Sunday, May 23, 2021

Dewey Weber (1938-1993)

Aloha and Welcome to the LEGENDARY SURFERS chapter on Dewey Weber, put together by Malcolm Gault-Williams in the late 1990s.

Dewey Weber - Photo by Leroy Grannis

Appreciations go out to Jeff Duclos whose excellent and insightful biographical sketch of Dewey, published in Longboard, Volume 4, Number 4, September/October 1996, is quoted throughout. Jeff’s article on Dewey was particularly brave, as he included the uncomfortable subjects of Dewey’s takeover of the Velzy Shop and his later alcoholism.

Dewey Weber was born David Earl Weber on August 18, 1938 in Denver, Colorado. He went on to become one of the greats in surfing in the 1950s and a great in the surfboard manufacturing world in the 1960s. His stardom, however, began at an early age. When Dewey was 8 years-old, his mother took him to an audition where he won a part as "Buster Brown," the fantasy boy who lived in a shoe with his dog Tide. Dewey did in-store promotions as Buster Brown and by the age of 14 was a three-time National Duncan Yo-Yo Champion, appearing on the national television show "You Bet Your Life," hosted by Groucho Marx. In high school, he was a three-time CIF westling champion and an All-State performer at El Camino College.¹

The only child of a German working class family, Dewey was exposed to water at an early age through his babysitter. His father, Earl, was a truck driver and his mother, Gladys, worked at Denver's Nabisco cracker factory. At age 3, he had a babysitter who was also a lifeguard at a nearby municipal pool.²

"My early memories," Dewey recalled once, "are of being at the pool almost all of the summer. By the time I was four, I could swim twice the length of the pool underwater. It came very natural to me for some reason."³ Whether it helped or not, Dewey had two webbed toes on each foot, a family trait passed on to every other generation on his mother's side.⁴

Manahattan Beach Surf Club, 1943-1948

The Webers relocated to Manhattan Beach during the war, in 1943.⁵ Dewey immediately adapted to the new surroundings:

"I spent my summers playing in the surf in the morning. The neighbor ladies had this little clique and every day they'd go down and fish off the pier. So, in the afternoon, I'd fish off the pier with my mom."⁶

It was while he was up top, on the pier, that he began to notice what was going on in the surf off the beach. In 1946, surfers at Manhattan Beach amounted to the Manhattan Beach Surf Club whose members included Bev Morgan, Dale Velzy, Bob Hogan, George Kapu, Larry Felker, Jack Wise and Barney Biggs. The Father of the Modern Surfboard, Bob Simmons would occasionally drive down from Santa Monica to surf the pier and play ping pong with some of the guys. "I'd sit with my feet hanging over the end of the pier and watch them for hours," Dewey told one biographer.⁷

Watching from above, Dewey watched Velzy, Hogan and the rest of the surf club work with drawknives on redwood and redwood/balsa boards underneath the pier. "The reason they were a formal club," Dewey recalled, "was so they could get the city to give them permission to build a clubhouse under the pier's bathhouse, among the pilings." They pulled it off and, at one point, the knotty pine clubhouse was about 40 feet long and 15 feet wide. It had a main room and a smaller room where the board lockers and shower were located.⁸

Dewey was first noticed by Barney Biggs in the Summer of 1947. Dewey was nine and still up on the pier. Biggs called him down and asked him if he wanted to surf. "I'll never forget it," Dewey later recalled. "He gave me this old board. The thing was about 11 feet long and weighed about 110 pounds. It had a deep vee, hot curl-style tail and was made of solid pine and redwood."⁹

Getting the board to the water was an accomplishment, itself, for a 9 year-old. Paddling out through the white water was even worse. "I thought," Dewey remembered, "'I'm never going to do this.' And I almost never did. It took me two years before I ever rode a wave."¹⁰

First Board

Thanks to the ground breaking efforts of Bob Simmons and then Joe Quigg in lightening surfboard weight, the balsa board era started to kick in at the very beginning of the 1950s. It was at this point that Dewey's dad realized his son was serious about surfing and agreed to loan him the money to get a board of his own. Dewey bought a used board from Bev Morgan for $35. It was a board Morgan, himself, had built, patterned after a Simmons prototype of the day. It had a big, round spoon nose to release water and discourage pearling. The tail was wide and concave, with two small skegs on each side. At 8 feet long, "Bev didn't like it," Dewey said, "because it was too short."¹¹

"The first day I surfed Malibu I was 11 years old," recalled Dewey Weber to Dewey Shurman. "Billy Ming, a very historical guy in surfing who has gotten very little publicity, loaded me up in his '34 Ford pickup and took me to Malibu. We surfed, and then he got me a poor boy sandwich and said, 'You call this a poor boy.' And he handed me a bottle of Coors and said, 'That's a surfer's beer, and you may have half that beer.' And, Christ, that really lit my life on fire."¹²

South Bay Surf Clubs

"We had a really good group of surfers back then in the South Bay," Dewey said with some pride. "We were the gremmies and we eventually started our own clubs to get away from all the old men, because they used to terrorize us. A lot of those older guys were really radical. It got to the point that they were beating up Greg Noll every day. He was just a skinny kid then."¹³

Bing Copeland, who was another gremmie who would go on to make a name for himself as a surfboard manufacturer, remembers their treatment somewhat differently. "They pushed us around a lot," Bing conceded, "but they didn't beat us up."¹⁴

Greg Noll, another gremmie, also does not mention any beatings. In his case, particularly, it was sometimes the case of "the mascot terrorizing the master."¹⁵ Bing went on to tell about Noll coming to the beach with a little electric motor that made an annoying noise. As bait boy at the pier, Greg would arrive around daybreak to find some of the members of the Manhattan Beach Surf Club sprawled on the beach, passed out from partying the night before. Noll would sneak up on them and hold the buzzing motor close to their ears.

"They'd chase him around," Bing went on, "rub his head in the sand, that kind of stuff. But they were radical. They were the first to grow long hair and not wear shoes..."¹⁶

Unlike groups like the Palos Verdes Surf Club, the Manhattan Beach crew had no club jacket. Instead, they had the leather thong.

"The guys that belonged to it," Dewey said of the Manhattan Beach Surf Club, "wore a leather thong around their left ankle, tied with a square knot. Anybody caught wearing a leather band around their ankle who was not in the club, got it. And I mean got it. This one kid had tried to join the club, but they wouldn't let him in. They caught him wearing a thong on his ankle. They stripped him down naked and tied him to a stop sign on a Sunday afternoon."¹⁷

By the time Dale Velzy opened his surfboard shop on Ocean Avenue and Manhattan Beach Boulevard in 1953, a number of younger South Bay clubs had formed. Two of them were:

• 17th Street Gang -- the "Hermosa Beach Seals" included Sonny Vardeman, Mike Bright, Steve Voorhees, Chip Post, Jeff White and Jim Lindsay [Greg Noll and Bing Copeland had made it into the Manhattan Beach Surf Club].¹⁸

• 1st Street Gang -- included Dewey, Bibby Gibson, Richard Deese, Barry and Gary Stever, Wayne Coker, Roy Bream and Lum Edwards.¹⁹

Little remains of South Bay's Hotdog Years. A parking lot now sits where LuLu's White Stop Cafe once stood. Located a half-block down from the Velzy shop, Dale and others used to hang out there, eat bear claws, drink coffee, talk surf. Across the street was Oscar's Fish & Tackle Shop, leveled years ago to make way for another parking lot. Long gone are the old Manhattan Beach pier, bathhouse and the surfer's clubhouse. "The only thing that's there," Bing said in an interview in 1982, "is the fire hydrant that sits in front of where Velzy's shop was. I remember sitting out there and tapping out a ring from a silver dollar. I still have it."²⁰

Early Surf, circa 1953

Dale Velzy, a fine surfer in his own right, had both an eye for talent and a flair for salesmanship. The first board shaper to both advertise and sponsor surfers by providing them surfboards, Velzy noticed Dewey Weber and brought him into the fold early on. His first board for Dewey was a candy-apple red board to match the surf trunks Dewey's mother had made for him. While red would go on to become Dewey's trademark color, the Velzy board took his surfing to a higher level.²¹

Around the age of 15, Weber benefitted by the mobility of some of the older surfers around him. Dewey's earliest memory of a riding the nose was on a trip to Palos Verdes Cove with Billy Ming.

"It was a really good surf day -- about six or seven feet," Dewey remembered. "The offshore wind was blowing hard and the waves were difficult to catch. When you'd paddle in and get to your feet, you had to be way up forward to drop in. I'd get up on the nose to drop in and make the thing get going. It was super exciting to me, because it was a whole new thing -- to see how long you could stay there without pearling."²²

With Ming in his canary yellow Model-T truck, Dewey branched out to surf spots like San Onofre, Trestles and Malibu. In the process, other surfers noticed him. While his contemporaries included Mickey Dora (4 years his senior), Dewey remembered mostly the talk about Phil Edwards (one year his junior), down in Oceanside.²³

"We were aware of each other," he said in an interview in 1982. "People kept telling me to watch out for this guy down south. 'He wears Levi's and ties them with a rope around his waist,' they'd say. 'They call him the Guayule Kid after this place he surfs in Carlsbad.' And they'd tell him to watch out for this guy Dewey. 'He's this real short guy with blond hair and he's real husky.'"²⁴

Both Dewey Weber and Phil Edwards met one day, at Trestles, while Weber was on another surf surfari with Ming. There was what Dewey referred to as a crowd, that day -- four or five guys out. One of them was Edwards and Dewey remembers they spent the day trying to top each other in moves. Edwards, interviewed in 1982, didn't recall the session.²⁵

High School Rule, 1954-56

In 1954, when Dewey was a sophomore in high school, he got his first car -- a 1940 Ford sedan.²⁶ Mobility at his own command broadened his surfing canvas:

"I used to ditch school and run off to Malibu in May and June," Dewey remebered. "There'd be perfect six-foot swells and beautiful weather. I'd have to roust Tubesteak out of his shack so I'd have someone to surf with."²⁷

"Everybody from up and down the coast would come there: the legends. The kahunas. The heroes," remembered Tubesteak, who became one of Dewey's lifelong friends. "They'd get out of their cars, step to the curb, and walk down to the beach. But they'd have their noses up in the air. Like, 'Here I am, the boy wonder from Swami's.' 'Here I am, the boy wonder from Trestles.'" Not so with Dewey. "He would always stop and talk with us -- if only to find out what the latest rumors were. He took the time."²⁸

In his high school years, Dewey ruled the roost at Mira Costa High. "We had a group at school that was mostly surfers and we ran the place," Dewey recalled. "The other group was the lowriders. Both groups were very close. They rode their motorcycles and hopped up their cars and we surfed. We came together against all the football players. It worked out great."²⁹

Like the lowriders, the Mira Costa High surfers had their own dress code: white J.C. Penney t-shirts, v-neck sweaters, white belts and black corduroy pants, angora socks and black and white buck shoes. Remember, this was the mid '50s.³⁰

Unlike many surfers, Dewey went in for a number of extra-curricular school activities including wrestling and springboard diving. Freshman year, he had even tried his hand at quarterbacking. "I was really good at it," Dewey said of his handling of the football. "I just couldn't see over the line." At 5 feet, 3 inches tall and 130 pounds, Dewey did better with wrestling and received a varsity letter in the sport his freshman year. "It was classic," he described. "I had this letterman sweater down to my knees and a varsity letter, while a lot of these big football players had taken four years to letter. I took a lot of heat over that one."³¹

Hawaii, 1956-58

Dewey Weber graduated from Mira Costa High in 1956. That summer, he started wowing people onshore with his showmanship. He was riding a Velzy 7'4" at the time.³² Dewey's main focus, though, was getting to Hawai`i. He worked as a lifeguard at Hermosa's old Biltmore Hotel, saving his money for his first trip to the Islands.³³ "Mike Bright had come back and told us about this place called Makaha," Dewey recalled. "So, we went. There were 14 of us living in a two-room Quonset hut at the south end of the bay near Klausmeyers. Boy, I tell ya, that was a blast. We had one car for 14 guys and one ice box -- with little sections taped off inside for each guy. Buzzy Trent and Buffalo Keaulana took me under their wing, adopted me, more or less, and taught me how to spear fish and how to free dive. I'd dive every day, bring in a stringer of fish and trade those guys fish for eggs, butterscotch pudding, my share of the gasoline, my share of the rent." With Dewey that year were Gibby Gibson, Richard Deese, Gene Sedillo, Buddy Dobbs, Lum Edwards, Steve Smith and Bummy Kennedy.³⁴

"For Hawaii," Dewey told an interviewer, "I brought a really hot, light-weight, single bottom, double deck-glassed balsa wood board. It weighed about 20 pounds. It was real wide and had a big, deep fin. It was one of the best boards I ever owned. The thing just ripped and Makaha was the perfect wave for it."³⁵

But Weber's "flashy botdogging"³⁶ style was the direct opposite of the style then ruling at Makaha. "You were supposed to stand erect and as still as possible," Dewey recalled. "It was considered dynamic." Dewey described how he would maneuver around Makaha surfers like they were slalom gates -- dropping deep in the trough in front of them, cutting behind them and kicking out over the top.³⁷ He later summarized his approach in an interview with an East Coast journalist by saying: "It's a great thrill to toy with nature. To do things out on the waves you know you shouldn't do."³⁸

Predictably, Dewey Weber ruffled the feathers of more than one Hawaiian local. If it hadn't been for the protection of Buffalo Keaulana and Buzzy Trent, he would have been pounded on more than once.³⁹

But, Dewey's surfing style was being noticed in favorable ways, too. "People stood on the beach and pointed," he recalled. "You could see them pointing at you."⁴⁰

Dewey's first visit to the Islands is somewhat chronicled in Bud Browne's 1957 release, The Big Surf. From the film, a classic shot of Dewey surfing Makaha later became the symbol of the United States Surfing Association (USSA).⁴¹

Next year, around the time Greg Noll, Mike Stange, Mickey Muñoz, Bing Copeland, Pat Curren, Del Cannon, Bob Bermell and Fred van Dyke broke open Waimea, on November 7, 1957, Dewey began branching over to the North Shore, also. "I remember pulling up to Laniakea. You'd look out there and see these nice little curving lines and it looked great. Everything was so clear and colorful and bright, you'd lose your judgement as far as distance was concerned. You didn't see until you started to get out there that it was a solid 20-foot plus. We did the best we could with the equipment we had. When we got home, we started building guns."⁴²

One memorable day in 1958, "The North Shore was blown out," Dewey recalled. "But then it cleaned up a bit so I went out at Sunset myself. It was 20-foot. I was doing head dips in 20-foot waves, climbing and dropping, cutting back and stuff. By this time, I'd designed a board on which I could do -- on a big wave -- darn near everything I could do on a small wave. I got out, after nearly drowning, and we drove over to Makaha and I paddled out. It was a solid 20-feet. Everyone knew I could rip small waves, but that winter proved that I could rip big waves. Gordie's got some film of me coming into where the bowl peels over -- two-thirds of the way to the bottom -- then driving up through the top and kicking out; going left into the curl on a 20-foot wave and turning right. For me, it's something I'll always remember."⁴³

For Dewey, this was the highlight of his life as a performance surfer in big waves. "(Then) I went into business and it pretty much ended that whole thing," he concluded.⁴⁴

The Velzy/Weber Fallout, 1960

When Dewey was 22 and returned to the Mainland, in 1960, he lifeguarded for a little bit and can be distinctly remembered as perched up on tower wearing a Mexican sombrero, surrounded by kids. His 15-minute breaks would stretch into an hour as he demonstrated for the gremmies the finer points of his surfing style.⁴⁵

He also went back to work for Velzy. By this time -- with surf shops in Venice, San Clemente and San Diego -- Dale Velzy was known as "the world's largest manufactuer" of surfboards.⁴⁶ His former partner, Hap Jacobs, had left to start shaping and manufacturing on his own. It was a time of revolutionary change in the surfboard manufacturing world. Polyurethane foam had finally been developed to the point where it was the preferred material over the rarer-to-score balsa.⁴⁷

During Olympic wrestling trials, Dewey dislocated his elbow and, subsequently, he lost his interest in that sport.⁴⁸ Meanwhile, things were taking a turn for the worse at the Velzy shop:

"I'd hired a bookkeeper and paid her real good," Velzy began the story. "I told her you take care of the business end and I'll take care of making them and selling them. I had five shops and two factories going and I was selling 150 to 200 boards per week. The recession hit in 1959, and between buying out Hap and my divorce settlement, things were tight. People were telling me to cut back and I said fuck that, when it gets critical is the time to go forward. I was selling boards for $85 that cost me $75 in materials and overhead to make. I thought that I needed to sell more boards and that volume was the key to success. Then I started the 11/10 plan with Dial Finance. This was before plastic, and the idea of buying a board for eleven dollars down and ten dollars a month was beginning to take off. My creditors were all okay and things looked good until the fucking State came down on me for sales tax. Then the Feds hammered me which scared all of the creditors and that was it. They sold everything at auction including other people's consignment boards and repairs. Man the government didn't give a shit about anybody. Hell, I'd been paying 'em all along, but when the State started pressuring me it triggered a chain of events that couldn't be stopped."⁴⁹

"I came to work at the San Clemente shop one morning," recalled surfing stylist Henry Ford, "and it was padlocked shut. A legal notice was attached to the door and we were stunned, no one had a clue what was going on. The Hawk drove up in his Mercedes and says, 'Hey Fordy, what's the deal.' When I read to Dale, 'By the judges order, closed for non-payment of taxes' part on the notice, he was totally surprised. All Velzy could say was 'What taxes?' The guy was a real surfer. No one was a businessman back then. Things like business plans might as well have been from Mars. Our lives were about how much fun you could have. None of us were keeping score. You can imagine how much success the Hawk had in trying to explain that to the tax court."⁵⁰

"Dale had a bunch of higher paid people that weren't really pulling their weight and were sucking money out of the company," added Mickey Muñoz. "The bookkeeper would tell him that each board he sold was costing him money. Velzy would reach into his pocket and pull out a wad of hundred dollar bills because he'd have just sold six boards on a Saturday morning at the shop. He was smoking dollar Havana cigars, wearing diamonds and driving a Gullwing Mercedes. The Hawk would tell her, 'What do you mean? I've got plenty of money right here.'

"Our business meetings were held at Joe Kiawes Restaurant in San Pedro. It was a very famous gathering spot for displaced Hawaiians, dock workers and other rough-tough guys who'd eat poi and pu-pus. We'd start out in Dale's personal Gullwing Mercedes and end up at Joe's having wonderful business meetings. Things were wide open and loose. We'd party a lot. Nobody was really in the system. When the IRS came down on Velzy, he was the biggest surfboard builder in the world. He went down big time."⁵¹

"We knew Velzy had to be rich," Mike Doyle related in his book Morning Glass, "because he drove a Gullwing Mercedes and wore a big diamond ring. Anybody as slick as the Hawk had to be rich. One day late in the summer, some guys in three-piece suits showed up at his San Clemente shop. Henry Ford told me they were from the IRS. At the time I didn't even know what that meant, but I knew the padlock they placed on the shop door was big trouble."⁵²

This is where Dewey Weber came into the picture. "I didn't especially want to lifeguard," he explained. "I wanted to go to the Islands, so I built a couple of boards for myself. Some friends came by and asked me to build them boards. After I'd built about 15 in my dad's garage, he was having a fit."⁵³

Dewey convinced his father to loan him the $1,500 to lease the Velzy shop in Venice. "My whole plan was to build surfboards in the summertime, go to Hawaii until January, then to Mammoth and ski until May, then build surfboards all summer -- like I'd been doing for four years. But it didn't work out that way. I opened the door and boom! I had 30 orders."⁵⁴

Caught with the short end of the stick and not only the building going to Weber, but his blanks and tools, as well, Velzy has a different perspective than Weber. "There was a point when my business problems could have been cleared up," Velzy said, "and I still thought I could work it out. I planned to go back to my Venice shop and rebuild. I still had loads of orders and I knew it was only a matter of time till the economy would right itself. But then I got a call from my landlord. He thanked me for my ten years of business and told me he was sorry that I was out of business. I said, 'Hold on here, what are you talking about?' He told me that my employee had taken a lease out on my shop. Things at Venice had been strange for a while. I'd sent my sister there to watch over the place, but the numbers never added up right. Between some used boards being sold on the side and a few new boards which were being built off of my books and sold by the same couple of factory guys, I already knew Venice was out of balance. So I went up there to talk. I always liked the guy [Weber] and he was a great surfer. I was paying him $200 a week to manage the shop which was a lot of money at the time. I asked him to level with me and all I got was double talk. I ended up holding the chicken shit up to the ceiling by his neck and telling him, 'Look you little bastard, you didn't have to lie, if you'd been straight with me I could have made you a partner.' He was crying and lying as the other guys there broke it up. Shit, it's not what he did, but how he did it. I never spoke to him again, he didn't have the guts to apologize."⁵⁵

"When Dale fired the guy [Weber] he was in tears," said Donald Takayama, "crying on the outside, but laughing on the inside -- he had a garage full of Velzy's blanks."⁵⁶

Controversy continues to this day concerning this dark moment in surfing history. "There are lots of stories," said Tak Kawahara about how Dewey ended-up with Velzy's shop at 4821 Pacific Avenue, along with his tools and blanks. "It depends on who you talk to." Kawahara later joined Dewey as a shaper.⁵⁷

A good number of the surfers who were around at the time still refuse to go on record about the whole deal. Those that speak about it usually leave Dewey's name out of it, although they point to him as the culprit. While some say Dewey stole materials from Velzy to start his business, others say Velzy owed Dewey a large sum in commissions and Dewey took the blanks as payment.⁵⁸

"They were both very aggressive businessmen," summed-up Sonny Vardeman. "Let's just say they both went their separate ways."⁵⁹

"Dewey would never discuss it," his former wife Caroline said. "Dewey never had a bad word to say about Dale, other than he couldn't handle his money. He died without saying anything about the situation, and it's really a shame they couldn't reconcile before Dewey's death."⁶⁰

Dale Velzy never spoke to Weber again. And even after Weber's death, Velzy spoke bitterly about the start-up of Weber Surfboards. "I treated him like a son," Velzy told Jeff Duclos. "I made him boards. Made him manager of my shop. I gave him the world. Then, the next thing you know, he's stabbing me in the back."⁶¹

Weber Surfboards

As polyurethane foam and fiberglass made surfing more accessible to larger numbers of beach and ocean lovers, Dewey Weber found himself at the right place at the right time. Surfing had gained such a popularity that, at the start of the 1960s, Hollywood was promoting it -- albiet in its own way.

Having studied under Velzy, Dewey knew the value of promotion. "When I started surfing in San Diego in 1960," recalled Jeff Duclos, "all of the guys rode boards by Gordon & Smith, except for one. He rode a pintail Weber pig board, which he'd bought out of the back of a panel truck parked on the bluff overlooking Crystal Pier, a short block from the G&S shop. We all envied him."⁶²

The van and its placement were no accident or chance occurance. Mike Hynson and Skip Frye periodically drove up to Dewey's place to party and shape a few boards. The boards were then loaded into a turquoise panel truck. Mike, Skip and Dewey and Caroline Weber would then head back down to San Diego to surf and sell their boards.⁶³

As time went on, business just got bigger. With large numbers of American kids wanting to surf, surfboard manufacturers found themselves having difficulty keeping up. It took an average of 6-to-8 weeks to deliver a finished board. While a lot of other shop owners were reluctant to make the necessary investments to increase production to meet demand, Dewey was not. After he brought Harold Iggy in to handle the shaping side of the business, he went on to hire others for production and sales in order to expand the business.

"Dewey was an aggressive businessman," repeated Sonny Vardeman, an early dealer for Weber Surfboards. "That was his surfing style, and that's the way he ran his business. He wouldn't just think about something, he'd do it. He was very energetic, but he wasn't hyper. He had his energy directed. He did things with flair, but he had an objective."⁶⁴

He bought special milling and profile machines developed by Harold Walker to streamline the manufacturing end. "By the time we got a blank," Tak Kawahara recalled, "it was milled and cut to shape, with the sides squared off. We'd [just] finish it and turn the rails."⁶⁵

"Dewey didn't come up with the idea of milling blanks," Kawahara clarified. "But he applied it and he advertised it. He had foresight. Surfboards were considered a piece of fine craftsmanship. Like fine furniture. Mention machinery and it wasn't considered soulful. It was like Bob Dylan walking on stage with an electric guitar [for the first time]. You've got to give him credit for thinking of the repercussions and using advertising to make it a positive."⁶⁶

"He was a go-getter. He got the market going," agreed Harold Walker, one of the first to have experimented with polyurethane foam before it became popular. "I had this van and every morning at 6 a.m. we loaded it up and off it went to Dewey's -- 60 blanks. We were running 24 hours a day then, with 25 to 30 guys working."⁶⁷

Taking pages from the Velzy book, Dewey set himself up with Dial Finance to sell boards on credit. By the end of 1962, over 25,000 surfboards were sold in the United States. A good portion of them were Surfboards By Dewey Weber.⁶⁸ Following another Velzy-invented practice, Dewey began recruiting riders for his surfboard line. Standouts included Donald Takayama, who also shaped for him for a time; David Nuuhiwa; Ricky Young; Jackie Baxter; Joey Hamasaki; Rell Sunn; JoJo Perrin; Bob Purvey; Randy Rarick; Gary Propper; Mike Tabeling and Nat Young.⁶⁹

Stories

Many stories are told about Dewey Weber. In a foreshadowing of continued excessive alcohol use throughout his life, there is the image of Dewey greeting Gibby Gibson upon Gibby's return from the army in the early 1960s: "Let's go get a pitcher!" were his first words to his friend.⁷⁰

Then there is the story told by Linda Benson of the time she and Dewey were surfing Trestles in 1961. It's her favorite memory of Dewey. The waves were six feet and perfect. Dewey wore his trademark red trunks, riding a red board and ripping. The Marines were on the beach firing their guns in the air to clear the break. Dewey and Linda stayed out long enough to catch a few more classic waves on a classic day, then were escorted off government property by the Marines equipped with a tank.⁷¹

The Weber Performer

Dewey got so successful at advertising his product that, at one point, his advertisements were almost as eagerly awaited as his latest board design. During the early days of the Weber Performer model, 15-year-old Bill Handler saw one of Dewey's early ads and thought it was terrible. He had his mother drive him to the shop and then went about telling Dewey that he could do much better. Dewey's response was: "Let's see what you can do," recalled Handler. "He liked what he saw and we sat down and began working on an ad for The Performer. We tried to be entertaining and to come up with something clever. I hated the hard-sell of the day. Every ad was a guy riding a wave. So, the first ad I did was a chess board. In the middle of the chess board was a Weber sticker. The copy line was 'It's your move.'" The Performer ad campaign would go on to become one of the most ambitious surfboard sales campaigns of all time.⁷²

East Coast Barnstormers, mid-'60s

By the mid-1960s, Dewey Weber Surfboards had surf teams as far away as Oregon, Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia Beach, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Maine. While most manufacturers would merely visit their dealerships, Dewey would descend upon his sales regions with teams of riders, surfing exhibitions, and surf films.⁷³

The 1965 Weber tour of the East Coast set a standard for surfing promotions. The tour started at the first artificial wave pool called "Big Surf," in Tempe, Arizona. From there, it swung down and along the Gulf Coast through Texas and Florida and on up the eastern seaboard. Following the van filled with team members and Dewey and Caroline was surf filmmaker Jamie Budge. These "barnstormers" would pull into a surf town, meet with the shop owner or Weber Surfboards dealer, make in-store appearances for sponsors such as Laguna Sportswear, or appear at a local event like a boat show, set up a surfing contest and exhibition at the local beach and cap it off in the evening with a surf film at a local auditorium.⁷⁴

While on the East Coast, Dewey won the Governor's Trophy at the East Coast Surfing Championships. The next year, he would win the Senior Men's Division at the U.S. Surfing Championships held at Huntington Beach.⁷⁵

Downturn, late 1960s

As Velzy had done in the 1950s, by the mid-1960s, Dewey Weber had become the largest surfboard manufacturer. This time, though, it was not only of the United States, but of the world. At his peak, he was turning out over 300 boards a week. There are stories of Dewey and Harold Iggy walking into a car dealership in their bare feet and Dewey peeling off cash for a new yellow Porsche. Another story tells of Dewey buying Caroline a new gold Thunderbird as a wedding gift.⁷⁶

When the downturn came in the late 1960s, Dewey thought it was just temporary. He wasn' t alone. The other surfboard manufacturers felt the same way. "When we figured out that it wasn't," Tak Kawahara remembers, "it was too late."⁷⁷

"It's the same problem as today," Harold Walker added. "The product is under-priced. The margins are so small in the surfboard business that (when) the slightest mishap (occurs) the whole house of cards falls. Once the volume stops, you're dead."⁷⁸

For Dewey, as for all the other mass-production surfboard makers of the time, the ride was over. "It went from selling everything you could make to selling just local," recalled Bing Copeland.⁷⁹ Dewey downsized as fast as he could, butg he took heavy financial losses. When the adjustment was done, he settled into a small shop in Hermosa Beach. Earlier, trying to keep up with the trends in surfboard design, he'd tried to transition into shortboards. Like Greg Noll, who attempted to do the same thing, he met with no success.⁸⁰

Gone Fishing, 1970s

So, like Harold Walker, Hap Jacobs, Mark Martinson, Greg Noll, Del Cannon and others of his age, Dewey decided to go fishing. In the early 1970s, he built a two-man swordfishing boat called the Avispa and started logging major time on the water. "Soon," wrote Jeff Duclos, "surf stories turned into fishing stories."⁸¹

The Bottle

In the early 1980s, a longboard contest circuit reformed along the Southern California coast and Dewey Weber was in it early. The circuit's beginning is marked by a contest held at Leo Carrillo State Beach -- otherwise known to surfers as Arroyo Sequit or just plain Secos. "The morning of the Oar House event," wrote Jeff Duclos, "shoulder-high waves were peeling off Leo Carrillo's Big Rock and, though Dewey hadn't surfed in nearly a year, his team members coaxed him into entering... To his surprise, Dewey advanced through his first heat with relative ease."⁸²

"I remember the last three heats," said John Joseph, "with less than a minute to go in each, and I'd say: 'Where's Dewey?' And out from behind the rock he'd come, on the nose, in his famous arch, moving across the face of the wave. In the inside, he'd do a big cutback and then move right back up to the nose. He made the finals -- and he hadn't surfed competitively in well over 15 years. There were some good surfers there that day. John Baker, JoJo Perrin, and J. Riddle made the final with him... He had the ability to come from out of nowhere. It was unique. It was a star quality he had."⁸³

"I surfed against Dewey in a lot of contests over the years," said Baker. "He was always the first guy in the water for his heats and he was a fierce competitor. But I remember that day well. He was just arching from the nose... thrilled."⁸⁴

In the very beginning of the longboard revival, Dewey sponsored the Dewey Weber Longboard Surfing Classic. "The whole '60s era of surfing seems to be coming back into focus," he told an interviewer in 1982. "It's really apparent in the music scene -- the kids have started the whole thing rolling. Older surfers are getting back in the water and our Weber Performer is making a genuine comeback. The business looks more solid now than it has for over 10 years."⁸⁵ Although his words proved to be prophetic, Dewey never reaped any benefit from the longboarding revival nor capture the magic touch he once had ontop a surfboard. By the 1980s, years of hard drinking were beginning to take their toll.⁸⁶

Dewey was part of a generation and more of surfers for whom The Life was defined in terms of a "surf all day and always party hard" lifestyle.⁸⁷ In the end, excessive alcohol use can be directly linked to Dewey's loss of a profitable business and his loss of wife, friends and health. As the years went by, Dewey surfed less and less.⁸⁸

"A lot of us partied hard," Linda Benson declared. "Dewey had a choice. I'm a recovering alcoholic. I'm 17 years clean and sober. People tried to help him. I'd go down to his shop, but somehow he was never there. Alcoholism is a disease that (hides itself from you)."⁸⁹

"Surfing has a dark side," agreed Joe Doggett in an article that appeared in the Houston Chronicle after Dewey's death. "It's a maverick lifestyle; it attracts the renegades and cavaliers and one-eyed jacks. It has no place for the dull and ordinary. Surf stars, like rock stars, play hard and sometimes cannot control the power and the beauty that they possess."⁹⁰

In that year before he died," his former wife Caroline recalled, "Dewey told me about that first surf trip he went on with the older South Bay guys. He was 13 at the time. He talked about how they handed him a beer and he felt like he'd arrived, like he was finally accepted as a surfer, as one of the guys... 'How was I to know?' he said" of the ramifications of a life with alcohol.⁹¹

When Dewey died in 1993, news of his passing went around the world. Newspaper and broadcast eulogies appeared virtually everywhere. The California State Senate adjourned in his honor. "His death," wrote Jeff Duclos, "reaffirmed something Dewey had completely lost sight of."⁹²

"His problem," said Lance Carson, who knew him most of his life, "was that he didn't have enough confidence in who he was. He had no confidence in his own name. He was always trying to be something more, but he never had anything to prove. He was already there."⁹³

––––––––––––––––––––––––

¹ Duclos, Jeff. "In Trim: Dewey Weber," Longboard, Volume 4, Number 4, September/October 1996, p. 35.

² Duclos, 1996, p. 35.

³ Duclos, 1996, p. 35. Dewey Weber.

⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 35.

⁵ Duclos, 1996, p. 35.

⁶ Duclos, 1996, p. 35. Dewey Weber.

⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 35. Dewey Weber.

⁸ Duclos, 1996, pp. 35-36. Dewey Weber.

⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Dewey Weber.

¹⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Dewey Weber.

¹¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Dewey Weber.

¹² Surfer, October 1993. Dewey Weber quoted by Dewey Shurman.

¹³ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Dewey Weber.

¹⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Bing Copeland.

¹⁵ Duclos, 1996, p. 36.

¹⁶ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Bing Copeland.

¹⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Dewey Weber.

¹⁸ Duclos, 1996, p. 36.

¹⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 36.

²⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 36. Bing Copeland.

²¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 36.

²² Duclos, 1996, p. 37. Dewey Weber.

²³ Duclos, 1996, p. 37.

²⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 37. Dewey Weber.

²⁵ Duclos, 1996, p. 37.

²⁶ Duclos, 1996, p. 37.

²⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 37. Dewey Weber.

²⁸ Duclos, 1996, pp. 37-38. Tubesteak Tracy.

²⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 38. Dewey Weber.

³⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 38.

³¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 38. Dewey Weber.

³² The Surfer's Journal, Volume 1, Number 3, C.R. Stecyk, p. 52.

³³ Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

³⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 38. Dewey Weber.

³⁵ Duclos, 1996, p. 38. Dewey Weber.

³⁶ Duclos, 1996, p. 38.

³⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 38.

³⁸ Duclos, 1996, p. 38. Dewey Weber.

³⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 38. Dewey Weber.

⁴⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 38. Dewey Weber.

⁴¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 38.

⁴² Duclos, 1996, pp. 38-39. Dewey Weber.

⁴³ Duclos, 1996, p. 39. Dewey Weber.

⁴⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 39. Dewey Weber.

⁴⁵ Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

⁴⁶ Lueras, 1984, p. 118.

⁴⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 39.

⁴⁸ Duclos, 1996, p. 39.

⁴⁹ Stecyk, "Tales of the Hawk," p. 43. Dale Velzy quoted. Duplicated in Volume 1 of LEGENDARY SURFERS, "Dale 'The Hawk' Velzy."

⁵⁰ Stecyk, "Tales of the Hawk," p. 43. Henry Ford quoted. Duplicated in Volume 1 of LEGENDARY SURFERS, "Dale 'The Hawk' Velzy."

⁵¹ Stecyk, "Tales of the Hawk," pp. 43-44. Mickey Munoz quoted. Duplicated in Volume 1 of LEGENDARY SURFERS, "Dale 'The Hawk' Velzy."

⁵² Stecyk, "Tales of the Hawk," p. 44. Mike Doyle quoted. See also Doyle, Morning Glass. Duplicated in Volume 1 of LEGENDARY SURFERS, "Dale 'The Hawk' Velzy."

⁵³ Duclos, 1996, p. 39. Dewey Weber.

⁵⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 39. Dewey Weber.

⁵⁵ Stecyk, "Tales of the Hawk," p. 44. Dale Velzy quoted, referring, I believe, to Dewey Weber. This quote may have come from Noll's "Da Bull," Duplicated in Volume 1 of LEGENDARY SURFERS, "Dale 'The Hawk' Velzy."

⁵⁶ Stecyk, "Tales of the Hawk," p. 44. Donald Takayama quoted. Duplicated in Volume 1 of LEGENDARY SURFERS, "Dale 'The Hawk' Velzy."

⁵⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 39. Tak Kawahara.

⁵⁸ Duclos, 1996, p. 40.

⁵⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 40. Sonny Vardeman.

⁶⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 40. Caroline Weber.

⁶¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 40. Dale Velzy.

⁶² Duclos, 1996, p. 40.

⁶³ Duclos, 1996, p. 40.

⁶⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 40. Sonny Vardeman.

⁶⁵ Duclos, 1996, p. 40. Tak Kawahara.

⁶⁶ Duclos, 1996, p. 40. Tak Kawahara.

⁶⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 40. Harold Walker.

⁶⁸ Duclos, 1996, p. 40.

⁶⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 41.

⁷⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

⁷¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

⁷² Duclos, 1996, pp. 40-41. Bill Handler.

⁷³ Duclos, 1996, p. 41.

⁷⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 41.

⁷⁵ Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

⁷⁶ Duclos, 1996, p. 41.

⁷⁷ Duclos, 1996, p. 41. Tak Kawahara.

⁷⁸ Duclos, 1996, p. 41. Harold Walker.

⁷⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 41. Bing Copeland.

⁸⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 41.

⁸¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 41.

⁸² Duclos, 1996, p. 35.

⁸³ Duclos, 1996, p. 35. John Joseph.

⁸⁴ Duclos, 1996, p. 35. John Baker.

⁸⁵ Duclos, 1996, pp. 41-42. Dewey Weber.

⁸⁶ Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

⁸⁷ Wolfe, Tom. The Pump House Gang.

⁸⁸ Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

⁸⁹ Duclos, 1996, p. 42. Linda Benson.

⁹⁰ Duclos, 1996, p. 42. Joe Doggett.

⁹¹ Duclos, 1996, p. 42. Caroline Weber recalling Dewey's rememberance.

⁹² Duclos, 1996, p. 42.

⁹³ Duclos, 1996, p. 42. Lance Carson.

Friday, April 23, 2021

Surfing Year 1963

Aloha and welcome to this LEGENDARY SURFERS chapter on the year 1963 as it related to the world of surfing.

I am indebted to the many people who are credited throughout the text and whose work is listed in the endnotes. I have gone after the most credible sources available; the subjects themselves, those close to them, or insightful writers who fully understood what went on.

The chapter is, unfortunately, merely an outline of all that was going on that year, and mostly the things I found interesting, given limited writing time.

As usual with my chapters on time periods, the dates of things are approximate and in some cases could be incorrect. I did my best guess on the time frame and what to include, 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

Hollywood Beach Movies, 1959-67

Ride The Wild Surf

Surf Music ≠ Surfer Music

Dana Point Mafia

Contests & Surfing's Spread

1st Surfer Magazine Poll

Hap Jacobs

Hap Jacobs & the Big Label Meltdown, 1969

Hap Jacobs -- Fishing in the 1970s & Return

The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Dave Rochlen's Jams

Joey Cabell Wins the 11th Annual Makaha Championship

Nat Young -- from Collaroy to Hawaii

Kit Horn at Lunada Bay

"Hollywood had discovered surfing. For historians of the sport, this brief, hectic period might as well be known as the Annette Funicello Era of Surfing. The Gray Days, really... And every time the plot would lag -- which was most of the time -- someone would run on camera and yell, 'Surf's up!' You remember the cry, of course..."

-- Phil Edwards ¹

"... when you catch a wave,

You'll be sitting on top of the world."

-- Catch A Wave, 1963, Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys ²

The first half of the year 1963 was the heigth of a fairly innocent period in American society. Although barely winning the 1960 election, the country was lead by a high-profile and mostly popular president. In the world of surfing, Killer Dana and Doheny had yet to be paved over and the Mac Meda Destruction Company was hosting outrageous parties near La Jolla's infamous Pump House.³ But, the veterans and old timers who had a sense of surfing's roots were fast being run over by the new crop of surfers whose only reality was foam and fiberglass, fed by the popularization of the sport by Hollywood.

The film industry happened upon surfing in 1959, when the first Gidget movie came out...⁴

Hollywood Beach Movies, 1959-67

The movies Hollywood made that had surfing as their hook are better termed "beach movies." Although they helped to popularize the sport in a major way all across America, they were mostly discarded by real surfers.

"... most Southern California surfers cringed when the [Gidget] movies premiered," admitted LeonardLueras in his book Surfing, The Ultimate Pleasure, "and they saw how their sport was interpreted by filmmakers. The Gidget films were undeniably geeky, but Gollywood was onto a favorite chase -- a hypable and marketable trend -- so during the next ten years the public was assaulted by so-called 'beach movies' with bizarre and kitschy surfing themes."⁵

The Gidget movies of the late 1950s and beginning 1960s -- Gidget (1959), Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) -- were huge successes from the Hollywood perspective. They made money. Lots of it. They were the first of the "beach movies," but just the beginning of a whole genre of film that appealed to non-surfing teenagers for nearly a decade. The titles of these movies reflect their fanciful nature: Beach Party (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Pajama Party (1964), Ride the Wild Surf (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), How To Stuff A Wild Bikini (1965), The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965), Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), and Don't Make Waves (1967).

"Surfers and non-surfers now laugh at the almost nauseating naivete of those early beach movies," wrote Lueras, "but Hollywood producers remember them as commercial monsters -- that is, as great money-makers. Beach Party, the trend-setting 1963 American International Pictures (A.I.P.) movie that cast teen idols Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as young surfers in love, set box-office records nationwide soon after its release. The spectre of these pasty and dark-haired Italian-Americans (singer Avalon and Mouseketeer Funicello) cast as Southern California surfers was ridiculous, but the movie quickly grossed some $3.5 million, a tidy sum in those days."⁶

"There were the pretend surfers," remembered Phil Edwards, "chaste cleavage and guitars, on their endless film beaches, with the ample Annette plumply jammed into a swimsuit. And every time the plot would lag -- which was most of the time -- someone would run on camera and yell, 'Surf's up!' ... And then the camera would do closeups of Sandra Dee and the kids lurching into the surf with their boards -- and faraway shots of them slicing down the big water. Dramatic footage. On the faraway shots, the stars were doing bold crisscrosses and fancy footwork..." Edwards added that on 1963's most popular beach movie Ride The Wild Surf, "My friends and I were the ones on the faraway shots."⁷

"The plots woven into those early Hollywood 'surfing movies' were unbearably thin," underscored Leonard Lueras. "In Beach Blanket Bingo, for example, Frankie (Avalon), Dee Dee (Funicello) and fellow Hollywood surfers found themselves in yet another party-crashing confrontation with Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) and his notorious motorcycle gang, the Rat Pack. Yes, fans, West Coast Story, or as one will fondly recall, a Greasers versus Surfers stand off. Meanwhile, somewhere between a lame watusi dancing scene and stand-up shticks by Don 'Big Drop' Rickles, Buster Keaton and Earl Wilson (as themselves), one of the surfers, Bonehead, is rescued from drowning by a beautiful mermaid named Lorelei (portrayed by Marta Kristen). It was high surfside camp at its best (or worst?)."⁸

Teen idols Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello would, over twenty years later, reprise their roles in for the sequel Back To The Beach, in 1987.

"As such surfing-related themes began to appeal to the mass consciousness," wrote Lueras of the early 1960s, "several other L.A. production companies began spewing out beach movies. Hollywood's scriptwriters gazed out of their Malibu Colony bungalows, rolled paper into their salt sprayed typewriters, and surged into second surfing gear.

"Remember Don't Make Waves (Filmways, Inc. and Reynard Productions, 1967), that steamy little surf epic starring Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale and the late Sharon Tate? In that zinger the sultry Miss Tate portrays a surfer-skydiver (Malibu) who saves a visiting tourist (Carlo Cofield, played by Curtis) from drowning off Malibu Beach. The Tate-Curtis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation scene is a classic is surfing heroism. The movie is saved, however, by its theme song, 'Don't Make Waves,' written and performed by Chris Hillman and Jim McGuinn of the then fledgling Byrds."⁹

"As has been true of many teenybopper genre movies since, it was the 'background music' that usually saved the beach blanket movies and made them worth their then $1.50 admission price. Beach Party, as an example, marked th first nationwide appearance of Dick Dale (The 'King of the Surf Guitar') and his reverb-ridden Del Tones. Some sound track debuts, though historically important, went virtually unnoticed. In small print at the bottom of a poster advertising Muscle Beach Party is a small credit line 'Introducing Little Stevie Wonder.' In yet another musical adventure -- Paramount Pictures' Beach Ball (1965), starring Edd 'Kookie' Byrnes of '77 Sunset Strip' television fame -- bikinis coexisted with guest star appearances by The Supremes, The Four Seasons, The Righteous Brothers, the Walker Brothers and The Hondells. 'Nothing Bounces Like "Beach Ball,"' proclaimed a period press release. 'They're Surf Ridin'... Skin Divin'... Sky Jumpin'... Drag Racin'... Beach Bashin' Boys and their Bikini Beauties... In a Blast of a Beach Brawl!'"¹⁰

In December of 1964, a New York Times film critic, Peter Bart, traveled west, observed the making of a California beach blanket movie at Leo Carrillo Beach, and reported that this mutant cinematic form 'has created a rather idyllic way of life for the young people who are regulars in the beach pictures.

"'Most were members of the teen-age surfing set around Santa Monica before being "discovered" by American International. They are thus living out a bizarre adolescent fantasy -- making a great deal of money without ever leaving their beloved surfboards,' Bart wrote. 'The various members of the beach set,' he added, 'have grown so accustomed to their moviemaking routines that they can grind out a new "beacher" in less than three weeks.'"¹¹

Ride The Wild Surf

"Perhaps the most archetypical and ambitious of those beach blanket wonders," wrote Leonard Lueras, "was Columbia Pictures' Ride the Wild Surf (1964), starring 'Turn Me Loose' pop singing star Fabian Forte as big wave rider Jody Wallis. Also case into this cinematic backwater were blond heart breaker Tab Hunter (as the surfer 'Steamer Lane') and pop star Shelley Fabares (as the foxy surfer girl Brie Matthews). Splashing about in supporting roles were Barbara Eden (as Augie Poole), Peter Brown (as Chase Colton), Susan Hart (as Lily Kilua), and James Mitchum (as the surfer 'Eskimo')."¹²

Ride The Wild Surf was filmed in 1963 and distributed in 1964. The thing that sets the film apart from all others of the beach movie genre is the fact that there is actually some good big surf footage in the film. This was due to two factors. One, the plot took place in Hawai`i, unlike most of the Hollywood beach movies whose location was Southern California. The other thing was particularly environmental at the time of shooting.

"... in November and December of 1962," wrote Fred Van Dyke, "Waimea broke constantly. The jet stream had altered its course temporarily, and we kept getting these huge west swell surfs. They kept up, sporadically, clear through February '63. That was when the Columbia film company came over to make the movie Ride, Ride The Wild Surf."¹³

"My friends and I were the ones on the faraway shots," told Phil Edwards. "Mickey Muñoz, a boy, was Sandra Dee. I am lovable, charming, bushy-haired, youthful Tab Hunter or James Darran on the long lens, in the blue surf trunks. In the closeups, in the same blue trunks, the real star is sprayed with a salty hose in some studio back lot in Hollywood."¹⁴

Another stunt man for the film was Mickey Dora. "He was hired to do stunt riding in the movie RIDE THE WILD SURF," Greg Noll recalled. "He wasn't a big-wave surfer, but they were paying him and he told them he could do it. The waves were really pumped up that day at Waimea. He didn't like it. Although I hadn't been hired to do stunt riding, I was out there surfing anyway.

"Being unfamiliar with Waimea, I could see he was using me for his lineups. At Malibu, he and Johnny Fain had a running battle to see who could come up on the other guy first on a wave and grab his ass or push him off his board. With Fain, it was kind of a fun thing. With anyone else, Dora wasn't kidding. You didn't take off on his wave. He'd push you right off or try to cut you off at the knees when he kicked out of the wave.

"So here we are at twenty-foot Waimea and I see my chance to get Dora. There is a picture of us that shows me coming down behind him on a twenty-foot wave. What happened was I came rolling up beneath him on my board and grabbed him by the ass. Surprised the hell out of him. All day, I made sure I was always behind him and in the pocket, just to rattle him. In one of his funny accents, he'd say, 'Jeez, every time I turn around, you're on my ass! I can't get away from you!'

"The funny this is, these were probably the biggest waves he had ever ridden in his life. That day, he had made a jump from five-or-six-foot Malibu waves to twenty-foot Waimea. He was shaky, but he did it. The guy really had ability. I can't think of anyone else who could have made that sort of transition."¹⁵

"But you can't beat real art," Phil Edwards humorously noted of the money-making aspect. "I was browned into an appropriate Hawaiian color, tainted filthy rich -- I had perhaps $150 in my wax pocket."¹⁶ Which was a lot of money for most surfers hanging out on the North Shore at the beginning of 1963.

"We all made money surfing and doing fill-ins for the actors," acknowledged Fred Van Dyke. "They went so far as to duplicate Greg Noll's famous black and white striped bathing suit. That Hollywood film started an avalanche of new surfers to the North Shore..."¹⁷

"A promotion for the movie," wrote Leonard Lueras, "-- 'Actually filmed in the "wild waters" of Hawaii!' -- explained that Steamer, Jody and Chase had 'come to Oahu Island to ride the world's biggest waves and compete against surfers from all over the world. Steamer Lane falls in love with Lily Kilua, whose mother objects to the romance because she considers surfers to be "beach bums"...'

"In a particularly memorable scene, Chase generates monster waves at a flat Waimea Bay by diving into a pool beneath nearby Waimea Falls. According to a Columbia Pictures press release, Chase was invoking an ancient Hawaiian legend that says, 'if big waves fail to come in at Waimea Bay, a dive into the pool by one of the surfers will start the waves coming...' At triumphant moments in the movie, new Liberty Records singing stars Jan and Dean sing the movie's title song, 'Ride the Wild Surf,' written by Jan Berry (of Jan and Dean), Brian Wilson (chief songwriter for another new group, The Beach Boys) and Roger Christian.

"In an attempt to give surfing a sportive credibility, Columbia Pictures promoted the film with testimonials from former collegiate and pro football star Frank Gifford. 'See the spills and thrills the champ surfers take in Ride the Wild Surf. It packs as big a wallop as anything I've ever run across on the football field!' blurted Gifford in national radio, television and telephone publicity spots."¹⁸

"All the razzle-dazzle above marked a strange time in surfing history," noted Lueras, "but during that same care-free period -- as the Greasy Fifties segued into the Sunny Sixties -- true surfers remained hundreds of miles away from the glitter and dreck of Hollywood. Throughout and despite all that big screen embarrassment, California's surfing society continued to develop a character all its own. It evolved into an aloof cult that produced its own movies and music, discovered and annointed its own heroes, communicated intelligence about the surfing life in its own idiomatic way, and established a sense of 'surfer style' and ritual that endures to this day."¹⁹

Surf writer Ben Marcus sent me an email on 14 November 2002, after digging into the movie and seeing how Greg Noll treated it, years later:

“Ride the Wild Surf was just as Corny and Contrived as every other 60s surf [beach] movie, and launched a thousand cliches that would be repeated several times over the next decades: Mainland surfers arrive in Hawaii to challenge the giant stuff, and undergo all the sex and violence and passions of the Hawaiian Islands as they gird themselves for the big day. Ride the Wild Surf starred Tab Hunter as "Steamer" Lane, Fabian as Jody Wallis and Peter Brown as Chase Colton-who is first seen checking the surf at Waimea Fresh off the Plane in a suit and tie, with hair that would inspire McGarret's curling do many years later. The guys find love with a trio of babes played by Barbara Eden, Shelly Fabares and Susan Hart. The supporting cast includes the likes of James Mitchum as Eskimo, a big guy with a Roman nose who charges the biggest stuff wearing black and white striped trunks.

“Sound like someone we know? Greg says it was a fluke. ‘Hey, I was just out there surfing, you know, because it was good Waimea. I knew there was something going on because Miki Dora was out surfing Waimea, and he had never done that. He didn't really like the big stuff. Mike Hinson was out there, too. Well Miki and I were friends and I wanted to see how he would do and maybe keep an eye on him. We rode a lot of 15-20 foot Waimea and I caught so many waves in those black and white trunks, I hear they created the Eskimo character and put him into the movie.’

“Noll says he was very briefly considered as an actor: ‘They called me into LA for an audition. I went up on a stage and they gave me a card and I think I said three words, “The cat is…” and then they pulled out the hook and yanked me off of there. I guess mine was the shortest movie career ever.’

“Ride the Wild Surf is as C for Corny as just about every other surf movie not made by surfers, but the entertainment value of the movie goes way up as you watch it, 40 years later, with Da Bull. ‘Oh my god, look at these guys! A suit and tie? At Waimea? No wonder we didn't hang out with these guys. They're a bunch of Hollywood dorks. A bunch of phones. I avoided them like the plague, and the other guys hung around because they were getting paid.’

“Forty years later, Noll can barely watch the movie, but perks up at the surfing scenes. ‘That's Haleiwa there and who's the guy in the stinkbug stance on the yellow board with the black and white trunks at Sunset? There's L.J. Richards on that wave and that's Ricky Grigg. The backside guy is Butch van Artsdalen. I remember that style. Here's a big wave. That's Mike Stange taking off behind me at Waimea and wiping out and there I go. I remember telling the camera guys that if they wanted some good wipeouts to keep an eye on me, because that's what I was good at.’

“Noll watches Ride the Wild Surf with his fingers over his eyes and his fingers on the rewind button, fast-forwarding though the corn fields but occasionally rewinding a good ride. When Dora takes off at Waimea, Noll always perks up, like a proud father watching his fledgling son. This was Dora's first time and he complained in the magazines that he was riding a crummy surfboard, but Noll is proud of how his friend held up at Waimea. ‘Look at him take off on that wave, a little fade at the top and a big drop. This is his first time and he rode really well. Look at him there in front of me.’

“Noll swears he was never paid for his surfing in Ride the Wild Surf, but it doesn't bother him. He says that working on the movie did pay one lasting dividend. ‘You know I distinctly remember riding behind Dora on one wave and he looked like he was slowing down and about to get creamed. Well I put my hand on the back of his shorts and gave him a shove and that got him through to the end standing up. Well that was kind of like the guy pulling the thorn from the lion's paw. I don't think Dora ever forgot that wave and it became one of the foundations of our friendship.’

“Noll watched the movie carefully, even rewinding a few of his and Dora's best waves. When Barbara Eden and Peter Brown buy New Year's Eve fireworks from Mr. Chin, Noll nods and says, ‘Well they got that part right, anyway.’ And when Peter Brown runs off to dive from the jump rock at Waimea Falls on New Year's Eve, Noll nods again. ‘Diving from the jump rock was a big deal back then. I did it, and I'll tell you when you got to the top of that plateau there and looked down, it was pretty hairy. I jumped feet-first but never went headfirst. I think Munoz dove and I remember Pat Curren doing a huge belly-flop from up there and we thought he got hurt. So they got a few things right in this Ride the Wild Surf. But holy shit, did you see that guy's hair?’

“In Ride the Wild Surf, a stuntman in a straw hat and hula trousers dives headfirst from the jump rock. Noll had no idea who it was. Ricky Grigg thought it might be Butch van Artsdalen. Fred van Dyke also appeared in the movie as a pretty face and a fit physique giving First Aid to an injured Fabian. Van Dyke was pretty sure that a surfer named Chuck Quinn did the dive. Sure enough, Quinn now lives in Pacifica and remembers being paid $??? For a semi-dangerous stunt.”²⁰

Surf Music ≠ Surfer Music

"In 1963," Mike Doyle noted in his autobiography published in 1993, "almost overnight it seemed, everybody in the whole country wanted to be a surfer. Or, failing that, to look like a surfer. That has always been a great mystery to me, why people who had never even seen the ocean before would want to bleach their hair, put on a pair of baggies and blue tennies, and tell everybody how stoked they were. You could say it was all just a California fad, maybe one of the first California fads, but it's been going on for thirty years now, and a billion-dollar clothing industry has grown up catering to nothing but the average American's desire to look like a surfer."²¹

"I remember the first time I heard the Beach Boys song 'Surfer Girl.' I was riding in my car with Kemp Aaberg. When we heard that whiny, cornball music, we started hissing and hooting because we thought it was so hokey. It was a rip-off. The Beach Boys were stealing our culture. And they didn't even know how to surf!

"To be fair to the Beach Boys, I have to say that when I hear their music today, I like it because it takes me back to that era. I think they really did capture some of the fun of surfing in their music, and I think the way they portrayed teenagers growing up in Southern California during that period was accurate: the cars, the beach, the awkward love, the obsession with being accepted by your peers. But at the time, we felt like our territory was being violated. The Beach Boys were pretending they had already made it down the stairs at Malibu, when we knew they hadn't."²²

"Of course," Doyle continued, switching from music to the movies, "the Beach Boys were geniuses compared to the dolts who made the first beach movies. Muscle Beach Party was probably the most ridiculous of them all: everybody dancing on the beach at Malibu, wearing bun-hugger swim trunks; all of a sudden somebody yells, Surf's up! Everybody grabs his surfboard and runs out to Waimea Bay breaking with twenty-foot sets."²³

"Those beach movies," Doyle went on, "were the first glimpse most people in the country had of the surf culture, and I think because the movies were so badly made, so phony and just plain dishonest, the image of surfing, at least in the mainland U.S., was forever stamped as being silly, adolescent, and superficial. There were authentic surf movies being made, too -- by Bud Browne, John Severson, and Bruce Brown -- but they were never distributed outside the relatively small beach communities of California, Florida, Texas, and New Jersey, and were rarely seen by anyone who wasn't a surfer."²⁴

Most real surfers -- like Mike Doyle -- knew the difference between what was being portrayed and what was really happening. "The true surfiati," confirmed Leonard Lueras, "were at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium hooting at real surf movies -- flicks such as Bruce Brown's Surfing Hollow Days, John Severson's Surf Classics and Bob Evans' The Young Wave Hunters. Or they were moving up and down in the tribal motions of the 'surfer's stomp' at dance venues of the time -- places like the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, Harmony Park (off the freeway in Anaheim) and even 'inland' at Riverside's cavernous National Guard Armory."²⁵

"That summer," Mike Doyle continued, "we started hearing rumors that Bruce Brown was working on a new surf movie that was going to be something special. Bruce had made his first surf films with a 16-millimeter camera while he was in the army in Hawaii. Later, when Bruce spliced those home movies together, Dale Velzy showed them at his surf shop in San Clemente, charging surfers twenty-five cents admission. I remember Bruce as short and wiry -- he probably never weighed over 130 pounds -- very blond and very fair skinned; he was always stoked, and he always smoked like a fiend.

"For his new surf film, Bruce had taken a couple of well-known surfers, Robert August and Mike Hynson, and was travelling all around the world with them -- to Japan, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Tahiti -- in pursuit of the perfect wave. Based solely on the rumors we heard about the movie, we couldn't wait to see it."²⁶

Dana Point Mafia

To meet the popularization of surfing, the "sense of 'surfer style'" not only had 16mm films other surfers were making for their fellows, but it was also reinforced by the addition of surf mags on the scene.

John Severson had started The Surfer in 1960 with an idea and $3,000. A decade later, Surfer magazine was a slick monthly with a paid circulation of nearly 100,000. In 1970, The Los Angeles Times called Surfer "the only magazine of national consequence published in Orange County."²⁷

Located between Los Angeles and San Diego, Orange County "is more well known for its right wing Republicanism and Disneyland," noted Leonard Lueras, than for its surfing. Yet, the coastal portion of Orange County evolved into an important surfing center. "Both historically and politically," wrote Lueras in 1984, "it is renowned in contemporary surfing power circles as 'the unofficial surfing capital of the world.'"²⁸

This was in large part due to the physical location of the surf publication industry. "Orange County," continued Lueras, "is the editorial headquarters (at Capistrano) of surfing's two most important publications, Surfer and Surfing." At one time, "the sport's two most successful and influential filmmakers, Bruce Brown (The Endless Summer) and Greg MacGillivray (Five Summer Stories) live there (at Dana Point and South Laguna)." The area was also home to "Gordon 'Grubby' Clark, long the world's leading manufacturer of foam board blanks, and Hobie Alter, surfing's first commercially successful board-maker," both of whom "got their starts in and have remained in the county (in the San Clemente-Dana Point area). Also based in Orange County are surfwear manufacturers Walter and Phillip 'Flippy' Hoffman and surfing's greatest 1960s 'star,' Phil Edwards."²⁹

"Because these influential businessmen-surfers were traditionally headquartered on or near Beach Road in the San Clemente-Dana Point area," continued Lueras in Surfing, The Ultimate Pleasure, published in 1984, "they became known to other people in the surfing trade as the 'Dana Point Mafia.' According to popular myth, this group of good ol' beachboys has the commercial surfing world sewn tightly into its money-filled wax pockets."³⁰

"All are friends of more than 25 years," wrote Norman B. Chandler of The Los Angeles Times. "All were among the first surfers in this country. All have beach-houses next to each other worth up to a million dollars each... they also comprise a successful group of businessmen who are leaders in exporting various components of beach living."³¹

"All of the above surfioso were caught up in a commercial surfing swell that hit California's shores in the late 1950s," continued Leonard Lueras. "but unlike many who wiped out -- or burned out -- early on, they rode this surfy trend to personal success."³²

"They all recognized some magical ingredient in the Southern California lifestyle," noted The Surfer's Journal editor and former Surfer editor Steve Pezman, and they "took a part of it, and made it their own."³³

Contests & Surfing's Spread

Along with the growing surf media, interest in surfing contests was at an all-time high and would only peak around 1966. Contests spread to other parts of the world, along with surfing itself.

For the first time, there was a world invitational held in Peru. "Two Australian surfers, Bob Pike and Mike Hickey, happened to be in Hawaii," wrote Nat Young, "... and with a host of Californians and Hawaiians were invited to compete in the first surfing contest in Peru."³⁴

Surfing had hit Japan in 1962 ³⁵ and France, too. "After the contest," continued Young, "Bob [Pike] returned to Australia but Mike [Hickey], who had met two French surfers in Peru and had heard about the waves of Biarritz, on the French coast, went off to Europe. The next thing everyone knew Mike Hickey had become the first European surfing champion."³⁶

"Surfing had reached Britain," too, "where a small band of dedicated boardmen rode summertime waves in Cornwall and the Channel Isles."³⁷

"South Africans," wrote Young, "had taken up surfing and had picked up on the country's amazing wave potential; a few years later they were to produce a world champion."³⁸

"Surfing contests were really happening," continued Young. "The east and gulf coasts of the US were well into the second year of serious competition, with two major events and numerous small inter-club competitions. In California the west coast surfboard championships had been held annually since 1960 at Huntington Beach, where shooting the pier was an important manoeuvre to qualify for the final. The surfing clubs were very big; some surfers would travel hundreds of miles to be a member of a particular club with an impressive stable of good surfers. The Windansea Surf Club and the Long Beach Surf Club were the two biggest clubs in California; they were involved in competition every weekend, either between clubs or with surfers competing against one another. Most of the talented surfers to bounce off this platform went on to win the prestigious Huntington contest: Mike Doyle, Corky Carrol, David Nuuheiwa, Ricky Irons and Rusty Miller. All these surfers were also sponsored by surfboard manufacturers; what with their club contests and competition between rival companies they had very little time for anything else. If you were too young to surf you probably rode a skate board, and the competition associated with this craze was just as fanatical as in surfing."³⁹

1st Surfer Magazine Poll

Not all surfers saw the move to increased competition as a good thing. Most surfers endorsed competition, but even those that did had reservations about how accurate they were in deciding who was the best. In its third year of publication, Surfer magazine "came up with an interesting idea," Mike Doyle recalled. "It probably came out of the frustration almost everybody felt about the Makaha and other so-called international surf contests, which always seemed to favor the local heroes. The idea was, instead of having another surf contest, why not just ask the surfers themselves who they thought were the best surfers in the world? Most surfers had seen the surf movies, which tended to highlight the best surfers giving their best performances on the world's best waves. By letting the surfers decide for themselves, you could eliminate the hometown advantage, inexperienced or senile judges, and ridiculous rules. In fact, you could do away with contests altogether."⁴⁰

"So Surfer conducted its first Surfer Poll," Doyle continued, "and the results that year pleased just about everyone. The winner was Phil Edwards, the California style master whose smooth, understated way with a surfboard and a wave had inspired every surfer in the world. What made the award seem even more just and fitting was the fact that Edwards had rarely participated in surf contests, believing they were irrelevant and meaningless. Edwards had won the poll entirely on his reputation among other surfers."⁴¹

Hap Jacobs

Even though the surf scene was changing -- as evidenced by Hollywood movies, surf music and even the sports own magazines and movies -- the veterans were still around and still making major contributions. One veteran still shaping away was Hap Jacobs.

Jacobs took up surfing in the Hermosa Beach area, in the late 1940s.

"In the early '50s," Jacobs recalled, "it looked like they were going to draft me and send me to Korea, so I decided to beat them to the punch. I'd been hanging around Hermosa Pier long enough anyway, working the California Surfrider raft rental concession. The recruiter for the Coast Guard said if I signed right then, I could go to Hawaii, and I took them up on it. Some of the finest experiences of my life. I worked on a buoy tender, so I was sailing much of the time. It was danerous work, but we didn't have to wear uniforms, and that appealed to me. No shoes, no shirt, sailing around the islands. And there was the surfing, of course."⁴²

"George Downing was a big influence, and a good friend," Jacobs continued. He was out there day in, day out, on 'Pepe,' his favorite board. Spent a lot of time surfing First Break (Waikiki). Wally Froiseth, Walter Hoffman, Woody Brown... they were the crew... Alan Gomes and Bing Copeland. We'd get balsa and muslin from Hickam Field and build boards, surf around town."⁴³

After Hawai`i, Hap Jacobs returned to California and went in on a wetsuit and ocean sports company called Dive N' Surf with Bev Morgan. Shortly thereafter, Morgan and Jacobs sold Dive N' Surf to the Meistrell brothers and Jacobs went into partnership of a surf shop with Dale Velzy. "Together," wrote Scott Hulet for a 1996 profile of Jacobs in Longboard magazine, "Jacobs and Velzy opened a shop in the apropos shadow of a Venice oil derrick. Like the crude rig, the So. Cal. post-war economic landscape was pumping, and the boys reveled in their initial custom order list of 13 boards."⁴⁴

"Working with Velzy was memorable," Jacobs recalled of their startup in 1953. "I'd shaped for a year before we got together, and I credit my learning to the function of a surfboard, pertaining to shape, to him. And of course he was a pure salesman."⁴⁵

"You know how our most famous design came to be?" Jacobs asked about the Velzy-Jacobs pig board. "In the balsa days, there was a lot of sawing involved, and Velzy wished we could just leave the tails blocky to save the trouble. Well, on one board, he just left the tail fatter than anything and had her glassed. When he saw the finished board, he shook his head and said, 'It looks like the ass end of a pig.' Muñoz tried the thing out at the pier, and it went great."⁴⁶

The Velzy-Jacobs partnership lasted from 1953 to 1960 and during that time, the two shapers became surfing's pre-eminent design team.

"Velzy was a bit looser than I was," explained Jacobs. "If he sold two or three boards, he figured that was enough for a run to Hawaii, so off he went. Overall, we got along real well, though. We're still great friends. Not many ex-business partners can say that."⁴⁷

"Hap has just been a wonderful man as long as I've known him," Velzy said of Jacobs. "He was a good partner and a great friend, honest as they come. Bev and the Meistrell's wanted both of us at Dive N' Surf, but I said, 'Bullshit! Surfers will never wear those damn wetsuits!' Finally, I convinced Hap to join me in a partnership. It was just a matter of good timing. In all those years, the only time I ever saw him get pissed off was when I sold his board to Peter Viertel. I got him $125.00 for it! Hell, I thought he'd be happy."⁴⁸

"I would have been," Jacobs returned, "if I'd ever seen the money!"⁴⁹

In 1960, when the Dale Velzy and Hap Jacobs partnership ended, Velzy packed up his Gullwing Mercedes and moved down to San Clemente. Jacobs remained in the South Bay, forming Jacobs Surfboards and competing with Bing Copeland, Greg Noll, Dewey Weber and the smaller outfits. The Jacobs shop was cranking out 125 boards a week in its hey day. In addition to Jacobs, the more notable members of his shaping staff included Wayne Land, Al Nelson, Larry Felker, Donald Takayama, Dick Mobley and Kenny Tilton.⁵⁰

They worked in multiple shifts and there was an unspoken competition for the piecework. Various nefarious methods were employed to assure that certain shapers got their quota. "One of my shapers was a notorious drinker," Jacobs said. "So if a guy was running low on work, he'd just put a fifth of whiskey in the guy's shaping room, and we wouldn't hear from him for a few days. The guy who planted the bottle would get all the work."⁵¹

Jacobs boards grew in popularity because of their quality, the surfing boom at the time, Jacobs' team of region-specific sponsored riders, and two of the most popular signature models ever created: the Lance Carson and Donald Takayama models.⁵²

"I always thought of Donald as one of the most talented shapers I had the pleasure of working with," Jacobs remembers. "And Lance was just an incredible surfer, and also extremely loyal. Other companies were always trying to pull him away, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He's a meticulous, thoughtful worker. He's very quiet, but also very opinionated. He was responsible for a lot of Jacobs boards in the Malibu area. In fact, that's how I laid out the surf team. I liked to have the best surfer in any given area riding my boards."⁵³

"The team format was hugely successful," wrote Scott Hulet, "and Surfboards by Jacobs remained one of the two or three breakaway successes of the nascent surfboard industry. The Jacobs diamond loomed huge on Robert August's board in Endless Summer, and Hap's savvy use of early product placement paid off in spades."⁵⁴

"The high point of the team era, for me," Hap said, "was right around 1964. The guys riding my boards at that point were Donald [Takayama], Lance [Carson], [Robert] August, Mike Doyle, Rusty Miller, Mickey Dora (of course, I never knew if he was actually riding them or selling them), Rick Irons, and David Nuuhiwa."⁵⁵

Hap Jacobs & the Big Label Meltdown, 1969

Hap Jacobs had his shaping scene going strong until 1969.

"It was Dewey Weber offering Net 30 terms to the East Coast dealers," Jacobs said, that started the industry collapse, beginning in 1969. "They dumped just about every builder in favor of Weber. Boy, we were steamed. He was aggressive! You know, I honestly think he invented the concept of pre-Christmas sales before the big department stores did. Back then, you didn't need to drop prices, especially before Christmas. I mean, that's the one time when your orders are all but guaranteed! He was something."⁵⁶

The fact that the shortboard revolution was in process, at the time, also must be factored in.

"And then things got weird," continued Jacobs, addressing the counter-cultural movement among young people then in full bloom. "I'd have 16-year-old kids all psychedelic-ed out scheduling 'shaping appointments,' and I just decided 'That's it -- I'm going fishing.'"⁵⁷

Hap Jacobs -- Fishing in the 1970s & Return

A number of surfboard industry leaders went surfing during the shortboard revolution. In addition to Hap Jacobs, others included Greg Noll, Mike Stang, Bruce Brown, Harold Walker, Rennie Yater, Mark Martinson and Dewey Weber. They all worked as commercial fishermen. "The art of chasing huge billfish held the most allure," wrote Scott Hulet, "and with dry land mophing into a place that was feeling stranger and stranger, the deep blue of the Catalina channel seemed a likable proposition."⁵⁸

"It's easy to get addicted to sticking swordfish," said Jacobs. "It's quite exciting, really. They're large and powerful. The deal is this: you have a boat with a long plank sticking off the bow. You have a guy in an airplane fly your route, and he radios in when he finds a fish. Once you've found a fish, you hang out on the plank and have the driver run up at the thing. Then you stick it with your harpoon. They sort of loll on the surface. There's really nothing in the ocean that they fear, so if you're lucky, and the water's murky enough that they don't see you, you can get right on top of them. When you stick them, that's when it gets interesting."⁵⁹

"A lot of great stories came out of that period," Hap Jacobs recalls, "and, as usual, a lot of them are based on Dewey. He was just such a go-getter, so aggressive. Just like he'd compete and snake waves, he was the same way as a fisherman. We (the South Bay swordfish fleet) sort of had a gentlemens' agreement: we all tried to stay out of each other's way. But Dewey, boy, he'd just free-range.

"So I decided to take care of him. I built a boardfish. Got a piece of lumber. I nailed on a dorsal fin and a tail, then floated it in my fishing lane. Sure enough, Dewey spotted the thing and came up on it, full steam. He was up on the plank, all excited, and at the last minute, he saw it. We were watching in the binoculars, just busting up. He wasn't so pleased. For weeks, everywhere he went people asked im if he'd nailed any boardfish. Dewey was a classic."⁶⁰

Hap Jacobs fished commercially from 1970 to 1985. He owned the fuel dock at King's Harbor for a period. In 1991, he accepted an invitation from Donald Takayama to attend the Oceanside Longboard Contest. Takayama greeted Jacobs on the beach with a coffee can full of nuts, bolts and brushes. Jacobs asked what was with the coffee can.

"It's a Skill 100," Takayama beamed. "You need to get shaping again. And while you're at it, here's a template."⁶¹

"It was a little intimidating at first," Jacobs admitted. "Things had changed quite a bit since I had last shaped. The foam's different, for one thing. A local guy, Matt Calvani, helped me get used to it. Dennis Jarvis brought me up to date regarding things like the tucked-under edge. Between those two, I got up to speed fairly quick.

"As far as getting back up to date on the business side of things, Mike Eaton was very important. Every couple of months he loads up his van and a trailer, and drives all the way up the California coast, servicing his board accounts. I went on a couple of those trips, and met the shop owners, sort of checked out what was going on. And, of course, we'd take plenty of time for surfing... hitting 38th St. in Santa Cruz, things like that."⁶²

By 1996, Hap Jocobs was regularly in the shaping bay at Hermosa Beach's Shoreline Glassing, looking "like he never missed a beat," wrote Scott Hulet. "Blowing off the dust from his final screen pass with an air hose, he reaches for a sheet of rice paper. He pins the red flared diamond of the Jacobs logo to the deck of the shaped blank, ready to be clad in resin-impregnated Volan-finish 'boat cloth.'"⁶³

"He's a perfectionist," his glasser Dennis McGivern said. "It can drive you crazy, working with Hap. I mean, he pretty much monitors every phase of the process, and if he sees something he doesn't like the look of, you hear about it."⁶⁴

"My 422," christened in honor of his original Hermosa shop at 422 Pacific Coast Highway, Jacobs said, "is a better board than the original. It's just more functional. Turns better, and the steps aren't as Art Deco and curvy; they release the way they're supposed to now...

"I'm getting to the point where I'm questioning how involved I really want to be. The demand surpasses what I can build without just going crazy. My goal was to just get back into the enjoyment of shaping, but it's starting to go beyond that. Part of me wants to turn down these big orders and just go surfing.

"For now, I'm just going to try and keep things balanced. I'm really enjoying my surfing. Tyler Hatzikian is responsible for a lot of that. He's just so pumped, you know? We'd be working together, trying to keep on top of things, and he'd just be squirming, 'Come on, man, I know Malibu's good right now!' So he's dragged me all over the place, keeping me out there."⁶⁵

The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

By November 1963, Mike Doyle had transferred to El Camino College, in the South Bay. He did this to be in the same proximity of his "on-again, off-again" girlfriend, long black-haired Marsha Bainer, one of the stunningly beautiful women surfers of the period. "She and I were both too restless to settle down yet," Doyle explained, "but we really liked each other a lot, and continued to spend time together. Marsha had adopted a lot of my training regimen -- working out every morning, eating a low-fat diet, yoga -- and she had grown into a healthy, vibrant, fun-loving young woman.

"One morning, Marsha and I were in the parking lot of the college, fooling around in the back of my VW van. I had the radio tuned to a jazz station, and turned down softly. Suddenly, there was an interruption, and the announcer said to stand by for a special bulletin. Then we heard the words everyone in my generation would remember for the rest of their lives: 'President Kennedy has been shot.'"⁶⁶

Most everyone who was around in those days remembers where they were, what they were doing, and how they heard the news that fateful day of November 23, 1963. "Mickey Dora used to say that a curse fell over this country when President Kennedy was assassinated," Mike Doyle mentioned. "... Mickey was becoming sort of the gloomy prophet of Malibu, and sometimes it was hard to tell how serious he really was... But in spite of his eccentricity, Dora could be very perceptive at times, and I think he was correct in foreseeing the end of an age of innocense."⁶⁷

"I have to admit that I shared many of Dora's views about the commercialization of the sport," Greg Noll affirmed. "... By the late sixties, a lot of the fun and camraderie of the early days had been wiped out by the hordes of aspiring surfers and the ever-present click click click of the surf photographers' cameras, followed closely by the lads with their notebooks and pencils."⁶⁸

Dave Rochlen's Jams

"In December of 1963," Mike Doyle began the story of Dave Rochlen's invention of jams, "I was back in Hawaii again, getting ready for that year's Makaha. The morning of the contest, I was surfing at a little beach break at Pokai Bay (south of Makaha), just warming up before heading over to the contest. As I came out of the water, Dave Rochlen came walking down the beach. Dave, who was about fifteen years older than I was, had been a lifeguard at Santa Monica, was a respected big-wave rider and somebody I'd always looked up to. He'd been kind of a playboy in his younger days (he dated Marilyn Monroe before she became a famous movie star), but when he went to the islands he fell in love with a Hawaiian woman. I remember him telling me that when he saw her surfing one day, he just knew he had to have her. He ended up marrying the woman, having kids and settling down there in the islands."⁶⁹

Dave Rochlen had been a key element in the development of the Malibu Board in the late 1940s and start of the 1950s. Along with Joe Quigg, Matt Kivlin and Tommy Zahn, Rochlen had been a major influence in the surfing world and would continue to be so, but in different ways.

"Anyway," continued Doyle, "what really caught my attention on this particular day was that Rochlen was wearing these great big, floral-patterned surf trunks, like big baggy sacks with a draw string. They were like a cross between a Hawaiian muumuu, and extra-large boxer shorts. I liked them right away -- they really made me laugh. So I called out to him, 'Dave, what the hell are you wearing?'

"Rochlen looked at me, then down at his baggies. He had a funny way of talking with gestures -- rolling his head, squishing his neck, tilting his shoulders -- like he had to feel every word before he could let it out. 'These are my new jams!'

"I'd never heard the word before -- jams. 'Well, those are really cool,' I said.

"Dave acted surprised. 'You really think so?' He stripped them off right there -- he had a pair of briefs on underneath -- and handed them to me. 'Here, they're yours. First pair I ever made.'

"I wore Rochlen's jams around for a long time. They were comfortable, and they were so wild they made an anti-fashion statement, which I believe was the beginning of surf fashion.

"Not long after that, Dave created one of the first surfwear companies, and called it Surf Line Hawaii. He registered the trademark, Jams, and came out with an entire line of his floral baggies."⁷⁰

Joey Cabell Wins the 11th Annual Makaha Championship

Even though Australian Midget Farrelly had won the Makaha International the year before, judging rules stayed static. Judges Dick Brewer and Buzzy Trent were removed, in part because of their judging of the Australian win in 1962.⁷¹

"The contest was organised by the Outrigger Canoe Club," wrote Young, which by the early 1960s, "was mainly a social club with strong surfing affiliations; the members were involved in traditional paddle boards, outrigger canoes and, to a lesser degree, board riding. To the Outrigger's contest committee the senior men's was the most important part of the competition, but the tandem, girls, and paddle board races were of significance also."⁷²

"There was a nasty feeling on Makaha Beach in December 1963," continued Young. "Many talented Californians and Australians had failed to qualify and a showdown was avoided only because the contest was won by the well-respected causasian Hawaiian, Joey Cabell, who rode the biggest waves in a hot dog fashion to go on to win what was then considered the world championship. One of the problems was that the Outrigger was not aware of the importance attached to the contest in the rest of the world. They were doing their best to make it a good function: they were excellent hosts, extending guest privileges in their luxurious club to all international competitors, and any judging bias that may have taken place was unintentional. But the Hawaiians were somewhat over-protective about outside talent excelling in their inherited sport, especially as they had only a few outstanding surfers right then in senior men's competition. Fred Hemmings was still a junior and Barry Kanaiaupuni was still surfing in town, lacking the experience to excell in big waves."⁷³

"Joey Cabell won the Makaha that year," reiterated Mike Doyle, "continuing the tradition of a Hawaiian, either white or native, always winning there. Nobody could deny, though, that Joey surfed brilliantly and deserved to win. Linda Merrill and I won the Makaha tandem event, in what some people told us later was one of the best tandem events they'd ever seen."⁷⁴

Nat Young -- from Collaroy to Hawaii

"About this time," wrote Australian and future world champion Nat Young of the years 1962-63, "I was surfing down at Collaroy beach, on the north side of Sydney harbour, and getting into more trouble than I managed to keep out of. My mother bought my board registration sticker for me (it cost 10 shillings) because, like most surfers, I thought the registration system was a rip-off; getting my board confiscated for two weeks didn't help. A few friends and I formed the Collaroy Surfing Association, which had 17 paid-up members, about 10 hangers-on, and about the same number of girls who just hung around the beach looking beautiful at weekends or before the bus left for school on weekdays. The 'association' had its clubhouse on the beach or in my bedroom; we also had our own social club which held parties and organised fund-raising activities. At school all we thought about was the latest surf equipment and what pigment we'd use on our new boards, and to further establish our identity we carried our board shorts hanging out of the back pocket of our jeans. And we thought about sex. Most of the girl surfers we knew were into the sun and stomp, and some of them became serious boardriders later on, bust very few of them engaged in sex. So sexual intercourse became a group activity, involving several surfers and one of the more promiscuous girls who hung around the scene: Grunter, Brenda the Benda, Sally Apple Bowels, and others. These girls weren't well-respected in the normal sense of the word, but some strong ties did develop between them and the surfer dogs who chased after them. At the same time the local gremmies were busy peroxiding their hair to make it look as bleached as possible, tuning up on American slang, and trying to get enough cash together to buy a surfer van."⁷⁵

"Two older members of the Collaroy crew, Robert 'Kenno' Kennerson and Ian 'Wally' Wallace, managed to purchase an old bread wagon. They had the artist of the mob, Denis '10 foot' Anderson, paint their favourite character all over the wagon: his name was 'Murphy the Surfie' and he came via Surfer Magazine, the surfers' bible that came out of California four times a year (someone's 'with-it' mum would get one for her son at Christmas, or for his birthday, and the magazine would end up in pieces on his bedroom wall.) When the wagon was finished it looked fantastic and now, by sharing the petrol money and arriving before dawn at Kenno's, the crew could chase waves all up and down the coast. No longer would they have to build trolleys to carry the boards behind their bikes over the hill to Long Reef. Finally they were free."⁷⁶

Nat Young was among the group of Australian surfers on the North Shore of O`ahu during the winter of 1963-64, when the Banzai Pipeline was being broke open. "The Banzai Pipeline was originally called 'Banzai' by Flippy Ho [Hoffman]," Young wrote, "because it seemed an impossible wave to ride; the 'Pipeline' was added later because the waves looked like a pipe when they broke. It represented a new frontier. Butch Van Artsdalen from San Diego, and John Peck, a stylish flamboyant surfer from California were the first to meet the challenge head on. In the winter of '63 both these surfers broke down the barriers by surfing so deep inside the curl that on rare occasions they actually disappreared. The Australian contingent was really impressed by the wary of the Pipeline. Midget told the rest of the team that surfing the Pipeline was like committing suicide, because of the way the waves pounded onto shallow live coral heads. When Peter Troy had to be rushed to hospital for numerous stitches, the Australians made sure they took off a long way outside Peck and Van Artsdalen."⁷⁷

"My being in Hawaii," explained Young, "was the result of taking off first prize in an Australian open men's contest at Bondi in November, 1963. The prize, presented to me by Duke Kahanamoku himself, was a first-class air fare to Hawaii and California. The ticket and expenses were provided by Ampol Petroleum and the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, and the man who organised such impressive sponsorship was none other than Bob Evans. As well as his movies and surf magazines Bob found time, together with John Witzig, Ross Kelly and Ray Young, to put the Australian Surfriders' Association on a firm footing. Me, I was just pleased to get to Hawaii for the first time in my life and to have a chance of copying my heroes, Phil Edwards and Midget Farrelly, on the best waves in the world."⁷⁸

Kit Horn at Lunada Bay

Back on the Mainland, Greg Noll tells the classic story of Kit Horn at Lunada Bay, in what I guess to be Christamas-time 1963:

"We usually threw a shop party on the day of Christmas Eve. One winter, just before I was scheduled to leave for my annual trip to the Islands, people were getting out of their jobs early and stopping by the shop for a little Christmas cheer. Kit Horn came by to see if I would be available to go to Lunada Bay in the next couple of days. Lunada Bay is off the Palos Verdes Peninsula and breaks only on a big winter swell. It's a big, steep wave with a fast takeoff. Under the right swell conditions, the place could become very hairy. In 1963, we got several days over fifteen feet. The bay was rock-rimmed and enclosed by a hundred-and-fifty-foot cliff from point to point, with only one small trail down to the water.

"Not many people have heard of Kit Horn. He was a good friend and schoolmate of Buzzy Trent's. And a frustrated big-wave rider. If you had asked the guy what he wanted to do when he grew up, he would have said that he wanted to go to Hawaii and ride big waves.

"Horn was a bitchin' guy, but he worked at some terrible goddamn engineering job at Northrop -- wore a suit and tie and large-rimmed glasses. A tough guy, he spent all his free time running, pumping weights and getting in shape for the day that he would find himself in the Islands surfing big waves. He never made it, though. He never really had enough time. The couple of times he did go over there he would miss the big surf and come home totally frustrated by the whole deal. He wanted it so badly."⁷⁹

"So, at the shop, we got to drinking wine -- Horn wasn't a big drinker -- and talking about Lunada Bay. It was breaking at about fifteen feet. By this time it was about three in the afternoon and we were getting pretty shit-faced. I told Kit that I had a special workout for getting in shape for big waves. What you did, I said, was tie yourself into a big truck tire innertube, paddle out at Lunada Bay, get yourself right in the impact zone, then try to catch a wave backwards. There, with your wine bottle and your innertube, you drink and wait for a wave to break on you. If you lose your bottle of wine or if you quit drinking, you're automatically disqualified.

"Kit had drunk enough to believe me. And I was far enough along to be stoked on the idea. So we did it. We got two big truck tire innertubes and two fresh gallons of Red Mountain wine and went to Lunada Bay. It was near dusk as we ran down the trail. We were fired up and the whole situation turned competitive.

"We paddled out in our tubes and sat right in the impact zone. A fifteen-foot set comes through and pounds the living shit out of both of us. We're laughing anyway, having a great time. Kit loses his inner tube, but holds onto his wine bottle. I'm getting a little concerned about him, but he just laughs. He had drunk about half his wine. I think the only thing keeping him afloat was the half-empty bottle.

"By the time we decided to go in, the sun had gone down and I couldn't find Kit on shore. I'm walking along the beach, and it's pitch dark. I finally find him in a tide pool. He'd drug himself there and was still lying face-down, his head pointing towards the ocean. He was real screwed up, his face and body were a mass of bloody cuts. The tide was coming in and he was barfing as his head bobbed up and down in the tide pool.

"Kit was a big man, weighed a couple hundred pounds. I tried to roll him out of the tidepool but couldn't. The best I could do was grab him by the ankles and drag him up the rocks, just to get his head out of the water so he wouldn't drown. I carried over a couple of big rocks, rolled one under each of his armpits and told him I was going for help.

"I climbed up the path to the road and hitchhiked to a phone. I called Horn's house and somehow the message got through that Kit was lying face-down in a tide pool at Lunada Bay. His wife just went beserk. She thought he'd drowned. At this point, the cops were called in.

"In the meantime, Kit comes to and starts walking up the trail. In the process of doing this, he slips and falls in some dog crap. So now he has blood and crap all over him, and he remembers that a friend of his lives at the Point at Lunada Bay. All he can think of is looking up this lifelong friend. After all, it's Christmas Eve. He stumbles into the guy's house and collapses on the couch, looking -- and smelling -- like shit. They call his wife, and she comes to pick him up."⁸⁰

"For years afterwards, if the name of Greg Noll was spoken in Kit Horn's house, the woman would go into a total rage. I haven't seen the man since, and that happened in the early '60s.

"Not long ago, I was at E.T. Surfboards, a shop in Hermosa Beach owned by Eddie Talbot, a young guy who once worked for me and who became like a son to me. While I was there, a kid came up and asked me if I would tell him the story about Kit Horn at Lunada Bay. I guess it's become one of those surf stories that gets carried on from one surf generation to another."⁸¹

ENDIT

¹ Edwards, 1967, p. 110 & 119.

³ Lueras, 1984, p. 134.

⁴ See Volume 2, Chapter 4, "1959," for how Gidget effected surfing at the end of the 1950s/start of the '60s.

⁵ Lueras, 1984, p. 124.

⁶ Lueras, 1984, p. 124 & 127.

⁷ Edwards, 1967, pp. 119-120.

⁸ Lueras, 1984, p. 127.

⁹ Lueras, 1984, pp. 127-128.

¹⁰ Lueras, 1984, p. 128.

¹¹ Lueras, 1984, p. 128. Peter Bart of the New York Times quoted, 1964.

¹² Lueras, 1984, p. 130.

¹³ Van Dyke, 1989.

¹⁴ Edwards, 1967, p. 120.

¹⁵ Noll, 1989, pp. 130-131.

¹⁶ Edwards, 1967, p. 120.

¹⁷ Van Dyke, 1989.

¹⁸ Lueras, 1984, p. 130. Roger Christian was a well-known LA-area disc jockey. The Ride the Wild Surf theme song was actually quite good, compared to other songs of its genre. The surf riding footage of the movie was the most realistic of any of the beach movies and the shooting had coincided with a particularly large well on the North Shore.

¹⁹ Lueras, 1984, p. 130.

²⁰ Marcus, Ben. Email to Malcolm, 14 November 2002.

²¹ Doyle, 1993, p. 108.

²² Doyle, 1993, p. 108.

²³ Doyle, 1993, p. 108.

²⁴ Doyle, 1993, pp. 108-109.

²⁵ Lueras, 1984, p. 134.

²⁶ Doyle, 1993, p. 109. Talking about the pending issue of the original Endless Summer.

²⁷ The Los Angeles Times, 1970, quoted in Lueras, 1984, p. 133.

²⁸ Lueras, p. 133.

²⁹ Lueras, 1984, p. 133.

³⁰ Lueras, 1984, p. 133.

³¹ Lueras, 1984, p. 133. Norman B. Chandler quoted.

³² Lueras, 1984, p. 133.

³³ Lueras, 1984, p. 133. Steve Pezman quoted.

³⁴ Young, 1983, p. 94. This may have been in 1965. See photo caption in Young, p. 95.

³⁵ Young, 1983, p. 94. See photo caption in Young, p. 95.

³⁶ Young, 1983, p. 94.

³⁷ Young, 1983, p. 94.

³⁸ Young, 1983, p. 94.

³⁹ Young, 1983, p. 94.

⁴⁰ Doyle, 1993, p. 109.

⁴¹ Doyle, 1993, pp. 109-110.

⁴² Hulet, Scott. "Hap Jacobs, 20th Century Western Man," Longboard, Volume 4, Number 5, November/December 1996, p. 37. Hap Jacobs.

⁴³ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, pp. 37-38. Hap Jacobs.

⁴⁴ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 38.

⁴⁵ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 38. Hap Jacobs.

⁴⁶ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 38. Hap Jacobs.

⁴⁷ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 38. Hap Jacobs.

⁴⁸ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, pp. 38-39. Dale Velzy.

⁴⁹ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 39. Hap Jacobs.

⁵⁰ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 39.

⁵¹ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 39. Hap Jacobs.

⁵² Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 39.

⁵³ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 39. Hap Jacobs.

⁵⁴ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 39.

⁵⁵ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 39. Hap Jacobs.

⁵⁶ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 41. Hap Jacobs.

⁵⁷ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 41. Hap Jacobs.

⁵⁸ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 41.

⁵⁹ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 41. Hap Jacobs.

⁶⁰ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 41. Hap Jacobs.

⁶¹ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 41. Donald Takayama as retold by Scott Hulet.

⁶² Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, pp. 41-42. Hap Jacobs.

⁶³ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 42.

⁶⁴ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 42. Dennis McGivern.

⁶⁵ Hulet, "Hap Jacobs," 1996, p. 42. Hap Jacobs.

⁶⁶ Doyle, 1993, p. 110.

⁶⁷ Doyle, 1993, p. 110.

⁶⁸ Noll, 1989, pp. 134-135.

⁷¹ Young, 1983, p. 94.

⁷² Young, 1983, p. 94.

⁷³ Young, 1983, pp. 94-95.

⁷⁵ Young, 1983, pp. 92-93..

⁷⁶ Young, 1983, p. 93.

⁷⁷ Young, 1983, p. 95. Young, at age 16 and without a driver's license, drove Peter Troy to the hospital that day. See Young, p. 95.

⁷⁸ Young, 1983, p. 95 & 97.

⁷⁹ Noll, 1989, pp. 102-104.

⁸⁰ Noll, 1989, pp. 102-104.

⁸¹ Noll, 1989, pp. 102-104.

LEGENDARY SURFERS