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Above the Roar: 50 Surfer Interviews

TERRY “TUBESTEAK” TRACY

In 1993, 1 spoke with Terry Tracy (aka Kahuna, aka Tubesteak, aka the Pit Commander) about surfing Malibu in the mid‑ to late ‘50s, and it didn’t seem to me that he was visiting the past as much as he was seeking refuge‑maybe even losing himself. He was 59 when we talked; not yet old, but not quite all there. Still, Tracy was gracious and well‑spoken, with a certain Old Malibu noblesse that, as far as I know, he invented. If Tubesteak is once again living in his palm‑frond shack at First Point, he’s probably enjoying himself.

How did you get the name “Tubesteak”?

One summer I was really broke, so I got a job across the street, right next to the Malibu Inn, at a place called Tube’s Steak and Lobster House. And people would say to me, “Hey, you still at Tube’s Steak?” Then it just went to Tubesteak. But people have always been confused about what it meant. A lot of people think that Tubesteak meant ... ah, some kind of cylindrical piece of meat.

You really did live in a shack at First Point?

For three or four months a year, in summer. Actually, there were two shacks. The first one got burned u r n e d down; the cops tore the second one apart in 1957. In the winter I lived in Santa Monica canyon, at a place called the Sip’n’Surf.

You stopped surfing years ago. Why?

I watched the baseball old‑timers games, and saw that the players start to took silly when they get older. People over 40 who ride surfboards took silly. I’m over 40.

Do you ever see Mickey Dora?

No, not for years. Last time I saw him he said, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done.”

You’ve never been one to idolize Dora.

Weil, he wasn’t really part of our [Malibu] scene. He wasn’t part of the Gidget, Moondoggie, Tubesteak thing. He was down there a couple of days a week, but nobody really wanted anything to do with him‑with this self‑exiled toner. His whole gig was to irritate people. And he’d irritate the little guy. He’d take a guy’s board, some poor, helpless little guy, then a few days later he’d give it back.

But you agree that he influenced a lot of surfers.

Oh, absolutely. There was nobody like him. What I’ve just said‑I mean, he did have this incredible presence. Everyone at Malibu started to surf like him, to walk like him; they did all his hand gestures. He was very elegant in his way, you know.

Tell me about the social part of surfing at Malibu. What music did you guys listen to?

Beginning in the mid‑1950s, it was a lot of Harry Bellefonte. Walking into a party, you know, it was always, “Dayyyy‑O!” Plus a lot of jazz‑Anita O’Day, June Christy, Shorty Rodgers and the Lighthouse All‑stars.

Did the Malibu guys spend any time with, say, the San Onofre guys?

No. That Sano thing‑it’s archaic now and it was archaic then. That group hasn’t changed. just sitting around with their ukuleles and the Hawaiian music. Nah. Malibu was the place.

What about the Windansea guys?

Little leaguers. T‑ball. Malibu was the majors. Think of it this way. How many movies did you see about San Onofre? Or Trestles? Or Windansea? Or the South Bay? Malibu was just magic. Remember how, when Tinkerbell flies, all those sparkles come down behind her, all the magic sparkles? Malibu was just covered with that stuff.

But we did travel sometimes. We’d pack up for the day and go to Seat Beach [south of Long Beach] and surf with Jack Haley and those guys. We felt pretty welcome down there. Then, of course, Dewey [Weber] and those guys would come up from the South Bay and we’d be stoked‑because they were hot surfers, and because we just liked ‘em and everybody got along. Now, you know, it’s difficult to go to somebody else’s beach. They give you a hard time.

Is it true that the lifeguards drove you out of Malibu?

Yes. I left the beach in 1959 when the lifeguards ruined it. We had a good thing going before that. We had a place to stay, nobody hassling us, we weren’t hassling anybody. If you wanted to melt some wax on a new board, you’d dig a little hole, put down some twigs, light a fire, put the wax in a Hills Brothers coffee can and hold it over the fire. And one day, all of a sudden, some lifeguard comes running over and he kicks my coffee can over and screams, “No fires on the beach!” And that was pretty much it.

NAT YOUNG

Australian surfer Nat Young, world champion in 1966, went on record in 1968 to say that surfing might be seen as nothing less than a footpath to world peace. He was 20. He shot high. To his credit, I say. Young has since had a long and wide‑ranging career in the sport, and there have been at least two constants: one is his general sense of bigness‑giant talent, giant ego, giant physical presence. The other, as exampled by the surfing-for-world-peace notion, is that he’s always tried to place the sport in a much broader context.

How do you feet about presenting surfing to a non‑surfing audience?

I go a bit two ways about this. Like with surfing in the Olympics. On the one hand it would be nice, on the other hand ... well, they don’t deserve us, you know? I mean, it’s not even a sport. There aren’t any lines to cross, no goal posts, no time period. So we don’t even qualify on the most basic level. To call it a sport ‑ that’s really limiting. Try and think, for example, how Mickey Dora would fit into the whole thing. His contribution to surfing ‑ and it’s a huge one ‑ more or less proves that we’re not sportsmen. And beyond that... Christ, you know, we were pacifists, we wouldn’t go to war, we have this history of being antisportsmen, and we should be proud of that. We should adhere to that. It’s our heritage. So if the Olympics want surfing, let them come to us, on our terms.

Surf companies today, in a lot of ways, seem to be moving away from trying to sell surfing as another sport.

A lot of the advertising campaigns of late ‑ I think some of the companies are very much trying to build on what we are as surfers. It’s good.

So keeping it at that level, then, you would or would not be interested in presenting surfing to the rest of the world?

[long pause] Well, again, that’s a very complex question. It depends. For me, my direction, at this stage in my life ‑ no, I guess I don’t want to let them know. But fuck, that’s pretty ridiculous to say, isn’t it, after I’ve done four books and two movies trying to get the world tuned in to what we’re doing. So I guess I can’t really give an honest answer. I suppose if I were still involved with sponsors and the like I’d have to say that surfing needs to be shown to the rest of the world. Right now what I say is: this is a wonderful activity and I like to do it with friends and family, and I love the fact that we’re very much a minority tribe in the world. It’s selfish, that one. But surfing’s always been totally self‑indulgent, and I have no problem with that at all.

LISA ANDERSEN

1985: Lisa Andersen, 16, runs away from her family home in Ormond Beach, Florida, heading for Huntington, California, after her father destroys her only surfboard.
1986: surfs and drifts up and down the California coast.
1987‑92: six years as a flashy but erratic world tour pro who can’t get it together, personally or professionally.
1993: motherhood.
1994: world title, fame, some wealth, some contentment.

Andersen is talented, attractive, reserved, and off‑key. journalists who think they’re getting into her past, or her psyche, are kidding themselves. But she is happy to talk about how her career changed with the birth of her daughter, Erica.

Did having a child affect your surfing?

Oh, yeah. In ways I didn’t expect. After pregnancy, I just seemed to have a lot more energy somehow, and a lot more confidence.

More confidence because ... maybe you had a new kind of balance in your life?

No, because I’d just been through the worst, most painful thing ever, and everything seemed easy afterwards. Everything’s easy after having a baby. [Laughs] No, actually, it’s more like Erica put this kind of pressure on me that I’d never had. Or responsibility ... that’s the better word. I had to take care of her. Surfing, for me, was the way to do it, and obviously getting a world title was going to make things easier.

Before Erica was born, it seemed as if people were always sort of looking out for you, or taking care of you.

It’s true. For a long time, everywhere I went, people took care of me. That’s why I hardly ever had to work. Boyfriends or families‑yeah, they’d just take me under their wing.

That’s changed.

Yeah, I’m stronger. I’d rather be alone now. Most of the time, that is. That wasn’t the way it was five years ago. But a lot of that was just ‑ you know, at age 20, away from home and everything, you’re looking for security. Plus you fantasize about the right guy, about the perfect man. But that’s just movies, I guess. Now I’m at a stage where I want to be alone, listen to music alone, drive the car, go surfing by myself, then come home and be with Erica.

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Above the Roar: 50 Surfer Interviews

TERRY “TUBESTEAK” TRACY

NAT YOUNG

LISA ANDERSEN