I don’t remember the exact photo, but I first became aware of Mike Hynson in Surfer Magazine circa 1962. It was either in a small wave near his home in Pacific Beach or a far bigger wave in Hawaii where he was among the first to surf the Pipeline.
One shot that stunned me was of him at Pipe completing a vertical takeoff. Around that same time, there was also a shot of him laying his board on rail at Haleiwa, and a turn of him burying 10 feet of rail at P.B. Point.
Next, came the land shots—dapper with his slicked-back hair, framed by Ray-Ban Wayfarers. While other surfers’ fashion was found randomly at the bottom of a Goodwill bin, Hynson’s perm-pressed shirts were buttoned to the top and layered by alpaca.
By the late ’60s, the “Endless Summer” star along with his wife Melinda had made the jump to hyperspace, from surf stardom into the rock world where Jimi Hendrix played the soundtrack of the film they were associated with, “Rainbow Bridge.”
As the psychedelic king and queen of the surf world, the show began when they showed up in their airbrushed Mercedes, and Mike along with his friend David Nuuhiwa or his main man, Mike Hailey, released their own brand of rainbow magic onto whatever lineup they paddled into.
I didn’t follow Hynson’s thought patterns at the time. They were either too abstract or too advanced, perhaps both. He experimented with psychedelics, fins and rails. For a time, he attached a fishing weight in the nose of his boards. This was while he was working at Bahne Surfboards in Encinitas.
The idea occurred to Hynson after realizing that the surfboard with a camera mounted on the tip offered the board greater forward momentum. After that, the boards were fitted with a counter sunk well that a fishing weight was placed into.
(Hynson was not there on the day I drove up to Bahne’s, and my close friend Peter St. Pierre fitted my new board with a counterweight. While the difference was not profound, the weight definitely made a difference and my turns carried further than they previously had.)
I owned a health food catering truck around that time, and Mike would come out, covered with foam dust from a board he was shaping, and order a premade fruit salad. He always asked if the salad had yogurt in it. He was vegan then, and as was often the case, well ahead of his times.
Perhaps because he expected so much from himself, he was often demanding of others. He could be quick with a harsh comment that often proved detrimental to his health.
But there was a guarded side of Hynson that only those closest to him got to see. He was gentle with those he cared about.
My last hours with Hynson, who died in Encinitas on Jan. 10 at age 82, were spent near his hospital bed. Our mutual friend Kevin Kinnear told me that Mike was interested in seeing the book I had written: “Windansea: Life. Death. Resurrection.” where an entire chapter is written about his influence on the surf break he once dominated, Windansea. I brought Mike his book and we talked for a while about life in general and surfing in particular.
In my last visits with Mike, it occurred to me that we probably misunderstood him for the same reasons we misunderstand others who are light years ahead of the crowd. He showed that in the boards he built and the way he rode them.
Words memorializing Mike Hynson crowd social media. One of the most profound among them are in reference to “Rainbow Bridge.” “Mike has crossed the Rainbow Bridge,” someone said. I’m not sure where he is now, but by now I am certain he has arrived.
