Mike Hynson, who aired the image of the bronze Surf God as the star of the hit 1966 surf documentary “Endless Summer” And, with his outlaw instincts, he embodied the rebel ethos of the sport on his way to be greeted by a colossus of curls, dying on January 10 in Encinitas, California. He was 82 years old.
His death, at the hospital, was confirmed by Donna Klaasen Jost, who collaborated with Hynson on his 2009 autobiography, “Transcendental Memories of Rebel Surfing.” She said the cause is not yet known.
Hynson rose to prominence in an era when surfing was often marginalized as a curious ritual of West Coast teenage culture, thanks to Frothy Matinee Fare like “Blanket on the beach” (1965) and swelled Beach Boys Hits. He is hailed not only for his skills on the waves, but also as a famous board builder, especially popular Red fin Longboard, which he designed for the manufacturer Gordon & Smith in 1965.
He was “one of The greatest surf of life Ever lived,” Jake Howard wrote in Surfer magazine after Hynson’s death, describing him as a “hot dog performer, styling genius, cosmic adventurer” who “changed the sport and culture of surfing in countless ways. “
Hynson’s life became the stuff of lore starting in 1963, when the director called him Bruce Brown To join him and Robert Augusto, another young surfer from Southern California, on a journey that will take them through Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Australia, Tahiti, New Zealand and Hawaii, hopping the equator to avoid the slightest winter chill while searching for the perfect wave.
Hynson was only 21 years old, but he had already built a reputation as a Maverick Power Surfer on the beaches around San Diego. He could be brash and aloof, friends recalled—but not without reason: He had already proven his chops as one of the first non-Native Hawaiians to drive the pipeline, on the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Oahu, sometimes called the most dangerous wave In the world, in 1961.
He certainly looked camera-ready, with a caramel complexion and pout, his hair styled in Dracula Fashion, a hairstyle that would soon be imitated by surfers around the world.
Mr. Brown only had $50,000 for his project, leaving his stars to pay their own tickets around the world. To fund his trip, Hynson turned to a well-known board manufacturer Hobby alterfor whom he worked, to provide for him $1,400 for a plane ticket“Although a few years earlier I would have stolen nine surfboards from him,” he said in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian in 2017.
Unknown to his companions, Hynson brought with him amphetamines and a three-month supply of tijuana marijuana. “I was Young, stupid and loaded“, he said in a 2009 interview with OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California.
The first stop was Senegal, where the locals “were using wooden boards for belly boards in the waves,” Hynson told the Guardian, “so when they saw Robert and I surfing upright, they were overwhelmed.”
A bigger game awaited them. Hynson finally noticed his quarry on Cape St. Francis, on South Africa’s South Coast – “perfect wrapping right backwithout a surfer in sight,” as Surfer magazine once described it.
“On Mike’s first ride,” Mr. Brown said in his recounting of “Endless Summer,” “for the first five seconds, he knew he had finally found that perfect wave.” The waves, he added, “looked like they were made by some kind of machine. The rides were so long that I couldn’t get them on one piece of film.”
In his autobiography, Hynson recalled the experience: “I haven’t had too much adrenaline like that in my life, a pure and natural phenomenon. It was electric. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.”
Michael Lear Hynson was born on June 28, 1942, in Crescent City, California, near the Oregon border, the older of two sons of Robert Hynson, an engineer who worked for the Navy, and Grace (Wheaton) Hynson. In his early years, the family split their time between Hawaii and San Diego, finally settling in Southern California when he was 10 years old. As a teenager, he surfed with a crew called the Sultans.
After graduating from La Jolla High School in San Diego, Hynson found himself writing letters from the Draft Board in the early years of the Vietnam conflict. “I would have them for three years,” he wrote in his book. Traveling around the world for the film, he added, “was the miracle I needed.”
The trip brought no shortage of challenges. At a layover in Mumbai en route from South Africa to Australia, Hynson had to record five 16mm film canisters containing footage of the precious Cape St. and film in the suppression of unauthorized photography.
Distributors initially showed little interest. Warner Bros., Hynson wrote, “predicted it would never go 10 miles from the beach.” Mr. Brown eventually proved them wrong, drawing lines around a screening block in Wichita, Kan., during a driving snowstorm. “Endless Summer” went on to gross more than $30 million.
In the late 1960s, Hynson was on another quest, this time to find enlightenment with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a band of psychonauts and drug smugglers in the Laguna Beach area. The brotherhood mixed elements of Eastern religion with a belief in the transformative powers of psychedelic drugs, which were dealt in such large quantities that the authorities labeled them the “hippie mafia”.
Hynson was soon taking LSD regularly, but avoided arrest long enough to make another cinematic foray: he mastered “Rainbow Bridge” (1972), which he originally envisioned as a surfing film. The film, directed by Andy Warhol protégé Chuck Wein, evolved into a quasi-documentary about mysticism, surfing and drugs, culminating in a Jimi Hendrix concert at the base of Maui’s Haleakala volcano.
In one scene, Hynson eagerly opens a surfboard and produces a hidden bag of hashish (actually an ovalite), mirroring the smuggling tactics he employed in the Brotherhood.
Despite a dizzying display of drug use, Hynson’s addiction to drugs, particularly cocaine and methamphetamine, eventually led to a checkered slide, including time behind bars for drug possession. “I hit rock bottom,” he told OC Weekly, “and then stayed there for a while.”
He eventually pulled himself out of his spiral and started making surfboards again. He invoked his ex-wife Melinda Merryweather, a former model for the Ford agency, and his longtime partner, Carol Hannigan, as his “angels.”
Mrs. Hannigan survives him, as does Michael Hynson Jr., his son from his first marriage.
In a 1986 video interview, Hynson looked back on his perfect ride in South Africa and wondered if he and his mates had invented a surfing fantasy with it or simply reflected one already embedded in the surfer’s consciousness. “If we didn’t have an ‘endless summer,'” he asked, “Do you think it would still be there?” searching for the perfect wave? Do you think anyone would even care? “
“I didn’t particularly care,” he said. “But when I saw it, I knew exactly that we used the bubble and made a dream.”
