A few random thoughts on what we’ve come to call the short board revolution, which took place between late 1967 and 1970-71. Though surfboards had evolved before then and evolved after.

How things changed is a matter of personal history, that is, personal to the individual. What I recollect and what others remember may have similarities but not quite be the same. As well what was happening in the Ventura Santa Barbara area was not the same thing happening in San Diego or Santa Cruz areas.

In Ventura and Santa Barbara there were a small number of board builders and shapers. I just happened to be one of them. Surfing was changing and some guys fell out of the business because they didn’t fit into or follow the change. For instance in Ventura Tom Hale stopped making boards. I do know that he was doing some laminating in 1968 for Morey-Pope. The MP shop on Front street could not produce all the McTavish Trackers that Richard Deese and I shaped so some of the lam work was sourced to Hale. When MP stopped production of the Tracker and moved out to Saticoy as far as I know Hale stopped board building.

Though as some of the builders fell off they were replaced by knew guys entering the surfboard crafting thing. Even still there was only a small handful of guys making and shaping from 1968 to 1970-71. As well the big labels didn’t start to drop off until about 1970 anyway. In ’69 MP was making hundreds of boards a month. So were labels like Dewey Weber with boards like the Weber Ski. So there were labels keeping shapers employed.

But for sure as the established labels began taking a beating there were guys that made surfboards that ended up with out a job. And if you wanted to make surfboards you needed to follow the trends. If you were one of the guys making the trends ok but, if not, you had to follow or be out of work. As an example… I liked and surfed the Greenough style board but by ’71 a lot of guys wanted flat bottomed down railed boards. If I didn’t shape the flat bottom down rail I just didn’t have any work.

Having my start as a production shaper in 1967 and having steady work for the following 3 years pretty much right through the big change was great but by ’71 the whole surfboard making thing got rough for a number of board builders. The surfboard business got very fragmented and very localized.

What was…. a number of larger established labels run very business like with employees and fairly nice stores, which by the way sold almost only surfboards. And what was changed to... an underground type thing with small local shops that catered to a local clientele almost exclusively, and a lot of shops weren’t run very business like at all.

D.R.

In the shaping bay circa 1970