Miki Dora

Miklos Sandor "Miki" Dora III (August 11, 1934 – January 3, 2002) was a noted surfer of the 1950s and 1960s in Malibu, California. Dora received numerous nicknames and aliases during his life, including "The Black Knight," "the Gypsy darling," "Malibu Mickey," "Kung'Bu," "the Fiasco Kid," "El Taquache," and "Da Cat."

Life Dora was born in Budapest, Hungary and moved to California as a child. His parents divorced when he was 6 years old. Dora stayed with his mother, Ramona Stancliff Dora Chapin, but was mostly raised by his grandmother, with whom he lived well into his 20s.

Dora was introduced to surfing by his father, Miklos, in the late 1930s. His stepfather Gard Chapin was also a "surf pioneer . . . a roughneck rebel who never fit into polite society." After he returned to the US from France in 1981, he was subsequently arrested by the FBI for violating his parole by leaving the country in 1975 after pleading guilty to writing a bad check for the purchase of ski equipment. While serving time for that, he was sentenced to six months in federal prison after a Denver grand jury indicted him for credit card fraud in 1982. Dora was known to paint a swastika on his surfboards surfboard designer Dale Velzy and surf champion Nat Young all describe his views as racist and anti-semitic.

Dora died at his father's home in Montecito, California, on January 3, 2002, at age 67 from pancreatic cancer.

Filmography Feature Films

Popular media In 2014, Anderson .Paak included the track "Miki Doralude" on his album Venice. The track is an audio clip of Miki Dora talking taken from the 1990 documentary film Surfers: The Movie. In 2018, Amen Dunes named a song "Miki Dora" on their album Freedom. In 2023 Pushkin Industries published season 3 of their podcast Lost Hills, titled "the Dark Prince" which follows the story of Miki Dora.