Waikiki Beach Boys

The Largest Surfing Encyclopedia

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While the current version of Hawaiian beach boys, the Hui, is notorious for sending haoles to the beach, their predecessors were renowned for just the opposite -- helping them into the lineup and onto waves.

Led by pioneers such as George Freeth and Duke Kahanamoku, turn-of-the-century beach boys helped revitalize an ancient surfing culture that had languished under oppressive European constraints.

Surfing hadn't completely vanished, but it was frowned upon as frivolous and immoral when European civilization took root in Hawaii during the 1800s. Fortunately, a small band of watermen persevered and went on to see the ailing pastime into the 20th century.

Around 1901, when the first tourist resorts were being completed at Waikiki, these men found their calling. They earned their livelihood from surfing instruction and outrigger canoe rides for tourists. As more resorts were completed and Honolulu tourism started to boom, surfing with the beach boys became a major attraction.

Under these conditions, surfing would be introduced to the world through the writings of Jack London. In Waikiki with his wife in 1907, London met journalist/organizer Alexander Hume Ford. Ford took London surfing and introduced him to 23-year-old Freeth, the most accomplished surfer of the time. London was so entranced by surfing, and Freeth in particular, that he wrote a piece for Woman's Home Companion depicting the "royal sport for the natural kings of earth." The piece was later adapted into a chapter of his 1911 memoir, The Cruise of the Snark. As a result of the instant exposure, Freeth was invited to California as a tourist attraction for the Redondo-Los Angeles Railway and became the catalyst for West Coast surfing.

Ford, meanwhile, had an affinity for group dynamics and fathered the world's first chartered surfing organization in 1908, The Outrigger Canoe and Surfboard Club. It became the clubhouse and the storage facility for the Waikiki beach boys.

In 1911, Kahanamoku and others left the Outrigger Club to form a rival club, the Hui Nalu. Other clubs soon joined the trend and each held events that increased the popularity and acceptance of surfing.

Since the early days around Waikiki, the number of people who earn their living through surfing has increased exponentially. Professional surfers, sales representatives, shop owners and various other bottom feeders are supported by surfing, but can hardly be considered true beach boys.

Since surfing has expanded globally in recent decades, the population explosion has made the founding fathers of the surf lifestyle a forgotten entity. It seems that today, the mass acceptance of the sport has eroded their winged Mercury status depicted by London. Back in Waikiki, however, the beach boys will always exist -- they're just getting harder to find. -- Greg Heller, October 2000