A Purpus Endless Summer: 60s and 70s surf star Mike Purpus is inspired by Bruce Brown’s “The Endless Summer”
Mike Purpus and Robert August were both on the prestigious Jacobs Surf Team. In the early 1960s, surf movie posters were hung in the windows of all the hangouts. Hermosa Beach’s Foster’s Freeze, Winchell’s Donuts, (both long gone) and Mickey’s Deli (still kicking) and Stan’s Liquor Store in Manhattan Beach (also long gone) were just a few of the establishments with posters in the window. I was a 12-year-old surf-stoked kid who had to have latest surf movie poster. I covered my bedroom wall with them. My friends and I were surfing’s version of the “Little Rascals,” all caught up in surfing together and attending surf movie premieres. Surf films were shown in school auditoriums, working their way up the coast from San Diego to Santa Cruz. Pier Avenue Junior High School Auditorium, now the Hermosa Beach Playhouse, was the surf movie spot for the South Bay. Out in front, there was invariably a line of bushy-blond boys — dressed in Levi’s, Pendleton shirts and huarache sandals — that went past the police station at the bottom of the hill. The only female presence were the girls holding hands with their boyfriends, who were booed by the hormonally-changing audience members for bringing…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com