We drove south out of Venice one overcast morning in 1970, heading for Encinitas, me and Jay Adams and Jay's step-dad Kent Sherwood—easily the coolest adult I knew; Kent surfed, made boards, used to live in Hawaii—on our way to Donald Takayama's house. A few weeks earlier Kent had taken us to meet Dave Sweet at Sweet's small retail-factory space in Santa Monica, which was going out of business. Dave, incredibly, had given me and Jay each a free short john. On this trip to Encinitas, Jay was picking up a new custom Takayama board. I didn't have any expectations of getting a free stick myself, but you never knew.

We kind of understood who Donald was. Famous back in the old days. Still hot, but not like David or Barry or Jeff. I was 10, Jay was 9. We didn't yet know much about surfing but were nonetheless hard to impress. I don't remember actually meeting Donald. I do recall looking at Jay's new board and being confused. One of the grownups said it was a "reverse teardrop," and I nodded without comprehension, and Jay might have said "cool" and I probably said "radical." Clear deck and bottom, red rails, a flower-rimmed "Surfboards by Donald Takayama" logo on each side. The back half of the board was a full pintail, the front half ended in a big wide half-moon nose. The board must have been tiny, Donald himself at that point was making the smallest boards around. Like ridiculously small. His personal board was just under 5' 0" (see clip above).

Part of my confusion had to do with how completely different Jay's board was from my 6'10" x 16" Blue Cheer pocket-rocket. It looked like a giant blue letter opener. So radical. Had Tiger Espere found himself boardless in the Haleiwa parking lot with a 10'-to-12' west swell pumping in, I think he'd have been grateful for a loan of my Blue Cheer. But I was a 65-pound boy still learning the fundamentals in waist-high closeouts at Bay Street. It was all I could do to stand on the tailblock and swing the nose around a couple of degrees to the left or right before jumping off into the whitewater.

It didn't matter. We were so gung-ho. Jay and I took our over-designed boards that morning and went out and had a blast at Pipes, drove home, and spent the upcoming summer owning the inside section at First Point Malibu. Jay caught everybody's eye by riding in a low crouch and extending his front foot to the tip of that wide high-planing nose. Every wave, those little-boy toes would inch up to the blunt front end of his board. Jay would paddle further up the point than me, and I recall burning with envy one crowded afternoon as he actually caught a set wave to himself and cheater-fived the whole damn thing, never breaking trim, all the way into the bay. I worked mostly on trying to look like Reno Abellira.

Meanwhile, J Riddle was out there on a gunny flat-bottomed Natural Progression squaretail with a three-inch fin. Larry Sheflo rode a thick stubby thing called the Shoe. Greg Little and Steve Krajewski rode thinned-out round-bottom hulls. Jay and I, with our ridiculous boards, fit right in. A year later, the equipment would all be different (except for the hulls; hulls are forever). So I wasn't wrong. It actually was a radical time.

DONALD TAKAYAMA AND THE SUMMER OF RADICAL

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos