Duke and Sammy with Mike May

[00:01:11] Tyler: Hello, and welcome to the Swell Season Surf Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Brewer. Our guest on this episode is a champion of New Jersey surfing and he's also an incredible New Jersey surf historian. For the past five months, our guest has been sending me dug up and unearthed pieces of that are rewriting what we know about the first surfers on the continental U.

[00:01:40] Tyler: S. coastlines. He's a charismatic character who's made his way through the surfing scene, and his name is the legendary Mike May. Mike first tried surfing in 1965, and after seeing The Endless Summer and meeting Bruce Brown in [00:02:00] 1966, He was hooked by the seventies. He was a mainstay at the Atlantic city's best wave States Avenue.

[00:02:08] Tyler: May was active in local contests and ESA events through the eighties and nineties, and along with competing at the top ranks of the competitive South Jersey ESA district. He served on the board of the Dean Randazzo cancer foundation and was a founder of the paddle for a cause it's most successful charity event.

[00:02:29] Tyler: May is also a founding member of the New Jersey Surfing Hall of Fame and one of the seven induction committee members. He wrote the definitive story on the East Coast Surfing Hall of Famer and protégé of Duke Kahanamoku, Sam Reid, and noted surf journalist Matt Warshaw published an excerpt of the Reid story in his Encyclopedia of Surfing.

[00:02:53] Tyler: He has also recently published a children's book about Sam Reid called Duke and Sammy. It's an [00:03:00] awesome book, by the way, and May was also a casino executive for many years and lives now in San Diego with his wife, Kate. He has three sons, Steve, Matt, and Chris, and a grandson, Zephyr. He is still an avid surfer and continues to travel to Bali to surf his favorite wave at Uluwatu.

[00:03:21] Tyler: Mike is our guest on this week's episode. Mike, welcome to the show. Super stoked.

[00:03:27] Mike: Glad to be here, Tyler. I've gotta add the, uh, additional grandchildren that they've been pumping out for the last couple years. We have Miles and we have Solanas. So there's now three of them. And,

[00:03:39] Tyler: and they're gonna force you to move back, what, east, right?

[00:03:42] Tyler: That's,

[00:03:42] Mike: that's the pressure I'm feeling. It's not a bad thing. Island Beach State Park is a great place to go hide out and surf.

[00:03:48] Tyler: Normally, it's the other way around, I feel like. I've done it twice, so this will be another move back, for sure. Well, how's it feel being back on the East Coast right now?

[00:03:57] Mike: You know, for me, it's, it's, [00:04:00] It's nostalgic, but it's also kind of opens up another perspective on what it would be like to be back here.

[00:04:06] Mike: I could get back in the mix with the Hall of Fame and generate a little bit more of the, uh, the ornery New Jersey attitude that I like to at least share back here, which is more acceptable because in California, it's, um, it's not. Got

[00:04:22] Tyler: to downplay that a little?

[00:04:24] Mike: Uh, Understandably. How long have you been on the West Coast?

[00:04:28] Mike: Um, We're on 17 years on this go around and then I had to go on after college in the late 70s and Lived in the Huntington Beach area for a little while. What

[00:04:37] Tyler: part are you now? You're like San Diego area?

[00:04:39] Mike: A little bit in North County where all the the soft briefs are for older guys like me And you know, I have a crew of guys that I surf with that are all kind of legendary South Bay guys, La Jolla guys, guys that went to grammar school with Corky Carroll.

[00:04:54] Mike: Oh, man I've had a lot of fun and they love the whole You know, the nickname of Jersey Mike becomes [00:05:00] a moniker out there, and I'm a little more accepted than I was in 1977 when they stole my racks the first day I was in Huntington.

[00:05:09] Tyler: Do they ask you, you know, make like a Jersey Mike sandwich now? Like, are you gonna get that, uh?

[00:05:15] Tyler: You know, there's clueless about subs and everything else out there. So the clueless about a lot of things out there, bagels, pizza. Come on. There's

[00:05:24] Mike: a couple of pizza spots in the, in North County that are. Oh, you, you rate it.

[00:05:28] Tyler: You rate them. You're like, they're okay. Yeah,

[00:05:31] Mike: they're, they're okay. But, um, you gotta find something, a little piece of home when you're out there for sure.

[00:05:37] Tyler: Yeah. It's hard, you know, like, especially like, Bagels and those things, you know, that are like comfort food for us, I guess, you know, and everything out there is so healthy and sprouted and natural. And we're having this running battle

[00:05:53] Mike: out there of guys, well, what is Taylor pork roll that, you know, utter confusion on what, no, that's ham, right?

[00:05:59] Mike: I said, [00:06:00] please, that's North Jersey, South Jersey argument. So I don't want to start that in San Diego.

[00:06:06] Tyler: Um, yeah. I wanted to ask like, you know, you've been like sending me these incredibly, you know, incredible old clippings and and and wild historical kind of documents that I think of of evidence of surfing on the East Coast and New Jersey, particularly during a time that.

[00:06:26] Tyler: It wasn't really known that it existed, and I want to know, like, what's this mission you're on to unearth this? What started it? How did you, how did you go, start going down this wormhole and, and why?

[00:06:39] Mike: So when we started the New Jersey Surfing Hall of Fame, and I was familiar with Sam Reid a little bit. And I just started to say, how do we not know anything about this guy?

[00:06:51] Mike: I am more. From Atlantic City area, which is not even a name. So as I started to get down the path with it, it [00:07:00] actually started going down Ancestry. com. Really? And then I found a bunch of things that way, and then Matt Warshaw turned me on to the historical newspapers. Yeah. And that was, like, goodbye. Eight hours a day of trying to figure out, because I really wanted to find out, was Duke the first, right?

[00:07:22] Mike: Yeah. Yeah. And there was a lot of stories about George Freeth, who is legendary, that he may have surfed. And what you can find is, and what is unique, there's articles in Atlantic City, but there's these articles in the Honolulu Gazette from like 1910. So as I started to get down that path, it almost became something that I felt as though I needed to make this story.

[00:07:47] Mike: get known. And if 100 people know it, great. If, if, you know, even more than that, get to know it, at least it'll be something on the record. The whole point of the book was that I had something written [00:08:00] down that though it's fictional in nature, it is based on Sam Reid's history. So I think once it started and you start to find things, Like, you realize that even, you know, I'll send a note to Matt Warshaw and go, well, that's, you know, especially like New York history.

[00:08:15] Mike: Yeah. They said that Duke surfed rockaway. Well, Duke didn't. No, he only body surfed. He body surfed. That was

[00:08:22] Tyler: it.

[00:08:23] Mike: But I found way before that, you've got Alexander Hugh Ford and Alvin Keech in Queens. In 1909, surfing. Wow. And Keech was there for the whole summer. One night he had to save people at a hotel that was burning down.

[00:08:40] Mike: So as this stuff starts to come out, you go, man, you know, I don't know who wrote the history, but the history is wrong. And Matt Warshaw. And to Matt's defense, nobody had ever put the time in from an East Coast standpoint.

[00:08:57] Tyler: No. And why would, you know, like we never, [00:09:00] You know, there was the knowledge that Duke came out, you know, and gave exhibitions and, and we knew that, you know, like we, we'd, it's something we'd always been aware of actually 38th street in Rockways named Duke's way, um, you know, and that was like the spot that he had body surf, but it's, it's really, for us, like my idea of New York surfing begins like 1950s kind of forties, like from John Hannon telling me, you know, him working as a junior lifeguard at Jones Beach and riding kind of the kook box type life saving boards.

[00:09:38] Tyler: And that was it. And that was like the earliest that I had, had known of surfers really kind of forming there. And then like, I have stories of like Eddie McCabe being like one of the first, like hotdogging kind of surfers, but really super limited. And most people just assume it was Bunger,

[00:09:55] Mike: you know, a lot of it

[00:09:56] Tyler: too.

[00:09:56] Mike: Um, legitimately assumed. Totally, totally. [00:10:00] Extraordinary. historical character for the East Coast. I think for me it became this suddenly, you know, Duke was this singular moment or Keech was a singular moment. Singular mode turns out people were surfing. Yeah, people were having custom boards made There was lumberyards with ads, you know in that period saying we'll make it whatever, you know We'll make it out of redwood and balsa or you know They had all pine wood, which was the whole Sam Reid thing was Reid Doesn't go on to the rest of this story of him We we have this picture of Reid being the seven year old kid who sees Duke in 1912 People were already surfing in Atlantic City in 1912.

[00:10:46] Mike: Wow, they surfed with Duke that day next to million dollar pier Because Duke's mentor was a guy by the name of Lou Henderson who brought him into the world Back when he was going to the Olympics, Lou was [00:11:00] from Hamilton, New Jersey. He was an architect working in Pearl Harbor, one of the charter members of the Hui Nalo.

[00:11:08] Mike: Whoa. So when Duke was coming east, they said, well, let's. have Lou go with them. Well, Lou goes and brings them to Philadelphia and Lou's family is in Atlantic City. So there's letters from Duke back to his father saying, Hey, I was surfing with the Henderson family, you know, next to a million dollar beer, because all those folks had already been in the, in the water since Keech.

[00:11:32] Mike: Once Keech came along in, in that summer of 1910, he spent the whole summer into September. Um, it took off as. It normally would, right? There were surf clubs, right? They formed even like surf clubs. That, I mean, I can't find anything where it says there's a surf club started even in California before 1921, like the one in Atlantic City.

[00:11:54] Mike: And this was 1910 around, I think you sent me the article,

[00:11:58] Tyler: right?

[00:11:58] Mike: That's when they start, but the [00:12:00] first boys surf club is like 1921. But there's another guy by the name of Ken Busby, he learns to surf. He's canoe surfing in 1913 at like 15 years old. He means

[00:12:12] Tyler: stand up paddling.

[00:12:13] Mike: Pretty much, which I will, I will get the abuse as I bring that up.

[00:12:19] Mike: He, he graduates high school, goes to Hawaii with his father. Stays at the Moana Hotel, meets the Outrigger Canoe guys, Georgetown Center makes him a custom board and ships it back to Philadelphia for use in Atlantic City. This is 1918.

[00:12:35] Tyler: God. Can you imagine, like, shipping one of those boards, by the way? They were shipping them

[00:12:42] Mike: all the time.

[00:12:43] Mike: Crazy. I mean, Dad, he had made six already that he sent back to, uh, to the Atlantic City area.

[00:12:50] Tyler: So I want to ask, then, like, You know, why do you think this is important for us to know? What do you think we, as like New Jersey, New [00:13:00] York surfers, East Coast surfers even, like, what are we getting out of this, knowing this history, do you think?

[00:13:07] Mike: So there is an aspect of this, of all the time I've spent in California, where you can Kind of like, all right, I'm tired of hearing about all this all the time. Yeah. And when you start to find something that is unique to where we're from, right? We all have this, this kind of roots that surfing is driven that, that I think many of us back here, we feel like we're the Red headed

[00:13:35] Tyler: stepchild.

[00:13:36] Mike: Exactly. And the reality is we aren't.

[00:13:39] Tyler: No.

[00:13:39] Mike: So I, I think we miss this period of time, just like you said, right? We think, you know, 1950, 1960, and then you start to go back to it and you realize, no, we were right in the mix of all this stuff, kind of, of ahead of things. Mm hmm. You know, not to do another [00:14:00] simple name drop, but I think Paul Strauss said it best to me.

[00:14:03] Mike: He said, look, we have to be foolish to think that others were not doing this stuff. Once you wrote a wave, what did you think was going to

[00:14:12] Tyler: happen? Well, it's, it's interesting because it's like, You know, like they, uh, they had that Mammy Water book that came out a few years ago about African surfing in the history and then they realized, Oh, surfing existed in Africa actually before colonialism had come.

[00:14:29] Tyler: And so a lot of people are now like, Oh, I'm rediscovering my roots. And I think a lot of us. It's kind of discovering our roots and taking a sense of pride in where we came from because we've always been made I think for a lot of a lot of years we've been made to feel ashamed

[00:14:46] Mike: Oh most of the from the East Coast listen paddle out in the 70s at Huntington Beach Believe me.

[00:14:53] Mike: I had a board that had to get fixed during that time frame It was a heritage and they wouldn't fix it. Really? No, we don't do East Coast [00:15:00] So, I think we also get that You That little chip on our shoulder too, which is a little bit of that East Coast aspect. I think when I first started to get the reaction from, from the guys at West, when I would say, you know, and not for nothing, but first guys to surf Malibu, one was from New Jersey and the other one was from Wisconsin.

[00:15:22] Mike: No, no. And you know, I had, Like, children of, of dads from that period get upset and post, and it's like, thank God for Malcolm Gault Williams, who kind of puts a lot of things down from a historical standpoint. Yeah. At the end. And I, you know, when I was doing some of the work for Shaq, when I was, I was doing some of the social media, I just had to be careful to not respond.

[00:15:54] Mike: Which was very hard to do. I think Jake Howard was, was good at that. Like, I don't think [00:16:00] we need to talk about that.

[00:16:02] Tyler: It's funny how that brings up such like Uh, with some people on the West Coast, like it's like a challenge to them, even though it's like, Oh, this it's the truth though. So let's, we should just dive right into Sam Reid and, and, and if you can give like our listeners like a bit of his story and what he means to us as East Coast surfers and what he did.

[00:16:28] Tyler: Cause it, I feel like he is set a template that has been followed, you know, like the I feel like New York, New Jersey, Northeast surfers have all gone to Hawaii and have gotten respect. You know, like we tend to go there with a, with a more humble attitude maybe, or I don't know what it is, but. We kind of click and, and it, and you see it throughout our history, like from like Don Aiken, you know?

[00:16:55] Tyler: Yeah. Having gums named after him and very much so, you know, and making inroads to, you know, [00:17:00] Ricky Rasmussen to Mm-Hmm. , you know, Ballam Stack and Sam Hammer, you know? Yeah. So I was just curious if you could kind of dive into Sam's story a bit. You

[00:17:09] Mike: know, I think when you, when you also look at that, you also have industry folks like, you know, Jeff Bushman, who is one of my best buddies growing up, who dated my cousin when we were kids.

[00:17:21] Mike: Jeff goes over there and becomes the man if you, you want a gun. Um, you know, Ed Discoli with XL. So there is this legacy. And I think what's unique about Sam. Is that Sam always felt that tied to Hawaii, not, you know, he was there in California, was a big part of it, but Hawaii was everything. And I think that's the thing that, to your point, a guy like Balaram and Sam and Ricky Ravs, you know, and that crew, Hawaii was, was everything.

[00:17:50] Mike: Yeah. So Sam Reid is this, this seminal figure, you know, he's born in 1905 in Philadelphia. His grandfather actually [00:18:00] designed the, the American flag. So yeah, he, the whole family is, it's a very, you know, he was a huge during the whole period of the, uh, the revolutionary war is, is just, so the family lives in Atlantic city.

[00:18:18] Mike: Yeah. And his father is like the, The head postman for the whole city. And the father bails about 1910. So Sam is running the streets. I mean, I have all the places he lived. They're the old style apartments that we all know. The East Coast ones that were huge. And he sees Duke when he's seven years old. Um, giving a demonstration, a million dollar peer now, Sam has this skill set of like making things about him all the time, which I loved about.

[00:18:51] Mike: Um, so he writes the, these articles in the course of that time. And one of them shows up in surfer mag, and he describes exactly what [00:19:00] happens next day, steals his mother's ironing board. He's riding that for a little while, and then he makes himself a. surfboard out of pine and is standing up on it by the time he's 11, 12 years old, still there in Atlantic city.

[00:19:19] Mike: You know, this is 1912 with Duke. By 1919, they actually moved to Washington DC for a little while. And then he ends up in Santa Monica and he becomes a lifeguard in Santa Monica before Blake before Duke he's he's in Santa Monica and suddenly Blake comes along and starts He's already has the surfing bug

[00:19:45] Tyler: Does he does he like did he connect with Freeth at all or any of that?

[00:19:50] Tyler: No,

[00:19:51] Mike: cuz Freeth is dead by true 19 true. Yeah 1919 And it becomes this kind of mission for him. [00:20:00] And when he finally, you know, he connects with, with Blake, he connects with Duke, he literally goes to Hawaii before he surfs Malibu. Wow. And Duke tells him, you know, go see my brothers. Hook up with them and he ends up there on the beach where the the hui nalo is and Befriends Dave Kahanamoku and then gets a job at the Royal Hawaiian as it starts to open So Reid is this interesting?

[00:20:29] Mike: He's not that the proverbial surfer Kind of bum cliche. Yeah, he goes and gets jobs. Yeah, and he works at the Royal Hawaiian He ends up at a J's charge of the the Red Cross surfing team But during that time he's going back and forth to Santa Monica and lifeguarding 29 he wins the Hawaiian championship for paddling and surfboard riding 31 he wins it again 32 he wins it [00:21:00]again So there's the, the state of Hawaii has him as one of the five originals.

[00:21:06] Mike: It's like Duke, Sam, uh, Kahanamoku, Sam Reid. And there's a couple, uh, other Hawaiian guys. Kealoha and Pua were the last names. So the only hauoli in the whole group. Wow. That's crazy. But he is original. Ornery, and cantankerous, and he just is not one of those, you know, he does, he, he's almost like him and Blake remind me a lot of each other because they're singular.

[00:21:36] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:21:36] Mike: You know, you don't, Neither of them, I mean, Blake gets married for a little while, but Sam Reid, same thing, but they're traveling this path by themselves. Where Blake is kind of taking off the Hawaiians by building this board to allow him to win a paddleboard race, where Sam Reid is, is becoming a part of the community and learning to speak Hawaiian and, and becoming a big part [00:22:00] of it, which I think to your point is why a lot of New Jersey surfers who go over there are accepted.

[00:22:08] Mike: Right? They come in and they are respectful, and I, you know, I know Ricky from, from back there a little bit, and when Ricky came in, he just charged, and kept his mouth shut, and when guys dropped in on you, you kept your mouth shut as you should over there, and, and mostly everybody that I know, you know, who comes over from New Jersey and New York, never has a problem.

[00:22:31] Tyler: Very rarely hear of that, and, and like, I feel like they all charge. Like you very rarely hear of any of them not charging. I mean, it's, it's kind of crazy. I mean, like, even like this past winter at that, that kid, Austin, who, uh, charged a pipeline on the day they called off the contest because it was too big.

[00:22:55] Tyler: Yeah. He got injured, but, you know, like earned the [00:23:00] respect, you know, Austin Givens, like that kid charge. And it's just like, I feel like it's just. Same thing in New Jersey surfers, particularly, I mean, well, you guys have the power a little bit more in your waves, too, that allow you to adapt.

[00:23:12] Mike: I think so many of us, when we were young, ended up spending a lot of time in Hatteras, right?

[00:23:18] Mike: Hatteras was the go to place, so when you, you know, big days there, uh, when you got an opportunity to surf there, when you got to Hawaii, we were like, that's why, you know, a kid like Barley is such a fantastic pipe surfer, because You know, when it's big there and it's three or four feet, you're bouncing off that hard sand.

[00:23:36] Mike: It's, it's not as bad, but at least prepares you for that drop. Somebody like Scootin, you know, who's an extraordinary, not only an extraordinary surfer, but like an example.

[00:23:48] Tyler: He's just an extraordinary person, you know? So what happened to Sam Reid then? Like you said, he, he was cantankerous and had like He was, he [00:24:00] was rough and I,

[00:24:01] Mike: so Reid ended up landing in, he works for a number of companies.

[00:24:08] Mike: He actually goes to like, Squaw Valley and is promoting snow skiing there, but he ends up in Santa Cruz in the early fifties, somehow becomes the head of the lifeguards. You know, he's riding his Redwood balsa board at steamer lane all the time. Um, and then as he gets a little bit older, it, you know, He, you know, he's writing it, laying down and he's running people over as he comes through the lineup and guys that I've spoken to say, Sam liked you, he would call out set waves and he'd slit sit on the bluff out there and like number three or throw and guys would come up and you had to kind of pay homage to him and Sam had stories about working for the CIA, but he literally when he was in graduated from Stanford.

[00:24:56] Mike: Wow. When he was in the service, the, you know, [00:25:00] the, the ship he was on got sunk. He got a purple heart. I mean, nobody, when you go through the, the story albums, ah, this is, but it's all there to find. So he is there all the way through into the seventies. Um, lies about his age a little bit when he's younger.

[00:25:19] Mike: He's literally 18 years old and he's a sophomore at Santa Monica high school. So Sam. You know, it's a shame right to the end. He's he's complaining about things. And, you know, somebody made a comment, I think, during the US championships at Huntington about Duke, and re goes off and really, you know, the modern surfer riding next to an oil soaked ocean with Barnacles on the pilings with their stinkbug stances could never, never get close to Duke when he's riding, you know, castles and that big, the story of him riding.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Mike: Sam Reid talks about riding 40 foot waves in Waikiki and sometimes you gotta wonder, but. We do know that the gist of his story is true, and the fact that this guy comes out of, out of Atlantic City in 1912 is just an extraordinary piece of history that just does not How long did he live until? He was seventy three years old.

[00:26:25] Mike: I think he died in 1978. They had him. They had him at 69 years old, but I have his birth certificate. Sam is cantankerous and a little bit of a BS er, you know, during the time. Wow. Set the template for all surfers.

[00:26:45] Mike: What's the line? Surfers are the worst. Surfers are the worst.

[00:26:48] Tyler: You know, we, we, we get old, we get cantankerous, we get a little grumpy and we, you know, that wave was 40 feet or I was 15 when I really, it was probably like eight, but you know, [00:27:00] we never could measure size. We were, we were not very good, especially on the East coast.

[00:27:05] Tyler: Did he say, did he have resentment towards modern surfing then? Do you think, or the popularity, the rise in popularity of it?

[00:27:14] Mike: I think he did. I think he, he wrote this article in 65 that they put in Surfing Mac. And he talks about that. It's kind of like the title is when real men rode real boards, I think was the premise of the article.

[00:27:31] Mike: And he talks about hot doggers and, you know, real men. Uh, and I think he just, his biggest issue was the crowds. Yeah. You know, he looked at that, he describes this, this day of surfing Malibu with Blake where a pristine crescent shaped beach and, you know, nobody was around. There wasn't a pier, which there actually was a pier.

[00:27:53] Mike: Yeah. Yeah. In 1926. There was a pier. Um, [00:28:00] and I think he's still. Really feels that kinship to Hawaii, so whatever they were doing in California in the early 60s just did not, it graded against them. You know, he, I have a letter he wrote to Tommy Zahm where he's complaining about the, the condos they built on Will Rogers State Beach.

[00:28:20] Mike: And, uh, he's constantly complaining about stuff. I think, uh, Warshaw title of the, like the most miserable surfer of all time, you know,

[00:28:29] Tyler: only

[00:28:29] Mike: Matt can

[00:28:30] Tyler: do. Well, it's I mean, it's funny, because I feel like that's a pattern that tends to happen with every generation, right? We know

[00:28:39] Mike: some Sam Reids.

[00:28:40] Tyler: Yeah, dude, there's so many people who constantly look back at a certain time period, and they're like, oh, that was the best, you know, or that was the best.

[00:28:51] Tyler: And it's always like this, this whole like, Oh, it was better back then. And I just think, I always feel [00:29:00] like it's not really that it was better. It's just, you were younger, everything was fresher and newer. And so it was exciting. And so it felt like new to you and, you know, and as you get older, you obviously, yeah, things change and.

[00:29:14] Tyler: You know, it's definitely different and you long for the past. Like that's, that's the whole, that's the whole premise of like, so much of in our country, I feel like,

[00:29:23] Mike: you know, and a big part of, and I say it with, you know, I'll be. 69 a couple weeks and I see guys

[00:29:29] Tyler: look good. What do you use on your skin?

[00:29:32] Mike: Too much sun is what I use on my skin But I see guys holding on holding on to boards that they shouldn't be riding holding on to Um, complaining about things with, look, you're not going to surf six to eight foot outer banks anymore.

[00:29:51] Mike: Yeah. It's just not, you know, I surfed good size Uluwatu seven years ago. I can't do it now. But I can. Change my boards, [00:30:00]

[00:30:00] Tyler: you

[00:30:00] Mike: know, and I moved to little 710 standups and I run around in the reefs in northern North County and I find holes where, you know, it all becomes the pop up. We're not all Jerry Lopez where we did 400 stomach pains every day and yoga, you know, a lot of us had to go to work.

[00:30:18] Mike: So I think if you hold on to the past, part of that past is you're holding on to equipment. Yeah. Right, and you're not doing the things from a health standpoint to, to let you still enjoy it. I love seeing guys that even can't, they'll just ride a boogie board. Yeah. And in the end, you know, you can get into this argument of whether it's surfing or it's not.

[00:30:39] Mike: And I'll tell you, you know, I think Mark Cunningham riding a wave is probably pretty good surfing. You know, Mike Stewart is Mike Stewart is one of the best surfers

[00:30:49] Tyler: ever of all time. Man. Right. And he's Pushing 60 probably as well and still charges huge waves. And, you know, it's like, [00:31:00] the other thing is, I mean, shit, man.

[00:31:02] Tyler: Like I consider surf, like mind surfing, still surfing. If you look at a wave and you're like imagining someone on it or imagining doing turns and floaters, you're kind of surfing.

[00:31:13] Mike: I mean, I love the, uh, you know, the real big days that I get a chance to, To. Be on the beach and not go in the water. Like, you know, big days at Black's that I used to paddle out and guys say to me now, just get a nine six, sit out the back.

[00:31:29] Mike: I'm like, I can't even get the nine six through the lineup. I got to go down near the pier and hopefully paddle out. I'll sneak out at the cove and maybe grab a corner on a standup. But to visually look at that and, you know, and find joy in, in what that, that vision is for you. And it, you look back at what You experienced before, but you're also looking, seeing people doing things and going, man, I love, you know, to watch somebody like a Torrin Martin, who is kind of [00:32:00]within, though we can't surf as well as him, we can look at it, go, well, maybe I could, we could

[00:32:05] Tyler: relate, it's relatable surfing, it is, whereas Felipe and Gabriel, which, and Italo, which I, you know, You know, are amazing.

[00:32:13] Tyler: I could never relate to that surfing. Like that's just so foreign to me. It feels like another sport where if I watch a Torn Martin or an Oscar Langburn or any of these guys who just draw beautiful lines and there's, Yeah, they're totally capable of doing those acrobatics, but they, they tend to focus more on the lines as opposed to the airs.

[00:32:33] Mike: Yeah, and I think there's, you know, people want to have that argument on what is it surfing when you're off the wave, right? Or is it not? And I, I think it's kind of foolish. because ultimately you're taking off on the waves. So whatever you do on it is an extraordinary thing, whether it's Tarn's turns or it's, you know, Gabriel spinning in the air and Or Larry

[00:32:54] Tyler: Birdle in airs, larials, as he called them.

[00:32:57] Tyler: Very much so.

[00:32:58] Mike: So I think, you know, [00:33:00] we, to, to the point of surfers are the worst, I think we, We hold on too long to that past and, you know, I watched guys when I was in my forties just get frustrated Riding a chip and not having and I'm like man, this is supposed to be fun. Yeah, why are you getting why you get mad?

[00:33:19] Mike: Why are you yelling at people? It's it's silliness plus we live in Atlantic City. Why are you yelling at people? Anyway, this isn't pipe

[00:33:27] Tyler: Yeah, let me ask it. Like how have you been able to make that transition in like? Those milestones in in life and getting older like to maintain that positive attitude as opposed to holding on.

[00:33:43] Tyler: How have you been able to kind of progress forward past those things?

[00:33:47] Mike: So I, I was unlucky and lucky. So when I was 40, I was running marathons, I was surfing, I never stopped, and I ruptured a disc in my back. And I couldn't surf [00:34:00] for a year. Kind of boogie board. My wife one day came home with a longboard from, um, The Surfer's Supplies folks, George Gerlach, who was a great friend, she said, You're miserable.

[00:34:13] Mike: I'm tired of looking at you. Go figure it out. So I think when I started back after that injury, it kind of made me feel as though, Man, anything that I can make back into that environment that I was before him, Because I, I was, you know, rough at times as a guy out in the water, as a local, and it changed me, you know, to find rough.

[00:34:37] Mike: I'll tell you what, I was at Frisco pier one time and guys told me to go in, you know, after I just was, I was on the side, you know, laughing people. And I think when, when I came out of that injury and started back where I kind of stood up a little bit, and then You know, I started to work with shapers to kind of make me boards that would would help with some of the results of the [00:35:00] injury changed my whole perspective.

[00:35:02] Mike: So I think for me, I kind of had that I got hit with a baseball bat of life and said, man, anything I can get out of this, I don't care if I have to write a sponge the rest of my life, I'm going to, I'm going to do it. Yeah. So, you know, whether if that hadn't happened to me, whether I would have, but I always looked at boards.

[00:35:23] Mike: I had good mentors of guys and George Garlick was a great one for me of understanding what you ride and what you ride as you get older. Can

[00:35:33] Tyler: you talk a little bit about George because I know he's kind of like a You know, known figure, but not known. And, but I know he's had a huge impact on surfing.

[00:35:44] Mike: George's impact, I think, was on the youth of that community. And, you know, for those who don't know, George opened a surf shop in Ocean City, New Jersey in 1962. And he was always this kind of mentor, but George was also a bon vivant, [00:36:00] like George, we go to France, you know, for a month and he knew wine and he just had this whole, maybe like scales.

[00:36:07] Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:08] Tyler: Yeah. Yeah. David's like that.

[00:36:11] Mike: So when George would speak to you, it was always this kind of methodical discussion of, you know, maybe you should ride this or maybe, and he, he would get boards that were for. Yeah, you know, we weren't getting, you know, George wasn't filling his shop with Those little slippers.

[00:36:30] Mike: Yeah, they were proper and he had a, and he would build these relationships with shapers who then would build a relationship with you as his customer. And he, he remembered names. He remembered, you know, he didn't, we have this thing. You know, that we look at people that come down in the summer from whether it's Benny's or Shoeby's.

[00:36:50] Mike: Yes. George never looked at that. Yeah. And if you look at the history of what Atlantic City was built on, it was these people that lived there six months out of the [00:37:00] year. And then they went back and it was, so George built a relationship with, with all the young surfers in the community, started contests.

[00:37:08] Mike: But I think for me, the biggest thing that George taught me. Many of us of how boards work. I mean, Jeff Bushman to this day, we'll talk about how George was an influence on him to understand, um, Why a board does what right? Yeah, tailrocker and why the outline should be this and why it should be that and I think that's why George is seminal and then he had that kind of bigger influence of this big personality on the East Coast, you know, he was extraordinarily Um, uh, interactive with everybody on the coast.

[00:37:44] Mike: There was no sense of Florida guy, New Jersey guy. George was friends with all those people. It's good for

[00:37:52] Tyler: business, you know, when you do that. Ultimately,

[00:37:54] Mike: that's why George did it all. It was the only surf shop that was expanding besides Heritage [00:38:00] during much of that time frame. You know, and George had more, you didn't have to order customs.

[00:38:04] Mike: George had like, a Forty boards up in the attic, so there was always something there and he would have great, you know, Gary Linden, Tim Nolte, uh, he was there doing things with the Campbell Brothers, with Bob, so you had this kind of tie in to, to Unbelievable Shapers during that period.

[00:38:23] Tyler: That's amazing. I, um, I want to talk a little bit about your book, though, with Sam Reid, too, because I loved it.

[00:38:32] Tyler: I thought, so, Lesnar is like he, you know, uh, Mike has done like a children's book. Yeah. You describe it as It was the point of

[00:38:40] Mike: it was a book, and it's funny, I was flying back and forth when the kids were having all these babies, and I'm sitting on the plane, and I'm thinking of Sam and, and I thought, you know, there's no, I wrote the other stuff, which is his history, but there's nothing about that time.

[00:38:58] Mike: Day. Yeah, right of this [00:39:00] little boy who comes on to the boardwalk and sees Duke. And it started to kind of kick into my head. And, and boy, wouldn't it be neat to kind of take three days out of this period and see what happens with a young boy and how his whole life gets changed. So I changed names I threw some different stuff.

[00:39:19] Mike: It's somewhat

[00:39:19] Tyler: fictionalized, right?

[00:39:21] Mike: Most of it after most of after after him seeing Duke and the relationship with the lifeguards, which he would had to have had, you know, the lifeguards in Atlantic City, the paid lifeguards started in 1891. Wow. So they were significant in, you know, they were, you know, Riding waves on these vans and Dory's and so for a young boy who already had that interest He would have had to have been brought under their wing and there's no way he became a lifeguard in Santa Monica Without having spent that time told in Atlantic City So I wanted to try to think of [00:40:00] that is is what the the story might have been But I also wanted to leave like a little historical reference for my grandchildren Yeah, you know because I think the problem Um is that we didn't do enough of that as surfers.

[00:40:16] Mike: You know, I always, people talk about, you know, we had a lot of great photographs of Manusquan and up in that area, and not a lot in the Atlantic City area. Mostly because everybody was afraid to sit there on the beach, you know, and have their car be hit, which You know, all the years I surfed there, I think my car got broken into once.

[00:40:36] Mike: Well, that's, that's like Rockaway,

[00:40:37] Tyler: you know, it's like that too, it's like a, a gap of time missing of photos and stuff from like 70, mid seventies until like early nineties is like not a lot out there now, you know, because that was like a sketchy time to go there.

[00:40:54] Mike: And Manisquan had meseral.

[00:40:55] Tyler: Yeah.

[00:40:56] Mike: Exactly.

[00:40:56] Mike: And when you have somebody like him, you know, and there's a [00:41:00] couple other guys like Krizner and Ray Holgren and all that were there during the time. We had a little bit of an LBI guy by the name of Michael Bethoff, but nobody was going to sit on the beach in Atlantic City and we were, nobody cared. Yeah.

[00:41:16] Mike: You know, Mike Marr came back in 82 and he did an article and he was with Steve Dwyer and Newstatter and all. Um, we were, yeah, this is, but we didn't want. Anymore people in next to those peers than we had, you know, it was hard enough surfing with your friends I always tell the story I stopped going to Puerto Rico in the late 80s With people because my friend dropped in on me and I punctured my eardrum in middles I never went back and I never traveled with people again

[00:41:46] Tyler: funny enough.

[00:41:46] Tyler: I've never surfed Puerto Rico because I just don't want to see everyone from up here down there. The whole point of traveling for surf is to have a different experience, not the same experience for me. Well, I was seeing all your New York [00:42:00] buddies in Cane Garden Bay, which was where everybody was over there during that time.

[00:42:04] Tyler: You would have run into David Carson and, uh Well,

[00:42:07] Mike: David Yeah, we see David, off and on David, uh, he kind of puts a barbed wire around his property down there, which isn't, I don't know if he can do that, but, you know, he does it, him and, uh, and then Alex Dick

[00:42:21] Tyler: Reid, maybe,

[00:42:23] Mike: but I want, you know, I was there, we went back a couple of years ago and it was just great to be, I hadn't been back there since 2000, special wave.

[00:42:30] Mike: Yeah, but even there's also, there was a wave around the other side of Josiah's Bay that I used to paddle to because you couldn't get to it and it was a little left hand reef break and you could go down there and not be credited. So that's why I said, why did I ever travel with six people anyway? So my son's in Puerto Rico a couple of years ago and he takes a picture at the bar and it was all the Jersey guys, so they're still here.

[00:42:54] Tyler: Well, what I loved about this book, um, is [00:43:00] It captures grommethood perfectly, I feel like, and I feel like, uh, you made it for kids, but honestly, as a, as a grown surfer, like, for me, it was super nostalgic because you're capturing this, this feeling, that excitement, the newness, and you, you write it really well, I have to say, I really appreciated the writing because it felt like Like I felt that enthusiasm that Sam had for wanting to see Duke surf and that feeling of the first wave and then wanting to take an ironing board his mom's ironing board to go surf because he's so excited and and that to me like resonated.

[00:43:41] Tyler: I was just like, Oh, that's my grommet hood in some ways. Like it was maybe not Duke, but maybe it'd be like, Oh, Tom Kearns coming to town. Holy shit. You know, and you you do anything to kind of Just watch that and I think that hasn't changed and I thought that was like what was so [00:44:00] beautiful about it It's like you captured grommet hood perfectly in that

[00:44:03] Mike: I think so many of us like I don't remember my first standing up in whitewater But I do remember the first one where I was gliding along in clear green Go on describe it I literally, I was riding, I was barring surf, my brother, the first board he got he actually stole at the end of the summer and brought it home.

[00:44:25] Mike: So it was, I was small, it was big. I mean, and so I would borrow boards that I could ride and it was the first time I turned and had a green, I'm actually doing it now with my hands. I love it. Ridiculous. The muscle memory. And I remember that. And I remember looking down and, and kind of seeing that clear water and still.

[00:44:46] Mike: Feeling like, Oh, now this is, you know, I, I might've been 11, I might've been, you know, I think I was probably 11 years old, but it's, it's a vision that I can tell you exactly. And I think we get it still. Like first [00:45:00] time you go over a reef and the water's clear, it's the same emotional reaction that, that I think we get at 11.

[00:45:08] Mike: I think that's what is unique about this sport. Is that there's something that kind of transcends that age. Like I will, when the water's clear in San Diego and I'm out getting away over those reefs, it's still the same. And it'll probably be the same until I can't do it anymore, you know? And that's what I try to do with the book, to at least make when my grandchildren read it, to understand whether they become surfers or they don't.

[00:45:35] Mike: Yeah. That feel of a young boy and he was just lucky enough that it was Duke.

[00:45:40] Tyler: It's just, it's, it's, it's It's, you know, the surfing is the vehicle for the story of, of youth discovering something new and that when you're young, everything is new and getting excited for something. And it's like, that story is, I've read that story many times before and [00:46:00] other things from like kids going to their first baseball game to first football game, even like things of that nature, like those things just always resonate.

[00:46:09] Tyler: I really felt like it captured that. And, and for me, I was watching that and it brought me back quite a bit and it got me that excited. So I don't know. I love, I love looking at surf history and history in general, but surf history and realizing the more things change, the more they stay the same. You know, it's, I mean, I

[00:46:30] Mike: think you as I and I've got more articles that, you know, I'm sitting on that I'll be able to use later on when hopefully I actually do the book about Hawaii and Atlantic City because it is pretty unique.

[00:46:45] Mike: There is that, that air, like the one article about the young girl, Esther Keeley. Yeah. This is 1913. Yeah. She's standing up on a surfboard in Atlantic City. Eli, I think it, her last name is Becker. Might be [00:47:00] Elizabeth Becker. They give her credit in 1915 being the first woman standing up on the mainland. But you can see this girl just keeps riding waves and she's riding them on her stomach and then she's standing up and she gets knocked off and you can feel what she was feeling.

[00:47:17] Mike: And they describe her as this, you know, young teenager and the three other high school girls that are out for surfboard season. What I found there's more articles about young women. In that period, and I don't know maybe if it's because it was really novel, um, then many of the young men, there's a guy by the, I sent you the thing, Joseph Rotherman from New York would come down to surf in Atlantic City, known as one of the best surfers in New York in that time frame, and it's like 1919.

[00:47:47] Mike: That's crazy. It's, it's a, and I have theories on why it kind of went away. Yeah, um, what do you think? I think what ended up happening is that, [00:48:00] Atlantic City. Do you think the Warheads? I think it was before that because, and I, you know, I think I said it to Doc. Doc asked me, why don't you talk about, um, North Jersey?

[00:48:12] Mike: I said, because you didn't do anything in this. This had to do with Atlantic City and Hawaii. This was directly related because every summer the divers who came back from Hawaii were surfing in Atlantic City off from, like, 1910 when the first exposition, so I think what happened is that started to go away.

[00:48:34] Mike: Most of the people you read about are kind of upper middle class. Um, and Atlantic City started to change. You know, the people started to go to other places and, you know, planes started to come along. And I think it just lost, it went from the world's playground to this kind of, you know, Yeah, it's people go in the summer and it just started to fade away.

[00:48:56] Mike: Now it still went on. Yeah. I mean, I have a picture from National [00:49:00]Geographic, uh, from a guy who actually was the lifeguard that I was like his, you know, his pet during the, for a little while in the summer running a guy by the name of Bill Howard. Then here's a wonderful picture of him and he's on a Hawaiian plank standing up riding a wave in like 38 or 39.

[00:49:18] Mike: Wow. So I think that's for me is what happened is the dynamic of that city changed Hawaii Stopped being that that relay. They didn't need Atlantic City anymore. You know, I um, there's this interesting path of Hawaii you know where the missionaries who Who thought they were coming to save people gosh came to get rich and took the took the country over The same time Atlantic City was built building this ocean culture.

[00:49:48] Mike: Yeah. So they kind of meshed for 25, 30 years and that went away. And I think the, the awareness of surfing did too.

[00:49:57] Tyler: Well, you need a culture, you know, [00:50:00] and like if that culture, like, especially that connection to Hawaiian culture disappears, and then you don't, Have that, like, West Coast culture taken off yet.

[00:50:10] Tyler: It hasn't, you know, come into the, the cultural zeitgeist. And then, like, yeah, you have World War II coming in in between there too, which a lot of young men and women, you know, a lot of young men particularly, just never came back. And so you, you lost a lot of things there. And, Uh, you don't see that re emergence until the middle class really starts to form, I think.

[00:50:34] Tyler: And that's really, uh, the big, probably one of the biggest contributing factors to surfing. Yeah, I think

[00:50:39] Mike: even in California, when the, you know, the Second World War kind of popped up, it changed things. Pat, Pat Moser, who's a great author, um, he had done the book on George Freeth, and he just did another one, which, when I saw the title, I You know, it was, uh, it really was how California appropriated Hawaiian culture.

[00:50:59] Mike: It's a good [00:51:00] title. And it's, it's accurate. I mean, he lambased Blake. He, he kind of talks to the fact that California during that timeframe appropriated, but did not Pull in the native Hawaiians into the mix. Little bit of it was Duke. Um, but, you know, there's this great story about the Palos Verdes, uh, states.

[00:51:23] Mike: They put a, a, um, float into the Rose Bowl parade, like 3536. Well, the float is little Waikiki. Mm hmm. There's not a Hawaiian on the float. And there's a thousand Hawaiians that are working in that Hollywood community. Wow. Yeah. They rip them. The Hawaiian newspaper shreds them, you know, and they talk about the blonde haired wahine dancing the hula.

[00:51:46] Mike: And it's pretty rough. Where Atlantic City did not do that. Atlantic City was like, we need the native people. We need those folks, you know, the, some of the stuff I put up there'd be [00:52:00] Hawaiian orchestras in the cafes, the divers, um, the native Hawaiian was brought back, uh, because I think what ended up happening when they tried to promote Hawaii in the early 1900s, you know, the white missionary folks where the Hawaiians really would have preferred that just let's keep our culture and let's stay in these beautiful islands and be the good people we are.

[00:52:23] Mike: They wanted more people to come to Hawaii, but they knew that they could not sell this without having Native Hawaiians sell it. So all that music, all those things were Native Hawaiians. And California just kind of like, kind of let it, they, they, They took it and kind of made it their own a little bit.

[00:52:44] Mike: And, you know, the book is a great read. And, and Patrick Moser is a, he's a professor at, I think, a university in Missouri, but he's a California guy, but he, he kills Blake and his Blake tried to present. Tried to beat [00:53:00] Duke. And that's why, you know, people, why did Blake leave Hawaii? Well, you know, from what I read, it wasn't his love in Hawaii as everybody thought.

[00:53:11] Mike: You know, he comes along and invents this paddle board and beats everybody. And it's like, it's kind of unfair. It's kind of

[00:53:16] Tyler: cheating, you know. Like, it's not in the traditional way. He comes in like a different way. It's interesting how we've put Blake on this pedestal. It's You know, for so long and like he had some pretty progressive ideas, you know, he was he was vegetarian before anyone even considered that he except for Ken Busby, who was a vegetarian and

[00:53:39] Mike: doing yoga and an artist, shut up.

[00:53:43] Mike: So he was at a plate. My, my New Jersey, not to interrupt, but I finally connected with his family and spoke to his great grandson. And they were like, Yeah, he was, he was, he was, you know, He was pretty extraordinary, uh, individual. He's gonna have a big part [00:54:00] in the, if I ever get this thing done. But I think your point, Blake, um, there's actually an argument to be made that when Blake makes the kook box.

[00:54:10] Tyler: Yeah,

[00:54:11] Mike: it's set surfing back Mmm, because he creates this board was squared off rails Why didn't you verb or the Hawaiian board if you look at them? You know rounded bottoms much more if you would put a fin on those early Redwoods. Yeah The whole dynamic would have been different. And the Hot

[00:54:30] Tyler: Curls had, you know, were kind of, you could say, were more progressive than the Kook Box boards, for sure, you know?

[00:54:36] Mike: But it was all lifeguards, right, that were surfing and they were double dipping. Yeah. The Kook Box was also to help them to Uh, you know, for life saving purposes, where the Atlantic City guy came up to Jones Beach and he wanted to see the kook box, how it works, he said, we're not using this.

[00:54:54] Tyler: I feel like there's an interesting story then between Sam Reid and Tom [00:55:00]Blank, like almost like a buddy story that could be slightly fictionalized, but like the different paths both of them maybe took.

[00:55:07] Tyler: Very much so. You know, but at the same time, they both kind of, I mean, I don't know You know, if Sam had family or anything, did he ever marry or, or never

[00:55:16] Mike: married? I mean, he had, uh, when he moved to, um, Santa Monica, his older brother like disappears, can't find him and he's, he's not in the mix. His sister is there.

[00:55:28] Mike: She's in school at the same time. Like she, she applies for a passport and they said, you know, father, it's like, just like Unknown. Yeah, where they actually knew him and they knew where he was. Sam takes a trip with him. So I think Sam's family dynamic was similar to Blake, and they both kind of ended up alone then,

[00:55:49] Tyler: you know, like, that's what's I think kind of interesting is like these two characters who set the trajectory in some ways for mainland surfing.

[00:55:59] Tyler: Oh, yeah. [00:56:00] Um, you know, and they've they've set a template. And one, Sounds like Sam kind of adopted more of the Hawaiian style, whereas Tom Blake appropriated or self promoted, and also just, you know, he had a certain vision of surfing that was slightly different than Hawaiians, and that set off almost like this kind of chain reaction in different ways, and I don't know, I feel like there's an interesting story there between the two, and like them going to Malibu, And like, Discovery, Malibu, and then what happens after, and like, Tom Blake's, you know, promotional, self promotional style of things is what exploited it, you know?

[00:56:44] Tyler: Yeah, Blake writes

[00:56:44] Mike: a book all about himself and writes this fictional story about, you know, a young Hawaiian and, you know, He brings in, you know, somebody from an outer island and that he marries and they don't get old. Well, that's Blake's life [00:57:00] he marries a Native American from the mainland and they last a year and You know his stories always kind of brought him in to the story and he he was looking to promote surfing So he could make a dollar.

[00:57:16] Mike: Yeah, Sam Reid never never ever did Never put himself in a position of where this is about me, and you know, he coached swimming in Hawaii. He did so many things that I had to kind of give back, because he was just enthralled with the culture and didn't He just

[00:57:34] Tyler: wanted to be accepted. But it's, what's interesting is, you were saying, like, he complained about the changes and the things and you can imagine him blaming Blake.

[00:57:45] Mike: In some way, you know? Well, I think the story that I can't find is why, why were they never friends again after? Yeah. Like, if you see Blake's process of contests and this, Reid is never involved with [00:58:00] any of it. And when you read Reid, all his stuff is in Hawaii. He races in Hawaii. He swims in Hawaii. All of it is done in Hawaii where a lot of Blake stuff happens in California and through the late 20s.

[00:58:13] Mike: So here's these two guys who are very, and they're like real handsome. There's a picture of them, uh, on the beach and they look like a couple of male models that you could have propped up here when I'm walking around the streets in New York. My wife said to me, Did these guys get taller up here and their hair is better?

[00:58:32] Mike: And that's what Blake and Reid look like. They were extraordinary. They were the original Hollister models. They were.

[00:58:38] Tyler: The original Abercrombie and Fitch. They wore those sleeveless bathing suits a lot during that

[00:58:42] Mike: time. So I, it would not surprise me if there was a falling out between the two of them. You know, I like that, to be able to have a fictional perspective of why did Blake and Reid not, Who were aligned with one of the greatest findings in surfing history.

[00:58:58] Tyler: That's it. I, I [00:59:00] love those types of stories though. The, uh, slightly fictionalized historical, the missionary style of stories, which, uh, bring it to life, you know, add a little bit to it, you know? So, uh, artistic license, man. Hey, that's why you changed. That's why you changed the last name. And then

[00:59:19] Mike: you put that little blurb in the middle of it says,

[00:59:21] Tyler: based on, do you, do you think.

[00:59:24] Tyler: Like, the way you write about Duke in the book and everything I've ever read about him has been just nothing but positive things. Do you think he really was that type of person that we all kind of grew up idolizing or hearing about? I, I mean, I've

[00:59:44] Mike: never read anything where he wasn't. Yeah. Right. Straub tells this story about them sitting at the, at the table.

[00:59:51] Mike: The U. S. Open Awards, and the third place guy comes up and gets his trophy and like throws it in the trash, and I don't know if it was, [01:00:00] I think it might have been Corky, but it, you know, he wouldn't tell me who it was. So Strout comes over to him and he says, Duke, you know, what did you, he was waiting to see Duke, like, Go off of that.

[01:00:10] Mike: Duke goes, wasn't that so cool? Isn't that amazing that, you know, they wanted to be so competitive because Duke in the end was a gold medalist.

[01:00:19] Tyler: Yeah. He was a competitive motherfucker. You know? He was there to

[01:00:23] Mike: compete and surfing in that environment, I think for him was not a competitive world. I'm sure, you know, with his brothers and who's going to ride a, but that was joy and it was something he wanted to share.

[01:00:36] Mike: But everything I've. Ever read about him and that that last part of it where I kind of flip it and bring it to a time frame Is very much stories of of duke sharing that that Ocean in waikiki with just anybody who wanted to be part of it. Uh, there's no, and I've done, I mean, I think that Waterman book, which was a [01:01:00] wonderful biography of Duke.

[01:01:01] Mike: When you read it, it's just like, Hey man, Duke's here and he wants to do the stuff he can do and let's have fun. And yeah. Lou Henderson writes about, um, you know, bringing him throughout, uh, the United States and Duke has that bad experience sinking literally in the first time he swims in a freshwater pool.

[01:01:22] Mike: It's like, ah, let's, you know, we'll go to Philadelphia and that guy will teach me and just this cruising mentality, which I think when you, if you spend any time with a lot of the guys coming out of Hawaii, you know, that whole. Aloha. Yeah. Right. And the sense of what hello, aloha means, you know, the whole breath aspect.

[01:01:42] Tyler: It is Duke. It's interesting how we've, our culture, the surf culture, you know, because of so many of the influences and the, the appropriation, like have, sometimes we lose that. I feel like that, that aloha attitude, we, we lose so much [01:02:00] of that because obviously is a finite resource, you know, but. It is funny, like, seeing how people kind of behave, and how we all behave, I mean, we're all guilty of it to a certain extent, you know?

[01:02:11] Tyler: Yeah,

[01:02:12] Mike: I mean, my, my running joke is, what's the, what's the worst thing a stand up paddle boarder wants to see in the water? Another stand up paddle boarder

[01:02:20] Tyler: guy.

[01:02:21] Mike: You know that? I was gonna say, a

[01:02:22] Tyler: foiler.

[01:02:24] Mike: Scott Bass. Scott Bass. Scott Bass. So I think, and I don't know that, you know, many of us, like I always looked when I started the surf, I was not as absorbed as surfing as a California culture.

[01:02:37] Tyler: Yeah.

[01:02:38] Mike: It was a culture I was growing up and there was, you know, Mike Basham, you know, the father of Shane. He was one of the guys I used to talk to. Follow around in the water during that time and you know, I drove up with him to see Tinker and pick up boards up at Challenger Eastern. So I, we had our own heroes.

[01:02:56] Mike: Yeah. You know, during that time, uh, uh, you know, I [01:03:00] know Tyler Calloway from a New York standpoint and that whole crew of guys, and I forget the other guy who was Ricky's real good buddy. Yeah. They were extraordinary from a hero standpoint. Eric Penny and all that. Yeah. Eric Penny, when you, and. You know, we just inducted Eric into the East Coast Hall of Fame.

[01:03:18] Mike: But Eric's story, besides being, getting sick, the whole other part of his story is a book. Yeah. You know, and that's.

[01:03:26] Tyler: And everyone loved him. Everyone loved that guy. Like, everyone I talked to, they were like, Ricky Raz was a dick. Eric Penney, everyone loved. Ricky could be, Ricky could really be difficult in the water.

[01:03:39] Tyler: My therapist, one of my therapists, she grew up with Ricky and would tell me these hilarious stories of like, What a brat he was actually as a kid, talk to his sister. She'll tell you what Susan I'll tell you, you know, what

[01:03:53] Mike: a, what a spoiled kid he was from 15, just bailing and going to Puerto Rico and no, no [01:04:00] ramifications, none, none.

[01:04:02] Mike: And I think, you know, part of that might've been a little bit of the downfall during that timeframe. You know, it was, it was a weird period and I know he was Linda Davoli, who was one of my, my. Close friends who they'd done the

[01:04:15] Tyler: G Land

[01:04:15] Mike: trip and you know that that period was weird that 70s Dynamic was a was an odd dark ages

[01:04:24] Tyler: of surfing.

[01:04:24] Tyler: I feel like very much so You know, black wetsuits, clear surfboards, localism, kind of a dark time, you know?

[01:04:32] Mike: And we absorbed that, and I don't know that we, we learned it from out west because it was a big aspect, but boy, we sure did do it here, you know? There was, I mean, I unfortunately remember some days, you know, in Atlantic City at States Avenue, just fading guys, you know, if I didn't know them.

[01:04:52] Mike: I'm not proud of those days. Well, you know, you live and learn. You live and

[01:04:58] Tyler: learn. It took a while. [01:05:00] I want to ask, like, how you guys, this is more for my own personal kind of interest too, how you formed the New Jersey Surfing Hall of Fame, how that came about, and what has gone into that. Because it's really cool, and I think, I want to do one for New York, but I don't know where to get started.

[01:05:20] Mike: So I think what was, was interesting, we had Somebody with a vision. It was a guy by the name of Jimmy Kirk who was a professor at Stockton. He actually was a poet and, you know, he was also the main lifeguard at 7th Street in Ocean City. And Jimmy was kind of friends with Greg Lohr a little bit and he really wanted to start it.

[01:05:43] Mike: Greg talked to him about the East Coast Hall and Jimmy reached out to a couple of us. I think I was already living in California by then, and we started to put the structure together. And if one word comes through more than anything, it's structure. Yeah. So the [01:06:00] first kind of, the way we put it together initially, we did not do a great job of it.

[01:06:07] Mike: Um, that first induction, luckily we, we decided that, Anybody who was in the East Coast Hall of Fame would automatically go in. And then we had a whole bunch of other guys that got brought in. And there was no transparency with it. So, whether you agree with somebody should come in or not is a moot point.

[01:06:24] Mike: What it is, is, alright, how did you get there? So we had a huge meeting at that first induction. And there was a good group. And I think the biggest, the biggest, thing that I can tell you is that you need a mixture. You need the, you know, the top guys who are good surfers, but you also need some people that maybe have a business background.

[01:06:47] Mike: Yeah, we had this wonderful gentleman by the name of John Ryan who was from LBI who's since passed away, and he was a lawyer. And John was this even keel kind of, so after [01:07:00] we, we all got together that day, we, we, We pretty much, it said, look, this is kind of a clusterfuck. We better rethink this and You know, I was able to sit down and talk with people about structure We're you know, you put a group together and then you put a voting committee and with Gary Jermaine who was a longtime great Jersey surfer we put him in as president and the mixture of everybody on that board Um, Only had one.

[01:07:27] Mike: They left their, their egos behind. And we have a good one now. Brian Heritage is the president, but you have great surfers like Dean Schoonover and Jersey guys who put away a lot of that stuff. So I think our success was you needed to put a structure in that says, all right, why did you do this? And then people were going to bitch at us.

[01:07:48] Mike: I mean, of course. I stopped going on the Facebook page because people would attack about who voted for who and I would say, listen, I'm on the fricking voting committee and I would use something else and you know, [01:08:00] you're besmirching my reputation and then my wife, my wife, pretty much. So what we found is that.

[01:08:10] Mike: Put good bylaws together. If you can find a good lawyer who surfs, everybody who's involved in it has to have some kind of surfing chops. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, you don't have to be an all star, but you have to be somebody that's been in, that people know from in the mix. Yeah. But boy, to have a couple business guys background, I mean, I brought some of, you know, the years of my business and the lawyer and some of the other folks and that was the key.

[01:08:36] Mike: I mean, I, I think I, I send you some of the bylaws and don't make the bylaws too, too complicated or complicated because guys that are coming outside of it, like, Oh, I mean, you can't change out this. Well, that's, you know, we wrote this. We didn't want you coming along and changing it. So that's the bigger thing.

[01:08:57] Mike: And you've got, you know, I think I brought Will, Will [01:09:00] Hallett's another great, but Will's from a, from a personality standpoint is the type of people that you want to get involved with it. Yeah. And you grab somebody like Susan Rasmussen, you know, there's gotta be that one person like our Jimmy Kirk and Jimmy was going to quit.

[01:09:18] Mike: After that first year and I had to talk him out of saying, look, we're not going to get this done if, if you're not pushing together. So it's structure, don't let it all be surfers only, you know, you need, you need some people that have had a job. Number one, that has been a key part of, and it's been relatively successful.

[01:09:39] Mike: And then you need that, those couple of guys that are in, like Brian Heritage, who, you know, we are had a meeting a couple, uh, Weeks ago, and I got a chance to be and they were talking about voting and you know Who we're gonna vote for president. I said let me let me at least tell you this big event We have every year where Nixon comes and quicksilver comes and all those [01:10:00] folks come.

[01:10:00] Tyler: Yeah,

[01:10:00] Mike: they don't come because they like us They come because Brian's got three stores. Yeah And if they don't support us Guess what? Brian's going to torture him. So don't put some knucklehead in his president of the New Jersey hall that doesn't have a relationship in the surf industry. So that's, you know, there's got to be a mixture.

[01:10:22] Mike: But ultimately, the ego's gotta, you know, we have a lot of surf ego, the best guys can be really difficult, but we have Randy Townsend, who's been an extraordinarily supportive individual. Um, you know, we have a guy by the name of Keith Eaves, who's the treasurer, who just is like, he's behind the scene, and, you know, I always get nervous when these, These voting periods come up, then I realized nobody gives a shit.

[01:10:50] Mike: They're not going to run. So we're going to end up with a good, nobody wants

[01:10:53] Tyler: to do the work. Yeah, that's the thing. So you got to find the work who want to do the work, who are willing to put it in.

[01:10:58] Mike: And you have such like [01:11:00] the history of you guys and then to be able to start it as. Hey, 1909, Alvin Keech surfed Queens with Alexander Hume Ford.

[01:11:10] Mike: Nobody else has that story. You literally are the first, besides our Asbury Park Princess. You're the first guys to have surfing on the East Coast. And he's riding, he's got two boards back here.

[01:11:23] Tyler: See, my dream is to one day create like a Walk of Fame on the boardwalk by Duke's Way. I thought that'd be kind of cool.

[01:11:31] Tyler: Nice little tribute. Waves aren't so good down there, so it's okay, actually, to have, like, a place, you know? Yeah, listen, the

[01:11:39] Mike: stories get lost, and that's, for me, is where all the stuff that I'm doing is to find a name that nobody's ever heard of and suddenly go, This guy was ahead of things, you know? It's amazing.

[01:11:53] Mike: Let's honor them, and it'll at least be out there, you know, from that standpoint. Yeah.

[01:11:58] Tyler: Now, I want to ask, [01:12:00] um, how did you get into the casino business? Changing tact here. So,

[01:12:07] Mike: so when I came back, I go to California in after school and my degree was film and Wow. Unfortunately, all I did was surf. So I ended up back home and I was just going to work, you know, for a summer.

[01:12:23] Mike: And I still had the ability to have an apartment back West. And I went to a friend's house one day and he had a crap table in the garage. I said, what's this? He says, Oh, we're going to go work in the casinos. We're going to deal craps. All right. Maybe I could do that for a year or so. Then I'll have more money.

[01:12:42] Mike: I'll go back West. 29 years later, it took me to get back to California out of that. And I think that probably a third of it was that it was shift work.

[01:12:53] Tyler: Yeah.

[01:12:54] Mike: So I could surf every day. There was a swell and I could take a [01:13:00] shower at the, in the lifeguard 10 on the boardwalk and then drive right to work.

[01:13:04] Mike: down and park and go into work. So it extended and I kind of like the business a little bit. There is that, you know, our, our history in Atlantic city with a little bit of the mob. And I grew up on

[01:13:16] Tyler: boardwalk empire, you know, I, you

[01:13:19] Mike: know, we were at sea here now and they did, um, Springsteen did Atlantic City and his opening line, you know, is they blew up the chicken man's house.

[01:13:28] Mike: I used to go to the chicken man's house for dinner because I was friends with his son, Sal, who took a bullet to the head when he was 29. Holy fuck. And there's a picture that I sent you of me on a Challenger Easter and I sold that picture. Board to South Testa for 75 bucks. He surfed. He surfed until, well, he did it.

[01:13:48] Mike: Yeah, until then. So, for me, the industry was interesting. Um, I got into it in a period where most of the people that were in it were, you know, kind of high school educated [01:14:00] and were there to gamble. Yeah. For me, I didn't, I didn't. I just wanted to surf. I wanted to work and you could move up pretty quickly.

[01:14:07] Mike: And you moved up pretty fast, huh? Yeah, I did. I did. I was, I mean, as friends have said, you know, you probably would have moved up quicker without the bomb throwing at times. But, um, you know, I was lucky when I moved west, I worked for a tribe, a Pejanga tribe. Really? And, you know, they were just extraordinary to me.

[01:14:27] Mike: They understood my surf environment. I, whenever they fired the GM, I would take the GM job. And after one of those times, I get a phone call from, Bird from bird surf shop and he goes I got two boards here for you. I got a list fish and a skip fry egg You're the tribe bought him for you. No way. So when I left Atlantic City, they bought me like a flip camera Here's these folks where I'm still working for him in it And I still have the list fish and the fry on the wall the list [01:15:00]fish.

[01:15:00] Mike: I've written. How big is it? So the list fish is six foot. The fries is six, eight single fan egg. And the Liz, uh, quarter keel. It's, uh, it's not keels. It's twin fin. He tweaked a little bit of the design to modernize it a little bit during that. He wasn't making the old ones for me. So, you know, they appreciated, in a different manner, working for the tribe.

[01:15:28] Mike: And then the tribe had friggin surf history. When I did my interview, One of the tribal board members says to me, he goes, when you lived in California, what was your local break? I said, well, I kind of liked Santa Ana River Jetties. Ah, it was my break when, so I might've gotten that job because I served. I love that.

[01:15:46] Mike: But the industry was good for me. I think it, to some extent, it destroyed this Atlantic City because they never put the support into the city that they needed to.

[01:15:56] Tyler: Well, it's crazy. Like Atlantic City. [01:16:00] It's got so much potential, I feel like, and it just, it's like, you go one street back behind the casinos, there's nothing there.

[01:16:07] Tyler: That was the mistake. There's just no investment, it feels like. And, you know, when it comes to housing or, or anything like it, it really like, , it's all contained in the casinos and not outside as much.

[01:16:21] Mike: So it's in the DNA of that city? Yeah. Right of, of the skim. Mm-Hmm. of getting away with not working to some extent.

[01:16:30] Mike: And I'm talking about guys I grew up with. Yeah. You know, that. They were working in the convention center and they would take the winter off and, uh, you know, going on employment and steal what they could steal or whatever they did during that time frame. So the city's always had this interesting DNA.

[01:16:47] Mike: And then the biggest mistake I think is that, you know, when they. Got it approved. They funneled a lot of money up north instead of putting it into the city and the casinos always face the ocean with what they did when [01:17:00] they should have faced in inland and built on that and you know, it's it's a sad. I mean, if I move back with all the grandchildren, I'll move north.

[01:17:12] Mike: Um, because it's hard for me to drive through the town. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. It's tough. It's

[01:17:19] Tyler: a shame. And it's like, and then now with online gambling, it just makes it, it makes it easier for the

[01:17:25] Mike: executives. Like I would sit in these boardroom meetings and luckily had a position at times where I could, you know, spin something some way and you'd have a CFO go, well, if we cut the You know, we get rid of this many people and I would say, well, look, you make 350 a year.

[01:17:44] Mike: If we, if you get down to like 320 and you go to 290, we could save those people. Yeah. And then they would, you know, they wouldn't go down that path. It was hard to, to watch what the industry has done to, to that [01:18:00] community too. Yeah. And you know, the waves are still

[01:18:02] Tyler: good there. The waves are good. They're still pumping out incredible surfers, you know, and it's just, um, It feels like it needs something but like you know what it needs needs a fucking wave pool honestly If they built a wave pool there It would probably help revive a lot of it because people would travel to that spot, you know, you could create real estate around it.

[01:18:31] Mike: There's plenty of empty land because stuff they cleared in 68 has never been built on. Exactly. Pullings Prairie is this area that's just never been built.

[01:18:40] Tyler: You know, you can just totally, wave pool, skate park, amusement park type of thing. They have

[01:18:47] Mike: a water park there that's pretty cool. But it's, I mean, you've got.

[01:18:52] Mike: You've got to like, pave the streets. You've got, there's businesses that survive off the boardwalk. Yeah. You [01:19:00] know, Doc's Oyster House. My great grandfather went to that place for, and it's still extraordinary. Do you still go to the White House at all? Of course. I stopped in the last time I was there. I love the White House.

[01:19:12] Mike: People don't understand that a, what a sub actually is when it's Atlantic City, you know, they talk about Philadelphia with a cheese whiz and No, no, White House is pretty extraordinary. Steak

[01:19:24] Tyler: sandwich, man. That is like, it's the bread. It is, it is. It's this big hoagie like hero or sub hero, whatever you want to call it.

[01:19:33] Mike: They say it's the water. You know, there was an aquifer that's under Atlantic City that actually supplied much of the water. That's why our bagels up

[01:19:41] Tyler: here are good, too, you know? Very much so. So, so my, my last question is, what are you riding right now, then?

[01:19:50] Mike: So I just, um, I've been riding Simon Jones Twin Fins.

[01:19:56] Mike: Formerly of Morning of the Earth, now his own. Formerly of Morning of the Earth. So I, [01:20:00] I was riding, Jeff Bushman had made me a bunch of boards that I was traveling with. And then, I started riding. Started to get some boards from Infinity who Dave Baney who made makes my stand ups Yeah, so he's still making my small stand ups.

[01:20:16] Mike: I just had like a little 7 8 Asymmetrical that he made with concave deck that I ride when but yeah, I might move we were in Tortola my daughter in law rode my One my seven six morning of the earth and needless to say that's hers now So I got Simon to make me another one so it's it's like a seven ten eight Oh and that range and I read that all the time and and Steve Siebel who?

[01:20:49] Mike: Actually was a A big mentor to Charlie Mencel out of there. Steve took some of my morning of the earth and made gliders out of [01:21:00] them. So I have this nine, two glider twin fin with glassed in fins that I ride all the time out there.

[01:21:06] Tyler: I, I ride, uh, my, well, when Chris from Pilgrim brings down his Mencel glider, I love that board.

[01:21:13] Tyler: It's so dreamy. Oh my God. He's a

[01:21:16] Mike: great shaper. I

[01:21:17] Tyler: mean, you got to be so stoked, actually, when you're on the West Coast and you look back and you see New Jersey surfing now and like the the level or the big days in the winter where those clips come out like you got to be like, kind of beaming with pride in some way.

[01:21:35] Tyler: It's

[01:21:36] Mike: twofold. And I think I said it when we talked before I called it flavor of the month. Yeah. Where was everybody? But I think what Changed it all for me, and I'm extremely proud of, is the talent. I mean, there's some really extraordinary surfers back here. Chris

[01:21:53] Tyler: DeFino, Rob Kelly, you know, Rob. I

[01:21:56] Mike: mean, Sam Hammer hangs into the mix of that.

[01:21:59] Mike: Yes. You [01:22:00] know, they all kind of pay a little homage to my buddy, you know, Dean Randazzo. Yeah. From, from that standpoint. And, and I think the talent, the way it was there. Yeah. Well, it's not. You know that I don't know when it ever broke like that to be honest with you. I mean, I've been surfing that place since the, you know, late 60s for big days, which I prayed for.

[01:22:20] Mike: That was pretty extraordinary, but they were there. You know, you had plenty of those days where, where there was good size. But I think as guys started, you could make a name for yourself, riding those waves. Like Sam is probably, Really the first that said I can stay home. Yeah, you know and suddenly people are opening their eyes going man Not only is this guy's good, but I'm not finding barrels like that North County count.

[01:22:46] Mike: No, you know, there's nowhere Maybe blacks I can get and then La Jolla reefs, but I'm not getting any of those guys here. You can go to any And you can walk up and down the

[01:22:57] Tyler: beach and find it, you know? Yeah, very much so. [01:23:00] And I, before we close, I also want to ask about, like, your involvement with Dean. And one, like, how is he holding up?

[01:23:06] Tyler: Because I know he's, he's been quite sick lately. So, he, I mean, I've known Dean since he was a kid. So, listener, just a little context. Dean Randazzo was arguably probably one of the greatest surfers ever to come out of New Jersey. So, he It's the first New Jersey surfer to make the world championship tour, set it on fire, got, you know, diagnosed with cancer in the 90s, late 90s, battled it, came back, entered one contest, you know, and has, Periodically, every, it feels like almost every 10 years it comes back or something and he fights it, recovers, and keeps, keeps on keeping on.

[01:23:49] Tyler: So he's just quite an amazing human being and, and just absolutely lovely. So sorry. Yeah. No, I think that

[01:23:57] Mike: that sums up and I like the [01:24:00] sense that people understand outside because I'm close to it. Yeah. That others see, you know, kind of this path. So Dean. 2001. He sets his foundation up. Cancer keeps coming back, coming back and Oh, seven.

[01:24:14] Mike: Oh, eight. He gets a stem cell transplant and it starts to make a big come back after that. And he wins a grudge match. You win some other stuff. I think he ended up with a silver medal on an ISA is, you know, surfing against sunny. Um, but in the course of, of dealing with the cancer. As with all that stuff, other drugs affect things.

[01:24:39] Mike: And he's had this infection that has been outside of his lungs for the last couple of years. And it's just gotten to the point where, you know, he had to get something done. So he's in a hospital in San Diego with, um, UCSD, and they've had him in there since June. He's got a hole right now in his back, where they're just trying to kill the [01:25:00] infection.

[01:25:01] Mike: And he's had some up and downs. You know, I mean, I. I try to get in to see him every, you know, couple days that I can. I'm retired. It's good to go in and torture him a little bit . Um, but he has started to make a bit of a comeback. You know, he was getting out and he's walking and, you know, he just started his, he's another GoFundMe, I was just gonna say is a GoFundMe.

[01:25:23] Mike: Yeah. There's another, there was original one and we had talked about, I said, you need to start a new one with a new perspective on it and talk about where you are right now. Yeah. 'cause he tends to be. Quiet about a lot that this stuff's hot is hidden. Yeah, you know His I tell we were in hawaii together in like 93 and we were staying together He was living on peanut butter and jelly.

[01:25:45] Mike: I tried to take him out to like dinner I was already in a couple bucks and now i'm good. I'm good. I'm good So that's dean. He almost wants to fight it as much as he can on his own. So He's doing better You know, and I, but he's like [01:26:00] 130 pounds and, you know, he's, he's struggling with, but he's out there. So there's a handful of folks that, you know, that are, has his ties.

[01:26:10] Mike: He used to live in Oceanside and all you can, I mean, I don't bet against them. No. Um, at all. He, he, sometimes I just like, uh, I don't know how he, he, he's no

[01:26:20] Tyler: stranger to it. That's the thing. Like his will is

[01:26:24] Mike: incredible to the fight, right? The fight for him, I think at times becomes what he, what it's about for him.

[01:26:31] Mike: And you know, it's, uh, I did have, we, you know, one day we're sitting there and he goes, yeah, he's looking at flights to like Costa Rica. Good. Good. He said, dude, you can't even walk the hall. Let's walk the hall a couple days. Let's get outside and then we'll talk about whether we can get you. But that's his, that, that dynamic of looking.

[01:26:51] Mike: So, I mean, I have the, the greatest hope that he beats this battle again. He's got some better [01:27:00] prognosis, but, uh, he's in another Randazzo fight. You know, it seems like he's been fighting since he was frigging 10. Yes. It's, uh, it's

[01:27:08] Tyler: incredible.

[01:27:09] Mike: Yeah.

[01:27:09] Tyler: Like, and just. Listeners like do yourself a favor look up his surfing it will blow your mind like it's one of my favorite surfing styles, too It's just

[01:27:20] Mike: we did a post this weekend with the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame That kind of gives a short perspective and there's some photos attached to it His Facebook page has the link to the GoFundMe, but there's you know, there's video of him surfing Salsipides on like Triple overhead, just absurd, you know, he never had any fear of anything and he and Slater were kind of this, this peer of side by side type of, of, uh, you know, quicksilver guys for a while.

[01:27:55] Mike: You know, Slater, I know, talks about him in the highest [01:28:00] regard during the time.

[01:28:01] Tyler: His segment in, uh, what was it, in, uh, 110 240, I think it was, like, in El Salvador. His Lost Stuff was pretty crazy. Lost Stuff, and then, like, the Quicksilver movie, it's just, like, incredible surfing, incredible rail surfing, power, uh, dynamic.

[01:28:22] Tyler: He looks, he reminds me almost, like, of Bob Dylan. Balling ball rattling around on a wave. Just carrying momentum here. These

[01:28:30] Mike: big feet with like thick, you know, he almost had that kind of perfect. And the thing that, that for Dean is he grew up on these beach breaks of Atlantic city and ocean that worked were when they were good, they were less.

[01:28:45] Mike: So his backhand was just absurd. I mean, how he would put himself into that was just a

[01:28:51] Tyler: pretty amazing. Well, listeners, you should go check it out, check out his stuff and, and, and obviously. Uh, donate to his [01:29:00] GoFundMe because he could use the help and the guy is, uh, you know, fuck. I mean, like he is like a surf God for East Coast surfers and paved the way for many, many young professional surfers.

[01:29:14] Tyler: So, um, yeah. Well, Mike, I really appreciate you coming on. This was so much fun and fuck, like I love the stuff you send me. Like it's like every once in a while, like I'm going through my email and all of a sudden. I see it from your wife's email. Yes. It's always my wife.

[01:29:35] Mike: She's the coordinator of all things, which is wonderful to have and

[01:29:39] Tyler: it comes to me and it's like this old article and I'm like, where does he find this shit?

[01:29:44] Tyler: And like, I'm like, is he, is he searching through microfiche yet? Like some, I started to, and

[01:29:49] Mike: then thank God for Matt Warshaw.

[01:29:52] Tyler: Right. Warshaw is sending

[01:29:53] Mike: me down a path and you know, and it's like, The, the place where it all is, is that [01:30:00] Hawaii TAC Instagram page, so if you want to, uh, see where it's coming and I'd love to add some music to it and that will, it's the germination of how this book will be done when I started, which I'll start it pretty soon.

[01:30:13] Mike: And so, so where can our listeners find you? So that's the spot. All right. Hawaii two A-C-H-A-W-A-I-T Instagram, ac. That's the Instagram. And where I am putting all that, the stuff together. Um, Pilgrim guys are following me. I got a bunch of people that I have, you know, I've got David Scales finding me, so it's been a lot of fun to, to have that.

[01:30:37] Mike: But I post, I have so many articles that I have stockpiled, and then there'll come a moment where I'm gonna start this book. We'll see how it goes. The way Rizzoli's doing everybody's surf books, I'm gonna have to go knock on their door. I know, well,

[01:30:51] Tyler: if you need, I got a hook up there, you know, and, uh, you know, or we just go to Chronicle and be like, hey, Rizzoli's doing this.

[01:30:58] Tyler: You guys need to step it up, [01:31:00] you know?

[01:31:00] Mike: I'll give them all my self publishes. Warshall, when I did the little He goes, just self published. Nobody's buying that book.

[01:31:09] Tyler: Thanks, Matt. Thanks. Appreciate it. Well, where can our listeners find your book? You know, if somebody wants

[01:31:16] Mike: to, they can send me a DM in the, uh, the Hawaii TAC, and I'm more than happy to send stuff off to folks.

[01:31:24] Tyler: Is it, is it on Amazon? It is

[01:31:25] Mike: not. I've, it was a self published book. published to share with those people in my life more than anything. I didn't even make an attempt to try to sell it. Um, we'll see how it goes. If somebody, if anybody that sends me the DM and I kind of know them a lot, just send them a book and go from there.

[01:31:45] Mike: But if I want to start selling it, we'll, we'll figure something else out.

[01:31:49] Tyler: Well, listeners go DM Mike on this because it is a great book. It's really wonderful. For reading to your kids, I think it's pretty inspiring. And as an older [01:32:00] surfer, somebody who grew up surfing, I loved it and identified with a lot of aspects to it.

[01:32:07] Tyler: And, um, yeah. And Mike really appreciate you coming on, man, and coming into city. This is. I'm so stoked and really enjoyed. It's great to get back

[01:32:16] Mike: home. That's the thing. And Tyler, thanks for keeping the stoke alive for us in New York and New Jersey. Because there's, you know, we need our own champions. And we're, as you always say, the kind of the armpit.

[01:32:28] Mike: We're a little further down. We are

[01:32:29] Tyler: the armpit. But I will tell you, if you

[01:32:32] Mike: want to start naming names of some extraordinary surfers, we have them. Awesome. I appreciate it.

[01:32:37] Tyler: Well, listeners, thank you all for listening and, uh, got to give a quick shout out to Joe our engineer here and thank you and the new stand studio here at Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan where we record.

[01:32:49]Tyler:And uh, of course, don't forget to like and subscribe at Swell Season Surf Radio, uh, and also at Swell Season, or you could just go to[01:33:00]www. swellseasonsurfradio. com and, uh, we'll check you all down the line soon. And thank you. Y