Big Changes

"The real boom happened in the early '80s." The shop owner told me. I had asked him about surfing's rising popularity during the twenty five years he'd been doing business in orange county.

"After Big Wednesday." He said "When was that? '79? '80?"

"'78." I corrected him.

"Yea. Big Wednesday." he remembered. "A lot of people started surfing after that movie."

weather he was correct in crediting the 1978 Warner brothers film in bringing a wave of new surfers to the beaches is difficult to determine, other than by subjective opinions. What does seem clear in retrospect is that "Big Wednesday" was a Hollywood creation which, unlike other films, the surfing media and surfing community view fondly.

Perhaps it was the light sprinkling of reality in the screenplay. The characters cannot be called realistic by any stretch of the imagination. they are Hollywood stereotype heroes, living well written lives. but, compared to the their contrived counterparts in other surfing films from "Beach Party" to "Blue Crush", these men are as real as any surf movie may be capable of producing.

Perhaps, on the other hand, the film's emphasis and themes are what make it dear to surfers. Skipping over teenage love stories and the trials of proving one's self through surfing competition, the film dwells on friendships, relationships, and personal trials in the lives of individuals.

I watched "Big Wednesday" after having spent several afternoons at the library and browsing the internet, researching the history of surfing from 1966 to today. The film woke me up and smacked me in the back of the head. I felt a cartoon light bulb pop up over my living room easy chair as my eyes opened.

in all that I'd read about the shortboard revolution, surf culture in the time of the Endless Summer, early contests, surf teams, the first professional surfers, and the drug craze of the late sixties and early seventies, one background topic was missing.

Vietnam.

it eluded me until I saw the draft board sequence in Big Wednesday. the writers of surfing history had mentioned it only briefly, or not at all. In their defense, they can hardly be blamed. for anyone who lived through the era, the war is implied and does not need to be mentioned. it is a resounding and inescapable truth that any discussion of youth culture in the U.S. in the late 1960s relates to the war in Vietnam.

the U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1964 to 1973 was a catalyst in a widespread uprising of protest across the U.S. Through popular music, media, fashion, and culture, much of the world was affected. Though, at the core, those most active were those who were most venerable: U.S. males in their late teens and early twenties, eligible for the involuntary draft into military service.

The group, by coincidence, was surfing's core demographic.

Sex, drugs, rock music, burnt draft cards, and the free life in California quickly became the calling cards of a generation's rebellious reaching for individuality. Surfing was a natural fit. It was an activity that celebrated individuality, a carefree beach lifestyle, communication with nature, and free expression. surfing became married to the counter culture movement. Timothy Leary became fascinated with surfing. LSD and marijuana became part of surfing culture. Jimi Hendrix performed a concert at Haleakala Volcano in Maui. and, in the era of free love, it didn't hurt that surfers and beachgoers wore considerably less clothing than their land locked counterparts.

The draft board scene in Big Wednesday is strikingly similar to the story in the Jeff Hakkon biography, "Mr. Sunset", which describes several professional surfers reviewing their options for evading the draft. Among the options were: playing crazy, playing junkie, playing injured, and playing queer.

Jeff Hakkon - the great professional surfer of the early 1970s and the co-founder of Quicksilver USA - evaded the draft by playing queer.