Surf Turf
How Al Merrick, Tom Curren, and Jimmy Metyko’s compelling imagery created an epic era in Santa Barbara surfing
Ready for inspection: Al Merrick shows off the sleek shape of one of his twin-fin creations.
Written by Joan Tapper
Photographs by Jimmy Metyko
Santa Barbara was hardly in the surfing spotlight in 1979 when Texas native Jimmy Metyko came to study at Brooks Institute of Photography. A surfer himself, Metyko pointed his lens at young Tommy Curren, a future pro champion who was riding innovative Channel Islands surfboards designed and shaped by local Al Merrick.
To accommodate Curren’s competitive ascent, Merrick began adapting the highly maneuverable boards being ridden by top pros to fit Curren’s innate ability to seamlessly link maneuvers at high speed, resulting in a more refined version of the contemporary performance surfboard. From 1980 to 1983, Metyko’s images appeared in Surfing and Surfer magazines, introducing the local wave scene and the tri-hex Channel Islands logo to the world, and more recently were captured in Shaping Surf History (Rizzoli, $55).
“When I first moved to Santa Barbara, the best advice I received about the Sandspit was, ‘It’s too inconsistent to wait for. Go about your life, and when it happens, it will happen.’”
