Surfing’s Royalty, From Duke to Gidget

With winter over--I’m speaking of the month of June--this is a good time to turn our attention to Surfer magazine’s list of “the 25 most influential surfers of all time.”

No. 1 was, of course, Duke Kahanamoku, the father of the sport, not to mention a gold medalist swimmer in the Olympics.

A trailblazer (or perhaps wave-maker) in another sense was the No. 7 selection, Kathy Kohner. No world champion was she. But it was Kohner who invaded the guy-oriented world of hang-tenners in 1956 to take up the sport at Malibu. She inspired a novel by her father that awakened a whole generation to the sport. He used her nickname as the title: “Gidget.”

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NOT EVERYONE’S GOING SURFING! I have to admit, though, that I was saddened by some of Surfer’s omissions from the top 25 list. The Beach Boys, for example. Then, again, I suppose Surfer might respond that only one of the Boys--Dennis Wilson--actually surfed. Some of them didn’t even like to go into the water.

Nor was there any mention of ex-USC quarterback Todd Marinovich, who attracted attention to the sport earlier this decade when he revealed that he enjoyed surfing in the nude at night. But I have to admit that trend hasn’t caught on.

Finally, the magazine also shunned Cal State Long Beach grad Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman from Orange County who has called himself the top surfer in Congress. I guess that distinction doesn’t carry much water with Surfer.

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LIST OF THE DAY: Assorted milestones listed by Surfer:

* 1907: Waikiki’s George Freeth “is hired by L.A industrialist Henry Huntington to put on a public surfing display in Redondo Beach.” Some call him the mainland’s first board man.

* 1964: Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy is convicted of stealing the Star of India sapphire and 21 other precious gems. (The magazine added: “Despite the nickname, Murph did not surf.”)

* 1967: Miki Dora “makes a historic protest against organized surf contests and the creep of professionalism” by pulling down his trunks and “mooning” a crowd of 4,000 at a Malibu event. (Was Marinovich there?)

* 1992: The term “surfing the Internet” is coined. The number of landlubber surfers increases by the millions.

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TALK ABOUT COMPACT MODELS: Dean and Kathryn Gatons of Crestline received a computerized letter from a dealer who claimed to have delivered a car into a space not much bigger than a glove compartment (see accompanying).

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TEN YEARS AGO TODAY: The LAPD’s Hollywood station held no prisoners. But not because of a decrease in crime. One of the inmates had stopped up the toilets, forcing the transfer of the 12 inhabitants elsewhere. Talk about grungy.

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POSTAL HUMOR? Gwenn Steins of L.A. noticed a sign at a post office threatening to tow away authorized vehicles (see photo). The sign has since been replaced. Wouldn’t want to see any of the authorized drivers going postal.

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LETTER IMPERFECT: Last week, it was a sign in the Valley that read San “Fernado.” Is there an “N” shortage out that way? Lainey Hart of North Hollywood found the same letter missing from another street post (see photo).

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A WAY WITH WORDS: “I passed a lowered foreign car with tinted windows whose music was registering on the Richter scale,” writes Ed Baligad of Long Beach. “The elaborate airbrush on the window said ‘Conceded Toy.’ I concede he must have been conceited.”

miscelLAny:

Before I paddle off, I must take exception with one assertion by Surfer magazine. It says that East Coast surf champion Gary Propper, the producer of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” movies, coined the term “cowabunga” in 1960. Actually, the term was first uttered on TV’s “Howdy Doody Show” in the early 1950s. I’m just glad the late Buffalo Bob won’t read it.

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.