BOYHOOD AT THE BEACH
Okay, I’ll have to get this off my chest now, because I never managed to get it off my chest back then: I never mastered standing and riding competently on a full-size board. However, once I had accepted this was beyond me, I redirected my efforts into boogie boarding and the enjoyment factor mushroomed for me. By the mid-’80s I had developed into a reasonably competent boogie boarder in Auckland’s daunting west coast swells.
We grew up in the 1960s a stone’s throw from Mairangi Bay Beach, on the other coast, on Auckland’s North Shore. Summer visits to the beach were a top option in the day, where we quickly began to soak up the surf and auto culture. Mairangi Bay was blessed with having a Surf Life Saving Club, with a two-storey building, which attracted the young fast set to the action. Hot cars, hot young women, and the surfer stud brigade hung out around the mecca of the clubhouse. It was all impossibly alluring to our young eyes. In the beach front parking lot, were hot-looking Mk1 and 2 Zephyrs, FJ Holdens, Falcons, and the like. Atop many of them were roof racks carrying the ultimate symbol of cool Californian beach culture, the surfboard.
We had already been seduced by those glorious summer hits of the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Dick Dale and the Deltones, and many and (both with New Zealand content) had a lot to do with us becoming disciples of the surf and beach culture.
