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“Larry Bertlemann’s obsession with image and commercialism put him on the wrong side of surfing purists in 1978. Always fashion conscious, instantly recognizable by his neatly tended Afro hairstyle, Bertlemann frequently surfed and skateboarded in color-coordinated outfits, and at one point took to the waves at Pipeline wearing a customized blue-and-red bell-bottom wetsuit. A pioneer in surf world corporate sponsorship, Bertlemann by the late ‘70s was plastering his boards with oversize stickers from Pepsi, United Airlines, and Toyota, and even adopted the Pepsi swirl emblem for his board’s design motif. “I get off on promoting things,” the easy-smiling eighth-grade dropout once said. “I keep my sponsors happy, and they keep me in business.”

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