A reminder to look down at our balls to make sure we have any.
The great Pacific Coast Highway cuts through the town of Dana Point. Drive through and you can see its guts. Across from the state beach sits a fantastic 50-yard stretch of grass and walkway known as Waterman’s Plaza. It’s a monument to some of surfing’s finest representatives cast in life-sized bronze: Phil Edwards, Hobie Alters, Joyce Hoffman, Bruce Brown, Jon Severson.
Friday, the tarp came down to reveal the Plaza’s latest idol, Mickey Munoz in his famous “Quasimodo” pose. Applause erupted and tears shed at its unveiling.
A few hundred gray beards gathered to celebrate one of surfing’s finest maneuvers alongside Munoz. The Quasimodo, for those unfamiliar, stands alone in its beauty. The surfer cross-steps forward, graceful, gentle. As he reaches the nose, the surfer extends an arm, wistfully bows to the wave, knees and back collapsing forward, and stares directly at his ball sack.
The piece, crafted by Bill Limebrook, stuns in its realism.
Born in 1937, Munoz moved from New York to California as a tike.
By the time his voice stopped squeaking, the kid was trading waves at First Point Malibu with Dora, Kivlin, Velzy, and Quigg. Just north of there, Severson took that famous shot of Munoz in his pose, making a spread in the first full issue of The Surfer.
Soon after, Munoz bolted the mainland for Hawaii alongside Greg Noll and Pat Curren and, pushing all their cards to the middle, claimed some of the first waves ever at full Pipe and Waimea. It’s hero stuff.
But do we need another idol? Aside from the appreciation of Limebrook’s mastery of the material (Bronze ain’t clay, after all), should we be prostrate at the idol’s feet or laughing at it?
Behind Friday’s kind words and huzzas from the lectern, I suspect Mickey knew the silliness of it all.
“The ‘Quasimodo’ was done strictly for a hoot,” Munoz once said. “It was to inject some humor into a very serious situation. It was a joke! But then people started taking it seriously and trying to copy it.” Honest objectivity coming from the man who played stunt double, bikini blond and all, for Sandra Dee in the film Gidget.
But man has been pushing gold, bronze, and paint around since the beginning. First to gods, then kings, now to tanned boys in little shorts wiggling around on Styrofoam.
Do we have too much time on our hands?
Famed New York art critic Clement Greenberg suggested that the western world has increased its capacity for boredom; it’s this capacity that affords us leisure time to occupy ourselves with statues of surfing figures (or reading BeachGrit).
It reminds me of a dialogue in Brothers Karamozov. The chaste Alyosha suggests to the wiley Rikitan that we seek satisfaction outside of pleasure. “Oh…” Rikitan rolls his eyes. “the gentry!”
Or maybe the statue is simply a good reminder of Mickey’s bravery into the unknown North Shore waters.
A reminder to look down at our balls to make sure we have any.
Mickey looked good yesterday, handshakes and pats on the back deserved
Chris Dixon and Frank: please email [email protected] from the address you'd like your BeachGrit login on.
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
Very true!
I had a 10’6″” Munoz Surftech that thing was indestructible, until i took it out at a surprisingly empty Makaha, several of us were sitting in the takeoff spot for the 4-6 footers rolling in except the crowd had thinned because 12-15′ bombs were starting to hit, we all got yard-saled and i surfaced to tangled leashes and broken sticks galore. The rescue ski grabbed a guy that was struggling and i bellied my half a Munoz to the beach, good times.
Classic.
Had a legend visit surfer’s point in the mid nineties for a contest. sitting on the edge of the beach I spied Wingnut racing up for his heat. The wind, as always happens in the PM here was 30 knots from the north. Had to get a quip in and stated: “Nut! Hurry up and get out there before it blows out.”
Had to get that in to the legend. He didn’t laugh. But then he wasn’t crying either. Piercing stare that only a true critic could understand…as sarcastic as a “quasimoto”?
What else would there be to say? Good call.
shouldda been here yesterday?
The Quasimodo, or as known in other circles, the Marilyn Manson
I love fish and chips but I hate when they are too greasy.
I wonder if old bogs has crested 40 liters yet like negs. I am still holding strong just under 3o.
27.5-29
Nice. I’m running around 29.5 on average.
We’re so cool
The coolest.
I got the Quasimodo on lockdown.
If you can’t bust one out when the moment calls for it, you have no business being on a longboard.
Aw cheers cuz….chee!
I reckon people know but you do a kindness in assuring people your love for them you nice fella you
lol
“I int moving that shut” killed me
Fucking love the kiwi phonetics you provide here SC hilarious
But I guess like I said it’s such a niche culture here. In Aus you can throw a rock and hit someone who surfs. 30 million folks? California alone has 40 million and is the 6th largest economy on the planet with tons of people coming here who maybe haven’t seen the ocean before, American or otherwise maybe. Australia is a coastal country, so surfing is just another thing that people do I guess and is as common as taking a piss. Not here.
Can’t disagree. Human cultures are weird as hell. Avocados aren’t from Aus but somehow its cafe culture has made Avo toast its culinary pinnacle.
Bloke killed by shark at Rottnest Island.
5 m white seen lurking a couple of beaches away.
Heavy.
Bogs vs Skegs mate around here
People reached for an Identity
And the funny thing is they were both on any given day….
hahah
Gavin Newsom just vetoed a bill that would officially ban the Indian caste system in California.
Opposition to the bill is based on claims that discrimination is already banned in California. Still….why would anyone oppose further tightening of legal loopholes in this regard? Particularly the powerful South Asian community?
Yuck. Import the third world etc etc
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67055579
This is interesting
Surfing was so much fucking cooler then.
No way. Surfing was best in the 80’s / 90’s but better now than those days of piloting a log towards the beach.
After reading this article, I thought, when was the last time, I took the time, to look at and admire my own “Balls”
Well, At least I tried
I tried other things too….
Now I have a very, very sore neck
With no reward
You forget to stick your tongue out?
Fuck yes, Steve. I enjoyed that write-up.
I’d either never heard of Munoz or skimmed over any references of him until Jamie Brisick interviewed him for the Surfer’s Journal podcast. It was an entertaining episode. Mickey spoke well and was funny. I’m glad that he got his statue, celebrating the lighter side of surf history.
He is awesome
I’ll check it out.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c… Just thought I’d share a selfie with everyone xoxo
Not gonna lie I fucking love this song.
Ear-candy. I heard it through the grapevine that it’s Chas’ favourite song, and that he used to play it while driving home from the beach when he was a grom living in Oregon.
To quote Chas from his latest podcast episode, “I cared more about being a surfer than actually surfing”
Really?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/01QjwajqoU8Ul66c8ZwafP?si=6bDbPjOaQ8yIFfsjPMUi7Q
1:00:09 — 1:00:33
“Being a surfer meant more to me than surfing”
One part of me doesn’t believe him when he says it. Then another part of me understands, having grown up surfing exclusively in warm water, that the surfing part might have been trying at times, in cold, grey waters. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he forgot how much he enjoyed it.
I completely get it.
Why? You think some stranger recognising you as a surfer from a bleached fringe of hair feels better than the unparalleled liberty and exhilaration found sliding through a crystal cylinder ?
I think this is for sure more of a seppo thing. Image culture. Waves are generally way lesser quality than in Aus. Surfing/surfers is ubiquitous there and not as niche maybe as it is in the states. Way more centered around personality and clout than the actual waves and surfing at times. I remember someone describing the difference between Aus and california as “Australia: the place where the waves are more legendary than the men who ride them”
Obviously surfing is better than being categorized as a surfer. I love that people don’t think that when they meet me. But as an impressionable teen it was definitely the cooler thing to be. I had a distinct moment where I decided I’d hide away my nerdiness (manga, anime, etc.) and lean into the surf thing in middle school.
I’m trying to understand but have no real idea how feeling like a surfer in a social context can ever be better than moments like this….
Pretty little horseshoe tubes at a solo reef session
You have been spared the brain rot that is the American teen experience. I hope you never know xx
I remember the handwringing about being a “true soul surfer” that infested the Septic surf magazines after Curren quit the tour. It was some nauseating navel gazing dogshit and it took until Slater’s emergence to let it go. The whole episode looked ludicrous from the outside.
AaAahAahgA
“Is money all there is?”
“Idk brother but let’s go away from it all and surf perfect waves in a non-descript third world country to eventually just exploit it for all its wave and economic potential.”
“Sick and then we can really get into spirituality afterwards and talk about how it really all comes to manifesting and not lucking into an era of human economic development that was so privileged that it could commodify something like surfing.”
“Lifetime ‘heritage’ sponsorship too?”
“yeeeeeeeeeew”
Mate, anyone with any sense knows how lucky they are.
You, me , all of us lucky to be born in safe, secure and prosperous first world civilisations. Even then you can come a gutsa. My brother, only a couple of years older than me and he’s fucked with Parkinson’s disease.
Life’s a gift. No faux spirituality here.
Facts!
I think that they’re referring to the time in their lives when they’re young, have no money as yet and no chance of having an experience such as the one in the photo.
It changes once you can start travelling. It must also be different for surfers who have an older relative who goes on trips to places like Indo/Mex, where the from can tag along and surf proper waves.
I think it’s true that it’s because Australians generally have access to better waves so don’t overthink the exercise.
Here’s a little surf trip I did with a mate when we first got our driver’s license at about 16. Drove my Datsun 120Y station wagon that was a dead ringer for Mork from Ork’s egg spaceship.
My mate was onto it and knew this wave wanted a NE breeze to be offshore but with the South front dying it’d be glassy. We surfed it just us two for a few hours in the arvo then a few more in the morning before the NE started puffing and a few crew shuffled in. One of the funnest little reefs going. No parents, no permits, no passports, nothing but a few dollars in petrol and a taste for adventure.
Good times!
yeah dude y’all have the surfers set up
you nailed it about the overthinking. I also think that not having substantive healthcare plays into it. Less of that social net here than there so consequences can be more real it seems.
It’s not just the healthcare, it’s the entire security of knowing that you’ll never starve or wind up destitute and forgotten. I mean, you can get there but it takes either a serious cascade of catastrophic events or a dedication to fucking up your life entirely. No one is completely safe but it’s easy to sometimes believe that you are.
Agreed, caveats included. It creates a lot of freedom in action which I found refreshing to be around.
Those 120Y’s went hard back in the day. Legendary cars that did the business, right up into the chassis or drivetrain would eventually rot away.
Those waves looked proper. For most surfing countries/states waves like that happen under 30 days a year, and for many under 5 days a year. Heaving fuckin barrels.
Yup
While playing ACDC from the Cat, and wearing a Blue Flanno rashie
Bogs vs Skegs around here in the 90’s
And most were both AHHAHHAHAH
For some of these cunts,
IT never even happened if nobody was watching
Also I quoted Chas to rip into him and wasn’t co-opting the quote to speak for myself. I just saw that and realized maybe that’s how it came across. I should have said “Chas said” and not “quote” him for myself.
Except for when I got into surfing (family had no surfers), I just have really cared about th act itself and haven’t really tried to be anything other than I am. I just like to ride waves and have other interests as well. I care more about the actually surfing in my day to day life than “being a surfer” because it’s just something that brings me joy doing it.
WHY
YOU WOULDNT GET IT
Yeah ya probably right there
no more collab? </3
No
no no no no no
total puss. You like pearl jam. You like this ? Fucken hell you posted up tool the other day. My favourite band of all time. Where’s your head at. All over the shop like an old woman’s shit. You’re baiting me !
So lame.
No one rides on the pier, instant ticket.
Every Californian knows that.
I think he was from the Hood. So he didn’t know.
And she was rebelling against her folks.
Damn where’s a cop when you need one?
They came about in episode 3.
I can relate Bogs
The grizzly comes in and ruins EVERYTHING
That is Bogs life in a nutshell right there,
especially when Manu is barreling on the right too
Why are they going right at Manu on that TV?
Wave of the day great scoring potential