The short, sharp life of soul surfer Bunker Spreckles

We love young, dead people if they’re hot and have backstory. Which greatly explains Bunker Spreckels, Surfing’s Divine Prince of Decadence, the latest from writer Craig R. Stecyk III (“discoverer” of the Dogtown skaters) and ex-Spreckels photographer Art Brewer. It also explains why you probably don’t need this book, however much you want it.

Who was Bunker Spreckels? Exactly. But 35 years ago he was a cutting-edge soul surfer, in some ways a 1970s-era Miki Dora, until he went and became a version of (pick one) Hendrix/Morrison/James Dean. “Genetic space child” was how Dora saw Spreckels; maybe that’s apt. But you could argue that until Stecyk and Brewer resurrected him last year (as Stecyk also did for Dora), Spreckels was largely a footnote, a forgotten synonym for 1970s excess: drugging, shooting, surfing, posing. What a synonym. (Portrayed by Johnny Knoxville, in Lords of Dogtown.)

The great-grandson of sugar baron Claus Spreckels, Bunker became, at age five, Clark Gable’s stepson. (Thanks, mom!) He was set: Malibu and the Spreckels connection to Hawaii got him surfing. Clark Gable taught him to hunt, fish, and comb his hair.

And when he turned 18 in the late 1960s, Spreckels—your basic blond Adonis—turned his back on his fortune for Hawaii’s North Shore. It was, you may be forgiven for thinking, the style at the time. (The inheritance found him anyway, in three years: $50 million.)

Brewer and Stecyk’s collaboration has gorgeous photos and well-chosen words. It’s a page-turner, if not a keeper—lacking somehow that extra bit of depth and heart which, ironically, Spreckels himself might have provided if he hadn’t overdosed almost 31 years ago exactly.

Time might have mellowed and matured his tale into a genuinely great American novel—instead of this hellishly good screenplay.

It explains why a documentary about him, Bunker 77, using archival footage from Spreckels’ own film Decado, is slated for release this year. And why we still care.

BUNKER SPRECKELS: SURFING’S DIVINE PRINCE OF DECADENCE BY ART BREWER, C.R. STECYK III | HARDCOVER | 216 PGS | $39.99 | TASCHEN.COM

Tags: Books, bunker spreckles, lords of dogtown, soul surfer, sugar baron