 but followed up with an email to set the record straight on a couple of items:


People claim that all the time, because I was never seen or never filmed. You mentioned yourself that I never liked contests. Well, I never really liked the camera either. Every time a swell would hit Malibu in the '60s, all the photographers and moviemakers would show up, and of course once the locals saw the cameras, they'd all paddle out hoping to get their mugs in a surf film. Which seemed childish to me. So I'd pack up my stuff, leave, and wait for the tail end of the swell when everyone else was burned out. With that in mind, you can understand why my surf trips to Hawaii, over a half-dozen or so, were always planned on the sly. I'd usually go during the off season. Paul Strauch and I surfed epic days together at Haleiwa. As a matter of fact, the same year that Paul got all those pics on the nose (most of those stretch-fives he did were at Haleiwa) I WAS THERE. Everybody else was heading off to Sunset Beach. That was fine!


People who didn't surf Malibu in the '60s don't remember the unbelievable high tide lefts that used to work off First Point. And what was great about that era was so many people didn't know how to go left. Some afternoons, Rick Kreisler and I would be chuckling about how great it was to be right in the middle of a massive crowd of surfers on a fairly good swell, and yet we had the lefts all to ourselves!

ALL THE CRAZY-FUNNY DRUNK SHIT LANCE DID 50-SOMETHING YEARS AGO? LET IT GO, FOLKS.


People ask me all the time me, "Why don't you write a book?" The answer is that I am, believe it or not, a very private person. As regarding those antics—which by the way only lasted a couple of summers—all these decades I've spent moving away from depravity towards dignity, the surfing world will not let me forget the stupid things I did as a kid. Things that I really regret. It's like having a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe that you can't scrape off. I've been paying for it for 50 years. It's been an embarrassment to my family and close friends. What can I say? We were young and stupid and looking for attention. We never thought ahead about the ramifications. And that's a good part of why I don't like going to surfing events...there's always some clown in the crowd that has to yell something. And many of the guys who do that aren't young either; they're older, respectable-looking guys. Go figure! But in a way, I'm my own executioner. So now you know why I'll never do a book. You do something like that, write a book, and you've got to tell the truth. But if the truth is too painful, then leave it behind.

LANCE CARSON GOES LEFT, SETS RECORD STRAIGHT

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