Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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For no destination was this truer than Hawai‘i, where the tourism industry exploded in the fourteen years between the war’s end in 1945 and the establishment of statehood in 1959. But it was not just about plea sure travel. The growth of Hawaiian tourism coincided with the escalation of the Cold War, and Hawai‘i, which was already situated at the heart of American power in the Pacific, became even more militarized as Cold War tensions increased.⁶ If not for this militarization, however, surf history might have unfolded quite differently. The armed forces brought several major figures in the development of modern surf culture to Hawai‘i, including Bruce Brown, whose The Endless Summer (1966) made him surfing’s most influential documentary filmmaker, and John Severson, the founder of Surfer magazine. Both Brown and Severson further exposed the rich Hawaiian surf to California’s wave-obsessed youth.⁷ Yet even for those without military ties, Hawai‘i had become surfing’s mecca. It was the place mainlanders went to assert their wave-riding chops. By the 1960s, a surfer could not be said to have reached surfing’s heights unless he (or, far less frequently, she) had successfully ridden O‘ahu’s North Shore.