Matt Warshaw

Matt War­shaw is a surf writer who has writ­ten The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Surf­ing and Maverick’s: The Story of Big-Wave surf­ing. He is cur­rently writ­ing his lat­est book about the his­tory of surf­ing. We catch up with him and talk about his expe­ri­ences and fam­ily life.

What was it like grow­ing up in the South Bay?
I loved it. The per­fect sunny beach-town bub­ble. Plenty of fun beach­break waves, cruis­ing the Strand, lots of local surf heros — espe­cially Mike Pur­pus and Mark Levy — par­ties, worry-free pre-AIDS sex. Through high school and for a year or two after, there was absolutely no place else I wanted to live. I was so into my own lit­tle world there, and so surf-stupid, that I thought Man­hat­tan NY was copy­cat­ting Man­hat­tan Beach.

When did you get your first surf­board?
In 1969, just after I turned 9. My fam­ily lived in Venice at that time. Before that, we were in Tarzana — I’m an out and proud Val­ley boy — and my uncle Dan would push me across the pool on his big Hobie, so I wanted to surf even before we moved to the beach. The first board I had was a 7’4″ cut-down. In ’68, the year before I started surf­ing, every­body was strip­ping the glass off their long­boards, and reshap­ing the foam blank in their garage. That’s what my first board was. It was fire-engine red. I couldn’t get my arm around it, and used to drag it tail-down through the sand.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
No idea. It was 40 years ago. I body­surfed for two years before I surfed. Prob­a­bly it was the same rush as drop­ping down a big slide on the play­ground, except it never gets boring.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
Orig­i­nally I was just a young long-distance groupie for the big stars: first David Nuuhiwa and Jock Suther­land, then Jeff Hak­man, BK, Shaun Tom­son, and Mark Richards. Later I became more inter­ested in peo­ple who were really ded­i­cated surfers but had some­thing else going on in their lives. Mark Ren­neker, up here in San Fran­cisco — I admire him. Dan Duane, the writer; he’s my neigh­bor, and I’m just in awe of how he finds new things to do — car­pen­try, cook­ing, gui­tar — and does all of it incred­i­bly well. I’ve always had, like, two or three things in my life, and I put all my time and energy into those things. Dan’s con­stantly adding to his repertoire.

What inspired you to begin writ­ing about surf­ing?
I was a full-on glasses-wearing book­worm as a kid; I remem­ber walk­ing out of Venice library every week with books stacked up to my chin. For some rea­son, I thought that read­ing a lot meant I could write. I wrote an on-spec arti­cle after my first trip to the Hawaii, in 1983, and SURFER pub­lished it. “First Blood on the North Shore.” It’s ter­ri­ble. I was already 23, and pretty old to be get­ting started writ­ing, and too cool to really make a study of it. I just floun­dered on for years, writ­ing more average-or-worse pieces, not know­ing any bet­ter. My dad finally got me a sub­scrip­tion to the New Yorker, prob­a­bly in 1990, and my writ­ing start­ing to improve. I’ve always been a late bloomer.

What was it like work­ing for Surfer Mag­a­zine?
I loved it as much as I loved going to high school in South Bay, and for the same rea­sons: it just felt like I was in exactly the right place at the right time, doing exactly what I wanted to do. For five years, at least. When it no longer felt like that, when I was 30, I quit and enrolled at UC Berke­ley. Same thing. I loved that, too.

What was the inspi­ra­tion to cre­ate The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Surf­ing?
It was my dad’s idea. We were talk­ing on the phone, and I was try­ing to fig­ure out what to do next, some­thing big­ger, and he sug­gested that I write a surf­ing encyclopedia.

What advice would you give to an aspir­ing writer?
Read lots, rewrite, and don’t quit your day job.

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out?
And why?
For 30-plus years I went on surf trips and was usu­ally dis­ap­pointed. In 2001 I finally went to the Mentawais, and my aging cyn­i­cal 41-year-old mind was blown, day in and day out, by how per­fect the surf is there. Noth­ing else in my expe­ri­ence has come close. Three or four times we motored AWAY from surf that was bet­ter than just about any­thing I’ve seen any­where else.

Who/what inspires you?
Very few things are depend­ably inspir­ing. If I go look­ing for it, I’m usu­ally dis­ap­pointed. But stuff just turns up all the time. A Brian Wil­son song, a Doones­bury car­toon, a David Fos­ter Wal­lace essay. I thought Postsurf.com was fan­tas­tic. Fleet Foxes — I played that CD a lot this year.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
I don’t know if its the great­est thing, but the lat­est thing is that just about all of the com­mon every­day stuff that I wasn’t much inter­ested in dur­ing early adult­hood is what counts. Mar­riage, fam­ily. My son Teddy was born in August; I’m a first-time father at 49. Every­thing I believe in these days seems like it was lifted straight from a Hall­mark card.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
Wish I’d put on more sun­screen all those years.

What are you most proud of?
My son, my mar­riage, my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents and brother. I’m proud of the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Surf­ing, and Maverick’s. It’s too early to tell, but The His­tory of Surf­ing is look­ing pretty good at this stage. I pulled into a pretty gnarly 10-foot back­side tube last win­ter. I never pull in going left. Not pussy­ing out for once — I’m proud of that.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
Rid­ing waves was the cen­ter pole in my life for forty-plus years. Hard to say how it changed my life — it just was my life, end of story. This year, finally, surf­ing is on the back­burner, prob­a­bly for good. I’ll always do it, but not like I did for all those years. I’m both sad­dened and relived by the change.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Tak­ing my glasses off and lay­ing my head down on the bed nose-to-nose with my son.

What is in your cur­rent quiver? What is your favorite board? Your favorite surfspot?
A bunch of round­pin step-ups from Don Kad­owaki, my go-to shaper since the early ‘80s. I still have a cou­ple of Glen Minami guns from the ‘90s, which work great. I have a 6’3″ Surftech/Merrick plas­tic popout pool-toy of a board that I ride all the time.

What’s your favorite meal?
I’d crawl over bro­ken glass for a car­ni­tas plate from Taco Tem­ple in Morro Bay.

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?Fleet Foxes, Griz­zly Bear, an older My Morn­ing Jacket CD, the Car­pen­ters, Dusty Spring­field, Arc­tic Monkeys.

What are you most grate­ful for?
That I didn’t miss the boat on father­hood. It was close.

What’s next for Matt War­shaw?
The His­tory of Surf­ing comes out in 2010. I’ve been pound­ing away on that one for five years. It’s prob­a­bly my last book. Jodi, my wife, has been on mater­nity leave since July; she goes back to work full time in Jan­u­ary, and then I’m pretty much on full-time daddy patrol.

Matt Warshaw’s book, The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Surf­ing can be pur­chased here. More infor­ma­tion about Matt can be found at his web­site.