A tip for collectors-
Simon only ever used the triple Energy logo for team riders. You couldn't buy or order a board like that, you had to be on the Simon Anderson, Mike Newling, Duke Bombora, Scott Beggs team.
So if you find an old Thruster with the triple logos you've got a piece of history.
Team Simon
Fast times at Wave Tools
I love this spread from Surfer September 1982.
On the left, an ad for Lance Colin's Wave Tools with a fine array of 80's shapes and sprays.
On the opposite page, coming to a theatre near you, Jeff Spicoli in the pre-release ad for Fast times at Ridgemont High
With love from Tokyo
Doug, my new friend from Tokyo sent me these pics of his board he's trying to learn more about. I felt I had to post them because I think Doug has a great piece of experimental innovation period design on his hands. I've never seen or touched the board but my guess is that is a Japanese licence of Dick Brewer's brand from Hawaii because the logos are different and I've never heard of the shaper. Its a 5'8" rounded square tail with double hips. But the most interesting feature is the twin stabilizer fins set behind the big clear laminate twin fins. I've never seen this on a 80's twin fin. But it is similar to what Dick and Reno Abalila were doing with bonzer 3 fins a few years earlier. To me it looks very modern, like the new school quads kids are riding today.
Shawn Stussy- Mr Cranium!?
In Australia Shawn Stussy is generally considered to be the man who populated a plague of elastic waisted pants upon a generation. Few here believe he was once a credible shaper in his own right (like Bob Hurley who even shaped for Lighting Bolt). I heard when Shawn finally visited Australia and complained as to what had become of his good name the local licensee in Melbourne simply replied 'well...you never sent the cheques back'.
I have found here a rare portrait of him with one of his boards from an ad from a surf shop that carried his hardware and a shot of a young Californian ripper putting one of his boards to good use. I sure would like that twinny for my collection.
Richard Cram- Team Bolt
I continue to search for the original owners of boards in my collection identifiable by their markings. My research indicated that this Team Bolt twin fin shaped by Bill Barnsfeild in Hawaii could only have belonged to Rory Russell, Mark Richards or Bobby Ownens.
But here we see evidence of a young Richard 'Mr Cutback' Cram riding a very similar board in Jefferies Bay South Africa.
If it were the same board it would have traveled from Hawaii to Bondi on tour to SA and finally back to Bondi where it has now peacefully retired.
The Riddler
Simon Anderson is a professional surfer and a shaper. He is the man credited with developing the tri-fin surfboard design that he called the 'Thruster'. In 1981 Simon was frustrated with the limitations of the twin-fin design, in particular the way it would slide out, and he, at 6'0" liking to put a lot of power into his turns. Simon's tri-fin design solved this, adding more stability and allowing for greater control in the pocket. The three fins combined the best features of the single and twin-fin designs, and naturally became hugely popular. His tri-fin design was the biggest innovation since fibreglass and polyurethane foam.
This rounded pin tail board is an early examples of his design as evidenced by the rear fin that protrudes past the tail and the angled channels on the bottom. Features that were modified within the first rear of the designs manufacture.
It was made for a pro surfer, sponsored by bite clothing.
? But who was he?
? What happened to bite clothing and their baggy shorts?
? Who shaped this board?
? Why the question marks?
? A a fan of Frank Gorshin's Riddler character from the Batman TV series?
? Or an old school DC comics fan
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Kingsley Looker part 2
Kingsley Looker's legacy to surf history is less about his prowess in the water and more about his trail blazing alternative career path. Kingsley was the original pro-surfer turned professional musician. He paved the way for the likes of Jack Jonhson, Tim Curran, Rob Machado, Neal Purchase Jr and Andrew Kidman.
It is true that his red rose on the grand piano lacks some of the laid back surf cool of Johnson or Kidman. But he was the first to get paid for pulling into barrels at Manly by day and paid again to sing Billy Joel at Steps Cocktail bar, Cremorne by night.
Hey sing me a song your the piano man.......
Kingsley Looker part 1
A couple of years ago I was driving to Maroubra for a surf. As I was going thru Coogee I saw a yellow skip out the front of a building site. Sticking out the top was a broken nose of surfboard. Normally I'd drive by but I could clearly see a 'Platts' logo.
Platts was a small Australian board short company that went under a few years ago. I knew they didn't have much of a team, so if this was a team riders board I knew who it probably belonged to. I pulled it out of the skip and got goosebumps down my arms. I knew this board.
But how could I prove it?
I put it in storage till today. Because recently I found the Sunday Telegraph colour insert, program for the 1986 Surfabout, and there on the cover in all its 80's flouro glory was this board!
I still wasn't sure so I dug out the board, still covered in grime and unrepaired. I thought, Platts logo under the glass, its been snapped and put back together, it definitely something, but theres no shapers signature. Then finally peeled off some of the tail pad near the plug and there it is "GR 5'11" x 19"3/4 KINGSLEY"
This board is not worth $ but it does have a cultural history value, to me.
Vince Klyne beats up Keanu Reeves at the beach!
My favorite 80's surf star, Hawaiian surfer turned Hollywood actor, Vince Klyne AKA "War Child" and Anthony Kiedis from the Chiili Peppers beat up Keanu Reeves in the movie Point Break.
Klyne went on to work as a model for Guess, JimmyZ and GQ magazine and starred in other 80's films of questionable quality such as Cyborg
Music Fan
Scott Beggs
Scott Beggs shaped Energy thruster. Wide tail area with pronounced hips.
A similar rounded square tail board can be seen at www.surfresearch.com.au/00000095.html
This is a great example of one an early Energy thruster. Easily dated at 1981 by the fantastic checker spray featuring the bands-
Simple Minds
Ultravox
(A) Headbanger
The Sunnyboys
The Slits
Ian Dury & The Blockheads
The Pretenders
Mi Sex
Col Smith Channel bottom
One of the most important design innovations of the T2 period was the development of the channel bottom. It is thought that the channel bottom led to today's single and double concaves. One man who is given much of the credit for developing the channel bottom is Newcastles's Col Smith, RIP, father of rookie Rique Smith. Not to be confused with Narrabeen's Col Smith AKA the rubberman who made Morning Star Surfboards. Col is also responsible for earning the design broad acceptance by winning the Pipe masters on one of his own channel bottom designs. A poet warrior in the classic sense.
Here is a photo of my own Col Smith shaped channel bottom, board double fly, pin tail single fin, a classic example of his designs. A similar example can be found here www.surfresearch.com.au/00000064.html
The sad news is I no long have this board, having sold it for $220 to pay rent. The good news is I no longer have those shoes or that crappy Dodge ute either.
(Many thanks to Gerr for helping me out on this one).
Where were you in '77?- Jonny Rotten.
Where were you in '77 is the title of the Sex Pistols album the released when they reformed a few years ago. The title is meant to imply that you should have been at the front of the 100 Club pogoing like everyone else in the UK in 1977. The reality of course is that most of England was at home listening to 'Abba Arrival' or learning the bag pipes as reveled by the true Top Five Singles of the year on the British Charts for 1977 list:
1"Mull of Kintyre"Paul McCartney and Wings
2"Don't Give Up on Us" David Soul
3"Knowing Me Knowing You" Abba
4"Way Down"Elvis Presley
5"I Feel Love" Donna Summer
So too it is with surfboard design. Most surfers of the day were pretty slow to give up their flares and single fins and jump on the new multi finned surfboard designs, despite Simon Anderson effectively proving the functionality of the design by winning back to back contests at 20ft Bells, 2ft Manly and the Pipe Masters in Hawaii all in the space of a month in 1981.
Which brings me to this board of mine, quite obviously shaped in 82 or 83, based on the checker boards spray. But guys were still ordering single fins off Simon right up till the end of the 80's. Nice board though.
Gerry Wedd
Gerry Wedd is one of the most talented surfer's to come out of the surfless city of Adelaide. Several times state champion, he has a deep understanding of surf history and culture and is the only person to have read every article by Derek Hynd. He is also a talented ceramicist and potter. He has recently produced a series of ceramic tiles that celebrate important, if little know, points in surf history, including some historic innovation period mile stones. You can see the rest of his exhibition on Dain Thomas' s website http://www.seasurfboards.com/
Bob Hurley
Hurley surfboards ad from 1982
I mentioned in the previous post that Shawn Stussey used to shape boards in the 80's. So too did Bob Hurley, who shaped this beautiful Lightning Bolt single fin pin tail belonging to my friend James in LA. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story goes Bob shaped for Bolt before shaping under his own label Hurley. The Hurley business struggled along until Bob got the licence to produce Billabong apparel in the US. This proved to be a licence to print money as the Billabong team, led by Occy stormed the world. But Bob was doing a great job, so good a job that the lazy Queenslanders stopped designing their own ranges and just waited for the US sample range to arrive for "approval".Then they copied the US 'licensed' range and then tried to 'licence' it back to Bob.
Bob eventually got sick of this and pulled the plug and started Hurley, taking with him the US Bilabong team of riders, the design team, the production facilities and the account list. He then went on to quickly grow the brand and sell it to Nike. My understanding he made enough money to buy 17 of the 19 islands in the Hawaiian chain.
And my mum said I could'nt be a shaper cause I'd never make enough money.
Peter Schroff the original Marc Newsom
Peter Schroff is an LA based artist who used to shape surfboards around the same time Shawn Stussy mowed foam in the mid 80's.
He was my idol and I used to texa pen copies of his geometric sprays on my own boards.
Above are 3 examples of his surfboard inspired furniture designs. I'm pretty sure Marc Newsom had a good look at his work for inspiration (see green fibreglass lounge in tp photo).
Anyway, I'm chatting online to my friend in LA other other day. He says "Damion, is there any board you really need for your collection" "I say, yeah, I'd really like to find an original 80's Schroff, but I know its nearly impossible" Next thing I know he sends me shots of his collection of 8 twinny's, thrusters and quads. Oh my God! Look at that!
University of Narrabeen, School of Design.
The lagoon fed sand banks of Narrabeen have produced some the finest surfers in Australia. Beginning with Bob Pike & Nat Young then the 'innovation period' crew of Simon Anderson, Terry Fitzgerald, Col Smith, Ron Ford, Grant Oliver, Tom Carrol and many other surfers who made names locally and internationally.
From a design perspective it was home to both the first transition period of surfboard design from long board to short board and the second from one fin to three.
Specifically, Col Smith developed the channel bottom and Simon developed the thruster here.
Everyone is familiar with shots from 'THE SWELL OF 83' (top photo) but the reality is its not that unusual. The (bottom 2 photos) I took recently as I hurriedly jumped into my wetsuit on a sunny Sunday.
Trap for young players.
Everybody wants an original 70's Hot Buttered, Terry Fitzgerald shaped single fin for their collection with a nice Marty Worthington spray like the one in the top photo. I found the board above at Gavin Hardy's auction house in the days when you could only look and not touch. I could see it said 'designed and hand shaped by Terry Fitzgerald' under the glass and i decided I had to have it. I won the auction and the day came to pick it up and suddenly I realized something was very wrong. The board is 5'6".
5'6"! What use is that to anyone. Terry what were you thinking!
This board is worth nothing.
$10,000 to be paid for first successful kick flip by a surfer
Volcom will pay $10,000 to the first person to produce video of themselves cleanly stomping this yet-to-be documented maneuver.
Why?
'Old Faithful'- the famous MR Flame board. Part 3
The influence of 'Old Faithful' goes far and wide. Above is a pic of a Mike Davis shaped stinger from 1978 or 1979 from Kiama on the south coast of New South Wales.
Below is Mark Richards learning to shape a similar stinger from the master, Dick Brewer in Hawaii in 1977.
I believe that to gain entry to the WQS young pro surfers should have to spend 6 months in the shaping bay to get a basic understanding of board design and construction instead of drinking vodka cruisers and playing Nintendo.
'Old Faithful'- the famous MR Flame board. Part 2
I was reading through the February 1977 edition of the Australian magazine 'Surf' and I came across the an article called "The $8000 board".
It is about Mark Richard's famous Ben Apia shaped 'Flame' stinger.
It begins 'As we go through the seasons and surf many different surfboards, we often become sentimentally attached to favorite boards. Most you like, some you don't like and occasionally you find an extra hot one that suits your own style of surfing particularly well. To a surfer, good surfboard means a lot, so when you find a good one you try and keep it it as long as possible.'
The article goes on to reveal that the board had won Mark more than $8000 in 1977 which is equal to about $3 billion in today's money.
Apparently he had a pen friend in Hawaii by the name of Ronny Romero who was writing to him about a guy named Larry Bertelmen who was ripping on these Apia stingers. So when Mark arrived in Hawaii he went to Ben's shop and bought it off the rack for full retail- $200.
What I found most interesting was that Mark, a professional surfer, had had the board for 2 years and was planning to take it back to Hawaii for a third time. My new boards hardly last a summer and I'm not even a professional surfer. When I ordered my last custom and said I want a heavy enough glass job for it to go to Bali twice Froggy nearly laughed me out of the shop. Bastards!
1982 MR Twin fin v's 1978 MR Twin Fin
Here is a 6'1" Mark Richards designed single fly swallow tail twin fin of mine. If you compare this board to the one from '78 in the post 'How good is my wife' you will immediately see how the wide point has dropped down from 1/3 from the nose to near the mid point of the board. Almost all boards in the 70's had a wide point up near the nose with a long drawn out tail designed for long drawn out turns on single fins. Once this new template was perfected in about '83 it has hardly been changed in over 20 years. The other difference you will immediately see (even in my crappy photos) is the size of the fins, particularly the width at the base. The newer board has smaller fins that make the board looser and more manoeuvrable, at the cost of the board sliding and being slower down the line. Personally I like a nice wide fin base for lots of drive and power. Perhaps the addition of the smaller fin led to the twin fin designs period of unpopularity as surfer switched to the new 3 fin designs with more speed.
If Homer Simpson ordered a custom board.
My first ever custom ordered board was a little over the top even for 1983. I had waited so long for my own custom ordered board I added every feature possible just like when uncle Herb let Homer Simpson design a car. Homer added-
- Extremely large beverage holders.
- A horn 'here, here and here' cause 'you can never find it when you need it' and they all should play La Cucaracha".
- A little ball on top of the aerial so you can find it in the parking lot 'every car should have one'
- Tail fins.
- A giant spoiler.
- A 'letter box' intake on the bonnet.
- Bubble domes.
- Shag carpeting.
- For younger passengers a second soundproof bubble dome with optional straps and muzzles
Homer describes the car as "powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball".
I added the following features to my space age custom surfboard design-- 6'0" Greg Clough shaped Aloha quad.
- Double fly.
- Swallow tail.
- Channel bottom.
- 4 fins, the front 2 bigger than the back two.
- Custom painted blue fade stripes on all 4 fins.
- Textured deck for super fast application of wax.
- Rails sprayed dark blue to light blue and deck sprayed light blue to white with logo transfers with every colour available.
I describe the board as borderline unrideable.
So when I found a similar design for sale for $15 recently at a garage sale in Bondi naturally I just had to have it.
US Vintage surf Auction results- Boards selling for $20,000.
Today saw the close of the first online US Vintage surf Auction from Hawaii.
Although there were not many 'innovation period' pieces in the auction its always interesting to see the results. For example, a 1976 Lightning Bolt pin tail single fin shaped by Barry Kanaiaupuni 7’ 6", definitely the most prized collectible label of the 70s by one of the most sought after shapers. This all original Lightning Bolt was shaped and signed ’BK’ by the legendary Barry Kanaiaupuni sold for US$3500
But the piece of most note was a 1966 Greg Noll-Mickey Dora Black Da Cat 9’ 4" ’Black Cat’ which sold sold for US$19,000
You can check the entire listing of results at-
http://www.usvintagesurfauction.com/auction/AUCWinnersList.asp
Rainbow 'Clinker'
This has got to be one of my favorite boards in the collection. I found it in the roof space of a 'Money Lend' shop in Rockdale.
The 'Clinker Bottom' design is a combination of extreme vee and deep channels, usually four, placed between centre and side fins. Initially it was introduced on twin fin designs like this one, circa 1979 by Laurie Byrne at Byrne Brothers Surfboards, Wollongong, NSW and later used on 3 fin designs. Its 5'9" and has a single fly coming off the side channels with a swallow tail. It has really large base fins for this length of board. The spray is incredible, fading on the deck and striped down the rails finished with delicate pin lines. But it is the spray work in the channels that blows me away.
I've heard that its hard to get a good channel botom any more, not because the design isnt functional, but because glassers refusse to get in there and do all that extra work of glassing and sanding channels.
Larry Bertelman the Rubberman
Here is my Larry Bertelman designed 'Anything is possible' 6'0" twin fin. Its very flat, with hardly any rocker and long straight rails with no flys going down to a wide swallow tail. It has the famous 'Pepsi' spray and a pair of vee's cut into the tail which are unique to Larry's designs.
Larry - The Rubberman opened the door to the modern surf age. Arriving on the surfing scene amid a period of flux in surfing styles around 75 to 78, he demonstrated that no limits exist beyond our imagination. He didn't invent the short board; he just showed us how to ride it. No one had a greater influence on the way people surf today -- from the best in the world on down -- than Larry Bertlemann. From the time he was a cheeky grom Bertlemann was interested in design. Collaborating with Town and Country, George Downing and Hawaiian Pro Designs to become a driving force in creating the swallowtail.
'Old Faithful'- the famous MR Flame board.
So one day I'm walking home from having a surf at Bondi. I'm walking up the stairs out the front of the Pavilion and I hear 'CLUNK' 'CLUNK' 'CLUNK' and I look over and this kid is dragging this Mark Richards stinger down the concrete steps by the tail. 'CLUNK' 'CLUNK' 'CLUNK'. I do a double take cause it looks immediately to me like one of the most famous boards in the world. Mark Richards 'Old Faithful/Flame' 6 ft 8" Ben Apia shaped stinger that he rode at the-
1976 Rip Curl / Mordy Bells Beach Easter Classic (second to Jeff Hackman);
1976 2SM / Coke Surfabout, Sydney (1st);
1977 (the first) Stubbies Contest, Burleigh Heads (Second to Michael Peterson).
I freaked out and caught the nose before it hit the concrete again.
A long story short, the kid went home from the beach in a taxi with his mates and I saved an important piece of surf history.
This board is not the one Ben Apia shaped for MR of course but a March Richards design made in Newcastle in about 1977 or 78.
Its main difference in design is the addition of the second fly or stinger, down near the tail.
I actually took this board up to Newcastle and offered it to MR as a gift. But true to his reputation as kind hearted soul he insisted that I keep it. What a great man.
