Jack O’Neill’s first surf shop on the Great Highway was considered a crazy idea at the time. The same could be said of making a documentary film about the history of surfing in San Francisco. Not many local surfers liked the idea of shining a light on their home breaks and some were hesitant to talk about it at all. But as we spoke with more and more people the momentum began to build and people grew eager to share their stories with us. In the process, we were fortunate to come across the films of Fred Windisch and to have so many people open their photo albums, sharing family photos and movies with us. And just like that, the pieces of San Francisco’s surf history came together as a cohesive story. No one had ever told a comprehensive history of surfing in the City by the Bay, a rich tale stretching back decades.
San Francisco isn’t known for its surf, but people have been riding it here since the late 1930s. The sport has been here longer than the 49ers, the Giants, and the Warriors, but little notice was ever given to the town’s surf scene; that was usually a topic more appropriate for Southern California or Hawaii than the foggy, cold Northern California coast.
We structured Great Highway on the stories told by the people we met and the script wrote itself through the interviews. We added a history of the west side of San Francisco going back to the Gold Rush era to give context to the beach side of the city and how it developed. If you look at the beaches of San Francisco, you inevitably talk about the Sutro Baths, the Cliff House, Playland at the Beach and Fleishhacker Swimming Pool, not to mention the San Franciscans who cherished those institutions and relished the beach lifestyle.
Jack O’Neill talked about his first surf shop on the Great Highway and the Hawaiian lifeguards at the Fleishhacker Swimming Pool who started it all. Fred Van Dyke detailed how the other lifeguards at the pool were influenced by Cliff Kamaka and Eddie Eukini body surfing at Ocean Beach in the 1940s. As you can guess, the stories are rich and so is the history of wave riding here.
Interestingly, we heard a lot of how air mats came before boards. Jack LaLanne showed us the balsa wood board that he paddled from the Farallon Islands to San Francisco, made by Jack O’Neill in the 1950s. Everyone shared stories about the bonfires — the source of warmth before wetsuits and the central focus of the social scene at the beach. Alex Matienzo shared how Maverick’s got its name and Jeff Clark told us about the early years surfing there.
The history of surfing in San Francisco was a story waiting to be told and it was an amazing journey putting it together. The thing I’ll remember most is the sparkle in the eyes of people when they talked about it all. That stoke and that passion runs deep whether you’re in Hawaii or fighting the cold currents of Ocean Beach. My partners Krista Howell, Mark Ruegg, and Jim Norton dedicated years to help make it happen. It was truly a project of love. In fact, Mark Ruegg’s father was part of that early group of San Francisco surfers and a pioneer of windsurfing in the area.
Making Great Highway was an honor for all of us. We made life-long friendships with our heroes and brought to life a story not many people outside of the Bay Area had heard.
You can find out more about Great Highway here. The film is available on Amazon Prime.
