Brad Barrett is the unsung hero of SURFER Magazine's Golden Age, 1968 to 1971. Severson, Kampion, Brewer, Divine, Stoner . . . household names, all of them (if your house happens to contain one or more surfers of a certain age). Barrett, not so much. He was a staff photographer, darkroom ace, and de facto photo editor. More than that, he was a nonstop creative spark, and brought to the table a funny, whip-smart opinionated voice. He's got an incredible memory, too. Any time I need to go deep into that beautiful swirling pungent mess of an era, Brad is my first contact.

Yesterday I did a Barrett-shot Instagram post of Skip Frye. The response was great, and I showed Brad, and he sent me another hot batch of Frye photos, along with a riff on Skip and gremmie life and growing up in the '60s. What a pleasure it was for me to click the pieces together. Thank you Brad! And long may you glide, Skip Frye!

The first inkling I had about this surfing thing, and that it might just be really fun, was looking out my living room window on Law Street in Pacific Beach and seeing a woody full of surfboards stalled in the intersection. All these scruffy-looking guys jumped out of the car and were running around like Keystone Kops trying to get it push-started. I didn’t have a value to put on it, but in 1958 it seemed a world away from my bedroom where I sat, solitary, listening to the Mighty 690 on my little radio and building model cars from kits I bought at a hobby store located behind the Frosty Shop.

Two years later, there I was, trying to find my way in this new religion of surf stoke, an uninformed eighth grader grafted into the heritage of PB surf culture and its surf spots and hijinks and heroes. And the two biggest heroes were Skip Frye and Mike Hynson—the most famous surfers in San Diego, rulers not just of the Pier and the Point, but even Windansea and Swamis. Wherever that was.

Fast forward a few more years and I was working one of the various part-time after-school jobs my mom made sure I had to keep me out of trouble. I was employed by Berner-Judd, a women’s clothing store in Pacific Beach, a couple of doors up from Thrifty’s, as a sign maker who also got to wash the store windows on slow days. One afternoon I was out on the sidewalk and here comes Skip Frye motoring up Garnet on his little moped. He flashed me this cool hand sign as he passed and I just about fainted.

During those high school years I took up surf photography as a hobby and managed to be in the right place many times when Frye was in the water performing his wave-riding magic. PB Point and Crystal Pier mostly, local spots a kid without a car could easily walk to.

Well, gremmiehood marches on. I went to work for SURFER in 1968 as Ron Dahlquist’s replacement in the darkroom, and seeing as Ron Stoner was at that point on his way to limbo-land I also filled in as a staff photographer. I no longer lived in San Diego, so I didn’t see Skip as much, in the street or in the water, except at contests and occasionally on assignments. I recall a 1972 trip to the Ranch with Skip, Steve Lis and Jeff Divine. I mostly remember it because I shot a few pics of Skip in full wetsuit and booties, at Rights and Lefts, on a really dark and cloudy day—or maybe I just underexposed the film!

Thankfully, Skip is still with us, surfing, shaping, testifying, the local hero always, and a revered worldwide personage to boot. He’s still as nice a guy as you’d want to meet and know, and I am fortunate to have grown up in the time and place I did and get to interact with Frye, and Hynson, and Butch, and Hayward, and all the many others that inhabited the waves and sands of PB, La Jolla, and the Cliffs. And I’m still here—a gremmie always—to tell my version.

[Adapted from the introduction to Brad Barrett's forthcoming book San Diego Surf Sixties. All Frye photos by Brad Barrett. Photo of Barrett, above, by Drew Kampion]

SKIP FRYE BY BRAD BARRETT

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