Now in paperback and updated to include forty new entries, this "leviathan of surf literature" (Surfing magazine) is a remarkable collection of expert knowledge, spine-tingling stories, and little-known trivia. With 1,500 alphabetical entries and 300 illustrations, The Encyclopedia of Surfing is the most comprehensive review of the people, places, events, equipment, vernacular, and lively history of this fascinating sport by "one of surfing's most knowledgeable historians" (San Francisco Chronicle). Each year, the surf industry brings in $4.5 billion, and more than two-and-a-half million Americans, from California to Delaware, have caught the wave. The Encyclopedia of Surfing is a book that no surfer-or armchair adventurer-will be able to resist.

A-frame: Peak-shaped wave, generally short, hollow, and powerful; ridable in either direction-left or right-and often well-suited to tuberiding. Viewed front on, the A-frame wave has a symmetrical outline resembling that of an A-frame building.Aaberg, Denny:Good-natured surfer/writer/musician from Pacific Palisades, California; best known as cowriter of Warner Brothers' 1978 surfing film Big Wednesday. Aaberg was born (1947) in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved with his family at age two to the west Los Angeles town of Pacific Palisades. By the time Denny Aaberg began surfing in 1959 as a 12-year-old, his older brother Kemp was regarded as one of California's top surfers. Aaberg's involvement in the sport branched out as he played guitar on Innermost Limits of Pure Fun, a 1970 surf film, and contributed a song to Big Wednesday-a movie inspired by a 1974 Surfer magazine short story written by Aaberg titled "No-Pants Mance" that looked back at his wave- and beer-soaked salad days at Malibu in the early '60s. The sandy-haired Aaberg continued to serve as keeper of the Malibu flame, appearing in the 1987 documentary The Legends of Malibu, and describing in detail Malibu's characters, scene, and rituals in "Tres Amigos," a 1994 Longboard magazine feature. "Malibu was rough theater," Aaberg wrote. "In ancient Greece, plays lasted all day, beginning at dawn and not ending until dusk. Malibu was the same way." See also Big Wednesday.Aaberg, Kemp:Lean, blond, smooth-surfing regularfooter from Santa Barbara, California; a Gidget-era Malibu icon and costar of filmmaker Bruce Brown's 1958 surf movie, Slippery When Wet. Aaberg was born (1940) in Peoria, Illinois, spent his early childhood in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved with his family in 1948 to Pacific Palisades, in west Los Angeles. Eight years later he began surfing, at Malibu, first using a right-foot-forward goofyfoot stance, then switching to a left-foot-leading regularfoot stance so as to be facing the long right-breaking Malibu waves. Although Aaberg had been surfing for less than three years when he was picked to go to Hawaii with Brown to film Slippery When Wet, he was already regarded as one of California's premier surf stylists. A black-and-white photo of him back-arching in perfect trim at Rincon appeared in the second issue of Surfer in 1961; a duotone version of the shot became the magazine's first logo later that year, and was reprinted on the magazine's 25th anniversary issue cover in 1985. The Surfer's Journal later described the Aaberg back-arch shot as "one of the most instantly identifiable surf images of all time, and an enduring statement about the joy of surfing." Australian Peter Townend, the 1976 world champion, reintroduced Aaberg's move in the mid-'70s as the soul arch. Congenial and easygoing, Aaberg could nonetheless be obsessive: he avoided surf competition, but won the grueling 32-mile Catalina-to-Manhattan Pier paddleboard race in 1961; he studied flamenco guitar in

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Excerpted from The Encyclopedia of Surfing by Matt Warshaw
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