The Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in California in 1948, Jeff Hakman’s father introduced him to surfing at age eight. Four years later, the family moved to Oahu, and the year after that, at the age of 13, Hakman surfed Waimea Bay for the first time. In 1965, he was invited to the inaugural Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, held at Sunset Beach. Hakman was 17. He won. In the ensuing years, on his Dick Brewer-shaped boards, Hakman transitioned seamlessly from longboards to shortboards—and went on a winning streak. He won the Duke again in ’70 and ’71; won the first Pipe Masters in ’71; won the Hang Ten Pro and Gunston...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born and raised on the northern beaches of Sydney, Holly Wawn’s father started pushing her into waves at their local Bungan Beach when she was three. She started competing in her teens, won local events, and won the 2012 Australian Junior Titles at age 15. From 2015 to 2019, she competed full-time on the ’QS, bagged a few thirds, but came to realize that she was happiest surfing outside of the contest forum. Now 27, based in Coorabell, near Byron Bay, Wawn is a freesurfer known for her big, swooping hacks. In this episode of Soundings, Wawn sits down with Jamie Brisick to talk about lineup...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
From Newport, New South Wales, Australia, Derek Hynd is known for his unconventional approach to surfing and all else. Hynd was a pro surfer in the late 1970s and early ’80s, making his name both for his surfing in a jersey and for the pieces he wrote for the surf mags of the era. In 1980, while competing in South Africa, he suffered a brutal injury that resulted in the loss of vision in his right eye. He retired after the 1982 season and became a coach, first for Billabong, then for Ripcurl. In 1992, Hynd came up with The Search, Rip Curl’s iconic film series starring Tom Curren. Around...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in 1960 in Sydney, Australia, Cheyne Horan joined the pro tour in 1977 at age 16, and finished second in the world four times, in 1978, ’79, ’81, and ’82. He surfed with an urgency and potency, weaving in and around the pocket on his needle nose, fat-tailed Lazor Zap single-fins. His boards had vibrant, elaborate airsprays. His wetsuits were bright and loud. His hair was peroxide blond. He became a macrobiotic vegetarian, a yogi, a devotee of astrology, and the I Ching. He was outwardly pro-weed and pro-psychedelics. Horan retired from the pro tour in 1993. Soon after, he began to...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born and raised on Oahu, Kelia Moniz is a two-time world longboarding champion, freesurfer, wife, mother, and entrepreneur. From a deeply rooted surfing family, Moniz rode her first waves around the time she learned to walk. She started competing at age 15, racked up a string of victories, and turned pro shortly thereafter. She is the 2012 and 2013 world longboarding champion. She spent much of the 2010s as a traveling freesurfer. In 2015, on a trip in Tahiti, she rode serious Teahupo’o on a longboard. Now 31 and a mother of two, Moniz and her husband, photographer Joe Termini, recently...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in Honolulu in 1951, Tom Pohaku Stone made a name for himself at Pipeline in the early 1970s as a stylish goofyfooter. Around that time, he was imprisoned after a drug bust. While incarcerated, he found books and higher learning. He studied, and, after his release, got a job as a lifeguard and enrolled in college. He got his BA in Hawaiian Studies from the University of Hawaii in 1998 at the age of 46. A few years later he earned his MA for his thesis paper about the ancient Polynesian practice of riding papa holua boards—which are long, wooden sleds—down grass-covered mountains. Now...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Michele Lockwood is an artist, writer, photographer, clothing designer, mother, activist, and environmental scientist. She grew up in the boroughs of New York City and started sneaking out to hip-hop gigs, house music clubs, and punk shows while in high school. She hung out at the Brooklyn Banks in the late 1980s, and played the character “Kim” in Larry Clark’s 1995 film Kids. The X-girl logo, designed by Mike Mills, was based on her face, which led her to becoming a clothing designer in Tokyo with her own brand, called Material. Lockwood has lived in Australia for the last 20-odd years...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in 1944 in Queensland, Australia, Bob McTavish started surfing at age 12 on a 16-foot plywood paddle board. Best known as a surfboard shaper, he started working with Sydney’s biggest board builders at age 17, then became a major player in the shortboard revolution. He worked closely with George Greenough and Nat Young, helping Young design “Magic Sam,” the thinner, lighter, shorter longboard that would win Young the 1966 World Championships in San Diego, California. In 1967, McTavish produced the first vee bottom, nicknamed the “Plastic Machine.” Shortly thereafter, he and Young...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Born in 1981 on Oahu, Mark Healey started surfing at age three, turned pro by the time he was 17, and made his name in heavy, scary waves, first in Hawaii, then around the world. But big-wave surfing was only part of it. An avid diver, Healey won the World Cup of Spearfishing in La Paz, Mexico, in 2008. And then there were sharks. In 2011, he traveled to Mexico’s Guadalupe Island to dive with great whites for a Nat Geo TV shoot. Outside magazine called him “the greatest athlete you’ve never heard of.” Recently, he founded Healey Water Operations, synthesizing all his singular skills...
info_outlineThe Surfer’s Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick
Kylie Manning is a painter, surfer, and fisher based in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were both art teachers, and, while she was growing up, the family moved between their home in Juneau, Alaska, to various regions in Mexico, which would inform her artwork—and her surfing. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts with a double major in philosophy and visual arts. While she was getting her MFA at the New York Academy of Art, she had a captain’s license to operate 500-ton commercial fishing boats on international waters, and spent her summers catching salmon on the Pacific...
info_outlineMatt Warshaw grew up surfing in Los Angeles at a time when surf and skate culture were beginning to meet in Venice Beach and Santa Monica. After a stint as a pro surfer in the 1980s, Warshaw became the editor of Surfer magazine. In 1990, he left his editor’s post at Surfer to attend UC Berkeley, where he got his BA in History in 1993. He remained in the Bay Area, parking himself in an apartment in the Sunset District and in countless Ocean Beach barrels. As if personally expanded by all those tubes, Warshaw’s writing expanded into lengthy essays, profiles, and books—many books—among them Maverick’s: The Story of Big-Wave Surfing, Above The Roar: 50 Surfer Interviews, Photo/Stoner, Surfriders: In Search of the Perfect Wave, Surf Movie Tonite! Surf Movie Poster Art, 1957-2005, and more. His Encyclopedia of Surfing, first released in 2003, is the most comprehensive tome of surf culture in existence, and he followed it up with 2010’s The History of Surfing, a beast of a book that makes music of Warshaw’s encyclopedic knowledge. His most recent venture is the EOS dot surf, which is an invaluable online resource for surf obsessives, and features the “Sunday Joint,” a reflective op-ed style email that Matt shoots out to subscribers every Sunday. In this episode of Soundings, Warshaw talks with Jamie Brisick about the golden days of Los Angeles, establishing a career as a historian, the value of exploring someone else’s world, the importance of preserving history, the challenge of creating a database, his first Jeff Ho board, the Encyclopedia of Surfing, and the art of writing economically.