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Matt Warshaw AI simulator
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Matt Warshaw AI simulator
(@Matt Warshaw_simulator)
Matt Warshaw
Matt Warshaw (born 1960) is a former professional surfer, former writer and editor at Surfer magazine (1984-1990), and the author of dozens of feature articles and large-format books on surfing culture and history.
Warshaw currently curates the online Encyclopedia of Surfing and History of Surfing, each website based on expanded material from the archives assembled for their print companions. He has 1 child.
Born in Los Angeles and raised in Venice Beach and Manhattan Beach, at his competitive peak Warshaw was the second-ranked amateur in California and 43rd-ranked professional on the International Professional Surfers world tour (1982). After working as a student at several Southern California community colleges and San Diego State University while still a competitive surfer, Warshaw earned a B.A. in History from the University of California, Berkeley (1992). After finishing his degree at Berkeley, Warshaw briefly aspired to a career in academia, enrolling in the graduate program in History at UCLA. He quit after three weeks.
Warshaw is noted for saying "All I knew when I quit [graduate school at UCLA] was that I was going to make a living writing about surfing, and as a matter of vanity, I wanted to be the world's authority on it." Today he is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost historians of surfing, living up to a 2005 feature on his work that named him "the caretaker of surfing history."
1969 marks the year that Warshaw began surfing in Southern California along with friend and future skateboarding icon Jay Adams. Three years later in 1972, a twelve-year-old Warshaw accidentally became the owner of the very first surfboard made under Jeff Ho's Zephyr Productions brand.
As Warshaw recounts, he had been surfing a custom Jeff Ho swallowtail for about six months before the board was stolen from the car park at Leo Carrillo State Beach. Devastated, the young surfer scraped together money from odd jobs to order another board from Ho a few months later. When he received the new board from shop manager Skip Engblom, Warshaw noticed that the shaper's name had been replaced with a single airbrushed word, Zephyr. Sensing Warshaw's surprise, Engblom explained that Zephyr was a new label launched by Ho's shop. Warshaw had unintentionally become the owner of the very first Zephyr artifact of any kind, well before Ho's new surfboard label and its homonymous skateboarding brand had gained fame through the Zephyr Competition Team, or Z-Boys.
Warshaw was later one of the first Zephyr surf team riders. As a Z-Boy, Warshaw outgrew his pre-teen moniker, "Wimpy," although his clean-cut image stood in striking contrast to the rebel personalities (Jay Adams, Tony Alva, etc.) that would accompany the Zephyr skateboard brand in later years.
Warshaw began writing for surf-related publications in Southern California in the 1980s. After becoming a writer for Surfer magazine in 1984, Warshaw became the publication's editor in 1990. Shortly thereafter, he left the monthly magazine, a decision which he described as "[doing] them a big favor by leaving; they just didn't know it at the time," citing his dislike of crunching numbers for advertising revenue. His subsequent relocation to San Francisco was partially motivated by the overcrowding of surfing beaches in Southern California and a desire for a change of scenery in the wake of surfing's evolution into a popular pastime devoid of community ties. He lived, surfed, and wrote in San Francisco for over two decades. His work has since appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Outside, and The Surfer's Journal, among others. He is regularly consulted for online content for prominent surfing media outlets, including BeachGrit, Surfer, Surfline, and STAB.
Matt Warshaw
Matt Warshaw (born 1960) is a former professional surfer, former writer and editor at Surfer magazine (1984-1990), and the author of dozens of feature articles and large-format books on surfing culture and history.
Warshaw currently curates the online Encyclopedia of Surfing and History of Surfing, each website based on expanded material from the archives assembled for their print companions. He has 1 child.
Born in Los Angeles and raised in Venice Beach and Manhattan Beach, at his competitive peak Warshaw was the second-ranked amateur in California and 43rd-ranked professional on the International Professional Surfers world tour (1982). After working as a student at several Southern California community colleges and San Diego State University while still a competitive surfer, Warshaw earned a B.A. in History from the University of California, Berkeley (1992). After finishing his degree at Berkeley, Warshaw briefly aspired to a career in academia, enrolling in the graduate program in History at UCLA. He quit after three weeks.
Warshaw is noted for saying "All I knew when I quit [graduate school at UCLA] was that I was going to make a living writing about surfing, and as a matter of vanity, I wanted to be the world's authority on it." Today he is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost historians of surfing, living up to a 2005 feature on his work that named him "the caretaker of surfing history."
1969 marks the year that Warshaw began surfing in Southern California along with friend and future skateboarding icon Jay Adams. Three years later in 1972, a twelve-year-old Warshaw accidentally became the owner of the very first surfboard made under Jeff Ho's Zephyr Productions brand.
As Warshaw recounts, he had been surfing a custom Jeff Ho swallowtail for about six months before the board was stolen from the car park at Leo Carrillo State Beach. Devastated, the young surfer scraped together money from odd jobs to order another board from Ho a few months later. When he received the new board from shop manager Skip Engblom, Warshaw noticed that the shaper's name had been replaced with a single airbrushed word, Zephyr. Sensing Warshaw's surprise, Engblom explained that Zephyr was a new label launched by Ho's shop. Warshaw had unintentionally become the owner of the very first Zephyr artifact of any kind, well before Ho's new surfboard label and its homonymous skateboarding brand had gained fame through the Zephyr Competition Team, or Z-Boys.
Warshaw was later one of the first Zephyr surf team riders. As a Z-Boy, Warshaw outgrew his pre-teen moniker, "Wimpy," although his clean-cut image stood in striking contrast to the rebel personalities (Jay Adams, Tony Alva, etc.) that would accompany the Zephyr skateboard brand in later years.
Warshaw began writing for surf-related publications in Southern California in the 1980s. After becoming a writer for Surfer magazine in 1984, Warshaw became the publication's editor in 1990. Shortly thereafter, he left the monthly magazine, a decision which he described as "[doing] them a big favor by leaving; they just didn't know it at the time," citing his dislike of crunching numbers for advertising revenue. His subsequent relocation to San Francisco was partially motivated by the overcrowding of surfing beaches in Southern California and a desire for a change of scenery in the wake of surfing's evolution into a popular pastime devoid of community ties. He lived, surfed, and wrote in San Francisco for over two decades. His work has since appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Outside, and The Surfer's Journal, among others. He is regularly consulted for online content for prominent surfing media outlets, including BeachGrit, Surfer, Surfline, and STAB.