Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн
56 страница из 91
The aquatic skills that had so enamored London, Ford, and the Hawaii Promotion Committee were the same skills Freeth brought with him to California, where he found work for two of the major developers of the period, Abbot Kinney and Henry Huntington. Kinney was the force behind the faux Italian development of Venice, just south of Santa Monica, while Huntington poured his energies into creating what he envisioned as “the great resort of [the] region” in nearby Redondo Beach.117 Both Kinney and Huntington paid Freeth—dubbed “the Hawaiian Wonder” while under Huntington’s employ—to give surfing exhibitions to the thousands of curious residents flocking aboard Huntington’s Pacific Electric Railway to the sandy shores of Santa Monica Bay.118 There, one contemporaneous account reported, “[m]any people daily gather to watch the Hawaiians in the surf . . . showing their skill in aquatic exercises.”119 Such dexterity in the waves, demonstrating how the ocean was a space that could be enjoyed rather than simply feared (as had until then been the case), marked the beginning of Southern California’s beach culture.