Hasta La Ideas

Above: Surfboards from the ’70s. Images and reporting by Matt Skenazy

“Shortboard Revolution, Surf Design 1967-1984” opened last week at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica. The exhibit aims to display “the evolution that created the modern surfboard and modern surfing as we know it” through more than 60 handcrafted boards from nearly two decades of rapidly evolving design and images from some of the great, early surf photographers. Performance and design are linked in many things, but in surfing, more than perhaps in any other sport, the rules of the game change constantly. And nowhere else is progression and design more inextricably linked.

Two examples: In 1968, when Nat Young brought a new, round-tail design to Malibu, he was able to do smoother, sweeping turns than his counterparts on squaretail boards. In the early ’80s, when Simon Anderson combined three smallish fins with a square-tail, down rail body, the thruster was born. In less than thirty months the thruster accounted for over 90% of surfboard sales. It was the best of all worlds: fast, with maximum acceleration out of turns, but it held fast even during the most dramatic of maneuvers paving the way for surfers to do blow tails, aerials and flips with reckless ease.

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