A very high quality and detailed history of surfing in California

Michael James Roberts
San Diego State University, USA

Patrick Moser’s new book, Waikīkī Dreams: How California Appropriated Hawaiian Beach Culture is an outstanding work of scholarship. Perhaps this should come as no surprise as his previous books, including a biography of the surfer Georg Freeth and an edited collection of surf writing titled Pacific Passages, are also excellent. Moser is a very good writer, able to convey the history of surfing in all its complexities while keeping the reader engaged without any academic jargon. He also did a deep dive into the archives for this book. Waikīkī Dreams is an impressive, very high quality and detailed history of surfing in California during the early decades of the 20^th century. Moser has become perhaps the most important academic chronicler of the history of surfing. I would make this case because with Waikīkī Dreams, Moser wades into the waters of issues that are not easy to discuss but demand our attention.

Non-academic historians of surfing have documented how surfing was born in Hawai’i several centuries ago, as well as how the culture of modern surfing (early 1900s) developed out of the practices and customs of the Waikīkī Beach Boys, a group of surfers that included, most famously, Duke Kahanamoku. The Beach Boys enjoyed a certain kind of fame in the 1920s and 1930s after they were sought out for surfing lessons by famous Hollywood celebrities who visited O ‘ahu and helped popularize tourism in Hawai’i. What is left out of most non-academic histories of surfing is a careful placing of the emergence of modern surfing in the political context of the illegal annexation of Hawai’i by the United States, which was made possible by the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian government by the United States military at the behest of American businessmen who controlled the sugar cane and pineapple plantations there. Isaiah Walker’s (2011) important book Waves of Resistance corrects that mistake as he reveals how the surf zone is an import liminal space where Hawaiians have always resisted, and continue to resist, colonialism. Moser’s new book is an excellent complement to Walker’s, in that Moser looks at the other side of the coin, as it were, which is an examination of the cultural politics of the appropriation of Hawaiian beach culture by Californians.

For Moser, the appropriation of Hawaiian beach culture by white Californian surfers should be understood as a peculiar example of the racist tradition among whites in the United States of “playing Indian.”

While much has been said about how surfers in Southern California emulated the lifestyle of the original Beach Boys, Moser’s critical intervention into the telling of this story is what makes his book essential reading, because he focuses on the politics and consequences of the appropriation of Hawaiian beach culture. As Moser argues on page 120, “for all their enthusiasm about Waikīkī, they [SoCal surfers] seemed less interested in establishing substantive relationships with the Native Hawaiians themselves.” Moser discusses the tragic irony of how Californians reaped the economic benefits of the growth of the surfing industry, citing as one example the irony of how mass produced “Hawaiian style surfboards” were actually built in California and then shipped back to Hawai’i and sold to Hawaiian surfers and haole tourists. But Moser goes deeper, much deeper, in his analysis of the appropriation of Hawaiian beach culture by Californians.

For Moser, the appropriation of Hawaiian beach culture by white Californian surfers should be understood as a peculiar example of the racist tradition among whites in the United States of “playing Indian.” On pages 120-121 he writes

What they [SoCal surfers] wanted was to perform as Native Hawaiians themselves: to dress and dance and play the part of the people whom they romanticized and exoticized… Deloria’s [book] Playing Indianoutlines the complex dynamics of white Americans who adopted Native American dress and customs through the centuries, a practice that he connects to the construction of both national and individual identity. Native Americans and Native Hawaiians have distinct histories concerning their experiences with white colonial aggression, but Deloria’s study illustrates patterns that apply well to Californians’ appropriation of Native Hawaiian dance, music and language… Deloria reminds us in his study that the appropriation of identity is ever connected to the appropriation of land.”

On page 181 Moser continues, “Surfing in California remains a bastion of whiteness, in both actuality and imagination. This state of affairs can be traced back to settlers who populated the coastal areas in the nineteenth century, taking advantage of public domain laws that disposed Native Americans of their ancestral land.” Moser is without a doubt correct in claiming that most surfers in California remain “unaware of indigenous cultural traditions [in coastal California, including] the Chumash, Tongva or Kumeyaay,” while they

adopted those of Hawai’i to establish their difference from the mainstream values of their parents, who were largely Protestant Midwesterners. At the same time, their mildly subversive behavior actually reinforced the status quo not in terms of cultural content but in terms of hegemonic process: they adopted Hawaiian customs to suit their own needs and interests without more than a passing regard for the cultural knowledge behind those customs (121, emphasis mine).

In the organization of his book, he dedicates specific chapters to important individuals in the history of California surfing including Tom Blake, Lorrin Harrison, Mary Ann Hawkins, Pete Peterson and Doc Ball. The surf spots that Moser discusses include Palos Verdes, San Onofre and Malibu. The chapters on the individual surfers he highlights are careful to focus on differences. For example, Tom Blake never developed an authentic relationship with the Hawaiians, unlike Lorrin Harrison who was befriended by the Hawaiians. Blake, it turns out, cared more about his own brand than anything else. In most conventional, non-academic histories of surfing, Blake is portrayed as the “white” equivalent of Duke in terms of making crucial contributions to development of surfing culture as well as important technological innovations. Moser does a good job of revealing the mistake in this interpretation, and we learn valuable information about the contributions of other surfers, like Harrison as well as Mary Ann Hawkins, one of the first Californian women to gain notoriety for being an excellent surfer. The chapters on surfing spots also makes important distinctions that matter. For example, the surf club culture of Palos Verdes that had a formal, organized set of practices was absent in San Onofre. This meant that there were distinct subcultures that emerged out of Southern California: one more “mainstream” in Palos Verdes and one more subcultural in San Onofre. I appreciate Moser’s careful study of differences, because it reveals the complexities that make a difference in how particular surfers and surf scenes related to the Hawaiians. When Moser compares the appropriation of Hawaiian culture by California surfers to the older tradition of “playing Indian,” the specific context he describes and explains is the Palos Verdes surf scene. Harrison, who had a more authentic relationship to the Hawaiians, was one of the first surfers at San Onofre, and helped make San Onofre a distinctly different scene than that of Palos Verdes.

There are 2 minor issues that I have with Moser’s book. One has to do with a question he asks about how much California surfers knew about the overthrow of the Hawaiian government by the United States. Moser asks, “what did surfers think about Native Hawaiian loss of sovereignty?” (89). Moser never adequately answers this question, as it is assumed – rightly so, perhaps – that most surfers do not know this history, and perhaps among those who do know, many may not care. Moser’s question works as a rhetorical device. But it gave me pause because some famous haole surfers like John Kelly, Woody Brown and Greg Noll were aware that Hawai’i was stolen from the Hawaiian people, and they condemned the U.S. for the theft, advocating the return of Hawaiian sovereignty to the Hawaiian people. In the documentary film Liquid Stage, for example, Noll and Brown talk at length about this issue. The point being that Moser could have done more to acknowledge that there were California surfers and haole surfers in Hawai’i who were critical of U.S. foreign policy and genuinely appreciated Hawaiian culture with trying to appropriate it for monetary gain. While Noll is of a younger generation than the surfers that Moser discusses, John Kelly and Woody Brown were roughly the same age as the surfers discussed by Moser, but they get no mention in the book. To be fair to Moser, he undoubtedly knows this. His focus is on the majority of white surfers in California who were not critical of the appropriation of Hawaiian culture and land. And for this, his book makes a most valuable contribution.

In the surfing community, we are long overdue for a period of deep reflection regarding race, gender and the legacy of colonialism.

The other issue – which follows from the first issue mentioned above – has to do with what Moser calls the “mildlysubversive behavior” of California surfers. I have no truck with Moser’s claim that the appropriation of Hawaiian surf culture – especially in the case of the Palos Verdes surfers – reinforced the status quo in terms of marginalizing the valuable cultural knowledge of the Hawaiians. But for other surfers, like John Kelly, “Whitey” Harrison, Woody Brown and Greg Noll, there was another way to be subversive that did not reproduce the colonialist status quo and where California surfers did, indeed, develop an authentic relationship with the Hawaiians. One could also make the case – as I would – that the subversive aspects of California surfers were not “mild,” especially when one looks at how figures of authority responded to counter cultural surfers. Kristin Lawler’s (2011) book, The American Surfer: Radical Culture and Capitalism makes a good case that surfer counter cultures were not only subversive in their time, but also that a certain kind of subversiveness remains in spite of the thorough commodification of the lifestyle. In short, there are complexities and contradictions that demand more attention by scholars in surfing studies.

Alas, one can only do so much in one book. Waikīkī Dreams remains a critical intervention in the field of surf studies and a must read for academics and non-academics alike. This book is not a mere plot summary of the history of surfing like so many of the non-academic histories of surfing. It makes an intervention that improves our understanding of said history. In the surfing community, we are long overdue for a period of deep reflection regarding race, gender and the legacy of colonialism. There is a lot at stake in the history of surfing, and thankfully we have historians like Moser that help us understand what is at stake. The issues raised by Moser go beyond surfing, so for those who do not surf this book still has tremendous value.

Go get this book. After you read it, you will be compelled to talk about it with your colleagues and friends.

Copyright © Michael James Roberts 2024