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Breaking Dora's Code
After four years of research and more than 300 interviews, Author David Rensin discovers how getting the Miki Dora story IS the story

by
Chris Mauro

This April, six years after his death, the definitive story of the life of Miki Dora will be released by Harper Entertainment in book form. Unsparing and comprehensive, All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora pulls no punches in drawing a compelling portrait of Da Cat, warts and all, but leaves the final judgment to the reader. The book, which, even before its completion was optioned for the screen by Leonardo DiCaprio, is the byproduct of four years of work by LA writer David Rensin, who interviewed more than 300 people in compiling this oral and narrative history of surfing’s quintessential iconoclast. Rensin came of age surfing in the late 1960s before becoming a non-fiction writer and interviewer. His 2003 bestseller, The Mailroom, revealed Hollywood’s inner-workings from the bottom up. As a contributing editor to Playboy for more than 25 years, Rensin has also run tape on everyone from Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld to Martin Scorsese and Julia Roberts. But after profiling Miki Dora for California maga­zine back in 1983 (a magazine article that Dora carried with him until his death in 2002) Rensin never lost the sense that Dora was among the most colorful characters he’d come across. So he revisited the subject en force. This book is remarkable in that it allows those around Dora to fill in the gaps of his life and eschews the demigod hero treatment that mars so much representation of Da Cat. What remains is Dora laid bare—a portrait that’s breathtaking in its scope. We sat down with Rensin at the end of his four-year pursuit to get his thoughts and impressions on the surf world’s most recognizable enigma.

Deconstructing Mecca
Examinging the sum of its parts, it's easy to see why the North Shore still attracts legions of the faithful
by Sam George

The most famous surfing coastline on Earth appears on no map. No official map, at least, geopolitical or topographic. The fabled shore does exist, however, floating in the Pacific at latitude 21.590 degrees north, longitude 158.112 west. The region has a name—several, in fact, comprising approximately nine miles of coastline. But if asked, the average surfer would probably have difficulty describing the epic waves off Waialua Bay, Kawailoa, Kamananui, and Waialee, if, in fact they had ever heard of those locations. But ask a surfer about The North Shore—not even the north shore of the island of Oahu, but simply “The North Shore”—and you’ll most likely be given a detailed account of surf breaks, swell direction, bottom contours, wind speed, population—both local and transitory—history and even real estate prices. And this from surfers from Easky Bay to Easter Island, surfers who’ve never been within a thousand nautical miles of Oahu, the sixth link (from south to north) in a volcanic chain of islands known as Hawaii.

Why Are We Here? Half a Century Into Our Hawaiian Obsession, It’s Time to Look at the Reasons we Keep Coming Back
by
Alex Wilson and Matt Allen

It’s a valid question. Year after year, decade after decade, come November, it’s the same thing. Pack up the entire surf world, supplant it onto a tiny seven mile stretch of earth on the Island of Oahu. Granted, some of the best waves in the world are on offer, compacted together like no place else on the planet, and sure the water’s warm and the ocean is beautiful, but still, as the years have gone on and the annual winter circus in Hawaii has grown exponentially, it’s fitting to ask the question: What are all these people doing here? What’s drawn them here, and why do they continue to come back? We went out in search of answers, pounded the sand and asked complete strangers, pro surfers, locals and tourists alike what keeps bringing them back. What follows is the answer, both in words, and in photographs, culled from the best of this past winter. See you next November.

Elements by Brad Melekian
Through the decades, the same things bring us back to the North Shore

Bottom line: It’s the waves. The fact that they’re so big, that there’s so many of them, that they’re packed almost impossibly into a seven-mile stretch. But it’s also Hawaii. The bluest water on Earth. Pine trees and grass growing up against coarse, rust-colored sand. The fact that when you sit in the water on the North Shore and watch the sun set over Kaena Point, you’re engaging in a surfing rite of passage as old as the sport itself. And it’s beautiful. At the end of the day, there’s nothing more beautiful than the waves themselves. Clean, crisp, powerful, and of every variety that you can imagine, particularly heavy. It’s getting into them that’s the trick, but once you do, alone, perfectly alone, well, that’s the reward in itself.