Texas, USA

According to the now-legendary “Doc” Dorian Paskowitz (who spent much of his youth on Texas beaches) describes the early 1930s with fondness for “the surfing joy and excitement in Galveston.” According to Paskowitz, a local man had visited Hawaii in the 1920s and returned inspired to build a surfboard. The inventive fellow commissioned the Firestone tire company to make him some cylindrical innertubes – 8ft long and 6in diameter. He nestled them together and slipped them into a silk sleeve, then into a heavyweight sleeve, and finally into a heavy marine canvas sleeve. The finished “surfboard” was big enough to be surfed tandem. The local gremlins – including Paskowitz, the great waterman Preston Peterson, and the Columbo brothers (who ran the “board” rental at Murdoch’s Bathhouse) – caught the fever and began to surf these bulbous creations. “If you were knee-paddling and hit a wave paddling out, the board would jackknife a bit,” Doc recalls, “and Columbo could use that spring to do a one-and-a-half flip and enter the water next to the board!” (In 1934, at age 13, Dorian says he talked his family into moving to California, so “lost to surfing” was he.) In 1931, Tom Blake had received a patent on his Hawaiian Hollow Surfboard. Manufactured by the Thomas N. Rogers Company of Venice, California, the boards quickly become the ubiquitous tool of surf-lifesavers everywhere. Galveston’s Beach Patrol lifeguards (including Leroy Columbo, a deaf-mute, who went on to earn a Guinness World Record for lifesaving) were quick to adopt the 10-12ft hollow rescue paddleboards and, by extension, inspired surfing at Galveston area beaches. Like most other places in the country, however, only a few hardy souls attempted the sport. The earliest known example of a Texan-built surfboard dates from 1946. Inspired by two traveling Californians who passed through one summer in the late ’30s and let him paddle one of their boards (one red and one blue), R.W. Ellisor III proceeded to fashion his own out of a magnolia skeleton, skinned with shellacked muslin (marine plywood was too expensive). Still, surfing remained an obscure practice with few participants. There were at least a few active surfers in the Galveston area in the 1940s and ’50s, including globetrotting government undercover man, Don Hull. During the late 1950s and early ’60s, as more West Coasters came to Texas, particularly in the armed forces, the surf culture gained momentum, specially on those same Galveston beaches. Mack Blaker owned and operated a watersports shop in Alameda on the road from Houston to Freeport – bait and tackle, waterski gear, SCUBA equipment, etc. – and around about 1960 a couple of Navy divers from California (Steve Bishop and Randy Woodham) turned him onto surfing. At 6’4” and 225lb, Mack couldn’t find a surfboard that would float him, so he ordered a bunch of ‘Malibu’ boards – molded Styrofoam things with metal stringers – and that’s what he started to learn on. Unfortunately they were easily damaged, so he graduated to Foss Foam popouts, and therein was a new kind of business. In 1963-4, Blaker, his son Clay, and a few other Galveston guys made a trip to California to learn how it was done, and when they returned Blaker Surfboards became a reality.

Blaker wasn’t the first surf shop in Texas, however. Depending on who you talk to. An early edition of Surfer stated that Spring Branch Surf Shop was the first in the Houston/Galveston area, and Jay’s Surf Shop was first in Corpus Christi. According to Gene Bagley (who launched On The Beach), the first in Galveston was Ken Delbosco’s Ken’s Surf Shop, but Dickens “Dickey” Bishop (diver Steve’s brother), who partnered with Blaker and Bill Repass on the Bellaire Surf Shop in Corpus Christi, credits Henry Fry as the first shaper in Texas. Fry began making boards in 1960 and later opened the Spring Branch Surf Shop; he’s still shaping under the Fry label today, some 30,000 boards later, out of the Fry Surfboards shop in Pasadena on outskirts of Houston (run by his friend, Wyman Wade). In the early 1960s, the hot surfers were in Galveston – guys like Henry Fry, Lee Lucas, Johnny Vigianno, Skippy Walsh, Kirk Perry, Nathan Kapner, Leonard Guitrose, Eddie Walsh, Leonard Getrouse, Max Seukanek, and Sterling Blocker. As their skills progressed, and as surf movies music began to go more mainstream, the Texas surf boom got underway with a flurry of shop openings and booming sales. Other early Houston area shops were BJ’s Surf Shop (B for Bryson Williamson, J for his father, Jack), Village Sporting Goods, Bay Surf Shop (owner Eric Rincoff also opened stores in Pasadena, Texas City, Brownsville, and Port Isabel), Locked-In Surf Shop (owner Ruth Roy showed 16mm surf movies of Surfside on weekends in the store’s parking lot), Surfrider Surf Shop, Surf House (started by Lloyd & Carol Sandel it in 1967 as a combo head shop/surf shop), (Bob) Martin Surfboards, Sea and Surf (Gene Thompson and Chuck Davis), and Sunrise Surf Shop. First shop in Port Aransas was Hawn’s (owned by George Hawn), then came Pat Magee’s Surf Shop (a champion surfer in the late ’60s, Magee recently sold his huge shop along with the Pat Magee Surf Museum). In the Corpus Christi area, early outfitters were John’s Surf Shop, Copeland’s Dive Shop, and Alameda Airline; more recently Harper’s (in Corpus and Port A) and Dockside (Bill Mertauve). In South Texas, Bay Surf Shop was first in Brownsville (they later moved to Port Isabel). Paul Hammett was building boards in Brownsville by 1970, then Pop’s Surf Shop and The Shop opened in P.I. Soon there were surf shops from Beaumont to South Padre Island and as far inland as Austin and College Station. The surf biz was boomin’! Rincoff’s Bay Surf Shop in Houston sold an amazing 7,500 boards one year (a record that likely remains unsurpassed); boards were manufactured in Houston and Corpus Christi. With all these shops, the contest scene was fast and furious. Ruth Roy’s Locked In Surf Shop was famous for its all-girl team, and intershop rivalries were generally intense. California surf star Mike Doyle visited Galveston in 1964 as demand for surfboards surged during the national craze. He is still warmly remembered. With thousands of spectators on the seawall to see a surf demonstration by the champ in 6-inch waves, he paddled into his first wave, jumped to his feet, and his baggies split completely open down the back. In 1968, the annual Texas State Championships was inaugurated at Galveston Island, and on the weekend of April 6-7, 1969, a crowd of some 15,000 beachgoers (including 15-year-old Ken Bradshaw) and 750,000 television viewers watched the 2nd annual Texas State Surfing Championships, held at Galveston Island. Pat Harral and Pam Curtiss were repeat winners in decent 3-foot surf. “Tanker surfing” became a popular if semi-underground activity in this surf-starved area during the late ’60s. Large ships heading into along the 25-mile Houston Ship Channel to Galveston Bay and Houston frequently generated the largest waves of the summer. Today, Texas embraces all the trappings of modern surf culture with plenty of contests (often national ones), surf shops, surf reports, even surf cams spying on the main breaks.