In 2010, surfing’s preeminent historian Matt Warshaw began migrating his massive Encyclopedia of Surfing onto the internet, with a goal of making all 1,525 entries (from “A-frame” to “Malibu” on through to “zinc oxide”) available for free to the world. The ever-expanding website went live three years later, accessorized with photo arrays and clips from long-lost videos.
Nothing like it exists for any sport anywhere.
Few realize how many mind-numbing hours went into building this resource, and how lucky we are to have it. Warshaw’s database, which he carefully guards, is built on a searchable index of two hundred fifty surf-related books, five hundred mainstream-media articles, and every page of every issue of Surfer, Surfing, Surfing Illustrated, Surf Guide, The Surfer’s Journal, and most issues of TransWorld, Stab, Australian Surfing Life, Water, Longboard, and Eastern Surf magazines. For Surfer alone, he has indexed more than five hundred fifty issues totaling some fifty thousand pages.
Warshaw also has watched, logged, digitized, and loaded into his editing bay
600 words to go
You’re just getting to the good part.
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