It has been said that the movie Gidget, which came out about 46 years ago now, was responsible for the big surfing boom that took place in the 1960s and continues on to this day.  Well, it is probably true.  And so was the movie.  More or less.  It came from a book written by the father of this little chick that used to go to Malibu and learned to surf while hanging out with the locals at that time.  Her name was Kathy Kohner.  She was small.  So she got the name “Gidget” because she was like a girl midget.  That is no slander on midgets; you have to really watch what you say these days.  It is just the reasoning behind how she got the nickname.

The character in the movie they called “Kahuna” was in real life a dude named Terry Tracy.  Terry goes by the nickname “Tubesteak.”  Surfing was just coming into its phase called “hot-dogging” at that time.  He was the top dog at Malibu then, so he got the name Tubesteak because it was sort of like the ultimate hotdog.  A tube steak.

In the movie there was also a character named “Moondoggie.”   Well, he was a real guy named Moondoggie.  His name was Billy Bankston.  He was Gidget’s boyfriend.  In the movie he was played by Frankie Avalon and the surfing was done by the legendary Malibu bad boy, Mickey Dora.  Dora was known as the “Black Knight of Malibu.”  I think he named himself that really, but it fit perfectly.

The surfing for Gidget herself was done by a little short dude named Mickey “the Mongoose” Munoz.  He wore a girl’s bikini and a blonde wig.

Tubesteak Tracy had built a shack on the point out of palm fronds.  The whole story was based around the goings on at this Malibu Shack. It was a little time in surfing history, and the history of this area, that changed a sport and a lifestyle forever.