Art Brewer & Stecyk sign Bunker Spreckels bio Saturday
The Taschen Store in Beverly Hills will be hosting the launch of Bunker Spreckels: Surfing's Divine Prince of Decadence in the presence of the photographer Art Brewer and the author C.R. Stecyk III who will be on hand to sign their new book on Saturday, October 20th from 3pm-5pm.
The Player: The wild,
brief life of a surfing legend and international playboy The tale of Bunker
Spreckels (1949-1977) reads like a pitch for a movie to rival Boogie Nights:
The stepson of Clark Gable is a privileged Los Angeles party boy who is heir
to a multimillion dollar fortune; passionate about surfing, martial arts,
guns, and women, he lives the life of a debauched international jet-setter
before succumbing to his excesses at the tender age of 27.
Born Adolph B. Spreckels III, heir to the Spreckels sugar fortune, Bunker
became a famous surfer as a teenager, but after his inheritance came along,
he began to slip into a life of pomp and excess where surfing took a back
seat to drugs, sex, and wild road trips.
So remarkable was his
lifestyle that he created an alter-ego who invited photographers and
documentarians to trail him, piecing together a tell-all epic of his own
rise to fame and fortune. Before the project, known as The Player, could be
completed, Spreckels suddenly died.
Thirty years later, photographer Art Brewer and writer/photojournalist C.
R. Stecyk III (of Dogtown and Z-Boys fame) have come together to make this
book, which traces the meteoric rise and dramatic fall of Bunker Spreckels.
Brewer was a close friend of Spreckels and his personal photographer
throughout the last decade of his life, traveling with him from Hawaii to
Los Angeles to South Africa.
Spyder Wills, Bunker Spreckels & Tony Alva : photo Art Brewer
His images of
Spreckels, both on the waves and on land, chronicle Spreckels’s
metamorphosis from hippie surfer to international playboy, while Stecyk’s
extensive taped interview of Spreckels, completed just three months before
his death, provides a rare first-person perspective on his decadent life.
About the author: Born and raised in Santa Monica, California, C. R. Stecyk
III’s first encounter with Bunker dates back to their meeting at Malibu
Point in 1962. Their friendship of more than a decade spawned Bunker’s last
interview, which appears in this book.
Stecyk was an
instrumental figure in the Southern California skateboarding scene of the
early 1970s as both practitioner and chronicler, later serving as production
designer and cowriter of the documentary film Dogtown and Z-Boys. The
prolific artist and writer continues to create in Venice, California.
About the photographer: Professional photographer Art Brewer is among the
veteran photographers of the sport of surfing. His decades-long tenure as
documentarian of the international sport and as photo editor for Surfer
Magazine have garnered him numerous awards and titles. Bunker and Brewer
were longtime surfing buddies when Bunker tapped the journeyman photographer
to be part of his entourage to document and film The Player. Brewer
continued his relationship with Bunker until his passing.