Miklos Sandor Dora was born 1934, in Budapest, Hungary. His mother decided six years later that his wine-merchant father had reached crescendo; a realisation that prompted her to divorce him before appointing an American lad to the top job and migrating with Miklos to start a new life.

Gard Chapin was the new man’s name and being California’s best surfer was his game. Ironically, he was also notorious for being the region’s angriest and most disliked surfing personality. Miklos experienced his stepfather’s wrath when he was shipped off to boarding school, with Chapin later redeeming himself in the late 1940s when he introduced his stepson to the sport of surfing.

Young Miklos took ownership of his first ever longboard at age 15 and slowly built a reputation for having a completely individual and almost hypnotic surfing style. His whole act centered on a never-before-seen rhythmic and light-footed approach to riding waves; talents that later earned him the moniker Mickey “Da Cat” Dora.

It was during this period that he started venting his disgust for the quick growing commercial side to surfing. Though he contradicted this protest by featuring in surf apparel company advertising campaigns. Next came the alleged cheque and credit card fraud that would precede a lengthy investigation; a circumstance that saw then 36-year-old Mickey abscond the USA in order to avoid certain arrest. From there he lounge surfed around the planet, before his arrest in 1973 were upon he returned to California to be sentenced to a three-year probationary period that he broke. Mickey was later arrested in France, spent three months in jail, and eventually returned to the USA to face trial in California and Colorado that lead to jail time for the better part of the year 1981.

Mickey Da Cat” aka “The Dark Knight” Dora died of pancreatic cancer in 2002. He never married, had children or held down a profession. Some suggest that he was too busy playing host to an outlaw succubus that eventually drank his soul dry. He’s the God of freesurfing; the original anti-establishment archetype: an accidental hero who continues to serve as the doctrine for the contemporary freesurfing ethos.

(Ref: The Enclyclopedia Of Surfing, Matt Warshaw, Penguin Books Pt Ltd, 2004, page 160).