Michael Davidow's Blog: The Henry Bell Project - Posts Tagged "surfing"
Surf's Up
An hour watching surfers, an incongruous but friendly interview with some kids in the back of a station wagon, one with a St. Christopher medal tied around his neck, one with a shark’s tooth, and one with an Iron Cross; fond stories of the cat himself, Mickey Dora of Malibu, mooning the judges at a competition, showing up barefoot for a Hollywood premiere, taking Bell on an outrigger once and tipping him over at Rincon; then Bell leaned against his rental car’s hood to pour sand from his battered wing tips onto the parking lot at Carlsbad Beach.
They made fun of Dick Nixon for walking on the beach in his business shoes; but they made fun of Dick Nixon for nearly everything. Bell had better cause to walk on the sand, anyway. Market research, for Golden Gate Sports.
By the end of SPLIT THIRTY, though, Bell ends up with grudging sympathy for his soon-to-be embattled president, and not just because they both wore wing tips. Rather, it was because Nixon’s politics seemed sensible to Bell-- even if his style did not. Or, as he tells Pooch, “he could be a lot worse” (Neil Young likewise felt that “even Richard Nixon had soul”; The Campaigner, ’76). After all, putting aside his lack of executive morality (a problem easy to ignore in 1972, to the extent it was known at all), this was the man whose economic policies mirrored those proposed by RFK in 1968; who had opened the door to Red China; who had tried (at any rate) to wind down the Viet Nam War; who had imposed wage and price controls, started the EPA, and funded urban renewal. No less a liberal than Hubert Humphrey himself appreciated how successfully Nixon controlled his party’s various factions. And though famously disrespected by the first modern Republican president to accomplish that trick, he also proved to be that president’s greatest heir in that respect; and what came to Dwight Eisenhower easily, by grace of his heroic stature, only came to Richard Nixon by dint of unceasing effort.
His critics never forgave Nixon for breaking that sweat; they faulted him for it, which seems unfair. We can’t all be swans. Not even grimy ones.
Speaking of which, in real life, I doubt that Miki Dora (sic; “Miki” was short for “Miklos”) (I misspelled it in the book, to avoid confusion) ever acted as any company’s spokesman. He was a great surfer, but a rotten businessman. In his later years, he ran afoul of the law. But in his younger years, Malibu Beach belonged to him and his friends, and for Bell to have signed him in the first place would have been a real coup. Incidentally, you can catch a few glimpses of him (Dora; not Bell) in Bruce Brown’s "true motion picture," The Endless Summer.
They made fun of Dick Nixon for walking on the beach in his business shoes; but they made fun of Dick Nixon for nearly everything. Bell had better cause to walk on the sand, anyway. Market research, for Golden Gate Sports.
By the end of SPLIT THIRTY, though, Bell ends up with grudging sympathy for his soon-to-be embattled president, and not just because they both wore wing tips. Rather, it was because Nixon’s politics seemed sensible to Bell-- even if his style did not. Or, as he tells Pooch, “he could be a lot worse” (Neil Young likewise felt that “even Richard Nixon had soul”; The Campaigner, ’76). After all, putting aside his lack of executive morality (a problem easy to ignore in 1972, to the extent it was known at all), this was the man whose economic policies mirrored those proposed by RFK in 1968; who had opened the door to Red China; who had tried (at any rate) to wind down the Viet Nam War; who had imposed wage and price controls, started the EPA, and funded urban renewal. No less a liberal than Hubert Humphrey himself appreciated how successfully Nixon controlled his party’s various factions. And though famously disrespected by the first modern Republican president to accomplish that trick, he also proved to be that president’s greatest heir in that respect; and what came to Dwight Eisenhower easily, by grace of his heroic stature, only came to Richard Nixon by dint of unceasing effort.
His critics never forgave Nixon for breaking that sweat; they faulted him for it, which seems unfair. We can’t all be swans. Not even grimy ones.
Speaking of which, in real life, I doubt that Miki Dora (sic; “Miki” was short for “Miklos”) (I misspelled it in the book, to avoid confusion) ever acted as any company’s spokesman. He was a great surfer, but a rotten businessman. In his later years, he ran afoul of the law. But in his younger years, Malibu Beach belonged to him and his friends, and for Bell to have signed him in the first place would have been a real coup. Incidentally, you can catch a few glimpses of him (Dora; not Bell) in Bruce Brown’s "true motion picture," The Endless Summer.
