SURFER magazine throws in the towel after 60 years in print

It’s the end of an institution. The world’s first surf magazine, founded by surfer, writer, artist John Severson has called it quits. 

Severson said he created Surfer to counter the depiction of the sport and surf culture in the 1959 film Gidget. In his 2014 book John Severson Surf, he wrote, "Surfers hated those Hollywood surf films, and I could see that this magazine could create a truer image of the sport.”

Aiming to continue that ideal, early editors included Steve Pezman, Matt Warshaw and Drew Kampion, and it featured the works of artist Rick Griffin and pretty much every great photographer and surf writer in the US - and from Australia for that matter, with two particularly memorable and controversial articles being John Witzig’s 1967 shit-stir “We’re Tops Now” and Rabbit Bartholomew’s edgy “Bustin’ Down the Door” in 1976.

Perhaps in these days of the mighty, diluting interweb and the social media swamp, it’s easy to forget just how influential and entertaining this print magazine was to generations of surfers.

Surfer changed ownership and management many times over the decades, and in 2019 was bought by corporate non-surf American Media (AMI), owner of many “action titles”.

Last word to John Severson who in the very first issue of his 36-page The Surfer in 1960 mused on the inside back page, “In this crowded world, the surfer can still seek and find the perfect day, the perfect wave, and be alone with the surf and his thoughts”. It's all just a little harder in 2020.

 - JB for PLB