Great Highway traces the roots of Bay Area surfing and explores the changes that time reveals. The history is told by those who lived it in the freezing cold Bay Area conditions. Starring Jack O’Neill, Jack LaLanne, Fred Van Dyke and Michael Ho. The local surfers of Northern California are full of character, and offer their own perspectives on the history and the future of surfing.
Great Highway: Journey to the Soul of San Francisco Surfing is a documentary film about surfing in San Francisco. You can read more about the movie at https://www.greathighwaymovie.com.
What makes the movie all the more valuable and entertaining is that it is not just about surfing, but really about the history of San Francisco, especially on the west side of town. It goes back to the nineteenth century and takes a geographical perspective on Yerba Buena. Eventual, it focuses on what was called The Outside Lands, the sandy desolate place out by the ocean that is now called the Sunset District. We get a view of the various scrappy settlements that took hold out there including Carville, which was made of reused abandoned horsecars (horse-drawn trolleys) and, later, cable cars for housing and public buildings. You get to romp through the period of the heyday of Adolph Sutro’s Sutro Baths and the massive Fleishhacker Pool where now the San Francisco Zoo is located. Eventually the salt water of the ocean had its way and these public places are long gone, though there is still a good left exactly where the Fleishhacker Pool bathhouse once was and old timers still call it Fleishhacker’s. The bathhouse eventually did burn down.
The actual Great Highway was built in the 1929. The movie then romps through grainy footage and interviews of the various surfers who braved the cold water and surfed without wetsuits on crude, homemade boards. It highlights the rebel nature of these early surfers. a persona that interestingly has sort of disappeared as surfing has become more mainstream. The audacity of people like Fred Van Dyke, Bill Hickey, Bill Bergerson and Rod Lundquist to name but a few who broke trail, surfing without wetsuits in the frigid Ocean Beach waters. The movie goes on to talk about the wool sweaters, the fires on the beach and Jack O’Neil inventing the modern wetsuit. The movie has a very raw, low-budget appeal, just like the early days of the sport. It was timely that the film came out in 2017 as many of the old timers that were interviewed have now passed. Their recollections and candor are awe-inspiring. A great movie for people of all ages.
FIVE STARS *****
There are a few ways to see the movie. You can stream on Amazon Prime for a fee or buy the DVD at https://www.greathighwaymovie.com/product-page/great-highway
DIRECTOR
MARK GUNSON
EDITOR
MARK RUEGG
PRODUCER
KRISTA HOWELL
NARRATOR
JIM NORTON
MUSIC FROM
WRITTEN BY
MARK GUNSON
JIM NORTON
MERMEN
KATDELIC
TIM FLANNERY & The Lunatic Fringe