On the sixth day, God created Surfing.

And that night while Surfing slept, dreaming its first dreams of Pipeline, the Duke, and of Slater’s 11 titles, God removed Surfing’s rib. And from this rib came Skateboarding and the Lord said, you will be brothers and to you I will give California.

This is California’s dual threat. And just as these early subcultures needed guidance, so too did the state need something to guide. The sports, the fashion, the cultures, are woven into its historical fabric.

If California has a style, it does not exist without surfing and skateboarding.

The year is 1959 and the sun is shining in the Golden State. Gidget has just been released, Malibu has begun its descent into madness, and Miklos Dora is angry about it. Surfing has officially reached popular culture and there will soon be millions of barefoot, still dripping youth, screeching around on clay wheels in parking lots up and down the coast.

‘Sidewalk surfing’, as it was known, consisted of pirouettes and fancy footwork, cross stepping and nose rides on 2 x 4s nailed to roller skate trucks. Skateboards were either homemade or bought on the cheap as local surf brands like Hobie, Makaha, and Gordon & Smith, capitalised on the birth of a new market, one that for a brief moment, would dwarf surfing, with 50 million skateboards reportedly sold worldwide during the first half of the 1960s, compared to perhaps a million or two surfboards.

Jay Adams clips the coping and lifts a middle finger to history. Photo: William Sharp.

Skaters themselves were mostly surfers and mostly kids. Standard issue surf rats who couldn’t get enough of the feeling and were starting to get pretty damn good. A 1965 episode of ABC’s Wide World of Sports would highlight the first ...