Mickey Munoz

Mickey Munoz, written Mickey Muñoz in his own spelling and nicknamed The Mongoose, is a surfer, sailor, paddleboarder, skier and surfboard shaper who was born in New York City in 1937 and became one of surfing's early pioneers. He graduated from Santa Monica High School, surfed the Malibu scene of the 1950s and was present on the day in 1956 when Terry Tracy gave a young woman the nickname Gidget; he later served as the surfing stunt double for Sandra Dee in the 1959 film Gidget. He developed unconventional stances, among them the Quasimodo, a pose photographed by John Severson and published in the first issue of Surfer magazine in 1960. He appeared in the 2004 documentary Riding Giants and designs boards for Surftech. He was honoured as the 2006 Surf Pioneer by the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame, and a bronze statue of him in the Quasimodo stance was unveiled at Watermen's Plaza in Dana Point in 2026.