Wow, what can you even say about a book like this? Breathtaking and intimate full color snapshots of early surf culture fill up every page, and with each one you feel you're looking at a time and place that's completely gone now, never to return. It's like getting to peep a time traveler's slideshow from his vacation to the past, because Jeff Divine took pictures back then that would look right at home in, say, Vice today. Divine grew up in late 60s / early 70s La Jolla, when surfers still effortlessly bore the trademarks that surfers ever since have mimicked: cooool long hair, board shorts, moustaches, generally not giving a fuck. Aside from a brief introduction, the pictures are left to do all the talking, and that's a great thing. Divine's photos capture everything from standard big wave fare to cosmic vans being hand-detailed, spectators watching a heat, or my favorite - the sloppy, hand-painted sign reading "NO UNLOCALS - IF YOU DON'T LIVE HERE DON'T SURF HERE." If I had a coffee table, I'd put this on it. Approx. 100 pages.

reviewed by Chris Lemon-Red