Speaker 1: Pushkin. For most of Mickey's adult life, he was on
Speaker 1: the run, hiding, changing identities, trying to stay one step
Speaker 1: ahead of everyone. He called himself a gypsy. He called
Speaker 1: himself a wandering rabbi. He saw himself as cast out
Speaker 1: of Golden Malibu as it changed before his eyes. Linda
Speaker 1: Kai was with Mickey on and off for the better
Speaker 1: part of a decade. She was his longest term romantic partner,
Speaker 1: his confidante, and his partner in crime. And when they
Speaker 1: weren't together, he wrote to her.
Speaker 2: And there's some There are sixty four letters from all
Speaker 2: over the world with addresses in sta amps and this
Speaker 2: was all with Mickey. And see his artwork. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a lot of us must there's a lot of
Speaker 2: lure in here, would you say? The love letters.
Speaker 1: Linda and I are sitting at the breakfast table of
Speaker 1: her mobile home in Ventura. Light streams in through the windows.
Speaker 1: On the table between us is the black binder where
Speaker 1: she keeps the letters from Mickey. Flipping through the binder,
Speaker 1: I'm overwhelmed by the explosion of strange drawings of cats
Speaker 1: and witches and cataclysmic world events.
Speaker 2: Also jokes.
Speaker 1: There's a clipping from a newspaper of a man surrounded
Speaker 1: by credit card applications. Quote mister plastic fantastic collector has
Speaker 1: seven hundred and eighty eight credit cards, can't stop applying,
Speaker 1: and what appears to be a photo of Mickey Dora
Speaker 1: pasted onto his head. There are formulas, equations and references
Speaker 1: to the episodic wave. There's some mathematical formulas.
Speaker 2: Yes, everything is a secret, and you know, well, it's
Speaker 2: like I was. I was scared to death when I
Speaker 2: would get one and I had to let it sit
Speaker 2: for a while. Wow, this is yeah. I had to
Speaker 2: let them sit for a couple of weeks before I
Speaker 2: actually would open them to get I'm head right, you know,
Speaker 2: to be sure. I was ready to read this some
Speaker 2: of this stuff because a lot of it's super paranoia
Speaker 2: about the world and collapse from the Russians. And you know,
Speaker 2: he was.
Speaker 1: Way In the letters, Mickey makes liberal use of the
Speaker 1: N word. He also indulges in blatant Internet style anti
Speaker 1: Semitic conspiracy theories. Quote the Jews Zionists are the richest
Speaker 1: people in the world and control much of its destiny.
Speaker 1: Jews like Lord Rothschild every day in ironclad secrecy decide
Speaker 1: and flat around the world how high the price of
Speaker 1: gold should be on a particular day. That would be
Speaker 1: Philip de Rothschild, his father's employer, the same person Mickey
Speaker 1: would steal stationary from whenever he had the chance.
Speaker 2: The conspiracies rent rampant in his head. No, he never
Speaker 2: was like talking about aliens. It was always the nuclear bomb.
Speaker 2: This was all about New Zealand. You know, let's go
Speaker 2: to New Zealand where it's safe. He didn't want to
Speaker 2: be in the northern hemisphere. He said, Oh, it's going
Speaker 2: to be radiation, it's going to be trouble, everything's going
Speaker 2: to blow up. A lot of the letters contain all this,
Speaker 2: and sometimes I couldn't read them. I was like, this
Speaker 2: is awful.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It says here in this letter. Can you smell it?
Speaker 1: It's the asshole conspiracy. The spread of assholeism during the
Speaker 1: last century has been orchestrated on the part of a
Speaker 1: secret international conspiracy. Experts have believed that the problems of
Speaker 1: society could be blamed on poverty, ignorance, exploitation, racism, sexism,
Speaker 1: or the devil, but they were wrong. These problems were
Speaker 1: created by well placed assholes in the media, government, education,
Speaker 1: and religion who kept society stirred up and confused with
Speaker 1: their little brown tricks, a worldwide revolution, a social enema
Speaker 1: to purge assholes and assholeism forever all my best m
Speaker 1: and s. Boy, did you start to think at some
Speaker 1: point that he was really losing it? Like it got worse,
Speaker 1: the sort of paranoia and the conspiracy thinking and the
Speaker 1: sort of darkness of his vision.
Speaker 2: Yes. When I started reading and educating myself, I was thinking,
Speaker 2: this is you know, where is Russia getting us in?
Speaker 2: Why are we having a thing with Russia? There's nothing
Speaker 2: going on, you know, Mickey saw something bad in situations,
Speaker 2: probably a lot of them in I was interested in
Speaker 2: the surfing bar, not all this conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: At a certain point, the darkness it threatened to engulf her,
Speaker 1: and she fled. But Mickey's fear, whatever he was running from,
Speaker 1: it affected Linda's whole life, and not only Linda's. The
Speaker 1: dark Prince cast a shadow over Malibu and surfing, and
Speaker 1: it was the people around him that paid the price.
Speaker 1: I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills, episode twelve,
Speaker 1: A nasty piece of work. Mickey's whole life was a
Speaker 1: giant fu to society.
Speaker 5: I used to say to people when they would give
Speaker 5: me the oh, by god, Mickey Dora, unbelievable euch a,
Speaker 5: you know, and I would just say, if you really
Speaker 5: like Mickey Dora, you never met the guy.
Speaker 1: California Surf Museum president Jim Kempton, I.
Speaker 5: Don't know anybody that really knew Mickey well that would say,
Speaker 5: what a great guy, what a friend, what a pal,
Speaker 5: what a dude that really went out of his way
Speaker 5: for me. There just isn't There isn't one person I
Speaker 5: know who's ever said that.
Speaker 1: Mickey has his place in his He's the man who
Speaker 1: mastered Malibu.
Speaker 5: That is something that you won't get much better than Mickey,
Speaker 5: you know. There aren't many people who rode a surfboard
Speaker 5: and more elegance and more refinery, more style, more arrogance
Speaker 5: than Mickey, you know. And that is, as I say,
Speaker 5: it's that's the work. And you just can't take that.
Speaker 5: No matter what else, that image, that that thing will
Speaker 5: always be iconic.
Speaker 1: For many surfing insiders, Mickey was the definition of the
Speaker 1: true surfer. He claimed to be authentic compared to all
Speaker 1: the phonies and the fakes and the gidget wannabes.
Speaker 6: My whole life is this escape. My whole life is
Speaker 6: this way. If I drop into set, the whole thing up,
Speaker 6: pull up the bottom, true, and pull up into it
Speaker 6: and shoot for my life. I'm going in for me,
Speaker 6: and behind me, all of this shit goes over my back,
Speaker 6: and I'm shooting for my life.
Speaker 1: This is the classic Mickey Dora rebel yell. There's more
Speaker 1: of it. Mickey goes on behind me, all this shit
Speaker 1: goes over my back. The screaming parents, teachers, screaming teachers,
Speaker 1: police priests, politicians, knee boarders, windsurfers, They're all going over
Speaker 1: the falls, head first into the reef, head first into
Speaker 1: the motherfucking reef. And I'm shooting for my life. And
Speaker 1: when it starts to close up, I pull to the bottom,
Speaker 1: out to the back, and I pick up another one
Speaker 1: and do the same goddamn thing. This is why the
Speaker 1: wild kids loved him, this attitude, this rejection of authority.
Speaker 1: But I hear something else in it now, something I
Speaker 1: didn't hear before. Desperation. Not the joy of escape, but
Speaker 1: the stress and the panic of being pursued. From early adulthood,
Speaker 1: Mickey lived a secret life wherever he went North America,
Speaker 1: South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Europe. All he
Speaker 1: wanted was to be free, but he lived in fear
Speaker 1: that someone would sniff out his secrets, betray him, catch him,
Speaker 1: know him.
Speaker 7: He was performative. Mickey was theater.
Speaker 1: This is David Renson again. He's the author of the
Speaker 1: Mickey Dora Oral History All for a few perfect Waves.
Speaker 1: He spent years trying to root out Mickey's secrets, whatever
Speaker 1: they might be. David and I have been talking about
Speaker 1: Mickey's dark side, the swastikas, the Nazi posturing. He wants
Speaker 1: to give me some context.
Speaker 7: Mickey came from an era of guys who liked to
Speaker 7: rat fuck each other, who wanted to be in the
Speaker 7: face of conformity in society, like Marlon Brando on a
Speaker 7: motorcycle or James Dean at the Griffith Park Observatory, that
Speaker 7: whole thing. And I just think that in the forties
Speaker 7: and the early fifties, what would be something he could
Speaker 7: throw in society's face. I think he put a swastik
Speaker 7: on a board, and I believe Mickey also had a
Speaker 7: SS leather coat. He wasn't a Nazi had never, never,
Speaker 7: to my knowledge, did he say those kinds of things.
Speaker 7: He was a loner. He just wasn't, you know, an
Speaker 7: anti Semite, although he could perform it. But then the
Speaker 7: question is if you perform it, then maybe you are reading.
Speaker 1: With the letters Mickey sent Linda, I saw a number
Speaker 1: of references to David Renson, the person Mickey feared was
Speaker 1: going to expose him in the pages of California Magazine
Speaker 1: back in the early eighties. When I was with Linda,
Speaker 1: she brought out this binder of letters that Mickey had
Speaker 1: sent her and I took pictures of a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: and it was okay with her. And in reading through them,
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, I came across some references
Speaker 1: that I found really toxic that he made, and I
Speaker 1: think they were about you, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: Well this is the one where you call me a
Speaker 7: third rate carpetbagger, or well I.
Speaker 1: Can show you he doesn't say your name, so I don't.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'd like to know for sure. Yeah, I may
Speaker 7: have shaded a paragraph there. Fat You from New York
Speaker 7: has spent six months researching My life, huge anticipated article
Speaker 7: to be published in July for okay, has been bugging
Speaker 7: my asshole father and other assholes. This guy's going frantic
Speaker 7: to locate my whereabouts. So far I'm safe. Snooper's talking
Speaker 7: everyone I hate, including guests who none o the Pirate
Speaker 7: captain m Yeah, okay, well it's toxic, but so fucking.
Speaker 1: What it gets uglier. Mickey wrote to Linda, quote, we
Speaker 1: both knew that some hook knows MF would sniff out
Speaker 1: a story one day. He also wrote that the Pirate
Speaker 1: captain Don Wilson, Linda's X, who talked to Rensen quote
Speaker 1: kissed the feet of this Jew bastard. And then, when
Speaker 1: the article was optioned by the producer David Geffen, Mickey
Speaker 1: wrote quote, I've found out some beady eyed, copulating Jew
Speaker 1: faggot has bought my life story from the other Jew
Speaker 1: and are making my life into a film starring another
Speaker 1: well favored, bright eyed Jew. If they want information, talk
Speaker 1: to the rats. This is clearly not punk, not a pose,
Speaker 1: not a middle finger to society. This is raw bigotry.
Speaker 1: As David absorbs the letters, I feel him processing this
Speaker 1: question of whether Mickey is performing anti Semitism or expressing it.
Speaker 7: People ask me how I can celebrate Mickey Dora. You know,
Speaker 7: but I don't think I'm celebrating him. I mean unless
Speaker 7: the act of writing about somebody is celebration. I mean,
Speaker 7: he's a too bit hustler to some people, and he's
Speaker 7: God on a surfboard to other people. I just thought
Speaker 7: it was an interesting story to tell. I agree with you. Yeah, well,
Speaker 7: I'm glad you show me those letters, because Micky was
Speaker 7: a nasty piece of work at times.
Speaker 1: It's subtle, but it literally feels like a change has
Speaker 1: come over David, like he's revising his opinion in real
Speaker 1: time in front of me, and there's this other feeling disappointment.
Speaker 1: Micky didn't even say his name. He reduced him to
Speaker 1: a slur.
Speaker 7: I really, I've lost weight, Mickey. He just can't take
Speaker 7: this up personally. I mean, it sucks, but I mean
Speaker 7: it just shows, you know, he he was anti Semitic
Speaker 7: when it suited him, so I you know, and I
Speaker 7: wouldn't be his friend.
Speaker 1: David's thinking, still trying to make sense of his subject.
Speaker 1: Twenty plus years after his death.
Speaker 7: Somebody said to me that they listened to Mickey and
Speaker 7: what he said sounded great, made no sense at all.
Speaker 7: And you know, when you're somebody hero, you're more willing
Speaker 7: to give them a break.
Speaker 1: Mickey and Linda's romance played out across a dozen countries
Speaker 1: in hotel rooms and hideouts and campgrounds. They were chasing
Speaker 1: the surf, living by their wits and getting away with it,
Speaker 1: stealing from the market for breakfast and dining with the
Speaker 1: Rothschilds for lunch. They did exactly as they pleased. Mickey
Speaker 1: thought this made them free, but Linda found out nothing
Speaker 1: is for free. Is there anything that you sort of
Speaker 1: took away from your relationship with Mickey when you reflect
Speaker 1: back on.
Speaker 2: It, Yeah, I'd say it. I used to be very,
Speaker 2: very trusting, and I think now I really look at
Speaker 2: stuff twice or three times or four times, you know,
Speaker 2: to be sure. Yeah, it's a hard one to really
Speaker 2: go deep into that. It's like the love thing, you know,
Speaker 2: like what is it?
Speaker 1: Linda says there was a moment in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: when she saw Micky clearly and could never unsee him.
Speaker 1: They were on the run from the FBI and Linda
Speaker 1: needed Mickey's help.
Speaker 2: I get we were coming back from I think it
Speaker 2: was Kenya, and we flew into we were in Europe,
Speaker 2: and I was sick well. I couldn't hold anything down.
Speaker 1: This was when they stopped in Germany and Mickey bought
Speaker 1: his dark green Mercedes camera van. They were on their
Speaker 1: way to France to disappear.
Speaker 2: I was losing weight. I couldn't eat, it was throwing
Speaker 2: up every morning. And Mickey was not very sympathetic. It
Speaker 2: was like, you deal with your problem. He kept giving
Speaker 2: me this German Undenberg, which you take. It's if you've
Speaker 2: had a hangover and you've sick to your stomach, you
Speaker 2: down this stuff. It was horrible. He gave me a
Speaker 2: couple of those, and I was sicker and I said,
Speaker 2: this is not a hangover. I said, I'm pregnant because
Speaker 2: I was missing periods and you know, I knew the symptoms.
Speaker 2: You know, I was having morning sickness, and I said,
Speaker 2: this is pregnancy. You know. Mickey wasn't happy. Why his
Speaker 2: Mickey's thing was always his little comment was you'll ruin
Speaker 2: the trip if I didn't do something, You're going to
Speaker 2: ruin the trip.
Speaker 1: By being pregnant. Yeah, she was pregnant on the run
Speaker 1: and living in a camera van, and add to that,
Speaker 1: her passport had been stolen and Mickey wasn't there for her.
Speaker 2: I was scared. I was scared, you know, because when
Speaker 2: that happens like that, you're on your own.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: You know, you're not married, you're not in a house,
Speaker 2: you're on the road. You don't even have right id
Speaker 2: you were, you know, money. It's not an environment where
Speaker 2: you want to have a child. Come period. This was real,
Speaker 2: real scary.
Speaker 1: And you couldn't raise a kid with Mickey if Mickey
Speaker 1: didn't want to raise a kid. No, Linda won't say
Speaker 1: exactly what happened with the baby, but she does tell
Speaker 1: me why Mickey didn't want a child. Clearly, a baby
Speaker 1: would have complicated their international surf bandit plans, but Mickey's
Speaker 1: reluctance to become a father came from a deeper, more
Speaker 1: tortured place.
Speaker 2: Mickey was worried about a child, especially a girl, that
Speaker 2: she would be abused in the future by people trying
Speaker 2: to get back at him. And he even said, you know,
Speaker 2: he said, a boy, he said, I don't care, you know,
Speaker 2: let him get his ass kicked. You know, if a
Speaker 2: son would be like, okay, your turn now to figure
Speaker 2: it out. A daughter, he was like, very very worried.
Speaker 2: He said, some asshole is going to come along and
Speaker 2: fuck her and get her pregnant just to get back
Speaker 2: at me.
Speaker 1: This makes Mickey seem truly sick, unless it was just
Speaker 1: his excuse. Linda broke up with Mickey for good in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, not long before Mickey was arrested. Linda went
Speaker 1: to Ireland and spent years living in a rusted out
Speaker 1: VW on a desolate beach, purging Mickey from her system.
Speaker 1: He visited her sometimes, but Ireland was too cold for him.
Speaker 1: He begged her to join him in South Africa.
Speaker 2: Found the perfect right point Jeffrey's Bay Come Good movement.
Speaker 2: I was stuck. Love was gone. That wasn't love, but
Speaker 2: you know there was something fascination, Yeah, the fascination there,
Speaker 2: it is. The fascination was gone.
Speaker 1: Mickey wanted to rekindle what they had, but Linda had
Speaker 1: reached her limit long ago.
Speaker 2: I think I saw too much, you know, I was
Speaker 2: experiencing too much and I was done. You know, I
Speaker 2: wanted to just be calm. And it wasn't going to
Speaker 2: be New Zealand, and it wasn't going to be France,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't going to be Jeffrey's Bay.
Speaker 1: Mickey put her through a lot. As exhilarating as their
Speaker 1: shared adventure was, it was exhausting. He was exhausting. For
Speaker 1: a long time, she'd believed they were pursuing freedom together.
Speaker 1: Then she realized he was only for himself. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you to read this little passage at the end
Speaker 1: of your book and then sort of, you know, people
Speaker 1: can do what they want with it. I passed Linda
Speaker 1: a copy of her book, The Surf Sting. It's an
Speaker 1: account of her adventures with Mickey, Dora and Don Wilson,
Speaker 1: the pirate Captain. I circled it right there.
Speaker 2: She need reading? Is there the blue?
Speaker 1: This is a passage that comes right at the end.
Speaker 1: It's set apart from the rest of the text in
Speaker 1: a larger typeface.
Speaker 2: Mikola. She's beautiful, dark brown, curly hair, big brown eyes,
Speaker 2: almost gipsy looking, maybe a bit Italian. She's a young
Speaker 2: woman now speaks three languages, raised by a wealthy and
Speaker 2: prominent wine connoisseur. Does she serf? Maybe she definitely skis
Speaker 2: any pictures?
Speaker 6: What for?
Speaker 2: You might get lucky and meet her sometime? Any more questions?
Speaker 2: Nobody bothered to ask Mickey. I didn't have to I
Speaker 2: was there. It is what it is bittersweet.
Speaker 1: It's bittersweet because the life she's just described. Mikola's life
Speaker 1: sounds wonderful in many ways, wherever she is, whoever she is.
Speaker 1: But I can't help thinking of all that Linda lost,
Speaker 1: sacrificed for Mickey's fear and selfishness that could make a
Speaker 1: person fall right out of love.
Speaker 2: It wasn't about love. I don't think it ever was.
Speaker 2: Because love, what is love? I mean, what's the definition
Speaker 2: of love? You have to I mean, love can be
Speaker 2: different for everybody. I don't think it's something you can
Speaker 2: really say this is how it works, you know, because
Speaker 2: I love my husband. My husband is just the pickle,
Speaker 2: and I would have never had that with Mickey or
Speaker 2: don Period. I know that for sure.
Speaker 1: Did you have other kids in your life?
Speaker 2: No, but my husband has two boys. They're both very,
Speaker 2: very good, good kids. He raised them well. And it's
Speaker 2: funny because I think about if I had a kid
Speaker 2: with him, it would have been wonderful, you know, but
Speaker 2: life can bite you sometimes big time. It's funny too
Speaker 2: because my mom, when I told her, you know, she
Speaker 2: was so mad at me.
Speaker 1: She said I.
Speaker 2: Would have raised her. I would have raised my grandchild.
Speaker 2: And I said, Mom, it wasn't like that. I said,
Speaker 2: you couldn't just have her here because somebody would know
Speaker 2: who she was, you know, I said, it wouldn't.
Speaker 1: This is Linda's regret that she believed Mickey bought in
Speaker 1: for a time to his dark view of the world.
Speaker 1: Back then she couldn't see beyond it, and now she
Speaker 1: has no daughter.
Speaker 7: But it's okay.
Speaker 2: It's all hard. Everything was fun and breezy and nice,
Speaker 2: and then that was the hard part. So you get
Speaker 2: slapped in the end. You know, in some way you'll pay.
Speaker 2: I paid the price. Not nice.
Speaker 1: The promise of the Mickey and Linda adventure had been
Speaker 1: that it would all be free. They would travel and
Speaker 1: surf and not have to work. The lifestyle would be
Speaker 1: free and they would be free. But it didn't really
Speaker 1: turn out that way. So I was going to ask you,
Speaker 1: but I think you may have just answered this. What
Speaker 1: these adventures cost you.
Speaker 2: I got from your daughter, Yeah, which would have been
Speaker 2: very amazing, you know, to have brought her here. But
Speaker 2: it's okay. She's fretet and easy.
Speaker 1: Mickey paid to he went to prison, but he never
Speaker 1: grew up the way Linda did. He never had to.
Speaker 1: He continued to write her letters from the ends of
Speaker 1: the earth. Wherever he was. He referred to it as
Speaker 1: never never Land. Mickey will always represent the worst impulses
Speaker 1: of surf culture, the pull toward exclusion and xenophobia, But
Speaker 1: the surf media that fanned Mickey's legend has never forsaken him.
Speaker 8: How hard is it to just say, Gee, this guy
Speaker 8: who died a long time ago, who was just a
Speaker 8: good surfer in the fifties. That's all he was, was
Speaker 8: a handsome guy who was a good surfer, said some
Speaker 8: really nasty, gross things that suggest really dark hatreds in
Speaker 8: his heart. Writer and surfer Dan Dwayne again, that question,
Speaker 8: to myself is right, what is the big deal? Why
Speaker 8: is it so hard to say that was kind of gross?
Speaker 8: Maybe we shouldn't worship that guy anymore. Why can't we
Speaker 8: just say it's painful? Why can can't we just say
Speaker 8: it's hateful? This is not a big lift, This is
Speaker 8: not a high bar. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 8: be a conspiracy theorist to connect the dots around this.
Speaker 1: Surfing now is so much bigger than when Mickey was
Speaker 1: in his prime, and that Dan says is a good thing.
Speaker 8: This is a global culture, and more and more it's
Speaker 8: in everybody culture in a kind of a beautiful way,
Speaker 8: Like that's better that way for it to be in
Speaker 8: everybody culture. I'm glad it's in everybody culture. I don't
Speaker 8: want to go back to when it's not in everybody culture.
Speaker 8: I didn't like it more that way.
Speaker 1: And when I think of an everybody culture, I know
Speaker 1: that doesn't come from Mickey. It comes from a spunky
Speaker 1: fifteen year old who didn't let a few pineapples in
Speaker 1: the face get between her and the waves.
Speaker 4: Oh no, back again.
Speaker 2: Any objections you want me to reel off the whole
Speaker 2: list that I like to start?
Speaker 1: How does on Mickey blamed Gidget for ruining Malibu? But
Speaker 1: I have to disagree. I think Mickey ruined Malibu by
Speaker 1: treating it like it belonged to him and trying to
Speaker 1: scare everyone else away. There's a thread that seems to
Speaker 1: lead from Kathy's identity and her family's history in Hollywood
Speaker 1: to the popularization of surfing and Mickey's vitriol about all
Speaker 1: of it, not to mention Mickey's SS leather trench coat
Speaker 1: and the swastika on his surfboard. Did he express specific
Speaker 1: frustration about Gidget.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't like the whole thing because it was
Speaker 2: the start. It threw everything up into the air and
Speaker 2: everybody had a look, you know, And he never liked her.
Speaker 2: He always had to of a racist attitude.
Speaker 1: Because she was Jewish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he used to like to throw that around. True.
Speaker 1: The Gidget movie, with its daffy blonde starlet, isn't really
Speaker 1: what surfing's all about. But Gidget, the person, an intrepid
Speaker 1: Jewish girl who insisted that the guys on the beach
Speaker 1: except her, is the living proof that surfing doesn't belong
Speaker 1: to the guard Chapins and Mickey Dora's of the world.
Speaker 9: That the women to the surfing community, which was really
Speaker 9: unheard of back then.
Speaker 1: Former Malibu lifeguard Henry Ford, there are.
Speaker 9: Very few women in those early days that came down
Speaker 9: and I think Gidget opened that up. Kathy opened that
Speaker 9: door for a lot of women, and women became part
Speaker 9: of the surfing community. And now almost any day you've
Speaker 9: had out in any of the surf spots that you'll
Speaker 9: see at least at least a third of the people
Speaker 9: in the water are women. Nowadays, maybe even more depending
Speaker 9: on where you are. So I think that it started
Speaker 9: with Kathy and those films and moving forward.
Speaker 1: Mickey and Kathy were from the same world of European emigres.
Speaker 1: They met and found fame on the same beach in Malibu,
Speaker 1: riding the same waves. Mickey vanished and by disappearing became
Speaker 1: the most legendary surfer of all time. Kathy stayed put,
Speaker 1: but she was more or less forgotten after her reputation
Speaker 1: in the surf world was destroyed. Mickey said, Gidget was
Speaker 1: what was wrong with surfing, but finally people are starting
Speaker 1: to recognize that she represents what's right about it.
Speaker 5: From that Gigan on having the California Serti Museum, we'd
Speaker 5: like in you this silver Server reward. So let's hear
Speaker 5: it from the gind.
Speaker 1: That's jim Kempton again. Back in November twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the California Surf Museum honored Kathy with a Lifetime Achievement
Speaker 1: Award for her contributions to the surf industry.
Speaker 4: I give you the one and only Kathy kohnor Zuckerman,
Speaker 4: aka the real Gidget.
Speaker 3: They say, keep company with those that make me feel better,
Speaker 3: and how Honestly, this has been unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Like me, like me, and really like me.
Speaker 1: Gidget opened the door for women to surf. She gave
Speaker 1: them a template, an iconic figure they could relate to
Speaker 1: and try to imitate.
Speaker 2: I loved Didgit the TV show as a kid like
Speaker 2: I always the Sally Field.
Speaker 1: And even an accidental icon a twenty ten documentary about
Speaker 1: Kathy's life. Many professional female surfers credited the Gidget franchise
Speaker 1: with making surf a more welcoming sport for women to
Speaker 1: the sport.
Speaker 2: I grew up seeing images of Gidget surfing on TV,
Speaker 2: and she's the only woman that I ever saw surfing
Speaker 2: on TV. And it never occurred to.
Speaker 1: Me that girls didn't surf until I was a teenager
Speaker 1: and looked around in the lineup and saw that I
Speaker 1: was the only one.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I used to watch all those movies when I was
Speaker 3: a kid and just.
Speaker 6: Like fantasize about the whole beach life.
Speaker 2: And when I got to, you know, live at myself,
Speaker 2: it was awesome, you know. And without her, and without
Speaker 2: those movies, who know where surfing today would be.
Speaker 1: That last voice belongs to Cassia Miador. She's one of
Speaker 1: the best long borders in the world and a surf
Speaker 1: mentor to me. A few times now, I've gone with
Speaker 1: Cassia and her friend Leah Dawson, another amazing longboarder, to
Speaker 1: spend a few days at Santa Nofre, that beach where
Speaker 1: Mickey learned to surf. It's a bunch of women surfing
Speaker 1: and camping and sitting around the fire pit. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've heard anyone mention Gidget, but she's there in
Speaker 1: the background. In the subtext of the stories, the women
Speaker 1: tell of how they learned to surf and kept at
Speaker 1: it in spite of all the things that might have
Speaker 1: made them turn away, because surfing is that fun, that
Speaker 1: worth it. When I was pregnant with my second child,
Speaker 1: my husband gave me a beautiful pink surfboard. He doesn't surf,
Speaker 1: but he said he could picture me surfing and he
Speaker 1: thought I would love it. The baby was a girl,
Speaker 1: and after she was born, my husband and I would
Speaker 1: take her and her older brother to the beach. My
Speaker 1: husband would play with the kids in the sand while
Speaker 1: I messed around in the waves a happy coop. I
Speaker 1: remember carrying my daughter on one hip and my board
Speaker 1: on the other she's ten now, and of course she's
Speaker 1: a better surfer than I am. This is how it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be. The division's Mickey sde still pop up
Speaker 1: like ugly weeds, but he was fighting the inevitable. And
Speaker 1: I hope that by the time my daughter is driving
Speaker 1: herself to the beach to surf, the signs telling kooks
Speaker 1: to go home, the racial hate, the swastikas, that will
Speaker 1: all just be a story to her, a story from
Speaker 1: the dark ages.
Speaker 4: It was never going to be anything other than what's
Speaker 4: sort of happening now, which is come one, come.
Speaker 1: All, surf historian Matt Warshaw.
Speaker 4: Because being in the ocean, riding waves, talking about riding
Speaker 4: waves is a really fun, compelling, gorgeous thing to do,
Speaker 4: and why shouldn't everybody do it.
Speaker 1: Kathy doesn't surf anymore. She and Marv walk every day,
Speaker 1: rain or shine, and often they go down to the beach.
Speaker 1: She likes to watch the surfers.
Speaker 3: You know, my husband. I went to the jetty the
Speaker 3: other day and the water was like churning, and it
Speaker 3: was after the rain, and a guy comes in a
Speaker 3: wetsuit by himself, throws his backpack down on the sand
Speaker 3: and heads out to surf, and I was impressed with
Speaker 3: that because that's what it was about. He just went
Speaker 3: out for a ride. I want to ride, and I
Speaker 3: know what I'm doing, and that's you know what surfing
Speaker 3: to me is all about. Am I going to catch
Speaker 3: this one? Or am I going to hang back? Am
Speaker 3: I going to catch it? Am I gonna walk the nose?
Speaker 3: Am I not going to walk the noses? You and
Speaker 3: the element. It's you and the weather and the ocean.
Speaker 2: And a board and a board.
Speaker 3: And you know, it doesn't have to be a fancy
Speaker 3: triple fin board. It can be a longboard, a short board,
Speaker 3: one fin, little rocker, no rocker, but it's you on
Speaker 3: the board in motion.
Speaker 1: What Kathy's saying reminds me of the end of her
Speaker 1: father's novel, where Gidget sees a set rolling in and
Speaker 1: grabs her board and heads for the ocean, leaving a
Speaker 1: lot of drama with the big Kahuna and Moondoggie behind her.
Speaker 1: She cheers herself on. Shoot at Gidget, shoot the curl,
Speaker 1: and she does.
Speaker 2: It's powerful.
Speaker 3: Book, Yeah, it's powerful. So whatever you do, you can
Speaker 3: do it. Maybe that's a broader message, but there's something
Speaker 3: really fun about just getting a wave and peddling out.
Speaker 3: It just leave everything on the sand, you know.
Speaker 1: The last line of the book is, maybe I was
Speaker 1: just a woman in love with a surfboard. It's as
Speaker 1: simple as that. Maybe it's always been that simple. Mickey
Speaker 1: brought so much drama to surfing, and he left a
Speaker 1: stain on the sport that has not yet been expunged.
Speaker 1: Gidget's true contribution to surf culture was overlooked for decades.
Speaker 1: She's not important because she helped make surfing popular. She's
Speaker 1: important because she made surfing accessible. The Ambassador of Aloha says,
Speaker 1: come to the beach. The rightful King wasn't royal, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't right And whatever he once said, Malibu belongs
Speaker 1: to everyone. This was Lost Hills, The Dark Prince. Lost
Speaker 1: Hills the Dark Prince is written and reported by me
Speaker 1: Dana Goodyear. Sabrina Fang is the senior producer. Colin McNulty
Speaker 1: is the showrunner. He also edited the show with Benadere.
Speaker 1: Sarah Deeley is our production assistant. Original composition and sound
Speaker 1: design by Alex McGinnis, Mixing by Alex McGinnis with help
Speaker 1: from Victoria Schifflett. The Lost Hills theme is by Dan Leone.
Speaker 1: Our cover art is by Francesca Gabiani. Benadera and I
Speaker 1: are the creators and executive producers of Lost Hills. Executive
Speaker 1: producers for Pushkin Industries are Jacob Weisberg, Letama Laude, Jacob
Speaker 1: Smith and Sophie Crane. Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and
Speaker 1: thanks to the Pushkin team. Farah Digrunge, Jake Flanagan, Heather Fain,
Speaker 1: John Schnars, Greta Cone, Carly mcglei, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner,
Speaker 1: Isabella Navarrez, Jordan McMillan, Sean Karney, Roystonbserve, Nicole Optenbosch, Maya
Speaker 1: Kanik and Daniella la Con. Lost Hills is a production
Speaker 1: of Westernsound and Pushkin Industries. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: Westernsounds newsletter at Westerndashsound dot com. Pushkin's newsletter is at
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Speaker 1: Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in
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