E's Surf Report

Oh, forgot, RIP Dave Velzy....

Why is Dale wearing two watches?

wanted to get as much use out of them as possible since he didn't have alot of time left.

yaaa! kaiser rules!

rules what?

any body find a good obit on Velzy - original Manhatan pier ripper

wadup all, so a while back i posted about working in nica or portugal this summer. now i have the option of san jose, cr or lisboa, portugal. it'd be a 40 hr week job, so full on weekend warrior. oh, and i have to decide today.

any thoughts?

g

32 schools

and i won't have wheels...

Quick Dale Velzy story:

After World War II and a stint in the Merchant Marines, an older Velzy got into automobiles, along with his surfing. From money he'd saved while in the Merchant Marines, he bought a 1940 Mercury for $4,500. "That was a lot of money for then, you could buy a new house for eight thousand in those days... But to take a look at me, I never wore shoes or a shirt, I was cruising... Guys couldn't believe that car. Walt Hoffman would just shit when he'd see it. Bev Morgan had a clean Chevy and we'd go cruising. We had all the girls we wanted. We'd just toss the boards in there and roll off with the puss. Morgan and I would spend one day a week washing and cleaning our cars."

Velzy recalled a memorable time while he was a guard, involving Johnny Rice who would later go on to work under Velzy and take his own shaping skills north to Santa Cruz and become that town's first local commercial shaper. "I was guarding at Manhattan Beach when this lieutenant came by and told me to get my hair cut or else. It was sort of long and I kept it that way just to aggravate him. I looked down from the tower and I spotted Johnny Rice. I called him over and said, 'Hey Greek, you went to beauty college, come up here and give me a haircut.' Rice got his professional barber tools and he's cutting away on my hair while I'm on duty. Up comes these two hard-shoe cops and they order us to stop because it's against the law to cut hair in a public place. I told 'em, 'Bullshit, this guy is a licensed beautician and I'm in charge here because I am the lifeguard.' That really got 'em hot, but I had Johnny keep on cutting. Next thing they say that if he doesn't stop, they're going to arrest us. So I tell them, 'Fuck off, the Greek's almost done.' Rice was just finishing up when they took me off to jail. I thanked Johnny for the haircut and apologized to him for the cops being such assholes. That haircut was the best one I got all that year. The lieutenant never again asked me to get another haircut."

Velzy had an amazing moustache and made some amazing boards. Big bummer in my book.

Lot's of legendary surfers in history...very few have a world class surf spot named after them.

RIP Velzy

rest in peace DV.
That's the way to talk to cops.

wow, sad to see such a staple of the surf community leave us.

2 years ago I had some people over for a pre-Panic party and one of the dudes lived next door to DV. He had gotten 2 boards shaped for his lady and him. I hooked this dude up huge and he was like "DV is gonna be stoked on this, I go over and hang with him a lot and get irie and chat."

That dude was from Texas so I am not sure if he knew exactly how lucky he was.

This weekend is looking mighty lame for surf but we should have some fun stuff in the 5 to 7 foot range maybe by Monday evening but probably Tuesday. Good time to start the situps and stuff.

That Ozzie chick is innocent. damn, that sucks!

RIP, Mr. Velzy. The guy was SO classic. I hear the name Velzy and I get an immediate mental picture of woodies, palm trees and a barreling right with a little spray blowin' off the lip - no joke! I'm gonna go home after work put on my best Levi's, a white T-shirt, Pendleton, and go-aheads; then I'm gonna cruise to the beach and catch a wave for Dale.
Mr. Kaiser - thanks for steppin' up to the plate and keepin' the board current!

If you cant do the time, dont do the crime.

OK, who else out there loves Jenny C.??

Sorry - that anon post just before Officer Mcgruff was me.

i have ever since that movie that her and that nerdy kid were stuck in that department store all night..forgot the name..

this one

I wish she would quit calling me. damn!

SON OF A BITCH!!!

career opportunitys (sp) is the name of the movie

She pretty much gets nailed in every movie that she stars in.
She likes to be naked too.
also, pretty eyes.
I like her too, definite top 10 for me.

oops, arent we supposed to only be talking about surf and dope on this blog?

Requimen for a Dream, Yeah

funny how little effort it takes to push a shoulder and cause a wave face to crumble! what happens next?

This is what happened a few seconds later...

WOW, that wave is definately worth protecting!

Save the oil!

That was me

Go Occy!

Is anyone else getting spotty video/audio on the Globe Event?

me. AND nice work teach. can you assign some swell?!

A certain cove was all-time early arvonoon: 1-2' mushburgers, family picnic, and six drunken breasts for entertainment.

fiji stream seams pretty stable on my end!!!

Dear Sarcastic Sally,
And Sarcastic you may be! But what of your friend dropping in on the shoulder? There he is! Cutting back? Huh? Looking back? What? Do you ride a 12'6" at The Hook?
As you were...

Here is chance for a ripper to be sponsored and get hooked up with the team.
Rickland surfboards is looking for his last 2 team riders to complete their team.
Riders must be competition level.
Riders must have a portfolio to show and a good history surfing.
Reply to the following email.
rich@ricklandsurfboards.com
Aloha,
Bryce A.

Flowrider water ride opens on Oahu:
http://khon.com/khon/display.cfm?storyID=4989
http://www.hawaiianwaters.com/daflowrider/index.htm

I'm sorry. I forgot This Rickland team search is in San Francisco Area(Norcal)
Aloha,
Bryce A.

Earlier this week, Jamie Meiselman, the folks at Surfparks LLC, Ron Jon Surf Shop, B.T. Orlando LP, and Belz Enterprises announced the securing of over $9 million in funding to complete construction and open the Ron Jon Surfpark to be built this summer in Orlando, Florida.

There will be three pools; the pro surf pool, according to the press release, "utilizes patented technology to create perfect, salt-water waves up to 8 feet high. As large as a football field, the Pro Surf Pool can generate up to 6 waves per minute, with ride lengths from 60-100 yards. A computer-adjustable Versareef pool floor allows nearly infinite variety of left and right-breaking wave shapes and includes pre-programmed bottom contours that mimic some of the best natural surf breaks in the world."

No day off work for me; no tears--academic summer freedom starts in a week. Did a DP drive, but it looked sucky eveywhere 7 - 8: crummmmmmbly. Takers everywhere but no fun rides, at least that I saw. Looks like it's been getting better with the tide and low winds, though . . . The weekend surf-wise: pretty darned fun small waves yesterday morning at the beach. Fun webcast of the Fiji pros, including another Slater 10. By the end yesterday (at Cloudbreak, Tavarua) the swell was really kicking up; they said they're going to Restaurants today. webcast.

flap flops

Dale Velzy, 77; Master Surfboard Shaper Helped Popularize the Sport

By Myrna Oliver - Los AngelesTimes Staff Writer

May 30, 2005

Dale "The Hawk" Velzy, the pioneering master shaper of surfboards who
helped popularize the Hawaiian sport of surfing along the California
coast, has died. He was 77.

Velzy, a longtime smoker, died of lung cancer Thursday at Mission
Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

"I can't tell you strongly enough how he was the original
surfer-cowboy-hot-rodder in Southern California," said Allan Seymour,
who had known Velzy since the eighth grade and now produces a vintage
surfboard and memorabilia auction. "When we grew up, you couldn't get
a higher compliment than, 'You're a Dale Velzy guy.' "

A pioneering surfer off Manhattan and Hermosa beaches, Velzy was the
first to put a brand on his boards, establishing him as surfing's
first commercial shaper or builder.

His most famous board, the Pig, hit the waves in 1955 and is now a
collectible — what Velzy called "wall hangers," priced at more than
$3,000 each. Another Velzy specialty board was the Bump.

In 1960, when he ran five shops and two factories and sold up to 200
boards a week in the made-by-hand industry, Velzy was considered the
world's largest surfboard manufacturer.

Born in Hermosa Beach on Sept. 24, 1927, Velzy started hopping on
older surfers' boards as a tyke, and by age 8 had acquired his own
surfboard, carved by his father, a lifeguard and dory builder. With
the woodworking tools of his cabinetmaker grandfather, Velzy and his
dad started shaping boards.

"I got into building boards like that," he once told surfing historian
Craig Stecyk, "shaping down old planks into smaller, lighter boards I
could use."

Over the years, Velzy would adapt his technique as boards changed from
wood to polyurethane foam and from long to short and back again. He
shaped boards for such legendary surfers as Duke Kahanamoku, George
Downing, Mickey Dora and Harry Robello.

Nicknamed The Hawk - as he would carefully explain, it was for his
keen eyesight, not the shape of his nose - Velzy served in the
merchant marine during World War II and then worked as a lifeguard.

He began repairing and reshaping surfboards commercially in the family
garage in 1949 and soon set up shop at the Manhattan Beach Surf Club
under the Manhattan Beach Pier. He took his itinerant business to
Venice and then Hermosa Beach, where in 1953 he joined Harold "Hap"
Jacobs to produce custom boards under the Velzy-Jacobs label until he
bought Jacobs out in 1959.

"Custom built" was a term of art for Velzy. Although he designed
boards to order, if the customer was late on pickup day, Velzy thought
nothing of selling that board to anybody who showed up with money. The
original customer would also get a board that made him happy, if not
the one designed for him.

Velzy would also engage in inventive measuring, performing tricks with
a tape or a yardstick to convince a buyer who wanted a 9-foot-2 board
that a 9-foot-6 one was exactly the length specified.

"Velzy has always been fast and he's got loads of style," Jacobs says
in Malcolm Gault-Williams' book "Legendary Surfers." "Dale is the
greatest salesman in the world ... Once he even sold my own personal
board."

Style he had, all right: Velzy drove glamorous cars, dated beautiful
women, sported tattoos, slicked-back hair and a handlebar mustache,
wore diamond rings and smoked expensive cigars. He earned his "cowboy"
reputation by working on ranches, developing skills in saddle making
and leatherworking, and later decorating his San Clemente house in
western style. He liked riding horses as much as driving the cars -
and, later, motorcycles - that tagged him as a hot-rodder.

In 1956, with his business booming, Velzy befriended young surfer and
photographer Bruce Brown, whom he had hired to sweep up the shop. In a
typical demonstration of his generous, visionary mentoring, Velzy
helped launch the surfing-movie genre by giving Brown $5,000 to buy
camera equipment and fly five surfers to Hawaii to shoot his 1957 film
"Slippery When Wet."

Brown made more surfing documentaries, including the commercially
popular "The Endless Summer" (1966) and its 1994 sequel, "The Endless
Summer II," which further increased surfing's popularity. Other
filmmakers followed. Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon with "Gidget"
(1959) and a series of lighthearted beach movies.

Velzy may have been an innovative craftsman and stylish salesman and
surfing promoter. But a businessman he was not. When his manufacturing
operation peaked in 1960, about a year after he bought out Jacobs,
officials came down on him for unpaid taxes. His shops were padlocked
and most of their contents auctioned.

Near financial ruin, Velzy continued to shape boards - but as an
employee of others, including Hobie Alter in Dana Point. Velzy taught
youngsters the craft in his Surfboards by Dale shop in Newport Beach,
and eventually made Velzy boards again, working in his own backyard.

The colorful surfer personally preferred longboards and made them for
adult surfers. But by the 1960s, Velzy began making shorter boards and
paddleboards to encourage more children to take up the sport.

"You couldn't even sell a board in the '60s unless it looked like a
Velzy board," fellow shaper Joe Quigg says in "Legendary Surfers."
"What Velzy did all along the Strand, from Hermosa to Manhattan and
Redondo, was get all the little kids who wanted to surf onto his small
boards ... By doing so, he really popularized the sport. He was the
first guy to sponsor surfers, the first guy to advertise in a big way,
and the first guy to put surfboards - and thus surfing - within reach
of the average kid on the beach."

A mentor to a generation of young surfers, Velzy had an even greater
influence on those who followed him into the surfboard business.

"Dale is the master of wood," Steve Boehne, owner of Infinity
Surfboards, said in an online tribute to Velzy posted at the Shapers
Tree. "His combination of wood color and thickness of stringers are
unique and stunning. His wood boards are a treasure, he is a treasure,
a great innovator and a master shaper with a great sense of humor and
a warm heart."

In 2003, Velzy's name was placed on a plaque along with those of the
six other charter members of the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame:
Jacobs, Bing Copeland, Greg Noll, Mike Purpus, Rick Stoner and Dewey
Weber. Six years earlier, Velzy was added to the Huntington Beach
Surfing Walk of Fame as a "surf pioneer."

Velzyland, a popular surfing spot on Oahu's fabled North Shore, is
named after him.

In 2000, the Doheny Longboard Surfing Assn. named its annual surfing
contest in his honor.

"All I've tried to do is to have fun and do whatever it was as good as
I could," Velzy says in "Legendary Surfers."

Twice divorced, Velzy is survived by his longtime companion, Fran Hoff
of San Clemente; a son, Matt of Makawao, Maui, Hawaii; and a daughter,
Malia Cohen of Thousand Palms.

Services are pending.

(According to another source who is an old friend of Dale's "a public
service has been scheduled for June 11, at Doheney State Beach." )

lol,

Get to work punk ass!

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