Pray for Surf Retro T-Shirt

In 1961 Floyd Smith, a surfboard manufacturer based in San Diego, California, began printing his company logo on white shirts local surfers brought into Gordon & Smith Surfboards, and the surfer t-shirt was born. By the end of the year, the emerging market in silk-screen printing allowed printing of five-color O’Neill Surf Shop t-shirts and single-color Makaha International Surfing Championships t-shirts. After three years, surf t-shirts were being produced by the tens of thousands as the market widely expanded to include surf industry team t-shirts, competitor t-shirts for entrants in surf competitions and souvenirs from surfing destinations like Hawaii. During the mid-70s, surfer shirts by the California T-Shirts company were available in department stores throughout America and, by 2002, the production of surfer t-shirts had swelled to 300 million shirts annually. Their popularity skyrocketed as the entertainment industry modeled them through Mackenzie Phillips in American Graffiti and Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. Today, surfer t-shirts continue to thrive worldwide and remind people of the rich history and blessing of surfing.