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By
Published: 2007
Category: Biography [4]
Bunker Spreckels: Surfing's Divine Prince of Decadence
C.R. Stecyk III
When it comes to books as gifts, I vote for anything about surfing.
For one thing, it's a perverse choice. You can be pretty much assured that the recipient has no interest in it --- and forcing a friend or loved one to expand his/her interests is always a good thing.
For another, the photography is thrilling, bringing sports and nature and the nearly-naked body together as no other activity can.
And then there's the freak factor --- the kinds of surfers who find their way into books are so far beyond anyone you'll run into the mall or the office that it's refreshing just to know they're Out There.
For years, I've been giving Dora Lives [6], a loving portrait of a surfing sociopath with fantasies of personal perfection. For sheer bravado, I thought it couldn't be topped. But now its co-author has produced an oversized book --- with pictures by the legendary surfing photographer Art Brewer --- about a guy who was even more convinced he was the greatest show on earth.
Burton Spreckels was not destined for surfing. He was the great grandson of a sugar baron; his family hoped he'd go into business. But when he was five, his mother married Clark Cable, Hollywood's biggest movie star and, in those days, automatically the most famous man in the world. At 16, Spreckels threw it all away to become a penniless surfer. He was handsome in the extreme, gifted on the board and clever --- he invented a board that revolutionized surfboard design and opened up a new way of wave riding. He traveled with an entourage, needed a bodyguard, invented a persona called “The Player.” And then, at 27, he died.
From a very narrow point-of-view, a perfect life, doncha think?
There's not all that much to be said for a master of an “art sport” who died in 1977, before media had turned every subculture into a brand. So this book consists of short bursts of prose and a few very pointed interviews (all of which are then translated into French and German at the back of the book). Read them if you can --- the pictures are so remarkable that your eye can hardly turn away. This guy was magic on a board. And unbearably handsome: the Jim Morrison of surfing, and then some.
The interviews would be funny if they weren't so serious. Although Gable had warned him about the movie business, Spreckels had fantasies of acting --- but only with Andy Warhol, Nicholas Roeg or Stanley Kubrick. One “interesting” week, he reported, he slept with 64 women; he knew because he counted, as an experiment. And he relished every detail of the fights he'd been in and the guns that should have killed him.
Around him, of course, were the usual enablers of the very rich --- and the usual hangers-on. Could he take drugs? Massively. Buy cars? He needed, he claimed, at least two in every city. Spend money? Hell, he couldn't hold onto it. Spout mock-surfer wisdom? You'll wince at the adolescent blather.
On January 15, 1977, Spreckels predicted, he'd fly from Hawaii back to the mainland “and begin a completely new lifestyle.” And he did, though not as he intended --- on that day, friends watched his casket be sealed into a mausoleum wall.
This is an ideal ending to a book that will make anyone you give it to scratch his/her head. And maybe even wonder about you. Well, good. It never hurts to be reminded that life is a larger than what we see and feel.
To buy “Bunker Spreckels” from Amazon.com, click here. [7]