On Wednesday, October 7th the San Francisco Chapter had an outreach table at a surf film and music event at the historic Victoria Theatre in the Mission District of San Francisco. The theatre, built in 1908 as a vaudeville house, is now a city landmark and the oldest operating theatre in San Francisco.
110 event attendees watched a film by Australian Jolyon Hoff called "Searching for Michael Peterson" and heard music performed by Australian Beau Young.
Surfer Magazine has named Michael Peterson one of the 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time.
The film's website states that in 1977, in front of 20,000 people, Michael Peterson beat future 4 times world champion Mark Richards to win the first event of the surfing world tour. It was his last competition and he was only seen occasionally until 1983 when he was arrested in a 15-car police chase from Coolangatta to Brisbane. He never surfed again and, after years in Boggo Road goal, he was finally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
photo: Michael Peterson @ Sunset Beach, 1975. By Dan Merkel.
This film beautifully tells his story. The Australian tour had 22 sell out shows through March & April this year, and recently premiered in the USA at the NY Surf Film Festival. The NY Surf Film Festival has a nice interview with director Jolyon Hoff, here.
We really appreciated the tour's invitation to have our Chapter at the event. Jolyon wore one of our Chapter's t-shirts on stage when he did the film's introduction, and gave us a shout out!
Australian singer/songwriter and former 2 x World Longboard Champion Surfer (2000, 2003) Beau Young opened the evening with a 45 minute performance on the stage where the film would be shown later that night. Beau's first album "Waves of Change" was released in Australia and Japan in 2005, debuting at #13 on the independent charts in Australia, and then reaching #10 in the following weeks. Beau's second album, “One Step at a Time”, came out last year.
Beau also gave our Chapter a shout-out from the stage, during his performance.
This video interview with Beau features his music.
The film & Beau are currently touring So Cal. You can check out the remainder of their dates, here.
Jolyon, Beau, and Tour Manager Rick Christian all visted our outreach table and talked with us about our Chapter's events and programs, and also promoted our upcoming events from the stage.
Photo: Rick, Jolyon, Beau
Tim, a Surfrider Music Outreach Program volunteer, did a great job capturing attendees attention when they walked in the front door, and were passing by our outreach table.
photo: Tim & I
Tim and I spoke with a lot of Surfrider members, and handed out a lot of our Beach Cleanup Schedule Postcards, and got a lot of enthusiastic responses to our invitation to the October 15th Chapter surf film/music event at the Park Chalet. It was a great night!
Thanks to Beau, Jolyon, Rick, and Suzy for inviting us out to the event.
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