Jul 11, 2016

“Kids these days!” is the perennial judgment of anyone over thirty of anyone a day younger. Today it’s millennials and their trigger warnings, yesterday it was slackers and their grunge music, and the day before that it was surfers, those dangerous hooligans, reigning terror over America’s beaches with their great bodies and their lack of ambition.

: Labor Day at Ocean City, September 7, 1971. (Pearson/Baltimore Sun)

: Surfing at Indian River Inlet, Delaware, above Ocean City, MD. June 9, 1968. (Klender/Baltimore Sun)

: Ted Purnell of McLean, Virginia. September 15, 1964. (Cook/Baltimore Sun)

: “The Board Riders–Well balanced youth at left rides waves into Ocean City beach while surfboarder at right paddles out to catch another breaker. Some enthusiasts surf the year round.” Ocean City, MD. September 15, 1964. (Cook/Baltimore Sun)

: “Now the girls have discovered surfing,” The Sun reported in 1967. (Photo by William L. Klender/Baltimore Sun)

: Jeff Muniford of Ocean City, MD, rides surf. September 15, 1964.(Cook/Baltimore Sun)

: “Now the girls have discovered surfing,” The Sun reported in 1967. In those days, the paper was not one to miss an opportunity to show a photo of a woman in a bikini. “Perhaps it is because of bikinis, though, that male surfers are willing to accept the scores of girls turning to the sport,” author Malcolm Allen wrote, in a statement that has so many things wrong with it it’s hard to really know where to start. (Photo by William L. Klender/Baltimore Sun)

: Aquaplaning, July 28, 1940.

: “Now the girls have discovered surfing,” The Sun reported in 1967. (Photo by William L. Klender/Baltimore Sun)

: Jeff Muniford of Ocean City poses with Ron Croci of San Francisco in Ocean City, MD on September 15, 1964. (Cook/Baltimore Sun)

: Surfers in Santa Monica, California, 1963. (AP Photo)

: Felipe Pomar, world’s surfing champion. April 28, 1966.

: Surf board rider, Ocean City. September 15, 1964. (Cook/Baltimore Sun)

: “Once the surfer is upright, she adjusts her feet on the board to maneuver it into the right position on the face of wake.” July 6, 1964. (Baltimore Sun)

: “Surfboard experts.” Photo dated June 14, 1936.

: Surfers ride Ocean Highway in search of waves to ride, Ocean City, MD. September 15, 1964. (Cook/Baltimore Sun)

The Sun’s coverage of the surfing phenomenon over the years reflects a mix of fascination and cultural hysteria. In 1961, writer Dial Torgeson flew to Southern California to report on the so-called “cult” of surfing that had the olds of the day up in arms. “Lawlessness, truancy, teen-age drinking, sex parties—these are things charged against the surfers by many police and property owners.”

In 1969, those concerns led property owners in Ocean City to file suit to enforce a ban on surfing during daytime hours. According to the town council president, “The surfers can’t coexist with the swimmers, and the council must look out for the taxpayers.” (The Ocean city solicitor later reported that he had no record that a ban on surfing had ever existed in the first place.)

And it wasn’t just men. “Now the girls have discovered surfing,” The Sun reported from Ocean City in 1967, during an era when the paper was loathe to miss an opportunity to show a photo of a woman in a bikini. “Perhaps it is because of bikinis, though, that male surfers are willing to accept the scores of girls turning to the sport,” author Malcolm Allen wrote, in a statement that has so many things wrong with it it’s hard to really know where to start.

Though the surfing cult was born in the ebullient waves of the West Coast, there are reports of surfing happening in Maryland much earlier. In 1965, a Baltimore Sun reader named S. Watts Smyth wrote a letter saying he learned the sport from his older friends in Ocean City way back in 1906. “In those days it was known as ‘shooting the waves,’ (the modern term is ‘body-surfing’) and is accomplished without a board, actually much more difficult than using a surfboard.”

He might as well have added, “Kids these days!”

From the vault: Surfin’ U.S.A.

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