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"content": "\u003cp> \u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is a beautiful state with incredible natural scenery. But it can sometimes feel daunting to actually get out and take advantage of all the state has to offer because there are so many other people vying for the same campsites and permits. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11973183/want-to-go-camping-near-the-bay-area-this-summer-make-your-reservations-now#:~:text=Camping%20on%20federal%20Forest%20Service%20or%20BLM%20land\">process to reserve campsites\u003c/a> is notoriously cumbersome and favors people who know their plans in advance. But what if you find yourself with a free summer weekend? Dispersed camping might be just the thing, but it’s worth knowing what you’re getting yourself into. We break down the main things to be aware of so that you can have a great time and stay safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if you’re looking for more resources about camping, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/explainers\">KQED’s Audience Desk\u003c/a> has a ton of helpful guides:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083697/how-to-find-dispersed-camping-california-near-san-francisco-bay-area-free-campsites-public-lands-national-forests-blm\">Dispersed Camping 101: How to Find Free Campsites Near the Bay Area\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082396/cheap-camping-near-bay-area-checklist-gear-cookware-tent-rental-sleeping-bag-pad\">How Cheaply Can You Camp In the Bay Area Without Sacrificing Comfort?\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12035515/where-to-go-camping-in-the-south-bay\">Where to Go Camping In the South Bay\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11920867/how-to-find-free-camping-in-californias-national-forests\">How to Find Free Camping in California’s National Forests\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bay Curious audience has shown us over the years that you all are very interested in camping. In 2017, we did a story about how bots snap up campsites, making it nearly impossible for real humans to click their way into a primo reservation. And you made it one of our most popular stories of the year. Last year, we offered a little update on that story. TLDR, things are better, but still, it’s tough out there. And we offered some tips on how to be a camping reservation making master. This year, we wanted to help you even more by going in depth on how to get out and go camping if you’re maybe not the type of person who could wake up early and make a reservation six months in advance. Or maybe if you feel like being at a campsite that’s a stone’s throw from the next group isn’t quite getting away from it all. Today, we’re talking about dispersed camping. No reservations needed, just show up, set up, and go. Could it be camping at its finest, easiest, truest form, or could it be more than you bargained for? Here to guide us through it all and answer your questions about dispersed camping is KQED’s outdoor reporter, Sarah Wright. Welcome, Sarah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks so much for having me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I gotta start by showing my cards here. I have done some dispersed camping myself. For people who have not tried this yet, what is dispersed camping?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so I have also done quite a lot of dispersed camping, most of it backpacking, so hiking out to a secluded spot all by yourself, which I think is like the best way to experience nature, but there’s a way to do that without hiking at all with your car. Dispersed camping is where you are usually going to a federal government wilderness area, there’s no campground, you’re on public land, It’s usually free to camp out there. And it’s sort of like a safari. That’s how Ben Easley, the founder of Overland Trail Guides, described it to me. He runs a website that offers downloadable guides and GPS waypoints for remote camping all over the US.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s still some amazing campgrounds out there, don’t get me wrong, but I think once you get turned on to dispersed camping, you can make better educated decisions on where to camp that are gonna meet your criteria.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It sounds like an absolute dream, but there are some drawbacks that people need to understand up front, right? What are those?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because you’re not at a developed campsite, there’s not gonna be any facilities. That means no bathrooms, no running water, often there’s no cell service, there’s trash service either, so you’ll have to pack out everything you bring in. It’s not really a campsite. It’s just a spot where you can set up and you’ll be out there completely on your own. So logistically, you need to be ready for that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’ll still see people when you go to Spurs camping, but once you kind of get the hang of it, even with 40 million people in the state, you can absolutely find locations where you won’t see a neighbor around you if you know where to look.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But none of these places are particularly close to here. We should also be upfront about that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, that’s right. Typically, you can only disperse camp on federal lands. That means you have to get out of our local state parks, our local beaches, where everything’s regulated and developed campsites are the norms. And you have to go to places like Tahoe National Forest or Mendocino, a few hours farther away, but a chance to explore a new wilderness area. How do you find a place to disperse camp? What do you look for? First, I would advise figuring out where you want to go. Do you want be in Redwood Forest? Do you wanna be up in high alpine lakes? You wanna be by the beach? Narrow it down generally to a region and then do your research. There’s a ton of information online. There are lots of YouTube accounts, lots of bloggers who will show you kind of the opportunities in those areas. Your next step is to figure out what agency manages the land that you’re trying to go on. So go to the website of that agency. It’s probably the Bureau of Land Management or the US Forest Service. And it might be as easy as downloading the free maps on that website to figure out where is a road that you can take and where can you disperse camp. The best advice that Ben gave me and that I agree with is to just call up the local ranger station.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know people don’t do this anymore, but you’d be amazed how much information you can simply get by just picking up a phone. And sometimes the people that you talk to will tell you their secret spots of places to go check out as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If this is sounding intimidating, but people are still interested, is there sort of a recommendation for where you might get started?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You don’t want to design your own itinerary, you can download some expert resources. So there are free and paid apps that have overlays essentially, so maps that can tell you where the U.S. Forest Service or BLM land is and help you design a route through these lands in order to camp somewhere that’s for sure on public, not private land, which is important. And so some of the paid apps are apps like Onyx or Gaia GPS or The Dirt. And the good thing about these apps is most of them offer like a two-week free promo period. So you can test them out and see if you like them and if they’re helpful before committing. There’s also free apps like Cal Topo. They take a little bit more tinkering and time to get used to, but if you’re someone who’s really into like… Maps and navigating, play around in those and you can even build routes and have them accessible offline while you’re actually camping.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And maybe walk me through, what was your experience of going dispersed camping? Like you roll up, what then?\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of my favorite things about this first camping is that you have to have a first choice, a second choice, and a third choice, because you don’t know if people are going to be there. So my experience is you roll up and you’re shocked and excited that your first choice is available and hopefully as beautiful as you thought. But you always have to be prepared in the case that someone’s already there. And Ben gave me good advice, you know, if somebody’s in the spot you were hoping to get.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When there’s other room around you, the expectation is that, like, you should respect that somebody got that site before you and you should try to find somewhere else.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My experience in general has been that there’s more than enough space to go around. You can go down the dirt road a couple more miles and find an equally great spot.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’ll say a lot of the dispersed camping I’ve done has been a little bit more, like, of the dirt bag variety, I would say. So the camp site that we were at wasn’t particularly beautiful, but it was more about proximity to something that was really cool. So we’ve crashed a couple times outside of Yosemite. There’s some forest service land that is not particularly notable, but it’s really about just having a place to sleep so you can wake up early and then get into Yosemite and have a great day. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re going to pause for a quick break. More just ahead. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor break\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some friends of mine went dispersed camping for their very first trip this past weekend. And I was asking them about what questions they were facing as they were sort of getting ready to, you know, embark on this new adventure. And one of their biggest concerns was about water. How do you camp without a clean water source or a spigot?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You basically have two options. If the place you’re going, you know, has access to a stream or a river or a lake, you can pack a water filter and just make sure you’re also packing like some sort of receptacle to hold the water in. So I bring these big two, three liter bags. You can bring, you know, those sort of car camping jugs, but if you aren’t sure you are gonna have water, it’s always kind of better to be safe than sorry. Just bring enough. And make sure you have enough to cook. Enough to clean, enough to put out a fire if you create a fire. So just like have extra as insurance. Also if it’s hotter than you think it’s going to be all you have to do is be prepared. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what about fires? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First thing first you must check if you’re allowed to build a campfire at the place you’re going and this might be seasonal. So check the website of the place you’re going call the ranger if you have questions. Just triple check whether or not you’re allowed to build a campfire, if you are. Typically, you’ll be required to make it in sort of a cleared out space with some rocks. There might even be dispersed sites like past people who have made, sort of, little campfire area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anywhere you’re camping in California, you need to get a California campfire permit. Even if you’re not going to make a campfire, if you are going to cook using a stove, if you’re going to use fire for any reason at all while you’re out there, you need to have a valid campfire permit. It’s like a five minute video. You sign up, it’s free. It just to remind you of how to safely use fire out in the backcountry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And finally, we have to talk about it, but toilets. You won’t find any if you’re dispersed camping for the most part. What are guidelines people need to keep in mind for when nature calls?\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, so there’s this handy tool called a trowel and you should always have one. It’s basically like a mini shovel for your poop. And most regulations here in California are to bury your poop six to eight inches deep in a hole. And you wanna be at least 200 feet away from any water sources. And it’s important that you dig deep enough, you go in the hole, you cover it up, and try to- do it like also away from where anyone might be camping or anything like that. I personally always pack out my toilet paper. I know some people bury their toilet paper here on the West Coast. The climate is so dry that that toilet paper is not going to be decomposing at a reasonable rate. I put a ziplock inside of a ziplock. And I put all of my toilet paper in there and pack it out with the rest of my trash and just double-check some wilderness areas here in California will even require that you use a wag bag. It sounds more fun than it is. It’s basically an insulated, like scented Ziploc bag that you had to poop in and that’s so that you don’t leave any of your waste behind at all. And that may sound crazy, but. If you’ve ever been to an area that requires a wag bag, you’ll immediately understand why. It’s like beautiful granite landscapes where there are no trees, there’s no soil. So there’s just really no chance of your poop being, you know, biodegradable in a reasonable amount of time. So that’s something that you have to make sure that you’re prepared to do. And that means like bringing enough trash bags where you feel comfortable in your vehicle, storing your poop trash. Somewhere away from your food, away from your clothes, away from everything else. So just be prepared.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds so fun, but I mean, wag bags are great to have no matter what, even if you think you’re gonna be able to dig a hole because eight inches is pretty deep. You might not always have that much, I don’t know, digging interest in you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Digging interest and also like warning time, like, if you’re just like gotta go it’s nice to have a wag bag ready.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, so if people are interested, where might they get started with some of this this summer?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so Ben actually had a really good suggestion. It’s to go to Jackson Demonstration State Forest that’s up in Mendocino County. It’s not technically dispersed camping, but it’s an area that’s managed by Cal Fire and the sites are super spread out. They’re first come first serve and there are no facilities very similar to dispersed camping except there are outhouses. So he suggested it as a great sort of intro trip if you’re interested in dispersed camping, you want to start bringing your own water, bringing your own, you know, emergency devices, et cetera, but you’re a little scared to get out there for real. That’s a great first spot to check out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other suggestion I have is to pick the highway closest to you that goes up into the Sierras and find a spot at least a mile off of the highway in the National Forest there. So that’s likely to be like Tahoe National Forest or El Dorado or Stanislaus. And these types of spots are so beautiful. They’re almost Tahoe-like in their alpine wilderness, but without the crowds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We like to use the motor vehicle use map that the National Forest puts out that has a little bit more details about where all you can drive your car if you are in a National Forest.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, that map is super helpful and all those apps I mentioned have that as an overlay so you can check your route that you’re building with sort of those access areas. And of course, make sure that your car can handle the roads that you are planning to go down. Many of these roads are probably dirt or gravel roads and aren’t super well maintained. So just double check before you’re going about whether it’s a paved road or not and whether or not your car could handle it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those are some great tips. Sarah, thank you so much. Thank you. Sarah Wright is the outdoors reporter for KQED. She has a full guide to dispersed camping on kqed.org with lots of links and resources for planning your first trip. We’ll put a link in our show notes. Every month we invite our audience to vote on some questions we’re considering answering on the show. Our June round just went up. Here are your options. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 1:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I have lived in the Richmond District for decades and heard that it is also known as Little Russia. How did that happen? There’s a large Russian cathedral and several Russian stores and delis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I walked through the Presidio and noticed many beautiful private-looking residences. Is the public allowed to live there? Is it still a Navy and Army property? Who maintains this lovely park?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Was there a steam railroad through Noe Valley and the Mission? Is there a way left to see it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cast your vote at BayCurious.org. It’s quick and easy. Bake Your Race is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price. We get extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Springer, Jen Chien, Ethan Tovan Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price, happy trails. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Singing] Happy trails to you until we meet again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ooh, can we auto tune that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"description": "View the full episode transcript. California is a beautiful state with incredible natural scenery. But it can sometimes feel daunting to actually get out and take advantage of all the state has to offer because there are so many other people vying for the same campsites and permits. The process to reserve campsites is notoriously",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp> \u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is a beautiful state with incredible natural scenery. But it can sometimes feel daunting to actually get out and take advantage of all the state has to offer because there are so many other people vying for the same campsites and permits. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11973183/want-to-go-camping-near-the-bay-area-this-summer-make-your-reservations-now#:~:text=Camping%20on%20federal%20Forest%20Service%20or%20BLM%20land\">process to reserve campsites\u003c/a> is notoriously cumbersome and favors people who know their plans in advance. But what if you find yourself with a free summer weekend? Dispersed camping might be just the thing, but it’s worth knowing what you’re getting yourself into. We break down the main things to be aware of so that you can have a great time and stay safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if you’re looking for more resources about camping, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/explainers\">KQED’s Audience Desk\u003c/a> has a ton of helpful guides:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083697/how-to-find-dispersed-camping-california-near-san-francisco-bay-area-free-campsites-public-lands-national-forests-blm\">Dispersed Camping 101: How to Find Free Campsites Near the Bay Area\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12082396/cheap-camping-near-bay-area-checklist-gear-cookware-tent-rental-sleeping-bag-pad\">How Cheaply Can You Camp In the Bay Area Without Sacrificing Comfort?\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12035515/where-to-go-camping-in-the-south-bay\">Where to Go Camping In the South Bay\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11920867/how-to-find-free-camping-in-californias-national-forests\">How to Find Free Camping in California’s National Forests\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bay Curious audience has shown us over the years that you all are very interested in camping. In 2017, we did a story about how bots snap up campsites, making it nearly impossible for real humans to click their way into a primo reservation. And you made it one of our most popular stories of the year. Last year, we offered a little update on that story. TLDR, things are better, but still, it’s tough out there. And we offered some tips on how to be a camping reservation making master. This year, we wanted to help you even more by going in depth on how to get out and go camping if you’re maybe not the type of person who could wake up early and make a reservation six months in advance. Or maybe if you feel like being at a campsite that’s a stone’s throw from the next group isn’t quite getting away from it all. Today, we’re talking about dispersed camping. No reservations needed, just show up, set up, and go. Could it be camping at its finest, easiest, truest form, or could it be more than you bargained for? Here to guide us through it all and answer your questions about dispersed camping is KQED’s outdoor reporter, Sarah Wright. Welcome, Sarah. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks so much for having me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I gotta start by showing my cards here. I have done some dispersed camping myself. For people who have not tried this yet, what is dispersed camping?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so I have also done quite a lot of dispersed camping, most of it backpacking, so hiking out to a secluded spot all by yourself, which I think is like the best way to experience nature, but there’s a way to do that without hiking at all with your car. Dispersed camping is where you are usually going to a federal government wilderness area, there’s no campground, you’re on public land, It’s usually free to camp out there. And it’s sort of like a safari. That’s how Ben Easley, the founder of Overland Trail Guides, described it to me. He runs a website that offers downloadable guides and GPS waypoints for remote camping all over the US.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There’s still some amazing campgrounds out there, don’t get me wrong, but I think once you get turned on to dispersed camping, you can make better educated decisions on where to camp that are gonna meet your criteria.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It sounds like an absolute dream, but there are some drawbacks that people need to understand up front, right? What are those?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because you’re not at a developed campsite, there’s not gonna be any facilities. That means no bathrooms, no running water, often there’s no cell service, there’s trash service either, so you’ll have to pack out everything you bring in. It’s not really a campsite. It’s just a spot where you can set up and you’ll be out there completely on your own. So logistically, you need to be ready for that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You’ll still see people when you go to Spurs camping, but once you kind of get the hang of it, even with 40 million people in the state, you can absolutely find locations where you won’t see a neighbor around you if you know where to look.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But none of these places are particularly close to here. We should also be upfront about that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, that’s right. Typically, you can only disperse camp on federal lands. That means you have to get out of our local state parks, our local beaches, where everything’s regulated and developed campsites are the norms. And you have to go to places like Tahoe National Forest or Mendocino, a few hours farther away, but a chance to explore a new wilderness area. How do you find a place to disperse camp? What do you look for? First, I would advise figuring out where you want to go. Do you want be in Redwood Forest? Do you wanna be up in high alpine lakes? You wanna be by the beach? Narrow it down generally to a region and then do your research. There’s a ton of information online. There are lots of YouTube accounts, lots of bloggers who will show you kind of the opportunities in those areas. Your next step is to figure out what agency manages the land that you’re trying to go on. So go to the website of that agency. It’s probably the Bureau of Land Management or the US Forest Service. And it might be as easy as downloading the free maps on that website to figure out where is a road that you can take and where can you disperse camp. The best advice that Ben gave me and that I agree with is to just call up the local ranger station.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know people don’t do this anymore, but you’d be amazed how much information you can simply get by just picking up a phone. And sometimes the people that you talk to will tell you their secret spots of places to go check out as well.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If this is sounding intimidating, but people are still interested, is there sort of a recommendation for where you might get started?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You don’t want to design your own itinerary, you can download some expert resources. So there are free and paid apps that have overlays essentially, so maps that can tell you where the U.S. Forest Service or BLM land is and help you design a route through these lands in order to camp somewhere that’s for sure on public, not private land, which is important. And so some of the paid apps are apps like Onyx or Gaia GPS or The Dirt. And the good thing about these apps is most of them offer like a two-week free promo period. So you can test them out and see if you like them and if they’re helpful before committing. There’s also free apps like Cal Topo. They take a little bit more tinkering and time to get used to, but if you’re someone who’s really into like… Maps and navigating, play around in those and you can even build routes and have them accessible offline while you’re actually camping.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And maybe walk me through, what was your experience of going dispersed camping? Like you roll up, what then?\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of my favorite things about this first camping is that you have to have a first choice, a second choice, and a third choice, because you don’t know if people are going to be there. So my experience is you roll up and you’re shocked and excited that your first choice is available and hopefully as beautiful as you thought. But you always have to be prepared in the case that someone’s already there. And Ben gave me good advice, you know, if somebody’s in the spot you were hoping to get.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ben Easley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When there’s other room around you, the expectation is that, like, you should respect that somebody got that site before you and you should try to find somewhere else.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My experience in general has been that there’s more than enough space to go around. You can go down the dirt road a couple more miles and find an equally great spot.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’ll say a lot of the dispersed camping I’ve done has been a little bit more, like, of the dirt bag variety, I would say. So the camp site that we were at wasn’t particularly beautiful, but it was more about proximity to something that was really cool. So we’ve crashed a couple times outside of Yosemite. There’s some forest service land that is not particularly notable, but it’s really about just having a place to sleep so you can wake up early and then get into Yosemite and have a great day. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re going to pause for a quick break. More just ahead. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor break\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some friends of mine went dispersed camping for their very first trip this past weekend. And I was asking them about what questions they were facing as they were sort of getting ready to, you know, embark on this new adventure. And one of their biggest concerns was about water. How do you camp without a clean water source or a spigot?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You basically have two options. If the place you’re going, you know, has access to a stream or a river or a lake, you can pack a water filter and just make sure you’re also packing like some sort of receptacle to hold the water in. So I bring these big two, three liter bags. You can bring, you know, those sort of car camping jugs, but if you aren’t sure you are gonna have water, it’s always kind of better to be safe than sorry. Just bring enough. And make sure you have enough to cook. Enough to clean, enough to put out a fire if you create a fire. So just like have extra as insurance. Also if it’s hotter than you think it’s going to be all you have to do is be prepared. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And what about fires? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First thing first you must check if you’re allowed to build a campfire at the place you’re going and this might be seasonal. So check the website of the place you’re going call the ranger if you have questions. Just triple check whether or not you’re allowed to build a campfire, if you are. Typically, you’ll be required to make it in sort of a cleared out space with some rocks. There might even be dispersed sites like past people who have made, sort of, little campfire area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anywhere you’re camping in California, you need to get a California campfire permit. Even if you’re not going to make a campfire, if you are going to cook using a stove, if you’re going to use fire for any reason at all while you’re out there, you need to have a valid campfire permit. It’s like a five minute video. You sign up, it’s free. It just to remind you of how to safely use fire out in the backcountry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And finally, we have to talk about it, but toilets. You won’t find any if you’re dispersed camping for the most part. What are guidelines people need to keep in mind for when nature calls?\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, so there’s this handy tool called a trowel and you should always have one. It’s basically like a mini shovel for your poop. And most regulations here in California are to bury your poop six to eight inches deep in a hole. And you wanna be at least 200 feet away from any water sources. And it’s important that you dig deep enough, you go in the hole, you cover it up, and try to- do it like also away from where anyone might be camping or anything like that. I personally always pack out my toilet paper. I know some people bury their toilet paper here on the West Coast. The climate is so dry that that toilet paper is not going to be decomposing at a reasonable rate. I put a ziplock inside of a ziplock. And I put all of my toilet paper in there and pack it out with the rest of my trash and just double-check some wilderness areas here in California will even require that you use a wag bag. It sounds more fun than it is. It’s basically an insulated, like scented Ziploc bag that you had to poop in and that’s so that you don’t leave any of your waste behind at all. And that may sound crazy, but. If you’ve ever been to an area that requires a wag bag, you’ll immediately understand why. It’s like beautiful granite landscapes where there are no trees, there’s no soil. So there’s just really no chance of your poop being, you know, biodegradable in a reasonable amount of time. So that’s something that you have to make sure that you’re prepared to do. And that means like bringing enough trash bags where you feel comfortable in your vehicle, storing your poop trash. Somewhere away from your food, away from your clothes, away from everything else. So just be prepared.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sounds so fun, but I mean, wag bags are great to have no matter what, even if you think you’re gonna be able to dig a hole because eight inches is pretty deep. You might not always have that much, I don’t know, digging interest in you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Digging interest and also like warning time, like, if you’re just like gotta go it’s nice to have a wag bag ready.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Okay, so if people are interested, where might they get started with some of this this summer?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so Ben actually had a really good suggestion. It’s to go to Jackson Demonstration State Forest that’s up in Mendocino County. It’s not technically dispersed camping, but it’s an area that’s managed by Cal Fire and the sites are super spread out. They’re first come first serve and there are no facilities very similar to dispersed camping except there are outhouses. So he suggested it as a great sort of intro trip if you’re interested in dispersed camping, you want to start bringing your own water, bringing your own, you know, emergency devices, et cetera, but you’re a little scared to get out there for real. That’s a great first spot to check out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other suggestion I have is to pick the highway closest to you that goes up into the Sierras and find a spot at least a mile off of the highway in the National Forest there. So that’s likely to be like Tahoe National Forest or El Dorado or Stanislaus. And these types of spots are so beautiful. They’re almost Tahoe-like in their alpine wilderness, but without the crowds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We like to use the motor vehicle use map that the National Forest puts out that has a little bit more details about where all you can drive your car if you are in a National Forest.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sarah Wright: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, that map is super helpful and all those apps I mentioned have that as an overlay so you can check your route that you’re building with sort of those access areas. And of course, make sure that your car can handle the roads that you are planning to go down. Many of these roads are probably dirt or gravel roads and aren’t super well maintained. So just double check before you’re going about whether it’s a paved road or not and whether or not your car could handle it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those are some great tips. Sarah, thank you so much. Thank you. Sarah Wright is the outdoors reporter for KQED. She has a full guide to dispersed camping on kqed.org with lots of links and resources for planning your first trip. We’ll put a link in our show notes. Every month we invite our audience to vote on some questions we’re considering answering on the show. Our June round just went up. Here are your options. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 1:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I have lived in the Richmond District for decades and heard that it is also known as Little Russia. How did that happen? There’s a large Russian cathedral and several Russian stores and delis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I walked through the Presidio and noticed many beautiful private-looking residences. Is the public allowed to live there? Is it still a Navy and Army property? Who maintains this lovely park?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 3: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Was there a steam railroad through Noe Valley and the Mission? Is there a way left to see it?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cast your vote at BayCurious.org. It’s quick and easy. Bake Your Race is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen Price. We get extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Springer, Jen Chien, Ethan Tovan Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m Olivia Allen-Price, happy trails. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[Singing] Happy trails to you until we meet again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ooh, can we auto tune that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "the-wetsuit-changed-surfing-weve-got-a-berkeley-physicist-to-thank-for-it",
"title": "The Wetsuit Changed Surfing — We’ve Got a Berkeley Physicist to Thank for It",
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"headTitle": "The Wetsuit Changed Surfing — We’ve Got a Berkeley Physicist to Thank for It | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly’s Cove is located at the northernmost curve of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a>’s Ocean Beach. Tucked right below the Cliff House, it was one of the earliest surfing spots in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The now quintessential California sport was late to arrive in San Francisco, only coming into its own in the 1940s. If you’ve ever dipped your toes in the ocean here, you’ll know why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s cold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The water temperatures would creep below 50 degrees at times,” longtime surfer Jim Gallagher said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gallagher was part of the Kelly’s Cove community. They were a select group, willing to brave frigid waters for the chance at the perfect wave. And in the early days, they did it without wetsuits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before neoprene suits were invented, surfers like Gallagher had to rely on their senses to keep them safe. “We became experts in hypothermia,” Gallagher said. Surfers kept sessions short and experimented with creative ways to stay warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Guys tried almost everything,” Gallagher said. People surfed in wool sweaters, covered their bodies in petroleum jelly or tried warming up from the inside with brandy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12079528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12079528\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surfers near Ocean Beach in San Francisco in an undated photograph believed to date to the late 1960s or early 1970s. Photographer unknown. The image is from a collection of photo negatives belonging to Dennis O’Rorke. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis O'Rorke)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12079525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12079525 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"850\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-2000x664.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-160x53.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-1536x510.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-2048x680.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Surfers check out a wetsuit at Kelly’s Cove on Ocean Beach, circa 1970s. Right: Beach goers lie out to enjoy a warm day at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, circa 1970s. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis O'Rorke)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There was a theory that two or three of them started by wearing your mother’s underwear, which was nylon and close-fit, you would have less cloth,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That particular hypothesis was debunked quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonfires were the most reliable way to warm up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084172\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084172\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A surfer walks in the water to surf at Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Feb. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Typically, somebody would bring down old tires because tires really hold the heat,” Gallagher said. “It didn’t smell too good, but it was better than freezing to death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly 75 years later, everyone at Ocean Beach is wearing a wetsuit, not to mention neoprene hoods, gloves, and booties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How that happened has roots in Kelly’s Cove and a whole lot to do with a Berkeley physicist.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Designing a suit for the military man\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the major challenges for Allied forces during World War II was figuring out how to land ships and soldiers on enemy coasts. The shorelines were heavily fortified, rigged with concrete, metal and wood obstacles that could only be dismantled by soldiers in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On D-Day in 1944, Naval Combat Demolition Units — better known as frogmen — deployed to Omaha Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re just wearing wool sweaters and things like that,” historian Peter Westwick said. “And they suffered terribly; their casualty rate was like 50%.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084194\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084194\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"901\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner-160x72.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner-1536x692.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Hugh Bradner at the California Institute of Technology around 1941. Right: Hugh Bradner at his desk at the California Institute of Technology around 1941. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of UC San Diego Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The soldiers were left exposed to enemy fire, doing precision work in cold water for a long time. For the U.S., it was part of a larger wake-up call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The U.S. Navy [is] quickly realizing the equipment that these divers are wearing really is going to make a difference,” Westwick said. “So the Navy started thinking more about how we can improve these things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Post-war, the Navy turned to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nasonline.org/\">National Academy of Sciences\u003c/a> for help. They convened a panel to tackle the problem and tapped Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner to join the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After completing his PhD at Caltech, Bradner had worked on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11956611/from-berkeley-to-the-bomb-oppenheimer-before-los-alamos\">Manhattan Project\u003c/a>, helping the United States develop the atomic bomb. Perhaps more importantly, he was an avid diver and waterman.[aside postID=news_12082529 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/042506CORASANTOSBELOY_GH_004-KQED.jpg']One of his first projects with the panel was trying to design a suit to help divers survive underwater explosions. But he soon realized the foam materials he was working with could help tackle the cold water problem, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was then, Westwick said, that Bradner came up with his fundamental contribution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You don’t have to stay dry to stay warm.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a concept that flew in the face of accepted knowledge at the time, when the best option for watermen was a dry suit. Dry suits, as the name suggests, keep divers warm by keeping them dry. They’d bundle up in wool underlayers and step into a bulky rubber shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You stayed relatively warm, but they’re really hard to move around [in],” Westwick said. Bradner’s “wetsuit” idea wouldn’t depend on layers of wool underwear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You let the water in and then let [the divers’] body warm them up,” Westwick said. “The [suit] material acts not as a barrier, but rather as an insulator. So this is really his crucial insight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a letter dated June 21, 1951, Bradner shared his revolutionary idea with a colleague. It’s the earliest known documentation for what would later come to be known as the wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other innovation in Bradner’s design was the use of neoprene, a synthetic rubber that became widely available during World War II.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084195\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084195\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1211\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3-160x97.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3-1536x930.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Two men in diving gear with small, round raft. These diving suits predate the neoprene wetsuit. Right: John S. Foster modeling wet suit designed by Hugh Bradner around 1953. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of UC San Diego Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Westwick said Bradner started testing his neoprene suit in 1951. “He tests them in swimming pools. He tests them in Lake Tahoe, and they seem to work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a novel idea and a patentable invention. But Bradner wasn’t interested in becoming a businessman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He says, ‘No, no, I want to preserve my objectivity here,’” Westwick said. “‘I don’t want to be tainted with commercial bias or the perception of commercial bias … I just want to be available to advise the Navy if they want to call on me.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, Bradner never patented his design. “‘Let’s just throw it out there,” Westwick paraphrased, “and let people run with it.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s exactly what happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The wetsuit goes mainstream\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On the other side of San Francisco Bay — back on foggy Ocean Beach — a local surfer and tinkerer at Kelly’s Cove was working on his own suit. After experimenting with other materials, Jack O’Neill also stumbled across neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Gallagher, the guy who used to warm up by tire fires on Ocean Beach, was friends with O’Neill. “He was a guy that was a salesman and did a bunch of different things,” Gallagher said. “But he was a really curious sort of guy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084191\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084191\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1021\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL-160x82.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL-1536x784.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Jack O’Neill as a young man wearing a pre-wetsuit in the 1950s. Right: Jack O’Neill and sons Pat and Mike demonstrating Jack’s supersuit he invented between 1970 and 1979. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Shades of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>O’Neill has long been considered one of the fathers of the wetsuit, along with the Southern California company Body Glove, a distinction both were happy to cultivate. But this line on the \u003ca href=\"https://eu.oneill.com/blogs/all/who-was-jack-oneill\">O’Neill company blog\u003c/a> raises questions about those claims: “Seeing the successful experiments of UC Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner in the early 1950s, Jack O’Neill switched to neoprene.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I reached out to the O’Neill company to get a better understanding of the degree to which O’Neill was aware of Bradner’s discovery, but the company did not respond to my request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jenna Meistrell, the granddaughter of one of Body Glove’s founders, said the family does not believe the founders knew of Hugh Bradner, and that the company credits itself with the first commercially viable wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gallagher said the O’Neill suit was a game-changer for surfers at Kelly’s Cove. When they saw the inventor in his neoprene suit, “[they] said, ‘Well, how do I get one?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll make you one.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gallagher was lucky enough to get one of the early models. It was custom in every sense of the word, carefully measured and tailored to his body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080309\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080309\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gary Silberstein sits in the back of his car next to his surfboard at his home in Santa Cruz on April 14, 2026, before heading out to surf. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084192\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084192\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"820\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL-160x66.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL-1536x630.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Gary Silberstein holds a Jack O’Neill wetsuit he has owned since the 1960s. Right: Silberstein surfing at Ocean Beach in the 1960s. \u003ccite>(Left: Beth LaBerge/KQED. Right: Courtesy of Gary Silberstein)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These early suits weren’t lined. Surfers like Kelly’s Cove local Gary Silberstein used cornstarch or talc to help them slip on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Silberstein has held on to one of O’Neill’s later models. The neoprene is thick and inflexible by today’s standards, but it still looks warmer than a wool sweater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Silberstein has put the suit through the wringer. “The wetsuit has 18 holes; it’s real leaky and cold,” he said, pointing out the tears. “You can see this has been repaired, but this would still be a functional wetsuit 50 years in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080277\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080277\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Jack O’Neill’s first surf shop on Wawona Street in San Francisco with Jack’s children, Cathy, Mike and Pat, standing in front of shop in 1957. Right: The site of the first Jack O’Neill surf shop on Wawona Street in San Francisco on April 14, 2026. The shop opened in the early 1950s and later moved to Santa Cruz in the late 1950s. \u003ccite>(Left: Courtesy of Shades of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library. Right: Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084402\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084402\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1278\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis.jpeg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis-160x102.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis-1536x982.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A surfer stands at Ocean Beach in San Francisco in 1972. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis O'Rorke)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As demand for his surf gear grew, O’Neill opened up a store near Ocean Beach, often thought of as one of America’s first surf shops. He continued refining his wetsuit, rolling out new styles and diving headfirst into marketing. Today, O’Neill is one of the biggest surf companies out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why you might know his name, while Bradner has largely been left out of the popular retelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How the wetsuit changed surfing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>These days, people are surfing in Iceland, British Columbia, the Great Lakes in the middle of winter, and of course at Ocean Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You think of the product, and it really was the foundation of the explosion of winter surfing sports all over the world,” Silberstein said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he goes out to surf on his home waves in Santa Cruz, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be packed. “I can go out here on a good day and see over 100 people in the water,” despite the cold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Jack O’Neill used to say, “When you’re wearing a wetsuit, it’s always summer on the inside.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> It’s a foggy day at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach … just like so many before it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everything’s gray … cold and windy … but familiar landmarks stick out in the fog … seal rock … the Cliff House …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the early 1950s … and the waves are roaring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Waves crashing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> There are a few surfers paddling out. They’re wearing … shorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just shorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>When you first went in the water, your fingers would sting and your toes would sting, and that stinging would begin to increase a little bit up your arms and so forth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Jim Gallagher was part of a group of surfers who braved Northern California’s frigid waters in the early days of surfing here. A place where ocean temperature stays in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/coastal-water-temperature-guide/all_table.html\">50s\u003c/a> for \u003ca href=\"https://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/Ocean-Beach/seatemp\">most\u003c/a> of the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher:\u003c/strong> And then after an hour or so, that stinging would abate, and you start feeling good, well, you’re about to die, so you better get out of the water fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> At Ocean Beach, surfers found community and creative ways to keep warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher:\u003c/strong> We became experts on hypothermia …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious reporter Gabriela Glueck takes it from here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cu>\u003c/u>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Jim got into body surfing as a kid and soon found a community of surfers at Kelly’s Cove, at the north end of Ocean Beach. It was one of the earliest board and body surfing spots in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>A myth went out that somebody named Kelly died on the beach. There was a competing story that was a Foster & Kleiser sign, a big advertisement for Kelly’s tires. So people had been saying, where’s the beach, or go down to see the Kelly sign …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>In the early days of the sport, people surfed in wool sweaters, covered their bodies in petroleum jelly, or tried warming up from the inside with brandy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher:\u003c/strong> Guys tried almost everything. There was a theory, two or three of them started by wearing your mother’s underwear was nylon and close fit, you would get have less cloth. And that got debunked pretty quick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The solution was quick surf sessions, maybe ride a few waves and come running back to the beach, to the bonfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>Typically, somebody would bring down old tires, and because tires really hold the heat. And so you could be standing 5 and 6 feet away from the fire and be quite warmed by that fire. It didn’t smell too good, but it was better than freezing to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>While Kelly’s Cove surfers were doing their best to outsmart the ocean … thousands of miles away, another group was having trouble with cold water too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During World War II, the U.S. military learned the hard way that a soldier’s capacity to function in cold water could make or break an invasion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>World War II music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>For the Allied forces, one of the major challenges of the war was figuring out how to land ships and soldiers on heavily fortified enemy coasts\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concrete, metal and wood obstacles could only really be dealt with by soldiers in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>War tape\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UDv5BUUm2A\">\u003cstrong>:\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> The story of the United States Navy’s frogmen is a story of adventure, of brave men against the enemy and against the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>So-called “frogmen” trained in warm-weather Florida, in mild surf … not the kind of conditions you typically find off the coast of France.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>War tape\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UDv5BUUm2A\">\u003cstrong>:\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> The weather is none too good, but the little ships are plugging onto the beaches, bringing enormous support of manpower and weapons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>On D-Day, they deployed to Omaha Beach. And as historian Peter Westwick tells it, they were pretty poorly equipped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And basically, they’re just wearing kind of like wool sweaters and things like that. And they suffered terribly. Their casualty rate was like 50%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The soldiers were left exposed to enemy fire … doing precision work in cold water for a long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the US military, the whole war was one big wake-up call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>The US Navy is quickly realizing, OK, the equipment that these divers are wearing really is going to make a difference. So the Navy started thinking more about how we can improve these things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>At the time, if you wanted to stay warm underwater … dry suits were the answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And what the dry suit basically did was, as its name suggests, was it kept you dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The suits were bulky. You’d bundle up in wool layers and then step into a watertight rubber shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even today, many scuba divers use a more advanced version of this technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Americans sometimes used drysuits during the war, they weren’t perfect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>The downside was, you know, you stayed relatively warm, but they’re really hard to move around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>“Suit squeeze” was common, pinching watermen in sensitive places at the most inopportune times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Imagine trying to disarm a bomb underwater while wearing 20 leather jackets stacked on each other. Not exactly practical combat gear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what’s a Navy to do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the war, the Navy turned to scientists for help. One man in particular seemed like a good bet — Hugh Bradner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>Bradner likes to dive, and has dived in cold water regions before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bradner got his PhD in physics from Caltech. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project… helping the United States develop the atomic bomb.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After that, he got a job as a professor at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>He’s diving, swimming and playing water polo around the Bay Area. So avid kind of waterman, as we would call it now, but also a top-notch physicist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bradner joined the project … working first on a different problem … a suit to protect divers from underwater explosions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s tinkering with these foam materials, using them like shock absorbers … and starts wondering if the foam could also help keep divers warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And then he comes in and ends up with the really fundamental contribution to this whole, this whole enterprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>You don’t have to stay dry to stay warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a letter dated June 21, 1951, Bradner shared his revolutionary idea with a colleague …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>Actually, I do not think it is necessary to have a waterproof suit. It should be possible to obtain adequate warmth by use of a “dead water” space from a furry type of porous material …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>There’s this really kind of central, counterintuitive insight there, before the whole assumption was that if you’re in cold water, the way you keep from getting cold is to keep the water out. The water is cold. If you keep the water out, you will stay warm. Bradner says you let the water in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Let the water in, he thought, and your body would warm it up naturally.\u003cu> \u003c/u>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And the material acts not as a barrier, but rather as an insulator. So this is really his crucial insight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>His other big breakthrough was identifying the kind of material needed to make that happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>When he’s looking around for materials to test, here is this material right at hand that the chemical industry is cranking out in great quantities, especially for the U.S. military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The synthetic rubber was invented in the 1930s by chemists at DuPont.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During World War II, it became an important substitute for rubber, which was hard to come by. Inventors improved on the material, making it better and more widely available … just in time for Bradner to prototype his wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>He begins testing this in 195. And he tests them in swimming pools. He tests them in Lake Tahoe, and they seem to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>It was a novel idea and a patentable invention. Bradner’s 1951 letter describing his idea is the earliest known documentation for what would later come to be known as the wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But chances are, unless you’re a physicist or history nerd, you probably haven’t heard of Hugh Bradner. That’s because he never patented his design.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>So he says, no, no, I want to preserve my kind of objectivity here. I don’t want to be tainted with commercial bias or the perception of commercial bias … I just want to be available to advise the Navy if they want to call on me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He was a science guy … not a businessman. And as the thinking went, diving and surfing were destined to remain small niches, not places to make real money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And it’s funny, because some of the other panel members are actually writing Bradner at this time, saying, like, Dude, you’re blowing it. Like you can do both … you can be a businessman. And Brander says, like, no, no… forget it. I’m not going to patent it, and let’s just make it. Let’s just throw it out there and let people run with it, which is what happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bradner had no idea that the suit he’d invented would forever change the world of surfing and water sports. More on that when we return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re enjoying stories like this one, consider becoming a member of KQED. We can’t do this work without listener donations, so consider joining the hundreds of thousands of your Bay Area neighbors today. \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/a> is the place to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor messages\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> We’re talking about the invention of the wetsuit, and its Bay Area connection. Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner came up with the idea in 1951, but he never had it patented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It didn’t take long for the novel concept to go mainstream, thanks in part to the ingenuity and marketing prowess of a few California surfing legends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s Bay Curious reporter Gabriela Glueck again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Just a short time after Bradner comes up with his wetsuit, a local tinkerer at Kelly’s Cove stumbled upon a similar idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Gallagher — the guy who used to warm up by tire fires on Ocean Beach — he was friends with him: a man named Jack O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>He was a guy that was a salesman and did a bunch of different things, but he was a really curious sort of guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Legend has it that O’Neill experimented with all kinds of interesting suit solutions. But nothing really worked. Until he, like Bradner, came across neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>He made the neoprene suit, and he made one for himself, went out and came back, and people saw that, and he said, Well, how did I get one? He said, Well, I’ll make you one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Unlike the mainstream wetsuits of today, Jack’s suits were always custom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>And I remember when I went down to get mine, I went to his home. He was still living on Wawona, and his brother Bob was there. He was working for Jack, and you went in and he measured you like a tailor would … almost you know, the length of from your elbow midpoint to your wrist and up to your shoulders, around your waist or chest, arm length, legs, the whole body, and he might make a template and then cut the neoprene to that template and glue it together. And that’s how the first ones were made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As demand for his surf gear grew, O’Neill opened up a store near Ocean Beach, often thought of as one of America’s first surf shops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He continued refining his wetsuit, rolling out new styles … and dove headfirst into marketing. At a 1956 San Francisco trade show, for instance, he dressed up his six kids in little wetsuits and threw them into tubs of ice water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly’s Cove surfer Gary Silberstein remembers this time well, when the early wetsuit was gaining traction, rudimentary as they were.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> They weren’t lined, okay, with any fabric. And … use cornstarch to or talc, something to make them slip on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When I met up with Gary at his Santa Cruz home, he pulled an old O’Neill suit out to show me … like most early wetsuits, it’s just a jacket, nothing covering the legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> You are looking at Jack O’Neill. This is his logo, which is now all kind of etched away from years and years of surfing. And it’s a jacket. It’s simply a long sleeved, long sleeve jacket, pretty heavy neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The neoprene was rough … and cracked in places …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein: \u003c/strong>You can see that the stitches hold the arm pieces. These are all pieces of neoprene that had to be cut before they’re stitched together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene: \u003c/strong>And do you remember how much they cost back in\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>the day?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein: \u003c/strong>I’m guessing everything’s so much cheaper, probably 35-40 bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I wouldn’t be surprised if Gary’s old O’Neill suit ended up in a museum one day. It’s well-preserved evidence of an invention that changed surfing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> You think of the product, and it really was the foundation of the explosion of winter surfing sports all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These days, people are surfing in Iceland, British Columbia, the Great Lakes in the middle of winter… and of course, at Ocean Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> And so the whole culture, the whole availability of equipment, improved enormously over those years, from, let’s say, 58 to 65 or 64 when I left Kelly’s Cove … Wet suits became very inexpensive and available, and surfboards made of foam were mass produced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When Gary goes out to surf on his home waves in Santa Cruz, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be packed\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> I can go out here on a good day and see over 100 people in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Due to his commercial success, O’Neill came to be known as one of the “fathers of the wetsuit.” Body Glove, an early SoCal surf and dive company, is often also given that accolade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradner, though, was largely left out of the popular retelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But about 40 years after walking away from wetsuit development, Bradner began writing letters to try to clarify the history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>Dear Jack, You have lately been getting much well-deserved publicity for your invention of the surfing wetsuit. You perhaps recall that I was early in the wetsuit too, but not for surfers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>One letter recipient? Jack O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>The enclosed xerox of my June 21, 1951, letter to Larry Marshall has the disclosure that I believe \u003cu>may\u003c/u> (underlined) have been the beginning of it all. I’d be interested to learn whether your wetsuit predates it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sincerely,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hugh Bradner\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bradner’s copy of O’Neill’s reply, if one existed, isn’t in the archive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there are a lot of other letters. All following a similar thread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>Dear Bill, I am enjoying very much your latest book … There is one experience in which I did participate: the wetsuit … We have there an important question of timing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I consider this very important because if your work predates June 21, 1951, I must set about recanting my claim and fame by contacting significant people and widely read publications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Please set my mind at rest as soon as you can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The letter recipients, all in all, seem to have been less concerned than Bradner about clearing up the timeline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over Willard Bascom: \u003c/strong>“Dear Hugh … History is what we remember (including you).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My suggestion is that you let all statements stand …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Relax and have a merry Christmas. Kindest, Willard”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Like Hugh Bradner, I did some of my own due diligence … and reached out to O’Neill and Body Glove for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jenna Meistrell, the granddaughter of one of Body Glove’s founders, told me the family does not believe the founders knew of Hugh Bradner, and that the company credits itself with the first commercially viable wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The O’Neill company didn’t respond to my request for comment … But they’ve got this line on their company blog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over: \u003c/strong>Seeing the successful experiments of UC Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner in the early 1950s, Jack O’Neill switched to neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Versions of this neoprene suit are everywhere these days. Now complete with gloves, booties, and a hood for the cold-weather rider. It’s a combination early Ocean Beach surfers could have only dreamed of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because, as Jack O’Neill would say, when you’re wearing a wetsuit, it’s always summer on the inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was Bay Curious reporter Gabriela Glueck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I want to let you all in on something we’ve been working on behind the scenes for the last few months! A historically-themed gaming experience at San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers. It’s like nothing Bay Curious had done before … and now, it’s time to invite you to join us! Come out on June 20 and 21st and explore the history of the Conservatory and the people who created it. Tickets on sale at \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/live\">KQED.org/live\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There will be no episode dropping next week because of the Memorial Day holiday. We’ll be back with the freshy fresh on June 4.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We get extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly’s Cove is located at the northernmost curve of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a>’s Ocean Beach. Tucked right below the Cliff House, it was one of the earliest surfing spots in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The now quintessential California sport was late to arrive in San Francisco, only coming into its own in the 1940s. If you’ve ever dipped your toes in the ocean here, you’ll know why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s cold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The water temperatures would creep below 50 degrees at times,” longtime surfer Jim Gallagher said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gallagher was part of the Kelly’s Cove community. They were a select group, willing to brave frigid waters for the chance at the perfect wave. And in the early days, they did it without wetsuits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before neoprene suits were invented, surfers like Gallagher had to rely on their senses to keep them safe. “We became experts in hypothermia,” Gallagher said. Surfers kept sessions short and experimented with creative ways to stay warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Guys tried almost everything,” Gallagher said. People surfed in wool sweaters, covered their bodies in petroleum jelly or tried warming up from the inside with brandy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12079528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12079528\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/O_Neill-14ARP_edited-1-3-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surfers near Ocean Beach in San Francisco in an undated photograph believed to date to the late 1960s or early 1970s. Photographer unknown. The image is from a collection of photo negatives belonging to Dennis O’Rorke. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis O'Rorke)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12079525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12079525 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"850\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-2000x664.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-160x53.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-1536x510.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/South-1AAANC-9-2048x680.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Surfers check out a wetsuit at Kelly’s Cove on Ocean Beach, circa 1970s. Right: Beach goers lie out to enjoy a warm day at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, circa 1970s. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis O'Rorke)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There was a theory that two or three of them started by wearing your mother’s underwear, which was nylon and close-fit, you would have less cloth,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That particular hypothesis was debunked quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bonfires were the most reliable way to warm up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084172\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084172\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/250210-SurferSewage-05-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A surfer walks in the water to surf at Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Feb. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Typically, somebody would bring down old tires because tires really hold the heat,” Gallagher said. “It didn’t smell too good, but it was better than freezing to death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly 75 years later, everyone at Ocean Beach is wearing a wetsuit, not to mention neoprene hoods, gloves, and booties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How that happened has roots in Kelly’s Cove and a whole lot to do with a Berkeley physicist.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Designing a suit for the military man\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the major challenges for Allied forces during World War II was figuring out how to land ships and soldiers on enemy coasts. The shorelines were heavily fortified, rigged with concrete, metal and wood obstacles that could only be dismantled by soldiers in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On D-Day in 1944, Naval Combat Demolition Units — better known as frogmen — deployed to Omaha Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re just wearing wool sweaters and things like that,” historian Peter Westwick said. “And they suffered terribly; their casualty rate was like 50%.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084194\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084194\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"901\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner-160x72.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HughBradner-1536x692.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Hugh Bradner at the California Institute of Technology around 1941. Right: Hugh Bradner at his desk at the California Institute of Technology around 1941. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of UC San Diego Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The soldiers were left exposed to enemy fire, doing precision work in cold water for a long time. For the U.S., it was part of a larger wake-up call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The U.S. Navy [is] quickly realizing the equipment that these divers are wearing really is going to make a difference,” Westwick said. “So the Navy started thinking more about how we can improve these things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Post-war, the Navy turned to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nasonline.org/\">National Academy of Sciences\u003c/a> for help. They convened a panel to tackle the problem and tapped Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner to join the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After completing his PhD at Caltech, Bradner had worked on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11956611/from-berkeley-to-the-bomb-oppenheimer-before-los-alamos\">Manhattan Project\u003c/a>, helping the United States develop the atomic bomb. Perhaps more importantly, he was an avid diver and waterman.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>One of his first projects with the panel was trying to design a suit to help divers survive underwater explosions. But he soon realized the foam materials he was working with could help tackle the cold water problem, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was then, Westwick said, that Bradner came up with his fundamental contribution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You don’t have to stay dry to stay warm.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a concept that flew in the face of accepted knowledge at the time, when the best option for watermen was a dry suit. Dry suits, as the name suggests, keep divers warm by keeping them dry. They’d bundle up in wool underlayers and step into a bulky rubber shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You stayed relatively warm, but they’re really hard to move around [in],” Westwick said. Bradner’s “wetsuit” idea wouldn’t depend on layers of wool underwear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You let the water in and then let [the divers’] body warm them up,” Westwick said. “The [suit] material acts not as a barrier, but rather as an insulator. So this is really his crucial insight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a letter dated June 21, 1951, Bradner shared his revolutionary idea with a colleague. It’s the earliest known documentation for what would later come to be known as the wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other innovation in Bradner’s design was the use of neoprene, a synthetic rubber that became widely available during World War II.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084195\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084195\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1211\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3-160x97.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/HistoryoftheWetsuit3-1536x930.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Two men in diving gear with small, round raft. These diving suits predate the neoprene wetsuit. Right: John S. Foster modeling wet suit designed by Hugh Bradner around 1953. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of UC San Diego Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Westwick said Bradner started testing his neoprene suit in 1951. “He tests them in swimming pools. He tests them in Lake Tahoe, and they seem to work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a novel idea and a patentable invention. But Bradner wasn’t interested in becoming a businessman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He says, ‘No, no, I want to preserve my objectivity here,’” Westwick said. “‘I don’t want to be tainted with commercial bias or the perception of commercial bias … I just want to be available to advise the Navy if they want to call on me.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, Bradner never patented his design. “‘Let’s just throw it out there,” Westwick paraphrased, “and let people run with it.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s exactly what happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The wetsuit goes mainstream\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On the other side of San Francisco Bay — back on foggy Ocean Beach — a local surfer and tinkerer at Kelly’s Cove was working on his own suit. After experimenting with other materials, Jack O’Neill also stumbled across neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Gallagher, the guy who used to warm up by tire fires on Ocean Beach, was friends with O’Neill. “He was a guy that was a salesman and did a bunch of different things,” Gallagher said. “But he was a really curious sort of guy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084191\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084191\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1021\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL-160x82.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/JackONeill_SFPL-1536x784.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Jack O’Neill as a young man wearing a pre-wetsuit in the 1950s. Right: Jack O’Neill and sons Pat and Mike demonstrating Jack’s supersuit he invented between 1970 and 1979. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Shades of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>O’Neill has long been considered one of the fathers of the wetsuit, along with the Southern California company Body Glove, a distinction both were happy to cultivate. But this line on the \u003ca href=\"https://eu.oneill.com/blogs/all/who-was-jack-oneill\">O’Neill company blog\u003c/a> raises questions about those claims: “Seeing the successful experiments of UC Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner in the early 1950s, Jack O’Neill switched to neoprene.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I reached out to the O’Neill company to get a better understanding of the degree to which O’Neill was aware of Bradner’s discovery, but the company did not respond to my request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jenna Meistrell, the granddaughter of one of Body Glove’s founders, said the family does not believe the founders knew of Hugh Bradner, and that the company credits itself with the first commercially viable wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gallagher said the O’Neill suit was a game-changer for surfers at Kelly’s Cove. When they saw the inventor in his neoprene suit, “[they] said, ‘Well, how do I get one?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll make you one.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gallagher was lucky enough to get one of the early models. It was custom in every sense of the word, carefully measured and tailored to his body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080309\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080309\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/260414-BAYCURIOUSINVENTIONOFWETSUIT-09-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gary Silberstein sits in the back of his car next to his surfboard at his home in Santa Cruz on April 14, 2026, before heading out to surf. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084192\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084192\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"820\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL-160x66.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260414-HistoryoftheWetsuit-30-BL-1536x630.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Gary Silberstein holds a Jack O’Neill wetsuit he has owned since the 1960s. Right: Silberstein surfing at Ocean Beach in the 1960s. \u003ccite>(Left: Beth LaBerge/KQED. Right: Courtesy of Gary Silberstein)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These early suits weren’t lined. Surfers like Kelly’s Cove local Gary Silberstein used cornstarch or talc to help them slip on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Silberstein has held on to one of O’Neill’s later models. The neoprene is thick and inflexible by today’s standards, but it still looks warmer than a wool sweater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Silberstein has put the suit through the wringer. “The wetsuit has 18 holes; it’s real leaky and cold,” he said, pointing out the tears. “You can see this has been repaired, but this would still be a functional wetsuit 50 years in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12080277\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12080277\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Untitled-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Jack O’Neill’s first surf shop on Wawona Street in San Francisco with Jack’s children, Cathy, Mike and Pat, standing in front of shop in 1957. Right: The site of the first Jack O’Neill surf shop on Wawona Street in San Francisco on April 14, 2026. The shop opened in the early 1950s and later moved to Santa Cruz in the late 1950s. \u003ccite>(Left: Courtesy of Shades of San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library. Right: Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12084402\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12084402\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1278\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis.jpeg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis-160x102.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/1972-Dennis-1536x982.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A surfer stands at Ocean Beach in San Francisco in 1972. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis O'Rorke)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As demand for his surf gear grew, O’Neill opened up a store near Ocean Beach, often thought of as one of America’s first surf shops. He continued refining his wetsuit, rolling out new styles and diving headfirst into marketing. Today, O’Neill is one of the biggest surf companies out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why you might know his name, while Bradner has largely been left out of the popular retelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How the wetsuit changed surfing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>These days, people are surfing in Iceland, British Columbia, the Great Lakes in the middle of winter, and of course at Ocean Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You think of the product, and it really was the foundation of the explosion of winter surfing sports all over the world,” Silberstein said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he goes out to surf on his home waves in Santa Cruz, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be packed. “I can go out here on a good day and see over 100 people in the water,” despite the cold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Jack O’Neill used to say, “When you’re wearing a wetsuit, it’s always summer on the inside.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003ca id=\"Viewthefullepisodetranscript\">\u003c/a>Episode transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> It’s a foggy day at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach … just like so many before it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everything’s gray … cold and windy … but familiar landmarks stick out in the fog … seal rock … the Cliff House …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the early 1950s … and the waves are roaring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Waves crashing\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> There are a few surfers paddling out. They’re wearing … shorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just shorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>When you first went in the water, your fingers would sting and your toes would sting, and that stinging would begin to increase a little bit up your arms and so forth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Jim Gallagher was part of a group of surfers who braved Northern California’s frigid waters in the early days of surfing here. A place where ocean temperature stays in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/coastal-water-temperature-guide/all_table.html\">50s\u003c/a> for \u003ca href=\"https://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/Ocean-Beach/seatemp\">most\u003c/a> of the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher:\u003c/strong> And then after an hour or so, that stinging would abate, and you start feeling good, well, you’re about to die, so you better get out of the water fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> At Ocean Beach, surfers found community and creative ways to keep warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher:\u003c/strong> We became experts on hypothermia …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bay Curious reporter Gabriela Glueck takes it from here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cu>\u003c/u>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Jim got into body surfing as a kid and soon found a community of surfers at Kelly’s Cove, at the north end of Ocean Beach. It was one of the earliest board and body surfing spots in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>A myth went out that somebody named Kelly died on the beach. There was a competing story that was a Foster & Kleiser sign, a big advertisement for Kelly’s tires. So people had been saying, where’s the beach, or go down to see the Kelly sign …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>In the early days of the sport, people surfed in wool sweaters, covered their bodies in petroleum jelly, or tried warming up from the inside with brandy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher:\u003c/strong> Guys tried almost everything. There was a theory, two or three of them started by wearing your mother’s underwear was nylon and close fit, you would get have less cloth. And that got debunked pretty quick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The solution was quick surf sessions, maybe ride a few waves and come running back to the beach, to the bonfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>Typically, somebody would bring down old tires, and because tires really hold the heat. And so you could be standing 5 and 6 feet away from the fire and be quite warmed by that fire. It didn’t smell too good, but it was better than freezing to death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>While Kelly’s Cove surfers were doing their best to outsmart the ocean … thousands of miles away, another group was having trouble with cold water too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During World War II, the U.S. military learned the hard way that a soldier’s capacity to function in cold water could make or break an invasion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>World War II music\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>For the Allied forces, one of the major challenges of the war was figuring out how to land ships and soldiers on heavily fortified enemy coasts\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concrete, metal and wood obstacles could only really be dealt with by soldiers in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>War tape\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UDv5BUUm2A\">\u003cstrong>:\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> The story of the United States Navy’s frogmen is a story of adventure, of brave men against the enemy and against the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>So-called “frogmen” trained in warm-weather Florida, in mild surf … not the kind of conditions you typically find off the coast of France.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>War tape\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UDv5BUUm2A\">\u003cstrong>:\u003c/strong>\u003c/a> The weather is none too good, but the little ships are plugging onto the beaches, bringing enormous support of manpower and weapons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>On D-Day, they deployed to Omaha Beach. And as historian Peter Westwick tells it, they were pretty poorly equipped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And basically, they’re just wearing kind of like wool sweaters and things like that. And they suffered terribly. Their casualty rate was like 50%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The soldiers were left exposed to enemy fire … doing precision work in cold water for a long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the US military, the whole war was one big wake-up call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>The US Navy is quickly realizing, OK, the equipment that these divers are wearing really is going to make a difference. So the Navy started thinking more about how we can improve these things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>At the time, if you wanted to stay warm underwater … dry suits were the answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And what the dry suit basically did was, as its name suggests, was it kept you dry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The suits were bulky. You’d bundle up in wool layers and then step into a watertight rubber shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even today, many scuba divers use a more advanced version of this technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Americans sometimes used drysuits during the war, they weren’t perfect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>The downside was, you know, you stayed relatively warm, but they’re really hard to move around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>“Suit squeeze” was common, pinching watermen in sensitive places at the most inopportune times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Imagine trying to disarm a bomb underwater while wearing 20 leather jackets stacked on each other. Not exactly practical combat gear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what’s a Navy to do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the war, the Navy turned to scientists for help. One man in particular seemed like a good bet — Hugh Bradner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>Bradner likes to dive, and has dived in cold water regions before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bradner got his PhD in physics from Caltech. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project… helping the United States develop the atomic bomb.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After that, he got a job as a professor at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>He’s diving, swimming and playing water polo around the Bay Area. So avid kind of waterman, as we would call it now, but also a top-notch physicist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bradner joined the project … working first on a different problem … a suit to protect divers from underwater explosions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s tinkering with these foam materials, using them like shock absorbers … and starts wondering if the foam could also help keep divers warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And then he comes in and ends up with the really fundamental contribution to this whole, this whole enterprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>You don’t have to stay dry to stay warm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a letter dated June 21, 1951, Bradner shared his revolutionary idea with a colleague …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>Actually, I do not think it is necessary to have a waterproof suit. It should be possible to obtain adequate warmth by use of a “dead water” space from a furry type of porous material …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>There’s this really kind of central, counterintuitive insight there, before the whole assumption was that if you’re in cold water, the way you keep from getting cold is to keep the water out. The water is cold. If you keep the water out, you will stay warm. Bradner says you let the water in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Let the water in, he thought, and your body would warm it up naturally.\u003cu> \u003c/u>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And the material acts not as a barrier, but rather as an insulator. So this is really his crucial insight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>His other big breakthrough was identifying the kind of material needed to make that happen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>When he’s looking around for materials to test, here is this material right at hand that the chemical industry is cranking out in great quantities, especially for the U.S. military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The synthetic rubber was invented in the 1930s by chemists at DuPont.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During World War II, it became an important substitute for rubber, which was hard to come by. Inventors improved on the material, making it better and more widely available … just in time for Bradner to prototype his wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>He begins testing this in 195. And he tests them in swimming pools. He tests them in Lake Tahoe, and they seem to work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>It was a novel idea and a patentable invention. Bradner’s 1951 letter describing his idea is the earliest known documentation for what would later come to be known as the wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But chances are, unless you’re a physicist or history nerd, you probably haven’t heard of Hugh Bradner. That’s because he never patented his design.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>So he says, no, no, I want to preserve my kind of objectivity here. I don’t want to be tainted with commercial bias or the perception of commercial bias … I just want to be available to advise the Navy if they want to call on me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He was a science guy … not a businessman. And as the thinking went, diving and surfing were destined to remain small niches, not places to make real money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Westwick: \u003c/strong>And it’s funny, because some of the other panel members are actually writing Bradner at this time, saying, like, Dude, you’re blowing it. Like you can do both … you can be a businessman. And Brander says, like, no, no… forget it. I’m not going to patent it, and let’s just make it. Let’s just throw it out there and let people run with it, which is what happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> Bradner had no idea that the suit he’d invented would forever change the world of surfing and water sports. More on that when we return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re enjoying stories like this one, consider becoming a member of KQED. We can’t do this work without listener donations, so consider joining the hundreds of thousands of your Bay Area neighbors today. \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/a> is the place to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor messages\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price:\u003c/strong> We’re talking about the invention of the wetsuit, and its Bay Area connection. Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner came up with the idea in 1951, but he never had it patented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It didn’t take long for the novel concept to go mainstream, thanks in part to the ingenuity and marketing prowess of a few California surfing legends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s Bay Curious reporter Gabriela Glueck again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Just a short time after Bradner comes up with his wetsuit, a local tinkerer at Kelly’s Cove stumbled upon a similar idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Gallagher — the guy who used to warm up by tire fires on Ocean Beach — he was friends with him: a man named Jack O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>He was a guy that was a salesman and did a bunch of different things, but he was a really curious sort of guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Legend has it that O’Neill experimented with all kinds of interesting suit solutions. But nothing really worked. Until he, like Bradner, came across neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>He made the neoprene suit, and he made one for himself, went out and came back, and people saw that, and he said, Well, how did I get one? He said, Well, I’ll make you one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Unlike the mainstream wetsuits of today, Jack’s suits were always custom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jim Gallagher: \u003c/strong>And I remember when I went down to get mine, I went to his home. He was still living on Wawona, and his brother Bob was there. He was working for Jack, and you went in and he measured you like a tailor would … almost you know, the length of from your elbow midpoint to your wrist and up to your shoulders, around your waist or chest, arm length, legs, the whole body, and he might make a template and then cut the neoprene to that template and glue it together. And that’s how the first ones were made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As demand for his surf gear grew, O’Neill opened up a store near Ocean Beach, often thought of as one of America’s first surf shops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He continued refining his wetsuit, rolling out new styles … and dove headfirst into marketing. At a 1956 San Francisco trade show, for instance, he dressed up his six kids in little wetsuits and threw them into tubs of ice water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kelly’s Cove surfer Gary Silberstein remembers this time well, when the early wetsuit was gaining traction, rudimentary as they were.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> They weren’t lined, okay, with any fabric. And … use cornstarch to or talc, something to make them slip on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When I met up with Gary at his Santa Cruz home, he pulled an old O’Neill suit out to show me … like most early wetsuits, it’s just a jacket, nothing covering the legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> You are looking at Jack O’Neill. This is his logo, which is now all kind of etched away from years and years of surfing. And it’s a jacket. It’s simply a long sleeved, long sleeve jacket, pretty heavy neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The neoprene was rough … and cracked in places …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein: \u003c/strong>You can see that the stitches hold the arm pieces. These are all pieces of neoprene that had to be cut before they’re stitched together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene: \u003c/strong>And do you remember how much they cost back in\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>the day?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein: \u003c/strong>I’m guessing everything’s so much cheaper, probably 35-40 bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I wouldn’t be surprised if Gary’s old O’Neill suit ended up in a museum one day. It’s well-preserved evidence of an invention that changed surfing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> You think of the product, and it really was the foundation of the explosion of winter surfing sports all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These days, people are surfing in Iceland, British Columbia, the Great Lakes in the middle of winter… and of course, at Ocean Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> And so the whole culture, the whole availability of equipment, improved enormously over those years, from, let’s say, 58 to 65 or 64 when I left Kelly’s Cove … Wet suits became very inexpensive and available, and surfboards made of foam were mass produced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When Gary goes out to surf on his home waves in Santa Cruz, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be packed\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Silberstein:\u003c/strong> I can go out here on a good day and see over 100 people in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Due to his commercial success, O’Neill came to be known as one of the “fathers of the wetsuit.” Body Glove, an early SoCal surf and dive company, is often also given that accolade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradner, though, was largely left out of the popular retelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But about 40 years after walking away from wetsuit development, Bradner began writing letters to try to clarify the history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>Dear Jack, You have lately been getting much well-deserved publicity for your invention of the surfing wetsuit. You perhaps recall that I was early in the wetsuit too, but not for surfers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>One letter recipient? Jack O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>The enclosed xerox of my June 21, 1951, letter to Larry Marshall has the disclosure that I believe \u003cu>may\u003c/u> (underlined) have been the beginning of it all. I’d be interested to learn whether your wetsuit predates it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sincerely,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hugh Bradner\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bradner’s copy of O’Neill’s reply, if one existed, isn’t in the archive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there are a lot of other letters. All following a similar thread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over for Hugh Bradner: \u003c/strong>Dear Bill, I am enjoying very much your latest book … There is one experience in which I did participate: the wetsuit … We have there an important question of timing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I consider this very important because if your work predates June 21, 1951, I must set about recanting my claim and fame by contacting significant people and widely read publications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Please set my mind at rest as soon as you can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The letter recipients, all in all, seem to have been less concerned than Bradner about clearing up the timeline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over Willard Bascom: \u003c/strong>“Dear Hugh … History is what we remember (including you).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My suggestion is that you let all statements stand …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Relax and have a merry Christmas. Kindest, Willard”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Like Hugh Bradner, I did some of my own due diligence … and reached out to O’Neill and Body Glove for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jenna Meistrell, the granddaughter of one of Body Glove’s founders, told me the family does not believe the founders knew of Hugh Bradner, and that the company credits itself with the first commercially viable wetsuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The O’Neill company didn’t respond to my request for comment … But they’ve got this line on their company blog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Voice Over: \u003c/strong>Seeing the successful experiments of UC Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner in the early 1950s, Jack O’Neill switched to neoprene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Versions of this neoprene suit are everywhere these days. Now complete with gloves, booties, and a hood for the cold-weather rider. It’s a combination early Ocean Beach surfers could have only dreamed of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because, as Jack O’Neill would say, when you’re wearing a wetsuit, it’s always summer on the inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/strong>That was Bay Curious reporter Gabriela Glueck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I want to let you all in on something we’ve been working on behind the scenes for the last few months! A historically-themed gaming experience at San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers. It’s like nothing Bay Curious had done before … and now, it’s time to invite you to join us! Come out on June 20 and 21st and explore the history of the Conservatory and the people who created it. Tickets on sale at \u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/live\">KQED.org/live\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There will be no episode dropping next week because of the Memorial Day holiday. We’ll be back with the freshy fresh on June 4.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me Olivia Allen-Price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We get extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a wonderful week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since it was first unveiled in 1971, the 710-ton brutalist-style Vaillancourt Fountain has been a divisive piece of public art within San Francisco. The tangle of concrete square tubes once fit in seamlessly with the Embarcadero Freeway, a double-decker road which once ran right next to it. But nowadays it stands out against the open waterfront, and the Ferry Building across the street. On today’s episode of Bay Curious, we talk with KQED’s Katie DeBenedetti about the life of this piece of public art, which is currently being taken down by the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8752263348&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For more, read Katie’s reporting on the fountain:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12081169/san-francisco-will-start-dismantling-the-vaillancourt-fountain-on-monday\">San Francisco Will Start Dismantling the Vaillancourt Fountain on Monday\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12055275/this-fountain-looms-over-sfs-skateboarding-scene-a-growing-few-are-trying-to-save-it\">This Fountain Looms Over SF’s Skateboarding Scene. A Growing Few Are Trying to Save It\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Birds chirping and the sounds of outside. Olivia in scene says “hi! You found me.”\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I met up with this week’s question asker a short walk from her house in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi everyone! I’m Nisha and we are sitting across the street from the Ferry Building in front of this fountain statue. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re here to take a closer look at a piece of public art that has been causing quite a stir over the past few years – the 710-ton Vaillancourt Fountain. It has been compared to some pretty interesting things over the years. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waterfall of voices:\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Robot dog droppings.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s like Stonehenge with plumbing problems.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A loathsome monstrosity.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>Looks like Picasso’s dog took a dump.\u003cbr>\nA pile of dynamited debris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let’s hear how Nisha describes it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s a concrete structure. It seems like a brutalist type piece, that has water flowing through it. It’s a bunch of cubes put together, sort of if you imagine a large air vent.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Picture a tangle of square concrete tubes, some of which.when the fountain is running anyway, spew water into a ground level pool. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Probably two stories tall and as wide if not wider than that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To me, it’s blockiness has a Minecraft aesthetic, and the way the water flows through the structure feels very … drainage pipe? It’s had many detractors over the years. But this fountain has big fans too.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When my son was a toddler he would insist that every time we walked past this fountain we had to go and examine it and he’d want to ask at least if he could touch the water, get in the water, splash in the water. Everything with the water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s meant to be interacted with. And for decades people have enjoyed exploring it. Walking up close. Kind of walking between the different arms of the structure. But we won’t be doing that today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now there’s construction fencing around it. There’s a crane. There no more flowing water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s clear some big changes are coming for this fountain. But before we get to those, Nisha has questions…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is the history of this structure being here in the first place and how does it overall fit in with the development of this neighborhood which is an overall different visual style than that? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here to talk us through Vaillancourt’s past, present and future is Katie DeBenedetti. She covers daily news for KQED’s Express Desk. Welcome, Katie!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Thank you for having me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Let’s start with, how did the Vaillancourt Fountain come to be installed in San Francisco in the first place?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So back in the late 60s, the city commissioned Canadian sculptor Armand Vaillancourt to build this fountain. It was going to sit in the Embarcadero Plaza, which was kind of this entrance point to the city because at the time there was the city’s freeway that kind of came in along the Embarcadero near where the ferry building is now and it was a big thoroughfare for the city. There were always cars. It was bustling. It was loud. And this fountain was kind of going to like offset that. At the time, the artist said like, you know, the water, you could hear the water and it would kind of take away from the noise from the freeway. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was built of concrete and this like industrial look, so it kind of interacted with the look of the freeway. And so a number of sculptors applied to build this public art piece that was gonna go here. And the city chose Vaillancourt. It was never thought of as a universally beloved sculpture. It had a lot of detractors, Alan Temko the architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle was one, but also Ruth Asawa, the very famous Bay Area artist. Others, like Lawrence Halpern, who actually designed the Embarcadero Plaza where it sits, thought that this sculpture could become a world-famous piece of art though.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tell me more about the artist and what he was going for with this fountain.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Armand Vaillancourt is a Canadian sculptor. He’s still alive. He’s 96. And this is one of his most prominent works. I think part of it was inspired by, you know, brutalism at the time. It is very bare, it’s concrete. You know, his son, I spoke to his son Alexis, and he said in the original designs, actually the water that would flow through the fountain was designed to be able to like at sometimes flow faster or release more water and then release less. Like it was very interactive with the water aspect of the fountain. And one really interesting thing about the fountain’s legacy is actually that the night before it debuted, it kind of came to be tied with the Vaillancourt’s own political activism. He spray painted it “Quebec Libre” in big red letters the night before it was dedicated. And this was in support of Quebec sovereignty movement, kind of splintering off from Canada. And at the time he told reporters that he wanted to dedicate the fountain to all freedom in Quebec and Vietnam, East Pakistan, just all over the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alexis Vaillancourt: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a piece that you have to think, you know, when you see it and you might not find it beautiful, but this is not the point.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I talked to Alexis Vaillancourt , who’s Armand Vaillancourt’s son.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alexis Vaillancourt: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Any piece of art in public space will be ugly or beautiful for someone. We don’t have all the same taste, we don’t come from the same place, so we have different ideas about what is beauty and it also changes to time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then things seem to settle down for a while with the fountain. People walk by it, they explore it, it maybe becomes a bit part of the landscape. But then in 1987 – some 16 years after it was unveiled – it found its way into the headlines again. What was it this time?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So in November of that year, U2 was coming to the Bay Area on tour. They were going to be performing in Oakland and they decided kind of last minute to host this secret free concert in front of the Vaillancourt Fountain, performing in flatbed trucks. And people, you know, found out just hours before, swarmed down, showed up to the concert. During the concert, Bono tagged the fountain. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Clip of Bono from concert:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> “Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He wrote “rock and roll stop the traffic” on fountain. And he ended up getting cited by Mayor Dianne Feinstein for the graffiti. And this led to a lot of outrage on both sides. So, Vaillancourt himself was not really very upset. He actually came out to the Bay Area, came to the U2 concert in Oakland later that week, and he defended Bono and like painted on stage like a backdrop with him.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re going to take a quick break, but when we return – the fountain picks up some unexpected supporters. And the city’s plans to bring it down. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SPONSOR MESSAGE\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few years after the U2 Concert incident, the Loma Prieta earthquake strikes, and it damages the double-decker freeway that was along the Embarcadero, that was in the background of the Vaillancourt Fountain. And like we said earlier, that had sort of interacted with the sculpture visually. And so with no freeway there, the sculpture starts to look a little more out of place maybe than when it was first built. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, at least that’s what people started to say. I mean, again, some people already really didn’t like it, but now there was this kind of reason. It’s like, okay, well, the freeway isn’t there anymore. Do we need this sculpture? What, you know, it looks kind of out of place. Why is it here? You know, what’s its purpose?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Vaillancout Fountain has always had some supporters in the art world, some anyway. But along the way also picked up sort of some unlikely fans? Can you tell us about how skateboarders came to love this piece of art?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so in the early 90s skateboarders started to take a real interest in the Embarcadero Plaza and that’s because it’s this big brick plaza but it had at the time blocky concrete steps, it had a lot of curved ledges. And so pro skaters started to come here and they say they really developed modern street skating at the Embarcadero Plaza. At the time, they had been, you know, skating in empty pools or skate parks, and they started to create new skate moves based on the architecture at Embarcado Plaza. The Vaillancourt Fountain was not skated, really, but one of the big, you know, skaters, but also photographer, videographer at the time in this movement, Jacob Rosenberg, I spoke to him and he said it was like the touchstone of the spot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jacob Rosenberg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think the fountain was this unique object that always anchored the spot.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it was in the backdrop of all the videos.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jacob Rosenberg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Skateboarding is always a sort of counterculture movement. And I feel personally that the fountain embodies that. It’s an idea that may be different. I think it takes time to understand and appreciate it. And I think, it has a beautiful kinship with the spirit of skateboarding.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that gets us really to the modern era. So in recent years, there have arisen some concerns about the fountain. Catch us up on some of that.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so there have always been concerns about the water flow. Like it would kind of get gross with algae. It sometimes looked green or brown. The water had to be shut off intermittently throughout the years due to droughts or during the energy crisis. But in 2024, the last water pump that pushed water through the fountain broke and it’s been dry since then. They have not repaired it. And then last year, the city commissioned a report just assessing the fountain and it found major deterioration, corrosion. They said some of the parts, like some of the arms of the structure were bearing weight that they shouldn’t be. Tamara Apperton is a spokesperson for San Francisco’s Rec and Park Department.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Tamara Apperton: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is structurally compromised. This isn’t, we’re not talking cosmetic wear. It’s structural degradation that worsens over time. And the risks are really unpredictable. So pieces can fall without warning, especially with an earthquake or heavy public use nearby. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also found that there was asbestos and lead in the structure. So since last summer there’s been fencing around the fountain blocking access. And then this past fall the city actually got permission to expedite its removal saying it posed an imminent risk to public safety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the year before these safety concerns came out, back in November 2024, plans for a new waterfront park start to circulate, and people notice that the fountain is not in any of them. So it seems like the idea to remove this fountain has been kind of knocking around for at least several years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was this renovation plan that came out and it had big grassy expanses and it was going to connect to Sue Bierman Park which is nearby and have entertainment space and you know outdoor dining. But the fountain was notably not in those designs, so it seems like it was already going to be removed. But what the fountain supporters are arguing is that it should have and would have had to go through a full California Environmental Quality Act review process. CEQA is what that process is referred to by most people. And it’s required for most building projects in California, but also land use, zoning changes, and it’s triggered when there are going to be changes affecting historic resources like the Vaillancourt Fountain. It’s a long and kind of cumbersome process. You have to do an initial study. If it is going to affect the environment, you have to write this report about how to mitigate the damage. And also there’s a lot of public participation. People are allowed to come and voice their concerns and weigh in on whether or not this project should be allowed to move forward. And it opens up a lot of space for litigation as well to kind of slow or halt these projects. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know fans of The Fountain have been fighting back. They’re not wanting to kind of stand by and just see this thing taken down. What are they arguing?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So there’s this coalition that’s formed, they call themselves The Friends of the Plaza, and it’s led by some art and landscape groups, Docomomo/US Northern California, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, and then also, you know, these skateboarders, some other just residents who are fans of the fountain. And they are arguing that the fountain should have to go through this whole CEQA review process before it can be removed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Susan Brandt-Hawley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s been there 50 years and it needs repairs and renovations.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Susan Brant-Howley is representing the Friends of the Plaza in their legal case.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Susan Brandt-Hawley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, the city hasn’t maintained it, but there’s no emergency. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They think that the city has kind of manufactured an emergency to get around doing that. They’ve gone to the courts and they have a pending legal case basically asking a judge to require that there be a CEQA review before this fountain can be disassembled.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So is there any chance that they could still halt the removal of Vaillancourt Fountain?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Halt the removal? Probably not. The city has now started its removal process, but the Friends of the Plaza does have this pending legal case, and they are expecting a trial on that case this summer. But a judge denied the group’s request for a temporary order that would have halted the removal in the meantime until that trial happens, which tells us a couple things. On one hand, it could kind of indicate that the judge doesn’t think the case is likely to succeed, but the more immediate consequence is, you know, the city now has nothing standing in its path to move forward with the removal. So they’ve brought in big cherry pickers, they have a crane, and they’re really taking apart the pieces of this fountain now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When it’s deconstructed, do you know, is it being saved somewhere? Could this like show up in the future at a skate park or something like that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s going to be stored at least for a couple of years. And a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office told me they’re going to able to do more of an evaluation of the damage and kind of consider options of whether a pair or a restoration is gonna be possible.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alright. Katie DiBenedetti covers daily news for KQED’s Express Desk. Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I took all this back to our question asker, Nisha.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I gotta say I respect the amount of work that the artist put into this and the vision at the time. I do feel the disappointment that someone must feel putting this much effort into a city structure and then it coming down after so many years up. But I can see that progress sometimes involves change. And I think that’s what the city is seeing as well.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks Nisha.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Small donations from everyday people keep the lights on at KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you can, donate and and support podcasts like ours at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, CHristopher Beale, and me Olivia Allen-Price. We get extra support from Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a wonderful week. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since it was first unveiled in 1971, the 710-ton brutalist-style Vaillancourt Fountain has been a divisive piece of public art within San Francisco. The tangle of concrete square tubes once fit in seamlessly with the Embarcadero Freeway, a double-decker road which once ran right next to it. But nowadays it stands out against the open waterfront, and the Ferry Building across the street. On today’s episode of Bay Curious, we talk with KQED’s Katie DeBenedetti about the life of this piece of public art, which is currently being taken down by the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8752263348&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For more, read Katie’s reporting on the fountain:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12081169/san-francisco-will-start-dismantling-the-vaillancourt-fountain-on-monday\">San Francisco Will Start Dismantling the Vaillancourt Fountain on Monday\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12055275/this-fountain-looms-over-sfs-skateboarding-scene-a-growing-few-are-trying-to-save-it\">This Fountain Looms Over SF’s Skateboarding Scene. A Growing Few Are Trying to Save It\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Birds chirping and the sounds of outside. Olivia in scene says “hi! You found me.”\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I met up with this week’s question asker a short walk from her house in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hi everyone! I’m Nisha and we are sitting across the street from the Ferry Building in front of this fountain statue. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re here to take a closer look at a piece of public art that has been causing quite a stir over the past few years – the 710-ton Vaillancourt Fountain. It has been compared to some pretty interesting things over the years. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Waterfall of voices:\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Robot dog droppings.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s like Stonehenge with plumbing problems.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A loathsome monstrosity.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>Looks like Picasso’s dog took a dump.\u003cbr>\nA pile of dynamited debris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let’s hear how Nisha describes it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s a concrete structure. It seems like a brutalist type piece, that has water flowing through it. It’s a bunch of cubes put together, sort of if you imagine a large air vent.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Picture a tangle of square concrete tubes, some of which.when the fountain is running anyway, spew water into a ground level pool. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Probably two stories tall and as wide if not wider than that. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To me, it’s blockiness has a Minecraft aesthetic, and the way the water flows through the structure feels very … drainage pipe? It’s had many detractors over the years. But this fountain has big fans too.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When my son was a toddler he would insist that every time we walked past this fountain we had to go and examine it and he’d want to ask at least if he could touch the water, get in the water, splash in the water. Everything with the water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s meant to be interacted with. And for decades people have enjoyed exploring it. Walking up close. Kind of walking between the different arms of the structure. But we won’t be doing that today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now there’s construction fencing around it. There’s a crane. There no more flowing water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s clear some big changes are coming for this fountain. But before we get to those, Nisha has questions…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is the history of this structure being here in the first place and how does it overall fit in with the development of this neighborhood which is an overall different visual style than that? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here to talk us through Vaillancourt’s past, present and future is Katie DeBenedetti. She covers daily news for KQED’s Express Desk. Welcome, Katie!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Thank you for having me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Let’s start with, how did the Vaillancourt Fountain come to be installed in San Francisco in the first place?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So back in the late 60s, the city commissioned Canadian sculptor Armand Vaillancourt to build this fountain. It was going to sit in the Embarcadero Plaza, which was kind of this entrance point to the city because at the time there was the city’s freeway that kind of came in along the Embarcadero near where the ferry building is now and it was a big thoroughfare for the city. There were always cars. It was bustling. It was loud. And this fountain was kind of going to like offset that. At the time, the artist said like, you know, the water, you could hear the water and it would kind of take away from the noise from the freeway. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was built of concrete and this like industrial look, so it kind of interacted with the look of the freeway. And so a number of sculptors applied to build this public art piece that was gonna go here. And the city chose Vaillancourt. It was never thought of as a universally beloved sculpture. It had a lot of detractors, Alan Temko the architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle was one, but also Ruth Asawa, the very famous Bay Area artist. Others, like Lawrence Halpern, who actually designed the Embarcadero Plaza where it sits, thought that this sculpture could become a world-famous piece of art though.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tell me more about the artist and what he was going for with this fountain.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Armand Vaillancourt is a Canadian sculptor. He’s still alive. He’s 96. And this is one of his most prominent works. I think part of it was inspired by, you know, brutalism at the time. It is very bare, it’s concrete. You know, his son, I spoke to his son Alexis, and he said in the original designs, actually the water that would flow through the fountain was designed to be able to like at sometimes flow faster or release more water and then release less. Like it was very interactive with the water aspect of the fountain. And one really interesting thing about the fountain’s legacy is actually that the night before it debuted, it kind of came to be tied with the Vaillancourt’s own political activism. He spray painted it “Quebec Libre” in big red letters the night before it was dedicated. And this was in support of Quebec sovereignty movement, kind of splintering off from Canada. And at the time he told reporters that he wanted to dedicate the fountain to all freedom in Quebec and Vietnam, East Pakistan, just all over the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alexis Vaillancourt: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a piece that you have to think, you know, when you see it and you might not find it beautiful, but this is not the point.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I talked to Alexis Vaillancourt , who’s Armand Vaillancourt’s son.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alexis Vaillancourt: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Any piece of art in public space will be ugly or beautiful for someone. We don’t have all the same taste, we don’t come from the same place, so we have different ideas about what is beauty and it also changes to time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then things seem to settle down for a while with the fountain. People walk by it, they explore it, it maybe becomes a bit part of the landscape. But then in 1987 – some 16 years after it was unveiled – it found its way into the headlines again. What was it this time?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So in November of that year, U2 was coming to the Bay Area on tour. They were going to be performing in Oakland and they decided kind of last minute to host this secret free concert in front of the Vaillancourt Fountain, performing in flatbed trucks. And people, you know, found out just hours before, swarmed down, showed up to the concert. During the concert, Bono tagged the fountain. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Clip of Bono from concert:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> “Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He wrote “rock and roll stop the traffic” on fountain. And he ended up getting cited by Mayor Dianne Feinstein for the graffiti. And this led to a lot of outrage on both sides. So, Vaillancourt himself was not really very upset. He actually came out to the Bay Area, came to the U2 concert in Oakland later that week, and he defended Bono and like painted on stage like a backdrop with him.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’re going to take a quick break, but when we return – the fountain picks up some unexpected supporters. And the city’s plans to bring it down. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SPONSOR MESSAGE\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few years after the U2 Concert incident, the Loma Prieta earthquake strikes, and it damages the double-decker freeway that was along the Embarcadero, that was in the background of the Vaillancourt Fountain. And like we said earlier, that had sort of interacted with the sculpture visually. And so with no freeway there, the sculpture starts to look a little more out of place maybe than when it was first built. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, at least that’s what people started to say. I mean, again, some people already really didn’t like it, but now there was this kind of reason. It’s like, okay, well, the freeway isn’t there anymore. Do we need this sculpture? What, you know, it looks kind of out of place. Why is it here? You know, what’s its purpose?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Vaillancout Fountain has always had some supporters in the art world, some anyway. But along the way also picked up sort of some unlikely fans? Can you tell us about how skateboarders came to love this piece of art?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so in the early 90s skateboarders started to take a real interest in the Embarcadero Plaza and that’s because it’s this big brick plaza but it had at the time blocky concrete steps, it had a lot of curved ledges. And so pro skaters started to come here and they say they really developed modern street skating at the Embarcadero Plaza. At the time, they had been, you know, skating in empty pools or skate parks, and they started to create new skate moves based on the architecture at Embarcado Plaza. The Vaillancourt Fountain was not skated, really, but one of the big, you know, skaters, but also photographer, videographer at the time in this movement, Jacob Rosenberg, I spoke to him and he said it was like the touchstone of the spot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jacob Rosenberg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think the fountain was this unique object that always anchored the spot.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it was in the backdrop of all the videos.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jacob Rosenberg: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Skateboarding is always a sort of counterculture movement. And I feel personally that the fountain embodies that. It’s an idea that may be different. I think it takes time to understand and appreciate it. And I think, it has a beautiful kinship with the spirit of skateboarding.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that gets us really to the modern era. So in recent years, there have arisen some concerns about the fountain. Catch us up on some of that.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, so there have always been concerns about the water flow. Like it would kind of get gross with algae. It sometimes looked green or brown. The water had to be shut off intermittently throughout the years due to droughts or during the energy crisis. But in 2024, the last water pump that pushed water through the fountain broke and it’s been dry since then. They have not repaired it. And then last year, the city commissioned a report just assessing the fountain and it found major deterioration, corrosion. They said some of the parts, like some of the arms of the structure were bearing weight that they shouldn’t be. Tamara Apperton is a spokesperson for San Francisco’s Rec and Park Department.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Tamara Apperton: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is structurally compromised. This isn’t, we’re not talking cosmetic wear. It’s structural degradation that worsens over time. And the risks are really unpredictable. So pieces can fall without warning, especially with an earthquake or heavy public use nearby. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also found that there was asbestos and lead in the structure. So since last summer there’s been fencing around the fountain blocking access. And then this past fall the city actually got permission to expedite its removal saying it posed an imminent risk to public safety. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the year before these safety concerns came out, back in November 2024, plans for a new waterfront park start to circulate, and people notice that the fountain is not in any of them. So it seems like the idea to remove this fountain has been kind of knocking around for at least several years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was this renovation plan that came out and it had big grassy expanses and it was going to connect to Sue Bierman Park which is nearby and have entertainment space and you know outdoor dining. But the fountain was notably not in those designs, so it seems like it was already going to be removed. But what the fountain supporters are arguing is that it should have and would have had to go through a full California Environmental Quality Act review process. CEQA is what that process is referred to by most people. And it’s required for most building projects in California, but also land use, zoning changes, and it’s triggered when there are going to be changes affecting historic resources like the Vaillancourt Fountain. It’s a long and kind of cumbersome process. You have to do an initial study. If it is going to affect the environment, you have to write this report about how to mitigate the damage. And also there’s a lot of public participation. People are allowed to come and voice their concerns and weigh in on whether or not this project should be allowed to move forward. And it opens up a lot of space for litigation as well to kind of slow or halt these projects. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know fans of The Fountain have been fighting back. They’re not wanting to kind of stand by and just see this thing taken down. What are they arguing?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So there’s this coalition that’s formed, they call themselves The Friends of the Plaza, and it’s led by some art and landscape groups, Docomomo/US Northern California, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, and then also, you know, these skateboarders, some other just residents who are fans of the fountain. And they are arguing that the fountain should have to go through this whole CEQA review process before it can be removed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Susan Brandt-Hawley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s been there 50 years and it needs repairs and renovations.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Susan Brant-Howley is representing the Friends of the Plaza in their legal case.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Susan Brandt-Hawley: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, the city hasn’t maintained it, but there’s no emergency. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They think that the city has kind of manufactured an emergency to get around doing that. They’ve gone to the courts and they have a pending legal case basically asking a judge to require that there be a CEQA review before this fountain can be disassembled.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So is there any chance that they could still halt the removal of Vaillancourt Fountain?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Halt the removal? Probably not. The city has now started its removal process, but the Friends of the Plaza does have this pending legal case, and they are expecting a trial on that case this summer. But a judge denied the group’s request for a temporary order that would have halted the removal in the meantime until that trial happens, which tells us a couple things. On one hand, it could kind of indicate that the judge doesn’t think the case is likely to succeed, but the more immediate consequence is, you know, the city now has nothing standing in its path to move forward with the removal. So they’ve brought in big cherry pickers, they have a crane, and they’re really taking apart the pieces of this fountain now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When it’s deconstructed, do you know, is it being saved somewhere? Could this like show up in the future at a skate park or something like that?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie DeBenedetti: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It’s going to be stored at least for a couple of years. And a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office told me they’re going to able to do more of an evaluation of the damage and kind of consider options of whether a pair or a restoration is gonna be possible.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alright. Katie DiBenedetti covers daily news for KQED’s Express Desk. Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I took all this back to our question asker, Nisha.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I gotta say I respect the amount of work that the artist put into this and the vision at the time. I do feel the disappointment that someone must feel putting this much effort into a city structure and then it coming down after so many years up. But I can see that progress sometimes involves change. And I think that’s what the city is seeing as well.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks Nisha.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nisha: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Small donations from everyday people keep the lights on at KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you can, donate and and support podcasts like ours at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/donate\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KQED.org/donate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Olivia Allen-Price: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, CHristopher Beale, and me Olivia Allen-Price. We get extra support from Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a wonderful week. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>"
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"tagline": "The flip side of gentrification, told through one town",
"info": "Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?",
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},
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"order": 8
},
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},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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}
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"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"jerrybrown": {
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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