San Francisco Chronicle December 4 1921 Featuring “The Surf Riders”

The San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865. The newspaper served the Bay Area, which is where Hawaiian Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole and his brothers David Kawānanakoa and Edward Keli’iahonui arrived to attend school (San Mateo) prior to venturing into Santa Cruz to introduce surfing to California. It is therefore appropriate for the San Francisco Chronicle to be the first mainland newspaper of the time to run a full page spread on surfing in Waikiki Beach, Oahu, HI.

The December 4 1921 edition featured “‘The Surf Riders’ | The Favorite Sport of Waikiki” as a part of their eight page Rotogravure Pictorial Section. Rotogravure was a printing system using a rotary press that was used from the late 1890s into the early 1900s for long print runs of magazines, newspapers, and stamps. The front page of this recent Surf Museum Hawaii (SMH) acquisition displays a notable quote from British poet, Lord Byron, who recounted his 1825 voyage to Hawaii:

“And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers—they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror—’twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.”

SMH is stoked to add this San Francisco Chronicle “The Surf Riders” edition to our ephemera collection. Stay tuned for more!

San Francisco Chronicle December 4 1921

~ ALOHA ~

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