A richly illustrated history of the surfboard from the first hand-crafted “wave-riding” redwood planks to the "plastic fantastic" technological marvels of today
Check out www.benmarcusrules.com
Ben Marcus is a natural born writer who worked at Surfer Magazine as an editor for 10 years, and now has 13 published books with his name on them - well most of them, anyway.
Born in San Francisco in 1960, Ben lived in the Santa Clara Valley until he moved there with his mother Sue and younger brother Michael in 1970. Ben was a "Valley" trying to fit in with the cool kids during a time when Santa Cruz was a smaller, quieter, inexpensive hippie beach town. While walking home from Del Mar Middle School, down the hill toward Twin Lakes Beach, Ben saw a wave break at Middle Peak Steamer Lane - and that was that. Ben learned to surf at Cowell's Beach, and had a swell time as surfer in the Santa Cruz in the 1970s.
He mostly surfed the east side of town at Pleasure Point and the Hook, but also the Rivermouth and the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor in the winter. Graduating from Harbor High School in 1978, Ben went to school a little, but surfed and traveled a lot. In 1989, Ben was in Austin, Texas trying to write a movie about an Australian rugby player who plays "gridiron" football in a small Texas town. While in Texas, Ben wrote a story called You Wouldn't Read About It, about a surfing adventure in Mundaka, Spain that happened in 1984. Ben submitted that story to Surfer Magazine, and they ran it, and paid him $450.
Surfer Magazine hired Ben as a managing editor in 1988, and that is where he learned to write, helping to produce, write and edit more than 130 issues of Surfer Magazine, from 1988 to 1998. During his time at Surfer Magazine, Ben wrote the first article about Mavericks, and he also founded the Surfer Magazine Surf Video Awards - both of which are still going strong. The transition from hippie Santa Cruz in the 1970s to southern Orange County in the 1990s was never comfortable, and Ben left Surfer Magazine after he slugged an ad salesman - who later become the publisher.
After Surfer Magazine, Ben worked on various projects and also traveled, driving to Alaska twice and exploring the west and the Pacific Northwest, from Montana to Calgary to Tofino to the Queen Charlotte Islands. During this period, Ben persuaded Santa Cruz artist Jim Philips into publishing a book of his surf, skate and rock and roll art. Ben helped Phillips produce that book, which was eventually published by Schiffer Publishing.
After several years of wandering and working when he could, Ben came to Malibu in 2004 to chase a query from Jefferson "Zuma Jay" Wagner to write a book about surf wax. That was Ben's second book - also published by Schiffer - and since then he was written two books a year, for a variety of publishers, mostly about surfing.
Ben now lives in Malibu and isn't going anywhere. He likes it there in that small town by the sea.
From Malibu, Ben continues to write books, which will number 13 after he finishes his current project, a skateboard book for Voyageur Press.
During the summer of 2009, Ben helped Clark Little self-publish his Shorebreak Art of Clark Little. He wrote a short history of Las Vegas and photo captions for Vegas at Night and he also wrote The Surfing Handbook for Voyageur Press.
Currently Ben is working on the History of Skateboarding for Voyageur Press.
He also does copywriting and press releases for Wave House and Wave Loch, contributes to www.wetsand.com and any other website that will have him.
He writes for surf magazines around the world, but his non-surfing work has appeared in LA Weekly, Muscle and Fitness, the LA Times, Malibu Magazine, Malibu Times and Fly Fish Journal.
