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Author: Casey Bennett

  • Beginner’s Guide to Your First Surf Lesson (Vol. 21)

    Beginner’s Guide to Your First Surf Lesson (Vol. 21)

    Same topic, new angle — here’s what’s changed.

    Every surfer you see threading barrels and carving turns started in the whitewater. The beginning is awkward, humbling, and absolutely worth it. Here is what to expect from your first lesson.

    Your instructor will start on the beach, walking you through the pop-up motion: lying flat, hands beside your chest, pushing up and planting your feet in one fluid movement. Practice this on land until it feels automatic. In the water, everything happens fast.

    The first waves you catch will be whitewater — broken waves that push you toward shore with forgiving force. Focus on your stance. Feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent, arms out for balance, eyes looking forward. Do not look down at the board. Ride it out to the sand and do it again. And again. The ocean is a patient teacher if you let it be.

  • Winter Swells: Why Cold Water Means Better Waves (Vol. 11)

    Winter Swells: Why Cold Water Means Better Waves (Vol. 11)

    This one keeps coming up in questions, so we’re bringing it back with more detail.

    November through March, powerful low-pressure systems spinning across the North Pacific generate the largest and most consistent swells of the year. While summer crowds thin and casual surfers pack away their boards, the serious locals know: this is when California truly delivers.

    The water temperature drops into the low fifties along the central and northern coast. A good 4/3mm wetsuit, booties, and gloves become essential equipment. But the reward for tolerating the cold is access to waves of a size and quality that simply do not arrive in summer.

    The great winter swells of recent memory — the El Niño winters of 2016 and 2023 — brought forty-year events to breaks that rarely see overhead surf. Mavericks ran. Jaws detonated. And down at the local beach break, a generation of surfers got the sessions of their lives.

  • How California Surf Culture Shaped the World

    How California Surf Culture Shaped the World

    It started on the beaches of Waikiki and found its true home on the California coast. By the 1960s, Malibu, Huntington Beach, and Santa Cruz had become the epicenters of a global cultural movement — surf culture — that would reshape fashion, music, language, and lifestyle for generations.

    The Gidget films brought surfing to Middle America. The Beach Boys gave it a soundtrack. Bruce Brown’s “The Endless Summer” turned it into philosophy. California did not invent surfing, but it packaged it, sold it, and spread it to every coastline on earth.

    The legacy is complicated. Commercialization diluted authenticity. Crowds destroyed the solitude that made surfing magical. But the core of the culture — the early mornings, the community of the lineup, the surrender to something larger than yourself — remains intact wherever waves break.