JD's Journal : Encyclopedia

A brief colum this week, mostly to celebrate Matt Warshaw's Encyclopedia of Surfing - a fine Holiday gift for any surfing person, but particularly for those recently obsessed with the sport and wanting to learn about, well, pretty much anything.

Having spent many years combing surf magazines, picking over details of conversations in surf camps, and obsessively following the surfing world, it is somewhat awe-inspiring to spend a weekend with the Encyclopedia of Surfing. It's rather like figuring you're getting pretty good at hoops and then watching Michael Jordan courtside - a realization that there are wholly different levels to this thing.

I mean, OK, so there's surfing in Alaska - from "Playing Docs Games" we know that Doc Renneker has been going up there for over a decade. But did you know that the first surf shop in Alaska was called "Icey Waves", opened in 1999 in Yakutat? And, alright, I've been to Jamaica a few times and been skunked for surf, but I looked around a lot - did anybody tell me the best spot was called "The Zoo"? Nope. You saw the tanker surfers in "Step Into Liquid" - cool, no? Did you know that "Tanker surfing began in the mid 1960s" in Lake St. Clair, Michigan?

Every little nugget of information I've ever carefully unearthed and polished and stored in my little, but much-loved, pile of surfing lore is in here, usually with extra tidbits that I had no idea about ("not until 1975 was Christmas Island declared free of radioactivity"). And my years of digging would fill maybe seven pages of this 700+ page book, if I used a larger font than Matt Warshaw does.

History? Read the prologue. Culture? Everything from The Beach Boys to Kem Nunn. Surfboard design? Read entries on rails (not to mention real grab, rail turn, rail line, rail sandwich). Travel? Everywhere you've every thought of. Think you have an area of the globe to yourself? Nope. You dont. Matt Warshaw knows somebody who talked to somebody who's been there.

Oh, and quotes. Here's my current favorite, from the entry on "secret spot", from Nick Carroll: "to be completely honest, I'd have to say that nothing, not my family, bank account, country, or even my species, brings out quite the same combination of feelings - as my secret spot". Yes. "even my species". Brilliant.

So, if you can, get a copy - hey, Christmas is coming, and your significant other isn't going to buy you a board, and you don't need another hoody, so he/she can get one for you. Curl up with it for a few hours, drift through the wonderful vibrant details of our little surfing universe, and dream about places you might go, people you might meet, who you might be.

my email is: jdj@pacificwaverider.com

an archive of these columns is here