The Underwater Project from Mark Tipple on Vimeo.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time diving under waves, and the view from below can be beautiful. But you rarely see it captured in photographs as stunning as these. Be sure to click on the little arrows to blow the video up to full screen. (Via Adventure Journal)

180º SOUTH Trailer from Woodshed Films on Vimeo.

I was a surf-obsessed teenager living in a Southern California beach town in the early 1980s when “The Endless Summer” aired on my local PBS station. Surfing was my escape, and a movie about a search for the perfect wave promised to be the ultimate escape. I set my parents’ VCR to record it and was transfixed by what I saw.

I didn’t care that the movie was already nearly two decades old. I watched it again and again — after school when the onshore breeze came up and it was too windy to surf, on winter days when I refused to tug on my head-to-toe wetsuit — until I’d seen the film so many times I’d memorized every line.

Each time I watched the opening images of shimmering orange sunsets and silhouetted surfers gazing at the waves, all of it set to the Sandals’ warm, hypnotic soundtrack, I figured I was watching a simple surf documentary.

That, after all, is how filmmaker Bruce Brown, who narrates the film, explains the ’round-the-world journey undertaken by the two protagonist surfers at the outset:

Many surfers ride summer and winter, but the ultimate thing for most of us would be to have an endless summer of warm water and waves without the summer crowds of California. The only way to do this is by traveling around the world, following the summer season as it moves around the world.

It sounds straightforward enough. And yet, looking back at the film now, surfing isn’t its sole focus. It’s only the means to a much bigger end.

The film celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and its power hasn’t begun to subside. It’s one of the few films I still enjoy watching as much as an adult as I did when I was a kid. I think I understand why. “The Endless Summer” is not just the best surfing movie of all time. It’s also one of the greatest wanderlust-inducing documentaries ever made. It’s a celebration of travel, wonder and discovery — an unlikely and seductive cross between National Geographic and Surfer magazine, writ large on the big screen.

Its appeal has always transcended geography. When it debuted, movie-goers in Wichita, Kansas lined up in the snow to see it, selling out multiple screenings in the dead of winter. In fact, it’s perhaps most powerful when viewed on a gray winter day.

The movie is beloved by so many because Brown is a master storyteller who revels in the journey.

Early on in the film, when many other surf-filmmakers might be obsessing over waves, Brown shows surfers Robert August and Mike Hynson preparing for their ‘round-the-world trip in front of a fire on a winter night, reading up on malaria cures and shark attacks. Subtle humor runs through the scene — the book covers’ titles are clearly hand-drawn — but viewers gets the point: The surfers are experiencing the kind of pre-travel jitters we can all relate to.

Moments later, our heroes are wearing suits and ties like good gentlemen travelers of the 1960s, aboard a flight to Dakar, Senegal. It’s a place I’m sure I’d never heard of the first time I saw the film, and just hearing the words ignited my imagination. Brown stoked the embers further.

“Would they find surf?” he wonders. “Would they catch malaria? Would they be speared by a native? They didn’t have any idea.”

Of course, they would not be speared. They score countless tasty waves. But between surf scenes, Brown celebrate the kind of curious, culture-clash moments that make travel so compelling. He shows the two surfers arriving in Accra, Ghana, for example, struggling to explain to a taxi driver that they want to tie their surfboards to the roof of the car. The taxi driver, who Brown suspects has never before seen a surfboard, isn’t hearing any of it.

Cracks Brown, “The driver kept muttering something that must have meant airplane wings go in the trunk.”

Then we see the taxi motoring through town with the surfboards sticking straight out of the trunk, extending at least six feet into the road.

“Can you imagine driving down a highway in the U.S. like that?” Brown asks gleefully. “They’d put you in prison.”

We watch as the two stars teach surfing to locals in Ghana — Brown clearly loves every minute of it — and explore empty New Zealand highways and beaches.

The film’s famous high point comes when the surfers happen upon the small waves curling perfectly down the beach at Cape St. Francis, South Africa. Here again, where another surf-filmmaker might have simply cut to the tubing waves, Brown revels in the surfers’ quest.

With triumphant horns playing, the star surfers are first shown hiking over sand dunes under a hot African sun, searching for waves with no ocean in sight.

“Half way around the world and halfway across the dunes, it seemed like a bad idea,” Brown intones. “It started to get pretty hot. The odds were against us finding surf. We didn’t even know if we’d find the water.”

It’s the most compelling moment in surf movie history.

In “The Endless Summer Revisited,” a retrospective made by Brown’s filmmaker son, Dana Brown, we learn that the surfers didn’t really need to hike over dunes to get to the beach that day, and that Brown, in fact, inspired by “Lawrence of Arabia,” ordered them to hike the nearby dunes repeatedly for dramatic effect.

Learning that was not unlike hearing that Santa Claus isn’t real. But when you’re a 14-year-old surfer without a driver’s license, much less a passport, watching those surfers hiking over the dunes and discovering those waves is enough to sustain you and fuel your dreams for years. And what sticks with you isn’t just the surf (though if you surf can’t help but salivate at the sight of those perfectly peeling right-handers). It’s the very idea of the quest.

In recent years, some critics have justifiably complained about the film, noting a neo-colonial attitude reflected in some scenes, beginning with the use of “natives” to describe Africans. It’s a movie of its era.

The world has changed much in the last four decades, for better and worse. As the march of globalization has shrunk the planet, surfing’s popularity has soared. Surf ghettoes have sprung up around the world in places like Kuta Beach on Bali. The notion of traveling the globe in search of the perfect wave will never again hold the kind of magic it once did. Perhaps that’s in part why “The Endless Summer II” didn’t live up to its predecessor.

So be it. The adventurous spirit of the original film endures.

A giant surfwear advertisement greeted me as I stepped off the plane in Bali. “Search a little longer,” the ad urged. “Travel a little farther.” The message turned out to be sound advice. Mass tourism long ago established a beachhead on Bali, so visitors have to make an extra effort to escape its clutches and discover why adventurers have been drawn to this storied island in the Indonesian archipelago. Fortunately, that’s still not hard to do. A short bus and boat ride from Kuta Beach, Bali’s noisy answer to Tijuana, brought me to Nusa Lembongan. It’s a sleepy speck of a Balinese island offering everything I wanted: uncrowded beaches, shady palms, snorkeling, $7-a-night oceanfront bungalows, and world-class surfing at several breaks. What’s more, islanders make it easy to unplug from modern life: They shut off the electricity all day.

* WHERE TO GO: The town of Kuta, near the airport, is a good place to pick up supplies, change money, and arrange the crossing to Nusa Lembongan. Once there, you can walk to local villages and temples, or rent a bicycle at one of the small outfitters. Life centers on the beach. Serious surfers should bring their own boards to ride Shipwrecks and Lacerations, two advanced breaks located a short paddle offshore. Less experienced surfers can attempt Playgrounds. A lift to the breaks on a skiff costs $1. While quality varies, body boards and snorkeling gear can be rented cheaply. If you don’t want to spend all your time on Nusa Lembongan, head back to Bali to explore the volcanic cones of Gunung Batur. You can also check out other Bali surf breaks such as Ulu Watu, near the temple of the same name, where mischievous monkeys try to snatch visitors’ sunglasses.

* HOW TO GO: In late summer, round-trip flights to Bali cost about $820 from New York, $760 from Los Angeles. There is a $12 departure tax. Find deals with consolidators such as Adventure Bound Tours (800-308-2345; www.adventure-bound.com) or agencies such as Adventure Travel Company (800-467-4595; www.atcadventure.com). Taxis from the airport into Kuta cost about $3. Kuta’s Perama Tourist Service (62-3-617-51-551) offers bus/boat tickets to Nusa Lembongan ($7 each way). Boats leave every morning from Sanur, 30 minutes by bus from Kuta; it’s an hour’s boat fide. Perama also has bus service from Kuta to Kintamani ($3.50, two hours), with connecting public buses (60 cents, one hour) to Penelokan, the gateway to Gunung Batur.

* LODGING AND FOOD: In Kuta, rooms start at about $4. On Nusa Lembongan, bungalows line the beach, costing as little as $3 a night. Agung’s (623-662-4483), a popular operation, has colorful two-story bungalows, some views ($7), and individual rooms ($5). Most bungalow owners also run inexpensive restaurants. At Agung’s, banana pancakes and banana smoothies start at 50 cents. Nasi goreng, a traditional dish of fried rice and egg, costs about 80 cents. Gado gado, a salad with rich peanut sauce, costs $1.

* SAFETY: Many of Indonesia’s 13,000 islands are considered dangerous; anti-American demonstrations on Java made headlines last year. Bali, however, remains a safe, low-key haven.

11 Days in Bali
(Cost per person, based on a group of two)

AIRFARE: $760/$820
West Coast/East Coast, September departure

LOCAL TRANSPORTATION: $20
Airport taxi; bus and boat to and from Nusa Lembongan

LODGING: $35
Ten nights in basic bungalows

ACTIVITIES: $15
Bike rental, snorkeling rental, local boat trips

FOOD: $110
Restaurant meals and snacks for 11 days

INCIDENTALS: $12
Departure tax

TOTAL: $952/$1,012

Photo of Nusa Lembongan by yeowatzup via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

As I studied the 5-foot-tall artificial wave known as the FlowRider outside San Diego’s Wave House Athletic Club, I thought: Riding this will be too easy. I will rip and tear this wave to smithereens. I will carve wicked turns and school all the kooks around me in the lost art of shredding.

Sure, I’d just signed a form stating that “riding may result in the flow of water picking you up and pitching you head-over-heels.” And yes, one veteran rider with a substantial lip piercing had warned, “It’s tougher than it looks.” But over the last decade I’d surfed tasty waves from Central America to Indonesia. How hard could riding a fake wave be?

As a dozen spectators, five FlowBoarders and a lifeguard looked on, I stepped onto a board at the edge of the swimming-pool-sized, foam-padded box and pushed myself onto the stationary wave. I crouched low, feeling a rush of white water under me. Then, as I was about to rip my first turn, I fell flat on my back. In a blur, I shot up the wave and straight into a foam wall, ejected. It was I who’d been schooled.

Riding the FlowRider is indeed harder than it looks. The machine at Mission Beach’s Belmont Park, one of nearly 50 of varying sizes around the world, shoots a thin layer of water over an incline composed of taut fabric. The resulting wave can be ridden prone on a bodyboard, which is the easiest way, or standing on a foam-padded fiberglass board roughly the shape of a big skateboard. Up to 10 riders take turns at a time.

A small cadre of hard-core stand-up enthusiasts has evolved around the machines, including snowboarders and wakeboarders, surfers and skateboarders. Most beginners need at least a few hours of wipeouts before they begin to feel proficient. Even professional surfers can struggle to catch on. The bottom is soft, but riders sometimes fall hard, emerging with bumps and strains.

“It’s unlike anything you’ve ever done,” says Brian Crecely, 20, who rides the wave five days a week. “It’s addictive.”

On its face, the idea of building artificial wave machines located only steps away from real waves sounds preposterous. Charging $20 or more an hour to ride them recalls the old joke about selling refrigerators to Eskimos.

The scene around the FlowRider is surreal. Tourists while away their time watching riders on the fake wave, ignoring surfers gliding across real waves nearby. It’s only a matter of time before a graduate student works up a doctoral thesis on the phenomenon: “Post-Modern Recreation and Meta-Surfing in the Age of NutraSweet.”

The irony isn’t lost on the wave’s creator.

“It’s totally absurd,” admits Thomas J. Lochtefeld, 52, chuckling.

A die-hard La Jolla surfer who has ridden some of the globe’s best breaks, Lochtefeld co-founded the Raging Waters theme parks in 1983. After he left as chief executive, he saw the potential for a wave attraction and soon began dragging hoses into his jumbo bathtub to experiment with designs.

“My wife thought I was nuts,” he says.

He knew he’d have to build gentle waves for families, but the surfer in him yearned to create powerful waves that put the wimpy swells found in many wave pools to shame. Thus, the FlowRider was born. And next month, it will have a bigger, meaner cousin: Bruticus Maximus.

On June 16, the $2-million Bruticus Maximus machine, which spent several years touring the world, will open adjacent to the Mission Beach boardwalk, complete with concert-style sound and lighting effects. Rivaled only by a sister machine in Durban, South Africa, Bruticus Maximus offers a free-standing wave 9 feet tall that enables riders to get completely covered by the curl — the Holy Grail of surfing. Compared with the smaller FlowRider, which offers a more gentle Waikiki-style wave, Bruticus Maximus is the Banzai Pipeline.

Strolling onto the oceanfront site where the wave’s framework is rising, Lochtefeld is equal parts mad scientist, giddy surfer and shrewd entrepreneur. He points to the machine’s water pumps, discussing “force potential” and “super critical sheet flow.” He crouches low where the curl will form, his eyes gleaming. Then he looks out at the spectator area, with its thatched-roof bar and hanging hammocks, and invokes the importance of “ancillary revenue models.”

With Bruticus Maximus and its commercial spectator zone, Lochtefeld has tried to package the California dream in a lot the size of a football field. If it’s profitable, he says, he’ll export similar operations to spots around the globe, including Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

He’ll get his first indication during the opening festivities next month, when veteran riders will perform dazzling flips and spins. I’ll be watching from the bar, a margarita in hand, nursing my bruised ego.

Photo by derekadk via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

By Jim Benning
The Los Angeles Times Magazine

To Pierce Flynn, for whom surfing is nothing less than a form of prayer, the rise overlooking Trestles is sacred. Early most mornings, he pedals through empty San Clemente streets, surfboard riding shotgun on his mountain bike, to this bluff above one of California’s most popular surf spots. On days with curling waves, he’ll cruise down the dirt trail, tug on his wet suit, paddle out and picture in the distance the big change about to unfold here. Soon, despite the intense lobbying of Flynn and his flock at the Surfrider Foundation, the Marine Corps will build housing on this chunk of coast within Camp Pendleton. “Our kids won’t be able to look down and see the waves breaking,” Flynn says. “It’s sad.”

In Flynn’s world, the act of surfing is linked to the battle to preserve beach access, clean ocean water and unspoiled coastlines. Waves, this mellow Southern California native will tell you, deserve the same protective status as gnatcatchers and condors. To promote this agenda, Surfrider practices a brand of environmentalism that Flynn calls “surfer-bohemian-hip.” It’s a term that also describes Flynn–a tan, youthful 44-year-old PhD who thwacks around the small nonprofit’s San Clemente headquarters in flip-flops and counts among his passions Zen and traveling by plane, boat and skiff to hell-and-gone surf breaks around the world.

These days, Surfrider is riding a swell into the mainstream, and Flynn is out front on the nose. Propelled by recent victories against polluters, Surfrider, now going on 15, has won the attention of many government and industrial leaders on the both coasts. Despite having taken some media hits for playing loose with the facts, Flynn has delivered Surfrider’s gospel to America’s masses. He has courted the support of–and surfed with–such recording artists as Chris Isaak and Eddie Vedder. Pearl Jam’s front man donated cash as well as tracks for one of the CDs that Flynn co-produced as fund-raisers. And Flynn helped smooth-talk MTV into airing a short video that coolly spelled out Surfrider’s causes.

All this hype has fueled a hint of fear that the organization is straying from its core, surf-inspired mission. But even the grumblers concede that Flynn is a charismatic, brainy, media-savvy leader, equally at home in the boardroom and on the ocean. Put him in front of a TV camera and he really turns it on. Says Steve Barilotti, a Surfrider member who writes a monthly column about the environment for Surfer magazine: “He’s the master of the sound bite.”

Surfrider’s headquarters consumes part of the second floor of a rustic three-story office building about a mile from the San Clemente shoreline. A stack of surf magazines teeters near the front door. Hanging surfboards cover one wall. Flynn, who moved around as a kid, living with his doctor parents in Westwood, Redlands and San Bernardino, recalls how he got to Surfrider in 1992. The organization had just won a major settlement from two Humboldt County pulp mill operators that had been dumping millions of gallons of untreated waste into the ocean each day. The group tapped Flynn, then a communications consultant, in part to relieve internal squabbling over how to spend a $300,000 windfall in legal fees from the settlement. He loved it. “I thought, this is a real good vehicle for me,” he recalls. “I can serve and give back. It was very meaningful.”

Drawing on his background in media relations and academia–he has a doctorate in ethno-methodology, or the study of knowledge, from UC San Diego–Flynn made friends quickly. In three years, he made the leap from communications manager to executive director, which pays $65,000 a year, learning about the ocean as he went. He met his fiancee, coastal scientist Melissa Gordon, at a meeting in Washington, D.C.; their wedding is next Sunday.

Flynn spends much of his time talking on the telephone to Surfrider constituents, discussing policy with board members and brainstorming PR schemes with record producers and entertainers. (His Rolodex includes Woody Harrelson and Tom Hanks.) In the afternoon, he might meet with a geographer or an oceanographer for a briefing on a coastal issues, then finalize a grant application. Flynn moves easily from the role of inspirational leader to stoked surfer. “We want to reinvent democracy,” he’ll say one minute. Then, the next: “We receive so many bitchin’ letters.”

Flynn wants the organization to become more sophisticated. “We’re probably coming into young adulthood from adolescence,” he says. “I’m trying to be a maturing agent.” His goals include adding to the membership of 25,000 and finding ways to make the chapters more self-reliant. “We’ve been reactive, putting out environmental fires,” he says. “Now we need to look ahead.”

While organizations such as the American Oceans Campaign and the Center for Marine Conservation focus on a broad array of issues involving the ocean, Surfrider homes in on the coastal zone, a narrow strip that begins 10 miles inland and extends three miles to sea. Its tactics are decidedly nonmilitant.

Since winning the second-largest settlement in history in Humboldt County, under the federal Clean Water Act, Surfrider has kept up the heat. Its lobbying efforts led to a finding from the California Coastal Commission that a rock groin built by Chevron Corp. in El Segundo had damaged the surf break. For the first time, some say, the government has recognized waves as a natural resource. All of this has been accomplished without loads of money, on an annual operating budget of about $1 million. Flynn attributes the organization’s impact to its nearly 40 grass-roots chapters–small but devoted bands in the United States and abroad that pick up trash, test ocean water for contaminants and fight developments they deem harmful. Of Surfrider’s membership, a “gnarly” 10%, including lawyers and scientists, are hard-core volunteers; the remainder are less active supporters.

But Surfrider has failed to stop development of the bluff overlooking Trestles, a popular surf spot near San Clemente. Citing housing shortage, the Marines in 1996 announced plans to build more than 100 units for junior officers on the Camp Pendleton site. Surfrider filed suit to kill the project, arguing that it would damage wetlands. Flynn repeatedly described the area as “the Yosemite of surfing.” Although the California Coastal Commission first sided with the surfers, it reversed itself, finding that the Marines had satisfied state environmental requirements and had explored alternative locations. Surfrider concedes that its appeal also may fail.

Flynn has a knack for enlisting the aid of rock stars. Besides Vedder and Isaak, dozens have contributed to two Surfrider benefit albums. Over the years, he has surfed with Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction and Beach Boys member Bruce Johnston. When Pearl Jam rolled into San Diego several years ago, Flynn paddled out at Pacific Beach with Vedder, who would eventually give more than $50,000 to Surfrider. Over breakfast later, “we just brainstormed about how we could affect popular culture,” Flynn says. “We plotted out the ‘MOM’ albums.”

“MOM,” or “Music for Our Mother Ocean,” is the title of two albums that since 1996 have raised nearly $400,000 for Surfrider. A third is in the works. Help on those projects also came from another Flynn surfing buddy: Surfdog Records owner Dave Kaplan. The San Diego producer often has joined Flynn on trips to meet with musicians. “It’s very difficult for an outsider who hasn’t been around music to be comfortable speaking to musicians,” Kaplan says. Not so with Flynn. When the Surfrider leader made his pitch to the musicians, Kaplan recalls, “it was almost a slam dunk. He’s oozing with spirituality and goodness.”

Surfrider’s rock ‘n’ roll approach to coastal activism has won the organization many fans, including Sierra Club board member and former president Adam Werbach, who complains that environmentalism is frequently a grim practice. But Surfrider, he says, knows how to have fun. “It’s lively, full of music and kick-ass,” he says. And sometimes, as Werbach learned, it can be dangerous. After paddling into big surf with Flynn and other members at a rally in support of the Clean Water Act a while back, the beginning surfer insisted on catching a wave–against Flynn’s advice. Werbach wiped out badly and washed onto the sand with a bloody nose. “It was one of the best days of my life,” Werbach recalls, laughing. “I joined Surfrider the next day.”

But as Surfrider becomes more accessible to the mainstream, it has left some members wary. Founder Glenn Hening says Surfrider is backsliding from its original purpose. “The idea was to really say something serious about the values of serious surfing as it benefits our society,” he says. Hening wanted to introduce surfing to inner-city children. But with the passing of time, he says, the group has become less concerned with riding waves.

Hening was particularly annoyed recently when Surfrider’s 15-member board of directors voted to remove a line in the group’s mission statement calling for the “enhancement” of surfing spots, which could mean using sand bags to create new wave breaks. Some in the group felt the move contradicted the group’s goal of preserving wild beaches. Flynn believes that more research needs to be done. Hening’s mind is made up. He still supports Surfrider–he recently helped raise $7,000 for the Santa Barbara and Ventura chapters. But to him, the vote exemplified Surfrider’s push toward the mainstream.

Flynn shrugs off the criticism. He’s used to hearing complaints about the group’s vision and educational materials. Some observers say Surfrider at times overstates health threats posed to swimmers and surfers. And Surfer magazine recently chided Surfrider over a press release calling the embattled Trestles one of the 10 best surfing spots in the world. “I guess that is a relative call,” Flynn says. “We don’t say we’re perfect, but we’re working to be perfect.”

The group’s commitment to protecting and restoring beaches is stronger than ever, Flynn says. Surfrider’s Blue Water Task Force program, which includes storm-drain stenciling to warn people against dumping pollutants, as well as water testing to monitor quality, has been widely praised. Republican Congressman Brian P. Bilbray of San Diego recently co-authored a bill to establish a national ocean-water quality standard, which, he says, was inspired partly by Surfrider’s activism. And the group is documenting physical characteristics of beaches around the country to help gauge changes along coastlines. “This is a first-of-its-kind grass-roots beach-mapping program,” Flynn says. “We’re arming the volunteers.”

Flynn, as part of that effort, is developing a program to teach the volunteers skills such as campaign planning, media relations and fund-raising. The program will lead to a greater show of force around the country, Flynn says. “These people are getting positively politicized.”

Another Flynn goal, doubling Surfrider’s membership over the next few years, might be hard to achieve. The surfer-bohemian mind set is antithetical to joining, some argue. “We used to joke that trying to organize surfers is like trying to herd cats,” chuckles former board member Ward Smith. Flynn says that although that may be true, Surfrider will sign up anyone who enjoys swimming at their local beach–or even carving up epic waves faraway, as he did recently. He looks across his desk and grins.

“Did you see it?” he asks, referring to a photograph of him in the curl of a Fijian wave on Surfrider’s Web site, http://www.surfrider.org. “That was the best barrel I’ve had in my life. I free-fell down the face and pulled into the pipe,” he says. He gestures wildly, forming wave shapes with his hands, struggling to describe the indescribable. “I remember the sound, the vortex. It was an awesome experience. I close my eyes and can feel the thing.”

Flynn leans back in his chair and shuts his eyes. “The longer you live, the more you realize that a {good} swell is a very rare and precious thing,” he says. “You don’t want to miss that.”

Photo by colmsurf via Flickr, (Creative Commons).