The past and current (2010) shameless hijacking of history has prompted the above. As surfers age and the real facts slide into the foggy past it is easy for the snake oil salesmen to hoodwink the public at large with books, dvds, mag articals and ‘pop out’ festivals. Those, with little or no talent are able to capitalize on designs created by others, present themselves as gurus, then lend their names to mass produced ‘poop outs’.
Worse still, Australian schools and museums are treating the hijacking as fact. Australians and then those who follow (around the world) are parrotting a nonsense as reality, on websites that espouse surfing history.
Mainstream print media play up this nonsense and align it (authoritatively???) to a small group who manipulated the sport in the mid to late 1960’s. Below is a classic example of pure bullshit! Hard to believe this made it into Surfers Journal. Even harder to believe that Tim Baker promotes the below in his 2013 Century Of Surf!
“Truth should never get in the way of a good story”? Better still… “People love a mischief”!
What is wrong with the image and associated caption?
Mickey Munoz who shot the image was not in Australia in mid 1967. His first trip was November 1967. Mickey came with the Windansea surf team and a Hollywood camera crew who were scriptless. Nat who had retired after his San Diego win, sniffed the Arriflex 35mm cameras from Grafton and suddenly appeared on the beach. Bob and Nat grabbed the camera crew, made their vee bottoms almost overnight, and off they went, writing the script on the run. “Yeah Bob’s the designer and I’m (Nat) the test pilot” Never mind that there had been only one vee bottom in the Windansea versus Australia contest that concluded as Nat and Bob went into full song with their new untested (too) deep vees. Evidence of this lies in the ‘Fantastic Plastic Machine’ footage of the Palm Beach final. Ted Spencer rides an 8’6’’ double ender, John Monie rides a 9’ plus mal and the three Americans ride 9’6’’ plus mals. Midget rides the only Vee bottom of the contest. Had there been one other Vee in the event it’s rider would have made it to the final. The performance advantage of the Vee in small waves was just too great. The fact that Midget came second had a lot to do with the person running the event, John Witzig. John was famous for his 1966 commentary of the Australian finals at Coolangatta. So famous in fact that his brother Paul chastised him for influencing the judges in a magazine artical shortly after. it was the beginning of the rot!.
I was living/working in SA in the sixties , there were a lot of Aussies coming through Cape Town going back and forth to the UK and they brought their ideas and boards with them I am pretty sure I remember seeing V bottom boards in 67 and I think they were made by a local board builder ( O,Donnell ) , maybe some of Midgets friends shared their ideas , it was a time of massive change in surfboard design a different flavour almost every week . I remember ODonnell made me an eight foot , wide part back of center like a pig shape , with a pin tail a V bottom and a very long flex y fin . Cape town and Durban were the surfing hubs in SA and so many surfers were drawn to SA because of Bruce Browns movie Endless Summer , they came from all over the world to catch the perfect wave and they all brought with them their ideas and styles and took away new ideas and styles based on who they met and what they surfed and where and how , exciting times , everyone seemed to want to try something different however radical or ridiculous the board may look some worked many did not , in my opinion SA in the sixties was a crossroads a melting pot an exchange depot of world surfing knowledge . And again in my opinion I think a great deal of the new ideas like the V bottom boards were spread by traveling surfers not just by mags printed in other counties , the latest US surfing mag was at least four months behind before it got to SA and I suspect a similar time passed from the US to AUS a traveling surfer could have spread the word long before the mags . Personally I have no doubt Midget made those V bottom boards and the word was spread by traveling surfers . As to the claim of bullshit in the article , well the surfboard business has always been full of bullshit and bullshitters that part never changes . Much Aloha
read Lies My Teacher Told Me by Dr. James W. Loewen for some insight into how extensive the re-writing of history to fit an agenda takes place in the American school system.
Its been interesting to see of late, the unravelling of the deceptions of the late 60’s which in turn has sent more than ‘unnerving ripples’ through the surf journos. The reaction mostly has been to ignore the fact that McT, or as we in the know like to call him ‘little bobby bullshitter’, has and willl say anything to keep himself and the bullshit alive They choose to turn away from any more confronting truthful content as ‘Its all too hard’.
You only have to read the latest fantasy tales in his last book and the claim to inventing everything in and out of the water to start to question what was spouted as his version of surfs twisted history of the V bottom. (See his rant in Century of surf facebook page where he starts to make it up as he goes). Why do you think Warren Cornish called in his pound of flesh after reading similar acticles in Surfer in the nineties. Stopping Bob from using his own McTavish name he hadn’t owned since selling it to Cornish (for pennies) in the seventies.
More to all this than the journalists want to hear I’d say…
In the spirit of the title but not on the V-bottom theme, I too recently observed some shaky “history” being claimed in Surfer the mag.
Case in point was when an article on Josh Mulcoy in the issue with the Aleutian Islands story claimed he “Pioneered the Queen Charlottes and scoured the coast of BC” etc.
The problem I have is that he wasn’t born until 1973 and I was surfing the Charlottes in 1974 and never heard of him at all. He must have been low key or something.
Also, I know a half dozen guys who had pretty well explored most of the surfable coast of BC before Josh was born.
Not blaming him as he didn’t write the article but as an old fart I like to see history be reasonably accurate…seems only logical eh?
