Chapter: 4
Ten-Year Boom
- Gidget the All-Powerful
- The Rebel Next Door
- Hobie vs Velzy vs the IRS
- Better Surfing Through Chemistry
- Summer on the Inside
- Surf Fashion, Lightly Salted
- Surfing the Newsstand
- Process of Elimination
- Oil City Showdown
- The Jazz Stylings of Phil Edwards
- Technicolor Surf Boom
- Heroes and Villains
- Blackball Blues
- Dick Dale, Destroyer of Amps
- Surfing in Five-Part Harmony
- Tokyo to Tel Aviv
- Flight of the Larrikin
- Bob Evans Means Business
- Midget Wins It All
- But Will it Play in New York?
- Houses of the Holy
- We Own the Sidewalks
- Beautiful from any Angle
- Duke's Big Contest
- Can You Handle the Penetrator?
- Girls, Don't Panic!
- David Nuuhiwa Walks on Water
- An Invincible Summer
Gidget the All-Powerful
Kathy Kohner, around 1957
Kathy Kohner
Kathy Kohner and Miki Dora
Kathy Kohner
Kathy Kohner, Malibu
Tubesteak Tracy was the first to notice 15-year-old Kathy Kohner as she passed by on the beach at Malibu during the summer of 1956. After a bit of obligatory heckling, Tracy shouted out, “See you around, Gidget!” Kohner was five-feet tall and weighed 95 pounds; as the better part of the Western world would soon learn, “Gidget” was a mashup of “girl” and “midget.” Kohner learned to surf by trading...
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