Women on Waves by Jim Kempton

Author:Jim Kempton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Danger Zone

With a nickname like “Danger Woman,” it’s of little surprise that Kim Hamrock’s reputation for fearlessness preceded her. When a male surfer collided with her on a wave at Lower Trestles, an incendiary vocal exchange followed. Then he punched Hamrock in the face. He was hardly prepared for what happened next.

“I took both my fingers, jabbed them in his eyes and held him underwater,” Hamrock demonstrated. “I wanted to make sure by the time he got up, he’d be too exhausted to want to get me.”

To the credit of the locals, the ugly aggressor was sent packing, banished from the surf spot indefinitely.

The salient point? Hamrock could give as good as she got. But many women were either intimidated by the bullying behavior or simply too disgusted with it to put themselves in a position to be demeaned.

Born in 1960 in Whittier, California, Hamrock didn’t start surfing regularly until the age of sixteen. Eventually a driver’s license and a used car would take her the twenty miles down Beach Boulevard from inland La Habra to the beaches of Huntington and Trestles. But in the mid-70s, an era when female surfers were somewhat rare and often discouraged by Southern California’s notoriously misogynistic lineups, it was not easy for an aggressive, fearless female.

Intent on taking as many waves as she could find, Hamrock was dropped in on constantly, had her lease yanked frequently. She was threatened and yelled at by surfers not half as good as she was in the lineup.

Despite the harassment factor and the constant hassle required to get waves, by the mid-90s, Hamrock had garnered six U.S. titles (four shortboards, 1993-96; two longboard, 1995–96.) After turning pro as a longboarder in 1998, just four short years later—at age forty-two—she was crowned Women’s Longboard World Champion in 2002.

But it was her big wave prowess that earned her the name Danger Woman, a moniker she wears with pride. For years, she was the only woman invited to surf in a longboard tube riding contest held at the big-wave spot Puerto Escondido, Mexico.

At forty-five, Hamrock claimed a Banzai Pipeline Surfing Championships title, despite being the oldest competitor in the event, and was the only woman to be invited to the Red Bull Big Wave Contest at Dungeons in South Africa, where she both paddled and towed into some 30'-plus waves.

Continuing to focus on larger surf, Hamrock earned a runner-up title at the 2005 XXL Big Wave Awards. That same year she was inducted into the Surfer’s Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach. Wanting to share her experiences and stories about surfing, Hamrock wrote a book in 2015, entitled My Grandma Surfs Better Than You. And as a mother of three, that book title may be the maxim that defined her legacy.

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