Jack Haley was one of a dozen surfers interviewed for a Surf Guide magazine feature titled "Huntington Beach: a Pier, its Pilings, and a Personality." The article ran in the December 1964 issue; Haley was 29 years old.


If one guy had was working, and 10 other guys weren't, the money that one guy made supported the others. Once I worked for 16 months straight, and for the next five years I didn't work at all. For 10 years, it was sharing. It was a matter of, what's mine is theirs, and vice versa. Kind of a Hawaiian idea. No worries about tomorrow.

The old crowd wasn't afraid. Their equipment was more difficult to ride, but they weren't afraid. There was only one way to turn, and that was to drag a foot in the water. Then you'd race for the pier and go right through it. You'd make it or you wouldn't. This was a different kind of surfer. These guys were he-men. Not kids riding lightweight 20-pound boards. He-men.


The Huntington Pier pilings reach out and grab at you as you ride by; they want to eat your body. They want to show you they're still master.


Blackie . . . this guy was my idol. During the Depression, he lived in a cave in Palos Verdes. He had a 50-gallon oil drum with a spigot at the bottom, and the oil dripped out slowly to feed a lamp. That's how he kept warm. He went out an caught lobster, abalone, and went up into the berry patches to borrow a few berries now and then. When Blackie made it to Huntington, he decided to stay. He still out-surfs 99% of the surfers out there. He doesn't much bother with all the little inside waves, when that giant comber comes through, there's Blackie August riding for the pier with magnificent control.


We all got pretty excited about bullfighting for a while. Some of the guys even took off for Spain. The rest of us went to Mexico to learn more about it. It became part of our life. We'd surf Trestle until 11 or 12, then shoot down to Tijuana and catch the 

. I always felt that riding a wave at Huntington Pier and fighting a bull were very similar. Here was something that could destroy you, unless you could manipulate it 

 yourself properly. But there is a difference, of course. In the art of bullfighting, the 

 braves horns of death. The surfers braves the waves, but the danger is not quite so great. In surfing, the ultimate is not death. In the bullfight, it is always death—for either the matador or the bull. There will be death. The fight isn't over until one is dead.


In the old days, boards were heavy and surfers were men. It's commonly known that wine contains a certain amount of food value, and surfers at Huntington drank their share. There was this big bottle of wine that hung beneath the pier, and you'd finish a ride, stop, drink, replenish your energy, and paddle out again.

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