Surfing Years 1950-51

Aloha and welcome to the LEGENDARY SURFERS chapter on the years 1950 and 1951.

I don’t normally preface my writings on surfing’s history and culture, but feel I must in the case of this chapter simply entitled “Surfing Years 1950-51.”

This chapter highlights some of the developments and goings-on of some of modern surfing’s most famous surfers during the period 1950-51. Not everything is included, obviously. The chapter was intended originally to give a kind of “sampling” of the space in time, while simultaneously hitting the most important historical points as I saw them at the time of writing (late 1990s).

A disclaimer I have is that the dates of things -- within this time period -- are approximate. I did my best guess of the time frame and what to include in it, but assuredly, it requires more date checking for complete accuracy.

In spite of its warts and all, I hope you enjoy this look at a special time in surfing’s history.

-- Malcolm Gault-Williams

Contents

Preface

Contents

Introduction

Simmons Plan Shapes

Malibu and Chips

Buzzy Trent, part 1

Greg Noll’s Beginnings

The Manhattan Beach Surf Club

Dale “The Hawk” Velzy

The Bait Boy’s 1st Shape

John Severson at San Clemente

John Severson’s Cinematic Beginnings

Surf, Cars, Parties & Girls

O`ahu -- Town & Country, 1950

O`ahu, 1951

Buzzy Trent, part  2

Mainland, 1951

Malibu, 1950-51

Malibu Perpetual Surfboard

Velzy Invents the Hang Ten

Greg Noll & the Redwood to Balsa Transition

Introduction

The Cold War rivalry between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was well underway as the decade of the 1950’s opened with the beginning of the Korean War. Popular songs of the time included “Bali Ha`i,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “So in Love,” and “Riders in the Sky.” The Japanese samurai classic “Rashomon“ was released in Japan. Significantly for lovers of the ocean was Thor Heyerdahl’s voyage of the ocean-going raft “Kon-Tiki,” from South America to Polynesia. In the United States, 1.5 million TV sets were already in place in homes across the nation. That number would jump to 15 million in 1951.¹

The world of surfing was still limited, for the most part, to Oʼahu, Hawaii, North America and Australia. The two movements shaping the period were the big wave riding assaults on Makaha and the North Shore of Oʼahu, and the transition to all-balsa boards covered with fiberglass on U.S. Mainland.

Simmons Plan Shapes

Sometimes referred to as “The Father of the Modern Surfboard,” Bob Simmons came up with the plan shape of the post-World War II surfboard, based on scientific principles and tested primarily at Malibu. His board shapes were later modified by others to become what were later called “Malibu Boards,” “Potato Chips,” “Malibu Chips” or just plain “Chips.”

The board’s story started somewhat ignominiously:

Toward the end of 1949, in the midst of all his exciting surfboard experimentation and innovation, Simmons abruptly terminated his business relationship with his workers Joe Quigg and Matt Kivlin, closed his shop and left the Santa Monica/Malibu area.

“Quigg and Kivlin were Simmons’ glassers,” recalled Simmons’ friend and biographer John Elwell, “and he kicked them out of the shop when they started to copy the technology,”² meaning copying his plan shapes. An example of this was the “Darrylin Board,” made after the summer of ‘49,³ the board many consider to be the first “Malibu Board.”

“According to Kivlin in his interview with McMasters,” Elwell wrote, “when they went over to see Simmons they saw the receipts for the glass and and resin. It was at the end of the summer of ‘49 when Joe made a copy of a Simmons which was 45 pounds and 10 feet long for Darrylin Zanuck that others rode and liked.”⁴

Joe Quigg, Matt Kivlin and Leslie Williams later brought their new boards with them when they “showed up at Windansea in December of ‘49 and at the Windansea Luau in August of 1950... These boards were duplicates of a Simmons except for the nose.”⁵

Elwell continued: “shapers copy things they think works. The Malibu Board was an exact copy of a Simmons board but with a pointed nose. Why? [Dale] Velzy came up with the best answer: ‘The spoon nose wedge was too hard to make!’ [Bev] Morgan said they changed it to make it look like it was not copied.”⁶

In addition to the board copying, there were personality differences between Simmons and Quigg. They had gotten into it just the year before. “Simmons was a point rider and had the board to take off sooner with more speed,” Elwell explained. “As the story goes, Simmons asked for the right of way and Joe scoffed at him. Next time Simmons ran him over with his fiber glass board and a fight ensued in the water, with Quigg dunking Simmons... [the fight] continued on the beach. Quigg threatened Simmons that if he did it again he would beat the shit of him. Simmons spit in his face.”⁷ According to Elwell, both [Bev] Morgan and Peter Cole agreed that Quigg and Simmons hated each other.⁸

“The Simmons-Quigg surf war is the longest I have known,” John Elwell wrote. “From my view point... It all started from not giving another surfer the right of way. Those were the rules that [Gard] Chapin taught Simmons and Miki [Dora]. If they don’t get out of the way, ram ‘em, run over them.⁹

To this day, the subject of the Simmons-Quigg rift is a touchy subject for some. To some degree, this aspect of the Simmons story and that of The Malibu Board has been buried over time. “The reason,” John Elwell believes, “is that surfers back then liked both Bob and Joe. They had some peculiar differences but many surfers do. The attitude was that they didn’t like each other. So what?”¹⁰

Calling it quits in Santa Monica, Simmons moved his surfboard operation out to the family’s Norwalk ranch for privacy, seclusion, research and development. He now surfed mostly in the San Diego area -- the Tijuana Sloughs and Windansea -- and it was during this time that he made the best and last of a series of boards.¹¹

Malibu and Chips

First shaped by Joe Quigg, in 1950¹² and then by Matt Kivlin, the “Malibu chip“ or “potato chip“ -- also sometimes called the “Simmons Chip” -- would later be called “Malibu’s” in Australia. They were first popularized by Leslie Williams, Tom Zahn and Dave Rochlen and referred to as “chips” because their thinness combined with rocker reminded some of potato chips.

The main testing ground for the Malibu’s, of course, was Malibu.

Malibu had been ridden steadily since Tom Blake and Sam Reid first rode it in 1926. Like other surf spots, it developed its own surf culture and own local heroes. In the mid-to-late 1950s, Malibu became the center of surf culture. Prior to the 1950s, the bipolar axis of American surf culture had rotated between surfing’s capitol of Waikiki and Southern California’s San Onofre -- which had superceded Palos Verdes Cove and Corona del Mar. As good as the waves were and are there, Malibu was not the focus of California surf culture prior to 1950.

Fifty years after surfing’s revival by the likes of Duke Kahanamoku, George Freeth, Alexander Hume Ford and local Hawaiians of the beginning years of the 20th Century, the sport had progressed and evolved. By the late 1940s, there was enough interest in big wave surfing that Makaha, on the west side of Oʻahu, even usurped Waikiki as surfing’s international focal point. Across the Eastern Pacific Ocean, in California, the surf culture that had dominated at San Onofre before World War II gave way to Malibu after the war. In part due to the lingering military occupation of the area, San O’s descent and Malibu’s rise was primarily because of the quality of the waves and the experimentation in surfboard design and materials that was going on in the Los Angeles area. Malibu became the testing ground for the new technology.

Buzzy Trent, part 1

At the beginning of the 1950s, Buzzy Trent began his legendary career as a big wave rider. On the same yacht that had brought Wally Froiseth, George Downing and Russ Takaki over to the Mainland in 1949,¹³ Buzzy made his way to the Islands for the first time. He was stoked on the tales that had been told by Walter Hoffman (1948) and Burrhead Drever (1949). Buzzy eventually ended up making Hawaii his home.¹⁴

In tracing back his earliest memory of Buzzy before Buzzy moved to Hawaii, big wave rider and oceanographer Ricky Grigg recalled that he himself “got into surfing” at the beginning of the 1950s, “because I was there and it was happening around me. My sister liked Tommy Zahn. He lifeguarded at Malibu and got her interested in surfing. She became the hottest gal on the whole coast.

“Buzzy Trent was my hero. I used to sit at his lifeguard station and listen to him tell stories. He took me surfing when I was nine years old. My sister was out there with us. It was like the beginning of a whole subculture. Hearing about the other surfers in these little pockets up and down the coast, we almost became mythological to each other. Then we started traveling and meeting at different spots and it was great. We built on each other’s experience.

“When I was eleven I got hurt pretty badly while surfing at State Beach. On a wipeout, my board whipped up under my ribs real hard and busted my spleen in half. Buzzy Trent was ten or fifteen yards ahead of me in a sand-buster and he got me to the beach. For three or four minutes, I couldn’t get any air. Buzzy was doing what he could and, finally, I started breathing again. Then Buzzy took me to the hospital in his ‘39 Packard.”¹⁵

When Buzzy was in possession of an old Chevy business coupe with handmade wooden surfboard rack screwed into its dented and rusting roof, Peter Dixon observed him one summer’s Malibu day in 1952. “It’s crowded. Seven guys out at first point. The surf is five to six and peeling to the pier.” In the water were, “Dave Rochlen, Matt Kivlin, Buzzy Trent, Peter Cole, and Chuck King. They’re all in the lineup and waiting their turn. Back then no one took off in front of someone else.

“Trent, Cole, and Rochlen were my heroes. Buzzy because he was a great football player/surfer who overcame polio to surf again. Cole, one of the fastest swimmers on the West Coast, was a fellow beach lifeguard. Rochlen’s mystique was hard to fathom. He had that gleam in his eye that wouldn’t tolerate bullshit.... Chuck King, another beach guard, was a bit older than the others. That summer Chuck introduced me to my future wife...

“The surf was ‘bitchin’ and I watched Buzzy ride a fast Malibu wave right into the rusted wire fence that separated the Adamson Estate from the public beach. Buzzy walked up the dirt path... He spotted my new board, showed interest. I asked Buzzy if he’d like to surf the balsa. He nodded in the affirmative, yanked the balsa from the back of the Zephyr and ran for the water. Buzzy didn’t waste words.

“Buzzy was fantastic. The board that I had lovingly shaped seemed to come alive under his agile maneuvering. After a twenty minute display of his muscular, wave riding talent, Buzzy paddled in and returned the board. This time he spoke. ‘Worst board I ever surfed. Thanks, kid.’

“A week later my draft notice arrived... I was off for the Korean War. Good-bye Malibu, college, beach lifeguarding...”¹⁶

The Korean War began June 25^th, 1950 and lasted to July 27^th, 1953. It was a war between North Korea, with the support of China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea, supported by the United States and the United Nations. Even though surfers were drafted into the military and some fought in Korea, surfing was not effected by this war to the degree it had been by World War II. Even so, this three year war came dangerously close to causing another world war.

Sonny Vardeman, who started surfing in 1948, recalled how he and his friends looked at the more established surfers in the early fifties: “Buzzy Trent, Joe Quigg, Dale Velzy, Bob Simmons and George Downing were all six or seven years older than we were. They’re the guys we watched. George lived in Hawaii, but came to the Mainland for paddleboard races. Buzzy was a lifeguard around Santa Monica and Malibu. He went over to the Islands in the early fifties and became one of the pioneers of modern surfing at Makaha and of big-wave surfing.”¹⁷

Greg Noll’s Beginnings

In his autobiography, Greg Noll wrote, “If I’ve learned anything in the past decade or two, it’s that you never have friends like the ones you make when you’re young...” He proceeded to tell the story of his beginnings at Manhattan Beach and the Manhattan Beach Surf Club. “I’ve been stoked on the ocean since I was a kid. I got hooked on fishing when I was six, and learned to surf a few years after that at Manhattan Beach Pier.

“My mother and I had moved from San Diego to Manhattan Beach in 1943. We’d lived in San Diego since I’d been born, in 1937... In Manhattan Beach we lived about seven houses north of the Manhattan Beach Pier. Whenever I could I’d stay out on the pier all day and into the evening, learning about the fish, the ocean and the tides from the older fishermen. By the time I was eight [1945], I’d got myself a job dishing bait on the pier...”¹⁸

Below the pier, the Manhattan Beach Surf Club was in full swing, with Dale “The Hawk” Velzy presiding. The surfboard shaping going on underneath the pier fascinated the kid and he spent hours just standing around and watching.

“I was kind of like a mosquito always buzzing around Velzy,” Noll recalled. “I had to get in there and see what was going on, boy, whenever he would put down a tool, I’d be right there to grab it. God I just drove him nuts, every time I’d pick up his drawknife, the Hawk would scream, ‘Hey, put that down son, you’ll cut yourself.’ Somehow I had this hunch that he would eventually teach me. After months of dogging his every step and being his shadow, I was allowed to do some small task. I think it was sweeping up the balsa shavings. I was so pumped, it was like I’d arrived. It was totally bitchin’.”¹⁹

“I started surfing in 1948,” Noll wrote, “when I was eleven, during the summer before seventh grade. Every day, as I was walking to and from the bait house, I’d see Jack Wise, Barney Briggs, Larry Felker, Dale Velzy and all the other guys who made up the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, surfing the waves beside the pier. It looked like so much fun, I thought, ‘I’ve just gotta do that.’ So I cornered some guy with an old redwood surfboard and got him to sell it to me. He took my money for some old hunk of junk that he was probably going to push off some cliff for a surf sacrifice. Instead he sacrificed it to me for fifteen dollars.

“It was a lot of money and a lot of board to be pushing down the street. It would take me forty-five minutes just to get the board in the water. It was made of solid redwood and weighed about a hundred and ten pounds - twenty pounds more than I weighed! I nailed some rollerskate wheels onto a wood plank and used that to push the board down to the beach. My mom would help me push it to the steps at the pier. Then I’d five the board a shove and watch it bounce down the steps. The fin would come off every time, so I left a couple of sixpenny nails at the base of the stairs near a rock that I’d use to pound the fin back on. Then I’d drag the board to the water and try to surf it.

“When I was done for the day I’d leave the board under the pier, sometimes for two or three days at a time, as long as the surf looked good. If it looked like it was going bad for a while, or if I had to be someplace else for a few days, I’d get someone to help me carry the board back up the stairs and put it back on my skate plank. Then I’d push it home, seven houses the other side of the pier...”²⁰

Mike Stange, a friend of Noll’s, recalled his start, at about the same time. “In 1947 my older brother, Pete, became one of the very first county beach lifeguards, so I grew up around the water and around some real characters. Fred Beckner, a city lifeguard, used to take me and my neighbor Don out into the old channel at Playa del Rey in the middle of winter on rubber surf mats when the surf was huge. We’d go out beyond the jaws of the two jetties and pick up waves that must have been twelve feet high. I remember I could see the beaches on both sides of the jetties, Venice and Del Rey, when I was on top of the wave, ready to speed down its face. I could hear Beckner, laughing and shouting at us, ‘O.K., O.K., ha ha, paddle, paddle, take off!’ Don and I were about ten. The old-timers didn’t have much pity.

“In those days the lifeguards used hollow boards made by an early redwood-board surfer, Pete Peterson. We called them kook boxes because you felt like a kook on them. I remember riding one of them at Playa del Rey. You’d stand up way on the back to turn the thing. There was no way you could really maneuver it like a surfboard.

“I started surfing at El Porto [1949], about a year after Greg started at Manhattan Beach. I was going to El Segundo High and very few people surfed El Porto. Of course, I knew of Greg, because the surfers at the Manhattan Beach Pier were the main group, the innovators of everything.”²¹

“It’s amazing how long it took to get to the point where you could stand up on those redwood boards and just ride a little soup,” continued Noll. “A few summers ago, I built a surfboard for my two youngest kids... Within a half-dozen waves they were standing up. I spent my entire first summer trying to catch a wave. I’d take that board out and just stuff it into the sand and scare the sand crabs, time after time. When I finally did catch and ride a wave, I felt like I had conquered the world.”²²

“You’ve got to watch out for these bony-kneed kids,” cautioned Bev Morgan to Dewey Schurman. “Greg Noll was the skinniest, boniest-kneed kid. For sport we used to pick him up from behind, hold him around the chest and squeeze him until he would pass out. We were all just dumb kids then, and lucky we didn’t blow his heart up. Pretty soon he’d pass out, and then we’d let him go. Usually he’d pass out for five minutes or so. One time he stayed passed out all night and I really got nervous and quit doing it.”²³

Years later, continued Morgan, Noll “turned into a 280-pound giant. He didn’t have a neck. His head just went down into his shoulders. He walked up to me one day and said, ‘Do you remember the times you used to squeeze my chest and make me pass out?’ And he grabbed me by the head and started squeezing my skull. Everything went black. My brain was going black. He was so strong I couldn’t believe it. And from then on, I always took good care of bony-kneed kids.”²⁴

Sonny Vardeman: “Greg [Noll] and I have been friends since grade school. While he belonged to the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, I was a member of a surf club called the Hermosa Beach Seals, along with our friends Mike Bright and Steve Voorhees. We’d see each other at the beach all the time. During the early fifties, there were very few surfers. You’d see the same guys at the different spots up and down the coast. That’s how we all got to know each other.

“In high school, we all hung out on the beach together. Mike Bright and a few of us played on the football and basketball teams, then surfed during the summer. Greg wasn’t much into high school athletics. He hung out at the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, spent most of his time on the beach. Greg is a very proud man. He doesn’t like to be a loser. I think that’s what made him good in paddleboard racing. I also think that was one of the reasons he didn’t go out for high school athletics. If Greg can’t do something well, he won’t participate in it.

“Greg devoted most of his energy to surfing...²⁵

Sonny Vardeman: “Greg [Noll] really learned about big-wave riding from Buzzy. If you compare films of Buzzy and Greg, you can see that Greg emulated Buzzy’s style. Greg admired George Downing, but he emulated Buzzy’s style.”²⁶

The Manhattan Beach Surf Club

Before Greg Noll was even a gremmie, “The Manhattan Beach Surf Club began as just a bunch of loose guys,” Noll wrote. “When I started hanging around them, my parents thought it was a healthy thing. They had nothing else to compare it to. The only thing they would get concerned about was the outward appearance of some of these guys. They looked really scroungy.

“Surfing in those days was different from what you see today. Surfers were grubby guys who spent most of their time in the water. Some worked as lifeguards. Some didn’t work at all. They spoke a funny language and nobody understood them. The city fathers had given the Manhattan Beach Surf Club a little spot under the pier, hoping that they’d clean up their act and not spread themselves all over the beach. The city also gave them a bunch of rules that nobody bothered to obey.

“One of these rules was that there could be no members in the club under eighteen. I guess the city figured that these guys would be a bad influence on minors. It’s true, they were an influence on this minor and on my friend and surfing accomplice Bing Copeland, but I doubt that either of us would have called their influence ‘bad.’

“Bing Copeland started surfing that same summer that I did. There was another kid, Buzzy Bent, who surfed at his home turf of Windansea... in 1948, the three of us were the only young kids surfing in Southern California.”²⁷

According to Jerry Cunningham, retired Chief of the L.A. County Lifeguards and himself one of the original members, “Members included Dale Velzy, Bill and Bob Meistrell (who later became owners of Body Glove), myself and about 15 other guys, mostly lifeguards, plus two junior Club members -- Bing Copeland and Greg Noll.”²⁸

“Since Bing and I hung around the club so much of the time,” recalled Noll, “and eventually learned to surf pretty well, the guys in the club made us honorary members... We went to all the meetings and hung out with these guys for several years. We grew up quickly, surrounded by guys eighteen and older, in their prime. They lived to surf, drink, raise hell and score heavily with women. I saw these guys going up and down the coast on surf trips, drinking and bagging girls, and all I could think of was ‘What a neat life!’

“... After a summer of being hauled up and down the coast from Malibu to Windansea by assorted characters from the Manhattan Beach Surf Club,” continued Noll, “starting seventh grade was quite an adjustment. I no longer had much in common with other kids my age. They were playing silly games, pulling girls’ pigtails. All the while I’m wondering, ‘Where are the wine and women?’”²⁹

“Mike Stange and I got into surfing at the absolute perfect time, during the last glimmer of the redwood/balsa days,” continued Noll. “In many of the photographs from that era, you see redwood and balsa boards side-by-side. When I first started surfing, Bob Simmons was just beginning to experiment with other materials. You’d hear a few stories about new, revolutionary Simmons boards, but up to that time there was Matt Kivlin and Joe Quigg riding redwoods at Malibu. Doc Ball and the guys at the Palos Verdes Surfboard Club. Velzy, Leroy Grannis, Ted Kerwin, the Edgar Brothers at Hermosa and Manhattan. Lorrin Harrison, Burrhead and the guys at San Onofre. A few guys down in La Jolla. The entire surfing population consisted of maybe a couple hundred guys, most of them riding redwood boards, paddleboards and balsa/redwoods.

“Then along came the gremmies -- me, Bing Copeland and Buzzy Bent -- watching these guys stick those long redwood boards in the shorebreak and pearl on them. There was no scoop on the nose of those boards, and they were so heavy that one arm became longer than the other when you carried them down to the water. Still, surfing looked like a neat thing to do, once you mastered it.

“You hear about those of us who began surfing during that era as the ‘pioneers of modern surfing,’ but I don’t think any of us had any sense of history about what we were doing. We were having fun. It does intrigue me that our era produced so many distinct individuals. I don’t see that happening as much today...”³⁰

“During eigth grade I used to go down to the pier in the mornings to surf before school,” said Noll. “I’d wake up Bev Morgan at the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, and he’d go with me. Morgan was already out of high school and drove this cut, chopped and lowered Chevy with chrome pipes and a hole in the back window where the surfboards could stick out. That Chevy was quite a showpiece and any kid’s dream car.

“Morgan and I had a deal. In exchange for a big, hot breakfast at my house after surfing, he’d drive me to school. We timed it to perfection. When all the kids were lined up, waiting to go into class, we’d roll up in the Chevy, revving the motor -- rummmm, rummmm, rummmm. Morgan would get out, open my door and dust me off with a whisk broom, as though he were my personal chauffeur. All my buddies and teachers were there, watching our routine. I loved seeing their reactions...”³¹

Dale “The Hawk” Velzy

Greg Noll, Mike Stange, Bing Copeland and Bev Morgan were in the same orbit as Dale Velzy, one of the great surfer/shapers of the Twentieth Century. Velzy started making boards in the 1940s and went on to gain notoriety in the 1950s for his balsa shapes and, later, in the 1960s for his polyurethane foam boards.

A story is told of the first meeting between Velzy and then-gremmie Lance Carson on May 3, 1947. Carson would go on to legendary status at Malibu:

“The distinctively pungent aroma of fresh cut balsa and sea water permeates the air,” when Dale Velzy, bulldog tattoo on his arm, is approached by Donald Carson and his son, Lance. Velzy pulled from a pint bottle of some sort of alcohol, while he explained to the Carsons about the different grades of balsa. “You see, the splotchy smoky streaked wood is the lightest, and the AA grade speckled balsa is your most consistent.”³²

The elder Carson was an engineer who worked on Northrop’s flying wing. Utilizing the knowledge he got from talking with Velzy, he worked at night on a 5-foot-long, V-bottomed, chambered balsa surf-foil for Lance, which he finished on May 19, 1947. Under Velzy’s supervision, Lance learned how to use his first board.³³

“Velzy’s a classic,” agreed Greg Noll. “Absolutely an incredible person. What I like about him is that he’s never changed. He’s still shaping boards at his house. Last time I saw him, he was hand-shaping hot curl redwood boards -- wall hangers. He told me that each one takes about a month to make. He was selling them for a thousand bucks apiece to rich guys... Velzy is still a fifties hustler... The beauty of these boards is incredible. He puts about six coats of resin on them and hand rubs it out. There is no one doing anything as beautiful today as Velzy is doing with these boards. Guys who shape foam boards today, who never had any experience on redwood, would go nuts if they had to lay a power planer on one of those redwoods...

“There are some real good stories about Dale Velzy. Like most South Bay surfers, he also worked for the lifeguard service. He had the night shift. He was supposed to check all the towers, from El Porto to Hermosa Beach, to make sure there was no vandalism. Half the time he’d crawl in one of the towers and sleep through his shift.

“One day, a body floated up off of the Manhattan Pier. The ‘guards had to go out and get it. It had been dead about a week. They put the body in one of those body baskets and wrapped a bunch of towels around it. When they got the guy into shore and the coroner’s office took over, they just threw the towels in the back of a tower, intending to take care of them later.

“So here comes Velzy on the night shift, looking for a place to crap out. Parks his truck, unlocks the tower door and dives into this inviting-looking pile of towels. I guess he didn’t smell the rotten skin until it was too late. Legend has it that Velzy was still in the showers at Hermosa three days later, scrubbing with a wire brush.”³⁴

“In the summertime, about 12 of us guys would sleep in front of the Manhattan Beach Surf Club. During the day, there were so few people around that we could just leave our sleeping bags right there in the open. One day, Bing, Bev Morgan and I were surfing at the Palo Verdes Cove and we found a dead skunk that someone had recently run over. We threw a line around its legs and dragged it back to the pier behind the car -- and we put it in Velzy’s sleeping bag.

“Now, Velzy was a notorious womanizer. Out late every night. That particular night, we all bunked down in our sleeping bags and waited for Velzy to roll in. We had pushed his bag out a ways from ours. The smell coming from it was horrible. About two in the morning, here comes Velzy after a hot date, just drunk enough not to realize what was going on. He crawls into his sleeping bag with the dead skunk... suffice it to say, it was a classic prank...³⁵

Bev Morgan recalled this prank, also. “Bing Copeland, Noll and I were coming back from down south one day in my Chevy,” said Morgan. “In Palos Verdes right around the Cove, Greg spotted a run over skunk. This thing was ripe. I wouldn’t let them put it inside of my car. So we attached it to a drag line and towed it. On the curves, I’d slide the car which would whipsaw the skunk right up to the passenger car door. God it smelled horrible. The look on Greg’s face when this happened was pretty funny. When we got back home, I thought that the deal was over, but Noll decided to put the carcass inside of Velzy’s sleeping bag. Later that night Dale stumbled in from a date a little drunk and jumped right into his bag. Damn, that sobered him up in a hurry. Velzy went off and buried it, but his loyal dog Kahuna would keep digging it up and bringing it back. He’d try to get rid of it, but the dog would find it every time. After a couple of weeks of this, everything Dale owned reeked of dead skunk; his clothes, his dog, his car, all smelled to high hell. A month later he was still taking long showers trying to get rid of the stench.”

“God it smelled bad,” admitted Velzy, “you have no idea how terrible it was.”³⁶

On April 10, 1949, Sabu and Velzy wrestled in the shorebreak with a dead 250 pound sea lion. The men proceeded to remove the eye teeth of the seal with their bare hands. A couple of hours later, they were sporting traditional Chumash ceremonial necklaces made out of seal teeth.³⁷

The Bait Boy’s 1st Shape

“Everything went really well between Velzy and me for about three years,” Greg Noll recalled, after he and friends pulled the dead skunk prank on Velzy. “He built boards at the Manhattan Pier and I hung around all the time, soaking up all I could about shaping balsa-wood boards.”³⁸

“For three years, we got along pretty good,” Noll reiterated. Velzy moved out from under the pier to a shop location not far away. “One day Dale and Bill Barr were walking out the door of his new Center Street shop which was just up the alley from the pier. They were going out to have lunch and do some drinking. A 12’6” Pacific Systems board was there that he was reshaping for a customer, so I asked him, ‘Hey, Hawk, mind if I scrub on this a little.’

“This same interaction had occurred hundreds of times in the past always with the identical negative conclusion. No one knows why, but this time it was different, for without seeming to pay any attention, Velzy replied, ‘Sure grem, take a couple od swipes, but stop cutting before you fuck it up.’”³⁹

“I jumped on it,” continued Noll, “and balsa was flying all over the place. I was going nuts like an elf locked in Santa’s workshop. In a few minutes it was obvious that I’d already gone too far and there was no hope of turning back now. My only chance was to finish this bugger off before they got back. I was really afraid of blowing it and buckets of sweat were streaming off of me and going all over the board. When they got back they were really shit-faced, and I was shaking like a leaf because the judgement day was at hand. There was no doubt that the Hawk was going to kill me. Why oh why hadn’t I stopped? I knew I’d screwed up bad. My asshole was puckering up because I was so nervous.”⁴⁰

“One day,” in 1950, Noll wrote in his autobiography about the day he reshaped his first board, “Velzy and Billy Barr decided to go to lunch together. He’d been working on a board and I asked him if I could just take off the rough wood with a drawknife while he was gone. Velzy said, ‘Yeah, but don’t do any more than that or you’ll screw up the board.’

“Velzy and Barr ended up in some saloon until late afternoon. Rolled in shit-faced about four o’clock. By that time, I had finished shaping the whole board. Velzy walked in, picked up the board, looked down the deck. Looked over at me. Looked down one rail, looked over at me. Looked down the other rail, looked over at me. Looked at the bottom...”⁴¹ The board was now 9’3” and Velzy thoroughly inspected it while the 13-year-old Noll held his breath. Velzy finally said, “Not bad, now get out of here you little shit, you’re on your own now,”⁴² which amounted to graduation from the School of Velzy.

The Pacific Systems board was Jerry Cunningham‘s, a lifeguard at Manhattan Beach and a member of the club. “I shortened my board,” Cunningham wrote, “and tried to improve its shape, but wasn’t too successful. Simmons boards were becoming the rage around 1951 and all balsa boards started to appear. Dale Velzy opened his first surfboard shop, as I remember, in a small building on the north side of Center Street (the pier street) at the alley, just up the hill from the pier. Greg Noll, who was probably just starting high school at the time, worked for Velzy in his shop.

“So -- I took my board, which had redwood rails, balsa center with a 3/4” redwood stringer down the center, to Velzy, and asked him to saw off the rails, laminate on balsa, reshape it into a ‘new’ board and glass it. When I got it back, it was 9’3” long (it was 12’6” when I bought it!) and had a great (for the time) shape.

“Dale told me that he let Greg Noll shape my board (under his watchful eye), and I remember that this was the first board that Greg had completely shaped.

“I surfed the board until November 1952 when I went into Navy Flight Training. I got my wings in April 1954, and was assigned to a squadron based at Barber’s Point, Oahu. It couldn’t have been better. The Navy shipped my board over as ‘household effects’ and I surfed with it at Waikiki (where the gals were), Makaha and Sunset Beach!”⁴³

“The board came home with me (and my new wife),” Jerry Cunningham added, “in November 1956. I went back to work on the beach, back to college and I surfed it occasionally for the next few years. Finally, the board went up in my garage for retirement.”⁴⁴ It was there that sufboard collector Griff Snyder found it in 1991 and later reunited it with Greg Noll in the mid-1990s.⁴⁵

“That was the last board I ever shaped for Velzy,” Noll recalled in his autobiography. “Time to wean the gremmie.

“Two months later, I was doing reshapes, and not long after that, I was shaping new boards under my own name. Velzy and I remained good friends all through the years, but I wasn’t his little gremmie any more. I was the competition.”⁴⁶

Velzy, wrote Nat Young, had been “forced to move his shaping trestles,” from the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, “to under the pier when the other members complained about the amount of balsa shavings strewn all over the club room!”⁴⁷ He moved to a commercial structure close to the pier and it was here that Greg Noll did his first reshape. According to Young, Velzy then “moved to Malibu“ where “he wanted to ride better quality waves than his native South Bay could offer, and he wanted to refine his surfboard designs. However, Malibu was still quite isolated and he found there was only a limited market for his labours of love. So Velzy moved back to South Bay, opening a shop in Venice.”⁴⁸

“There weren’t that many people on the coast then who could shape balsa wood,” exlained Noll. “Besides Velzy, there were Bob Simmons, Joe Quigg, Matt Kivlin, Dave Rochlen and Hobie Alter. Hobie was just getting under way at that time. Rochlen, Kivlin and Quigg were the Malibu gang. Their ‘Malibu boards‘ were more maneuverable than anything around and revolutionized board design during that time.

“Most of the boards came out of garage operations... Velzy was really the first that I know of to have a full-on, full-time surf shop.

“Velzy has been from the outhouse to the penthouse,” summed-up Greg Noll. “He’s a living museum piece. He’s still shaping boards on special order and he’s enjoying himself. He’s got his niche in life and he seems satisfied with what he’s doing. Some guys get to a certain point, a certain age and reach a peaceful thing. I think Velzy is there. The guy is still my hero.”⁴⁹

John Severson at San Clemente

“San Clemente,” recalled John Severson, “was discovered in the late forties by a loose-knit group of guys we called ‘The Pasadena Playboys.’ They surfed San Onofre, played two-man volleyball and threw parties. They came from somewhere beyond Santa Ana. We were suddenly involved in an information blitz, and more importantly, their little sisters.”⁵⁰

John Severson would go on to make a name for himself in the 1950s as a surfer, the early 1960s as a surf filmmaker, and from 1960 on, as the founder and editor of Surfer magazine. But, in the 1940s, he was just growing up in the San Clemente area -- a gremmie.

About his first surfboard, John Severson’s brother Jim remembered: “I bought that board from [Doheny lifeguard Dave] Tansey in 1949 for $15 cash. Once you got it moving, you’d shuffle to the back and stomp on the right corner. After that you’d shuffle to the middle and stand around. Doheny was a long, smooth right-hander and nothing could stop you. After two years and six reshapes (mostly due to water logging), we sacrificed it one night at a keg party in a roaring bonfire. Fittingly at Doheny Beach. Used surfboards were coming down the pike fast and cheap now that the new Malibu Chip was popular. From $10 to $40 you could get a hollowed redwood with plywood deck, redwood-balsa combos and an enormous variety of home-conceived, Popular Mechanics-style ‘surfing boards.’ John bought a 13 foot virtually square plank for $2 and put it up for rent for 50 cents an hour. He didn’t make his money back until he sold it for $3.”⁵¹

“I remember Hal Sachs,” brother John recalled, “Don Small, Roger Moore, Jim and Jack Klein, Grubby Clark, Frank Dowdall, Bud Burrell and others telling us about the real world, surfing, the rules of beach V-ball, and introducing us to the ‘Malibu Chip,’ beer, ‘tough skin’ to cover our fried noses and lips, and don’t forget their sisters.” About The Pasadena Playboys specifically, John Severson said, “They were pretty good role models because they were all college men and dedicated to their educations, as well as their summers.”⁵²

“We went through our cast-off boards in a few years, and by about 1950, had new Malibu’s. This is when we started to regularly surf the pier and T-Street. The earlier boards were too clumsy for the quick pier waves. Lifeguard Hal Sachs was one of the first we saw surf at T-Street and the pier, and that opened our eyes. We joined him, and for a few years were the San Clemente Surfers -- the first locals. It was an afternoon party at the pier, and later, mornings too, when we were lifeguards.”⁵³

“We used that pier,” recalled Vince Nelson. “I remember Jimmy’s duel with the pilings; Don Quixote on a surfboard. Jim reasoned (incorrectly) that you could ride next to the piling, reach out and throw one arm around it while executing a hard turn, and thereby do a 360º ending up in the original direction. It was so bitchin’ watching Jimmy swivel onto the piling and shred down the mussels and barnacles as his board definitely continued its original direction. Never one to give up, Jimmy then reasoned (also incorrectly) that as you rode under the cross member between pilings you should be able to reach up and grab the beam and your momentum would swing you enough to kick up onto the top of the beam. Jim failed to take into consideration that while his fingers were clutching the top of an 18” beam, his forearms would not be free to swing up without breaking. He had the momentum alright! As his forearms hit the bottom of the beam, his fingers left the top and he met his board in the reverse prone position in an ass-busting melee of soup, pilings and Severson.”⁵⁴

“Ohh,” Nelson continued, I “remember Santa Ana conditions with a red tide thrown in. Surfin’ after dark and diving to the bottom, then waving arms and legs creating a phosphorus spectacular. Earl Miller sleeping under the pier with a hammock strung between pilings. Try that nowadays. During one such evening, I slid through the pilings and got out on the North side of the pier. I went up to the lifeguard room and stashed my board, got dressed and ambled back to some south side pandemonium. I asked a guy what was going on and he told me some guy named Vince hit the pier and might have drowned. Everyone was looking for his body. Of course, I caught a ration for that. I’m not sure my return was popular after all the anxiety... like I did it on purpose.”⁵⁵

“You know,” Jim Severson took up where Vince Nelson left off, “at first the south side of the pier was the popular side. Rubes and kooks went to the north side. That changed a few times over the years. In the late forties, Buddy Gable installed a set of rental cabanas, we knew when they were empty and it was party time.

“Wheels became everything as we grew up. Earl Miller had a Model A Coupe with a rumble seat, and 3 or 4 of us could get to San Onofre with some planning. Earl would get in, Bill Taylor in on the other side. I would put boards on both sides of the car in ‘L’ brackets Earl welded on. Then I’d throw my board in the rumble seat and climb in on it. No one could get out until the whole process was reversed. We surfed all year long without wetsuits. You’d just pick up an old wool sweater at the Goodwill for 25¢ and think you were warmer. The kelp was so thick, sailing down a wave the skeg got caught and you’d go flying through the air. But, boy was it glassy. Then the kep cutters came.

“A crowded day at the pier or T-Street was 3 or 4 guys. But with a bigger lifeguard staff and a few more surf-struck kids, it was growing.”⁵⁶

“Capistrano High School served from San Clemente to the hills of what is now Mission Viejo, and to Salt Creek (just hills behind the beach),” remembered John Severson. There were 160 in school when I graduated in ‘51, and just three of us surfed. Vince, my brother Jim and I. Walt and Ted were off in Military Academy, and we missed them. We were definitely oddballs among the cheerleader-jock hierarchy, but we didn’t care. We’d experienced a freedom and were getting pretty addicted to it. You’d talk surfing to other kids in school and no light bulbs flickered. Nothing. So we just stopped talking. Jim and Vince wouldn’t go out for football, so some farm toughs threatened them. ‘O.K.,’ said the surf muscled Jim and Vince, but the enforcers never showed.”⁵⁷

John Severson’s Cinematic Beginnings

“Around ‘46,” John Severson recalled his early interest in photography, “my mom was throwing out a defective Brownie camera, so I grabbed it and started shooting the beach life. Discouraged with the results, I got a better camera, and then around ‘49 or ‘50, I got a Mercury that shot 1/2 frame 35mm. You got 72 transparencies on a 36 exposure roll. It took me a year to shoot a roll. Then in ‘51, a camera shop friend talked me into a Keystone 16mm movie camera for $50. Film was about $10 a roll, so I could only shoot about three a year. I bought some Army surplus black and white, and started building a collection.

“I went straight to the surf with my film career,” Severson said, “and was soon known as the ‘Sam Katzman‘ of San Clemente. We were stunned when the first roll of us surfing the pier flickered onto the silver screen.”⁵⁸

“We had our apartment across from the City Hall,” Vince Nelson recalled. “Upstairs with a garage that opened onto De La Estrella street. That was where John’s cinematic career was born. I had been part of a lifeguard rescue of a prominent S.C. attorney’s wife, and in appreciation he left a case of beer on our doorstep once a week (got to remember to check that doorstep). As things happen in a small town, word got around and the lifeguards and some other locals showed up and hooted and enjoyed the show. We just ran that first reel over and over. John’s fertile mind saw the opportunity to pay for the film and so he said, ‘Hey, let’s charge two bits [25¢] a head and throw in a beer.’ Well, crowds grew as the word spread, and we’d take up a collection for more beer and run a double feature. Maybe it was our hunger to see ourselves on film, or maybe it was the case of free beer that launched John’s career. In any case, a star was born, at least by San Clemente standards.”⁵⁹

Surf, Cars, Parties & Girls

“About this time,” John Severson recalled, “Gordon Clark was raving about a new spot called Trestles, so we started going there. We were already tuned into Cotton’s Point. Barney Wilkes had pioneered Cotton’s, with an open-door policy provided by Lucy Cotton who had a mad crush on Barney. It was like the ‘Wiamea Bay’ of our area. The world, as far as we knew. We hadn’t heard of Hawaii’s big surf yet. One of my first waves at Cotton’s, taking all the courage I could muster, was in front of some blond Malibu hulk (I never saw him coming). ‘Don’t ever take off in front of me kid!’ Slinking back out to the lineup, a friend told me, ‘That’s Tommy Zahn.’ I had snaked a god. There was a sorry ending to that easy access when a bunch of South Bay gremmies trashed the Cotton’s grounds after a surf, and easy access was over.

“This was around ‘50, when the car opened up a whole new world of surf. Simultaneously, ‘Nofre and Doheny were passe, considered ‘arm-chair’ surfing. I was surfing Brook’s Street in Laguna, Salt Creek, Dana Point, Cotton’s and Trestles. And, of course, the pier and T-Street.”⁶⁰

“Now it was us,” Vince Nelson said, “hauling pitiful slobbering gremmies to the killer surf. I remember taking three S.C. yokels to Cotton’s when the surf was 8’ to 10’. As usual, it didn’t look too big from the beach. After ten minutes of paddling, we were scratching to beat an outside set, when behind me I heard panting, wheezing and sobbing. ‘Oh God, don’t let it break... please don’t let it...’

“‘SHUT UP AND PADDLE,’ I yelled. Out in the lineup I looked back. Nobody. Two Dicks and a Chuck retired from surfing that day. Chuck had a sister, but I digress.”⁶¹

“Don’t forget that with cars came girls, and beach parties,” Jim Severson reminded. “Typical beach party: six or seven guys with ukes, a few cases of beer and lots of girls. There were always new girls because of the fabulous State Park system. Two week limited stays forced turnover and a fresh supply, and every other camper had a teenage daughter or two. Vince would go to Santa Ana and bring back horse meat steaks, the size of spare tires. The fires, singing and smooching seemed non-stop.”⁶²

A favorite campsite song of the Severson’s and friends:

“Sing Glorious, Glorious,

one keg of beer for the four of us.

Sing glory be to God that

there are no more of us,

For one od us could drink it all alone.

DAMN NEAR!”⁶³

“There was this stiff, classical two-guitar guy living with Ted and Nancy Newland,” recalled Vince Nelson. “They asked us to loosen him up. By the end of the summer, he was mixing kickapoo juice in the bathtub with both strummers.”⁶⁴

“‘Hey you guys! Here comes the train!’ This plaintive cry was voiced by a party who shall remain nameless, except that his father owned Russell’s Stationary. The signal had been sounded for the male members of the beach party at T-Street to run for the overpass and pee on the train as it passed below us. What bitchin’ things fertile minds can devise... the image of ten or twelve streams has got me. I can’t go on.”⁶⁵

“I really feel fortunate to have done what we did,” Jim Severson appreciated. “A lot of people say they would never want to go through their teenage years again. I’d live those years again and again. It was such a quality time.”⁶⁶

“Time has this strange duality to it,” John Severson retrospected. “It seems slow while it’s happening, but whoosh -- there went 20, 40, 50 years! They say you’re made up of what you remember. I sure remember those kids days in pristine San Clemente. It was like an Edward Hopper painting, pure white houses with red tile roofs framed by vivid blues of the ocean and sky, all tucked in the greens and browns of palms and rolling hills. The skies were clear except for the traditional spring and summer overcast.”⁶⁷

“Then one fall,” continued John Severson, “a light Santa Ana was a little brownish, kind of smokey. What they hell is this? Then they slammed a freeway right through the middle of town, and the people came. They built on our trails and tried to modernize little San Clemente. Every time I go back through, I can still find traces of our past, and still feel the spirit of that great little town. And I’ll never forget that easy life”⁶⁸

O`ahu -- Town & Country, 1950

Back in the Hawaiian Islands -- which was still a territory of the U.S. at this time -- Walter Hoffman recalled his fourth summer on the South Shore of O`ahu.⁶⁹ “Our living quarters, Summer 1950,” amounted to “a $25 a month basement and backyard garden area where we kept our boards.”⁷⁰ In a photograph of that backyard, one can see a variety of surfing equipment of the period like: balsa/redwood planks, a kook box, small plywood paipo board with fin, and Malibu Chips. Summer 1950, the Malibu chips, “were just beginning to arrive in the islands in the hands of guys like Zahn, Quigg, Kivlin and Rochlen who would bring them over and sell them when they left.”⁷¹

Walter Hoffman had begun surfing on the mainland, at San Onofre, in 1945. “I saw it in National Geographic, or... I saw people surfing and I had to try it,” Hoffman said, not recalling which, exactly. He and his brother Flippy attended Hollywood High school and usually surfed Malibu.⁷² They often surfed with the actor Richard Jackel, one of many Hollywood personalities to surf well and frequently in the Malibu area during the 1940s and ‘50s. “... on the beach Dick was just one of the guys,” Walter attested. Remarking about a memorable dive on July 4, 1949, at the Hoffman beach house at Cresent Cove, North Laguna, Walter said: “We were diving for abs and selling them for 25 cents on the beach that summer. Dick came down to join us for the holiday and the first time he ever went spear fishing he got this 40 pound white sea bass. Incredible!”⁷³

On O`ahu, in and around the year 1950, the core surfing scene quickly developed into a bi-polar “town and country” surf culture. The town culture wa based at the Waikiki Surf Club and Tavern in the summertime. In the wintertime, the focus switched to the country culure headquartered on was the West Side, at Makaha.

“The period is primal to the contemporary roots of our lifestyle and sport,” wrote publisher Steve Pezman in his Surfer’s Journal, “both on land and in the water. From the cool surf trunks they had custom made at small shops like Lynn’s in Waikiki and M. Nii Taylors in Waianae, to the first Makaha guns that evolved from the Kivlin and Quigg balsa chip boards that they brought with them from Malibu and cross pollinated with the hot-curls of island watermen/craftsmen George Downing, Wally Froiseth and Woody Brown.”⁷⁴ Legendary Surfer, inventor of the hollow board and skeg, Tom Blake was still around, even. In what was probably his last visit to the islands, he was living on a small boat in the Ala Wai Basin.⁷⁵

In notations Walter Hoffman made for a reprint of some of the photographs he took of the big surf summers of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, he recalled, “When I first got to the islands [1948] I heard about Makaha. So I started going out there in the winter [1949-50] and found out that, shit man, the place got really big. Dave Mojas and myself were the first two California guys really actively surfing it three to four times a week for the entire winter. That was the year I took movies (which I still have). I also sent still pictures to Flippy (brother Phillip) and Buzzy [Trent] telling them to get over here -- it’s bitchin, and Burrhead saw those and all those guys came the next year for the winter, and we camped on the beach at Makaha. From then on for the next few years we would rent houses near Makaha for the winter and in Waikiki during the summertime.”⁷⁶

“After spending a couple of summers in Waikiki,” reiterated Hoffman, “I went out to Makaha one early winter day, it was four foot and a lot of fun, so I kept coming back. I talked my friends from town into joining me and we’d go out there and camp on the beach. I talked a lot of guys into going out there and surfing with me. We could leave our boards and stuff right there on the beach for days and no one would mess with it or take anything. Buffalo, Henry Preece and Homer would come out from Waianae and surf with us and drink beer in the afternoons after work.”⁷⁷

O`ahu, 1951

By 1951, the Korean War had gone from bad to worse. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur disagreed with U.S. President Harry Truman on conduct of a “limited war“ and was summarily dismissed. Nevertheless, he returned home a hero for his outstanding military service which had spanned the period from World War I in the late 1910s to the Korean War at the beginning of the 1950s. That year also, both Carl Sandburg‘s and Robert Frost‘s Complete Poems were published, as was J.D. Salinger‘s The Catcher in the Rye, James Jones‘ From Here to Eternity and the first popular book on ecology (before hardly anyone knew what the word meant), Rachel Carson‘s The Sea Around Us. The Movie Viva Zapata was released in the United States and popular songs included “Getting to Know You“ and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.”⁷⁸

For surfers, it was a time of board transition from redwood/balsa combinations to fiberglassed balsa. Balsawood’s growing popularity notwithstanding, there was still interest in Hot Curl surfboards. For instance, while in Waikiki in 1951, Dave Rochlen “found an old redwood alaia-shaped surfboard that the Hawaiian children would play with and leave on the beach. [Matt] Kivlin traded some resin to Rochlen for the board and brought it home on the ship with him. He changed the overall deck shape, or template, and added as much V as the thin plank would allow. The original beach boy-type shape was probably made in the 1920s or 1930s and has some interesting butterfly patches. Notch in the nose,” so read a description of Matt Kivlin‘s 1951 Hot Curl surfboard. Made out of solid California redwood. At 9’10” long and 20” wide, the board is currently in the collection of Pete and Cathy Noble of Monterrey, California.⁷⁹

For Kivlin and Rochlen, personally, they were hanging with the babes they would later go on to marry. Matt Kivlin was with his first wife, Diane. Dave Rochlen was still courting “Honey Bear” Warren, daughter of then-Governor of California and future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. At the Waikiki Tavern, they were surrounded by friends Tom Moore and Jerry Lynn and other Californians like Hap Jacobs. Keanuinui Kekai was also around and recognized as one of the leading water women in the Islands. It was she who would later marry Dave Rochlen. Even in the mid-1990s, Keanuinui was still winning canoe races as steerswoman for the Outrigger Canoe Club.⁸⁰

Walter Hoffman would soon go into the military, as the Korean War continued. Before that, though, he continued his partnership with Dave Mojas. “Dave Mojas and me at our house on Kuhio Avenue,” noted Hoffman of a famous photograph of the period. “We finished balsa (the new, light Malibu style chip) boards in our backyard there and sold them for $85-100. The guy that controlled the area where hundreds of balsa life rafts were stored on the base at Pearl Harbor ended up being our friend’s, the Patterson brothers, father. So he’d let us drive in there and we’d slice up the balsa rafts and glue the pieces into blanks and plan shape ‘em right there in the base hobby shop -- then we’d drive out with them on the roof of the car, one or two at a time. We didn’t have to pay for balsa or glue, only the cloth and resin. The guards at the base gate didn’t know, they thought they were our surfboards. We’d take them to the beach out at Diamond Head and finish shaping them with draw knives and saw horses right there on the sand -- the wind blew the chips away. The boards were patterned after Matt Kivlin‘s. We did one a week for two years and lived off it. It was beautiful!”⁸¹

“Me and Mojas rented boards we built or bought cheap when guys left for $1 an hour. A young Hawaiian we called ‘Dingo‘ (Philip) helped us run the rental and lived with us. I believe he’s still on the beach to this day.”⁸²

In addition to Makaha, Walter Hoffman was one of the first coast haoles to later ride Sunset Beach and Laniakea.⁸³

It was, “in the early 50’s ,” wrote Steve Pezman, that “another group of California surfers, including Burrhead and Walter Hoffman, joined with George [Downing] and some of the Waikiki crew in exploring Makaha. The Californians camped on the beach at Makaha and quickly adopted to the island style of living. They were treated to the aloha spirit and were much in awe of their Hawaiian watermen friends and their wonderful islands.

“In turn, the Hawaiian surfers had warm feelings for these few Californians who seemed so eager to learn their ways and who exhibited great skill and courage in the surf. Together they shared profound moments of discovery about what could be done on these majestic waves and how much a man could endure and overcome. They rode together with grace and control in warm violent seas that dwarfed those men but not their spirits.

“These early pioneers who traveled to Hawaii brought back to the mainland certain symbols of the warm aloha of Hawaii. They wore the flowered print silk shirts of the islands, casual, colorful, loose and easy. And the thong slaps. And the classic surfer shorts, cut longer to just above the knee to protect the leg from rubbing on the waxed deck. With a lace closure that could be firmly cinched to keep from being rudely removed by the waves. At Windansea Beach and San Onofre grass shacks were built, not unlike the palapas on the beach at Waikiki.”⁸⁴

By the Winter of 1951, there were numerous Californians camped at Makaha. These included: Glen Fisher, Card, Eli, Buzzy Trent, and Walter and Flippy Hoffman. Their local sponsor was George Downing.⁸⁵

Buzzy Trent 2

One of the guys who responded to Walter Hoffman‘s call to hit the Islands was Buzzy Trent. In high school, Buzzy was “a top sprinter and an all-state football player,” commented Peter Cole.⁸⁶ But, during World War II, Buzzy was just a gremmie under Bob Simmons, often going with Simmons on his surfaris through the southern California coastal zone. It was Buzzy Trent and Kit Horn who introduced Peter and Corny Cole to surfing, at Malibu, in 1944. Both would arrive on the North Shore in the later ‘50s, as big wave riders in their own right.⁸⁷

“He went out Makaha with me,” Woody Brown recalled of Buzzy’s first trip to the islands, in 1951.⁸⁸  
“You know, with Wally and I the first time. He’d never been out at Makaha before. ‘Wow!’ he said and his eyes were big. He asked, ‘We’re going out there?’

“‘Sure, sure!’ So, he was game. We paddled out and, boy, we’re sitting there waiting for the wave and these monstrous swells just go by. But, they weren’t big enough to catch, you know. And Buzzy’s eyes bulged. ‘You mean, we’re gonna catch these?’ I’ll never forget that! ‘You mean, we’re gonna catch these?’ But, he did. He got into it.”

“Buzzy came over from the Mainland and he talked about big waves,” Woody retold the story to Ben Marcus, “and we said, ‘Come with us.’ We went to Makaha and it was a pretty good day, maybe 20 feet. I’ll never forget his expression. Buzzy saw these waves, and all you could see were two big eyes, and he said, ‘You mean we’re going to catch these?’ And we said, ‘Sure, Buzzy. Let’s go!’ But he got into it. He got into the swing.”⁸⁹

Mainland, 1951

In the garages of increasing numbers of home shapers, the corkscrew slivers of redwood and balsa were now being replaced by balsa only. Joe Quigg, who was instrumental in combining balsa with fiberglass and resin to make the new Malibu Chips, continued his shaping development. In 1950, Quigg introduced dramatic changes in board design. At a time when most boards weighed between 35 and 100 pounds, and measured 10 to 12 feet in length, Quigg began building a series of progressively shorter and lighter boards for Malibu area surfers. The lengths of boards seemed to come down month by month. From 9 feet 6 inches to 9 feet to 8 feet and shorter. By March of 1951, Quigg had the Malibu board length all the way down to 7 feet.⁹⁰

Quigg’s boards were the first to have the “complete combination“ of basic features integrated into one board. This combination of elements continues to be the basics of surfboard design to present day, with the exception that balsa has been replaced with foam and single fin design has evolved to tri-fin Thrusters. When Quigg was working out his initial designs in 1951, the specifications and construction included: all light balsa with one layer of 4 ounce glass, low rails, flat bottoms, deeper and thinner fiberglass fins, smooth flowing rail and tail rocker, and a bottom rocker template that can fit many modern boards, today. The 7 foot board weighed 19 pounds. Its elliptical, rounded pintail shape caused some surfers to call these designs “egg boards.” In 1953, young innovative surfers like Mickey Muñoz and Bobby Patterson campaigned the “egg board“ up and down the surfing beaches of Southern California.⁹¹

Muñoz and Patterson were not the only ones riding Malibu boards. Surfing was going through another one of its population explosions as dramatically increasing numbers of young surfers were hitting the waves. Greg Noll, Bing Copeland, Mike Bright, Sonny Vardeman and Steve Voorhees were part of this new influx. “Through most of high school, I was gone surfing anytime I could get a ride with the guys I knew from Redondo High,” remembered Noll. “When we were freshmen at Mira Costa High, Bing [Copeland] and I were the only guys who surfed. As soon as school let out, our buddies from Redondo High would be there with their cars and boards, waiting to pick us up. The guys at our school wondered, ‘What is this surfing deal?’

“By the time we were sophmores, in ‘52, guys like Mike Bright, Sonny Vardeman and Steve Voorhees had come into the surf scene and we started seeing more and more younger guys get interested. The school officials were concerned about the surfing craze. Some of the guys who normally would have been going out for sports were surfing instead. They didn’t care about the letter on the sweater and the squealing girls in the grandstands. I shared their feelings.

“During one of my many trips to the principal’s office, I was asked, ‘What do you guys do down there at the Manhattan Beach Surf Club? What are your goals, what do you want to become?’ I told him that I wanted to surf, I wanted to make surfboards, I wanted to go to Hawaii, I wanted to see the world and have a good time. From the principal’s point of view, that qualified me as most likely to end up a beach bum and never amount to shit.”⁹²

Malibu, 1950-51

Word snapshots of Malibu at the beginning of the 1950s show its development into the mainland’s surfing center, taking up where San Onofre had left off:

April 7, 1950, Joe Quigg and his girlfriend Aggie showed up at Malibu with a skimboard. Quigg had already invented “the first honed, narrowed and templated boards especially designed for stand-up skimming,” wrote surfing historian C.R. Stecyk. “These are no mere belly boards sliding along the sand. Nope. Quigg carves to sand berm cuts, climbs and skids over the incoming tidal surge. Aggie slides a few and wrenches her knee. There is no showing off here or taking of credit. This is just a guy and his girl having fun on a flat day.”⁹³

April 10, 1950 - Dale Velzy established his “Driftwood Emporium,” south of the pier, where he sold driftwood sculptures and, as Stecyk put it, “surfboards to the enlightened.”⁹⁴

May 5, 1950, Joe Quigg returned from a short trip to the islands. Back with Quigg were friends Kivlin and Rochlen. There was a lot of talk about the Hot Curl boards Wally Froiseth and the Makaha crew were riding. Quigg shaped his own 12-foot Hot Curl board as an experiment. The Hot Curl was very different from the Malibu Chips he was then also shaping. “Despite the fact that this board was intended merely as an example,” wrote Stecyk, “it developed quite a mystique. Some [surfers] began sawing off the fins of their Malibu boards as an emulation. Even Bob Cooper got deep into self revelation by spending a considerable amount of time with this Quigg hot curl. Eventually, Phil Edwards would also spend months riding this very board. In later years, Joe will be amazed by the surf publications repeated insistence upon making reference to this hot curl board. He will flatly characterize it as ‘A piece of junk, not at all creative, not at all representative.’ In parting he will add, ‘I wish they would burn it.’”⁹⁵

Malibu Perpetual Surfboard

An earlier Hot Curl experiment had been turned into a trophy labelled the “Malibu Perpetual Surfboard.” This was held by Tommy Zahn for his Malibu contest winnings in 1949 and then Joe Quigg in 1950 & ‘51.⁹⁶

The board was originally shaped by Matt Kivlin, around 1948.⁹⁷ Part of a thousand-year-old redwood tree that was felled in the 1930s, the milled pieces of it became a plank surfboard in the Santa Monica Canyon area. Under the influence of the Hot Curl design, Kivlin reshaped it to the dimensions of 8’8” long, 19” wide in the nose, 24” wide down the front length of it, 20” wide at the mid-point, and between 11” & 12” at the tail. It was 3 1/4” thick.⁹⁸

It was in 1948 that Kivlin and Joe Quigg first started messing around with the Hot Curl approach. This particular Kivlin reshaped plank “was recycled by Kivlin into a replica of Rabbit Kekai‘s Queens board,” wrote Craig Stecyk, in an article about how this board was lost for many years and then refound in the 1990s. “It was a sinker and the boys put it aside and moved on. Later when a trophy was required for the two-mile Big Rock Paddling Race to be held on Sunday, September 11, 1949, the abandoned hot curl project was requisitioned. Quigg carved the inscription and thusly the tree turned product turned surfboard turned hot curl turned into a trophy.”⁹⁹

Stecyk went on to muse that, “In a sense, this wooden vessel is representative of the pre-contact impetus of the ancients as interpreted by Kelly and Heath and advanced by the “empty lot,” Queens, Kuhio Beach and Waikiki Tavern crews merging with the Pacific Coast clan as articulated by Peterson, Harrision, Blake and Simmons and carried out by the Malibu irregulars.

“The fact that the Santa Monica Malibu theorists also interjected fins, fiberglass and balsa into the interaction served as a revolutionary accelerator. Zahn was the individual who got Rochlen, Quigg and Kivlin to come over to Oahu. In a feverish couple of years of innovation and cross-pollination, these were the guys who established the future we all now live in.”¹⁰⁰

September 29, 1950 - “The Malibu group ventures south on its way to a gathering of the tribes at the Windansea luau,” wrote Stecyk. “The light, short, all balsa Malibu boards they are equipped with are a source of interest and oftentimes provocation. At San Onofre, for example Burrhead, Hammerhead and the crew are particularly vocal in their criticism of the ‘potato chip boards.’ They dismiss them as being useless, since they could never ‘trim through the soup.’ The Malibu group, remaining silent, is content to surf aggressively around and through the pocket. On the occasion of the big luau, an event at which almost all of California’s surfing populace is in attendance, the Malibu elders sense vindication is at hand. Vicky Flaxman is taken aside and told that she will become the first [mainland] female to surf outside Windansea. Ms. Flaxman is honored, but somewhat apprehensive and agrees to do it as long as the guys remain outside in the lineup with her. Naturally, they don’t, and Vicky is forced to deal with the ten foot faces by herself. Her first wave results in a hideous wipeout and a long swim. The Hammerhead contingent nod their heads in a knowing manner. On her next wave Flaxman takes off far outside and adroitly maneuvers all the way to the beach, where she gingerly steps off onto the sand. The entire beach crowd breaks into applause upon Vicky’s dismount. History had been made, and a point had been proven.”¹⁰¹

Velzy Invents the Hang Ten

One day at Manhattan Beach, “Dale Velzy walked up to the front of his board,” told Bev Morgan to Dewey Schurman. “It was a big Simmons spoon board, and he figured it would support him. So here’s this guy standing within a foot of the nose of his 10-foot board, going across the wave. We couldn’t believe it. This was 1951. Previous to this, you stood a third of the way from the tail. You’d trim up and get on an angle, but there was no running around. If you were really fancy, you’d dip a foot in the water to turn. So here’s Velzy, walking about 6 feet from where you usually stood, right up to the nose. And he went back out and did it again. Then he did this amazing thing. He walked up and put five toes over the nose of the board. And by the end of the day, he was putting all of his toes over the end of the board and standing right on the tip. And that was the start of hanging 10.”¹⁰²

Greg Noll & the Redwood to Balsa Transition

“I learned about shaping balsa wood by watching Velzy at his shop by the Manhattan Beach Pier,” wrote Greg Noll. “Later, when I was fourteen, I teamed up with Mike Bright. He was from Hermosa Beach. We called him Bones because of his bony physique. Bones was a hell of an athlete... Bones and I got a little business going, reshaping balsa boards. Bones had, or thought he had, a little experience in glassing boards. Just like I thought I had experience in shaping them. Guys who were unhappy with their boards would bring them to us. We’d strip them down, I’d reshape them and Mike would fiberglass them. We made some real beauties.

“Except for one particular board. We set it up in Bones’ backyard on a couple of sawhorses. We stripped it down and reshaped it, then Bones started laying on the fiberglass and resin. He accidentally kicked the sawhorse leg and the board fell off into the sand. He tried to brush the sand off, but, of course, it was stuck in the resin. Finally, Bones just stood up and said, ‘Well, you won’t ever have to wax this board. It has built-in traction.’

“The type of fiberglass first used on surfboards required sun-curing. The catalyst then used was activated by the sun. You’d get weird results, like only half the board would set up. You’d finish glassing a board and the sun would go behind a cloud, slimming your chances of getting an even cure. We had to work with stuff like this for a couple of years before any advancements in fiberglass, resins or catalysts occurred.”¹⁰³

“What really was important about the transition from redwood to balsa,” Greg Noll said, getting to the heart of the matter, “was that it caused all hell to break loose. Now surfing styles began to evolve along with equipment changes. Suddenly there was a board you could actually surf. You didn’t have to spend all your time trying to keep the board from pearling and picking sand crabs out of your ears. And, it didn’t take you all summer to learn to catch a wave. The balsa board allowed more people to get into surfing. To really appreciate the evolution of the modern surfboard, every surfer today ought to take out a redwood board and try to catch a wave on the goddamn thing.”¹⁰⁴

Even so, Noll rode these things well. “... I can remember a time,” Ricky Grigg attested, “when no one turned faster than Greg Noll. He took on a different style when he ran into big waves. That’s when he got the name Da Bull. He’d sit out there like an immovable object. But when he was fourteen or fifteen years old, he was the best hotdogger on the California Coast.”¹⁰⁵

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

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¹  Grun, Bernard. The Timetables of History,” Simon and Schuster/Touchstone, New York, N.Y., ©1991, pp. 530-531.

²  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 18 April 2016.

³  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 27 December 2016.

⁴  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 29 December 2016.

⁵  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 29 December 2016.

⁶  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 27 December 2016. Dale Velzy quoted from memory.

⁷  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 14 July 2016. The 1948 was to be published in REEF magazine, date unknown.

⁸  Elwell email to Malcolm, 18 April 2016.

⁹  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 30 December 2016.

¹⁰  Elwell, John. Email to Malcolm, 30 December 2016.

^{11  Elwell, 1994, p. 45.}

¹²  1947 is the date given by Joe Quigg in the Lynch bio in Longboard magazine, but Elwell, Stecyk and Young have it in 1950. It makes sense that it was 1950, as that was the year of the break-up of the Simmons/Quigg/Kivlin collaboration.

¹³  Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.

¹⁴  Browne, Bud. Gung Ho! ©1963. Peter Cole says to Buzzy, “Buzzy, you came over 11 years ago...” Assuming Bud shot the footage in 1961 or ‘62.

¹⁵  Noll, 1989, pp. 20-21. Ricky Grigg quoted.

¹⁶   Dixon, Peter. “The Complete Surfing Icon,” Longboard, Volume 2, Number 5, February/March 1995, pp. 70-71.

¹⁷   Noll, 1989, pp. 33-34. Sonny Vardeman quoted.

¹⁸   Noll, 1989, pp. 12-13.

¹⁹   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996.

²⁰   Noll, 1989, pp. 13-16.

²¹   Noll, 1989, p. 22. Mike Stange quoted.

²²   Noll, 1989, pp. 16-17.

²³   Surfer magazine, “Greg Noll’s Revenge,” told by Bev Morgan to Dewey Schurman, October 1993, p. 61. See classic Zapata mustache photo of Noll circa mid-1950s.

²⁴   Surfer magazine, “Greg Noll’s Revenge,” told by Bev Morgan to Dewey Schurman, October 1993, p. 61.

²⁵   Noll, 1989, pp. 33-34. Sonny Vardeman quoted.

²⁶   Noll, 1989, pp. 33-34. Sonny Vardeman quoted.

²⁷   Noll, 1989, pp. 16-17.

²⁸   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996. Letter from Jerry Cunningham to “Griff,” December 10, 1991.

²⁹   Noll, 1989, pp. 16-17.

³⁰   Noll, 1989, pp. 93-95.

³¹   Noll, 1989, pp. 18-20.

³²   Stecyk, Craig. The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3, 1992, p. 38.

³³   Stecyk, Craig. The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3, 1992, p. 40.

³⁴   Noll, 1989, pp. 20-27.

³⁵   Noll, 1989, pp. 29-30.

³⁶   Stecyk, “Tales of the Hawk,” p. 40. Bev Morgan quoted; Velzy, also.

³⁷   Stecyk, “Humaliwu,” 1992, p. 59. See classic photo.

³⁸   Noll, 1989, pp. 29-30.

³⁹   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996. Greg Noll quoted.

⁴⁰   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996. Greg Noll quoted.

⁴¹   Noll, 1989, pp. 29-30.

⁴²   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996.

⁴³   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996. Jerry Cunningham, letter to surfboard collector Griff Snyder, December 10, 1991.

⁴⁴   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996. Jerry Cunningham, letter to surfboard collector Griff Snyder, December 10, 1991.

⁴⁵   Stecyk, Craig. “The Bait Boy’s First Board,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1996. Jerry Cunningham, letter to surfboard collector Griff Snyder, December 10, 1991.

⁴⁶   Noll, 1989, pp. 29-30.

⁴⁷   Young, Nat. The History of Surfing, Palm Beach Press, NSW, Australia, ©1983, 1987, p. 73. He has it as the Hermosa Surf Club.

⁴⁸   Young, 1983, pp. 72-73. Young gave 1948 as the date Velzy left Manhattan Beach, but this is obviously way off. The Manhattan Beach Surf Club probably got going around 1947-48 and Velzy probably got his first shop together at the beginning 1950s. He went into partnership with Jacobs in 1953.

⁴⁹   Noll, 1989. pp. 29-30.

⁵⁰   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” A recollection of growing up in the late forties and early fifties by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, pp. 97-98. John Severson. See also their recollections in Gault-Williams, “The Late 1940s.”

⁵¹   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 97. Jim Severson.

⁵²   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 98. John Severson.

⁵³   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 98. John Severson.

⁵⁴   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, pp. 98-99. Vince Nelson.

⁵⁵   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 99. Vince Nelson.

⁵⁶   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 99. Jim Severson.

⁵⁷   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 99. John Severson.

⁵⁸   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, pp. 99-100. Jim Severson.

⁵⁹   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 100. Vince Nelson.

⁶⁰   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, pp. 100-101. John Severson.

⁶¹   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. Vince Nelson.

⁶²   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. Jim Severson.

⁶³   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. Jim Severson.

⁶⁴   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. Vince Nelson.

⁶⁵   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. Vince Nelson.

⁶⁶   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. Jim Severson.

⁶⁷   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. John Severson.

⁶⁸   The Surfer’s Journal, “Sentimental Journey,” by the “San Clemente Surfers,” Jim and John Severson and Vince Nelson, Volume 4, Number 3, ©Fall 1995, p. 101. John Severson.

⁶⁹   Surfing, “Saturday Night Fever,” Volume 31, Number 11, November 1995. 6th Annual Waterman’s Ball honoring of Walter Hoffman.

⁷⁰   Hoffman, Walter. “Tales of Town and Country,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 2, Number 2, Summer 1993, p. 83. See photograph on same page.

⁷¹   Hoffman, 1993, p. 83.

⁷²   Surfing, “Saturday Night Fever,” Volume 31, Number 11, November 1995. 6th Annual Waterman’s Ball honoring of Walter Hoffman.

⁷³   Hoffman, 1993, p. 81. See photos of Walter Hoffman and Richard Jackel and one of Dick Jackel holding up his 40-pound white sea bass..

⁷⁴   Hoffman, 1993, p. 79. Pezman’s intro.

⁷⁵   Hoffman, 1993, p. 86. See photo. No date.

⁷⁶   Hoffman, 1993, p. 79.

⁷⁷   Hoffman, p. 90. See photos on pages 90 and 91. Preece incorrectly spelled “Priest.”

⁷⁸   Grun, pp. 532-533.

⁷⁹   Santa Monica Heritage Museum, “Cowabunga!” exhibit, February 1994.

⁸⁰   Hoffman, 1993, p. 89. See photos on p. 88 & 89.

⁸¹   Hoffman, 1993, p. 83. See photos on same page.

⁸²   Hoffman, 1993, p. 84. See photo, on the same page, of Hoffman and Mojas with rental of “light Malibu surfboards.”

⁸³   Surfing, “Saturday Night Fever,” Volume 31, Number 11, November 1995. 6th Annual Waterman’s Ball honoring of Walter Hoffman.

⁸⁴   Pezman, Steve. “Surfer Style,” special edition of Surfer magazine, 1983. Quoted in Lueras, 1984, pp. 117-118.

⁸⁵   Hoffman, 1993, p. 90. See photos on pages 90 & 91.”

⁸⁶   Browne, Surfing The 50’s, ©1994. Peter Cole.

⁸⁷   Browne, Surfing The 50’s, ©1994. Peter Cole.

⁸⁸   Browne, Gung Ho! ©1963. Peter Cole. reference.

⁸⁹   Marcus, Ben. “Woody Brown: ‘I’d Rather Eat Life,” Surfer, Volume 34, Number 11, November 1993, p. 99. In Bud Browne’s Surfing The 50’s, Peter Cole said that, “Buzzy came over to join Walter and Flippy Hoffman in 1952.”.

⁹⁰   Lynch, Gary. “Joe Quigg and the Shape of Things to Come,” Longboard (formerly The Longboard Quarterly), Volume 2, Number 5, February/March 1995, p. 32.

⁹¹   Lynch, 1995, p. 32.

⁹²   Noll, 1989, pp. 31-32.

⁹³   Stecyk, “Humaliwu,” 1992, p. 57.

⁹⁴   Stecyk, “Humaliwu,” 1992.

⁹⁵   Stecyk, “Humaliwu,” 1992, p. 50.

⁹⁶   Stecyk, Craig. “Perpetual Musings,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1996.

⁹⁷   Stecyk, Craig. “Perpetual Musings,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1996.

⁹⁸   Stecyk, Craig. “Perpetual Musings,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1996.

⁹⁹   Stecyk, Craig. “Perpetual Musings,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1996.

¹⁰⁰   Stecyk, Craig. “Perpetual Musings,” The Surfer’s Journal, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1996.

¹⁰¹   Stecyk, “Humaliwu,” 1992, p. 60.

¹⁰²   Surfer, “The Birth of Nose-Riding,” told by Bev Morgan to Dewey Schurman, October 1993, p. 59

¹⁰³   Noll, 1989, pp. 31-32.

¹⁰⁴   Noll, 1989, p. 96.

¹⁰⁵   Noll, 1989, pp. 20-21. Ricky Grigg quoted.