“On either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class.” – Eric Beck
The most exciting time in the life span of any sport or social movement is the golden age, the first dozen years or so when innovation in the equipment and technique comes fast and furious.
It’s natural that the Golden State with its diverse immigrant culture, its vast natural resources, and laid-back attitude would give birth to so many sports and social revolutions.
The fifties were the easy years in California. With full employment from the Korean War, we were enjoying all the fruits of the fossil fuel culture. Gas was a quarter a gallon, used cars could be bought for twenty-five dollars, campgrounds were free, and you could easily live off the excess fat of society. Those of us in the counter cultures of climbing and surfing were as climber Pete Sinclair said, “the last free Americans.”
I’ve been lucky to have been part of that golden age of not only surfing and climbing but also falconry, spearfishing, whitewater kayaking, and, later on, telemark skiing.
In 1954, I went down to General Veneer in Los Angeles, bought some balsa planks, and made my very first surfboard. I later traded that board for a Model A Ford engine. Tooling down Malibu Canyon from my home in Burbank, if I saw another surfer coming back from Malibu they would give me a thumbs-up if there was surf.
My first blacksmith shop was a chicken coop in my folks’ backyard in Burbank. There’s a photo of me hammering out my first pitons in 1957 and there’s a surfboard in the background. I’d often climb for half a day at Stoney Point in Chatsworth, then go up to Rincon for the evening glass after I’d freedive for lobsters and abalone on the coast between Zuma and the county line. I almost always got my limit of ten lobsters and five abalone.
A good deal of my shop work was portable, so I’d cruise the coast from San Diego to Big Sur, working on the beach and riding waves when the tide and the wind were just right. During those years I figured I slept on the ground 250 nights a year.
When I moved my shop to Ventura to be closer to the surf, the ultimate day was what we called a “McNab”: Skiing on Pine Mountain, climbing on the Sespe Wall, playing tennis, and surfing the glass-off at C Street or Rincon. Where else in the world except New Zealand could you pull off a day like that?
XX Yvon Chouinard
Excerpted from Some Stories: Lessons from the Edge of Business and Sport © 2019 by Yvon Chouinard. This selection originally appeared in California Surfing and Climbing in the Fifties © 2013 by Tom Adler. Reprinted with permission by Patagonia in RANGE Magazine Issue 11: Origins. You can buy your issue HERE or at select Patagonia stores.