Bodysurfing Ultimate Media Guide by Spencer Dunlap

THE BODYSURFER’S ULTIMATE MEDIA GUIDE
BY SPENCER DUNLAP MARCH 10, 2021

originally on shapedbywater.blog, archived. reposting here for my own personal use. perhaps you will find it useful too!

I thoroughly enjoy writing about bodysurfing. Why? Not only do I love bodysurfing and hope to share my stoke with as many people as possible, but I also feel that I’m making a genuine contribution to the “literary canon” (if you will). As you’ll see from the ensuing list, there are relatively few bodysurfing resources in existence today, especially when compared to board-surfing. In fact, board-surfing has a nearly 500-page book—The History of Surfing by Matt Warshaw—dedicated to the topic, which offers the reader nearly anything he or she might want to know about surfing, not to mention the hundreds of other books, films, magazines, and websites dedicated to the sport. Bodysurfing, on the other hand, has next to nothing of the sort. 

But I can’t blame the surf industry for this oversight. Bodysurfing is nowhere near as sexy (nor as profitable) as board-surfing, so why waste one’s time? In fact, I am grateful that there is so little information about bodysurfing accessible on the web. Not only has it provided me with a fun challenge in tracking down the information that does exist, but it forces me to produce original and creative content. Bodysurfing is a passion-driven niche topic that I am more than happy to fill, and have done so with surprising success. I had no idea when I started writing one of my very first blogs on bodysurfing back in 2019, Everything You Need To Know About Bodysurfing, that it would ultimately become one of the top-read bodysurf articles on Google.

In the process of compiling the aforementioned guide, I stumbled across several helpful resources that I stored as a list of links on a Google Doc. Today, I am sharing this list with you, my valued reader. I hope you find these articles and videos as compelling as I do.

Best Bodysurfing Reads

Articles: Bodysurf Skills Required, Real Bodysurfers, My Boardless Bestie, Why I Bodysurf, The Lip Comes Down, The Closest Thing To Being Born, Regardless of Circumstances, How to Bodysurf

Books: The Art of Wave Riding, Plight of the Torpedo People, The Yoga of Bodysurfing

Bodysurfing in Film

• Slippery When Wet 1958 (38:24)
• Barefoot Adventure 1960 (40:58) Water-Logged 1962 (26:24)
• Sprout 2004
• Come Hell or High Water 2011
• Dirty Old Wedge 2016
• Fishpeople 2017
• The Church of the Open Sky 2018

Professional Surfers who Bodysurf

Buffalo Keaulana (27:25), Gerry Lopez, Tom Curren, Kelly Slater, Dave Rastovich (1:15), Lauren Hill, Belinda Baggs, Keith Malloy, Dan Malloy (0:30), John Florence

Surfing Wipeouts to Bodysurf Recovery

Koa Rothman – Jaws, Billy Kemper – Puerto Escondido, Brett Burcher – The Right, Joan Duru – Pipeline, Ramon Navarro – Chile, Mikey Wright – Indonesia, Sebastian Williams – Jeffreys Bay (1:58)