Quote:
Hey Bill'
What is so impressive to me and to anyone else who has had a business and tried to do it by the book, is that you have been in business for so long while “following the rules”. I know how hard it is!! Most backyarders will never know the kind of pressure, restrictions, and obstacles that are required for a legitimate/legal business, let alone to keep the soul and stoke as a cornerstone of your business and reputation.
Aloha Aquafiend
You are so right. Doing anything the right way is always hard. And the fewer there are willing to do it right, the harder it is. Sometimes so hard that it isn’t possible to do the right thing. In that case one has to find something else to do or sacrifice their integrity. America has been historically amazing in this case. That is why we don’t have sewage running down the gutters of the cities like they do in Denpasar Bali. We tend to do it right no matter what the personal cost. And when we can’t, we do something else rather than spin our wheels doing something wrong and never reaping the proper rewards or eroding the existing standards. We just choose something different that we can do legitimately and change the world in the process. We aren’t perfect… but we are very different then most of the world.
So on with the saga.
When I came to the North Shore I made boards in the Church at Waimea Bay with Bob Haakenson and David Grimes… It was abandoned. The caretaker let us use it. And gave us raw milk every day from his cows grazing in the area. The North Shore was a much different place in those days. Butch VanArtsdalan was my neighbor. Lightning bolt had just started up and we were glassing boards for them and others.
There was no Clark Foam warehouse. Wiley Artman had a few blanks at his house and that was about it!
The socially negative aspects of Backyard surfboard making wasn’t even an issue as there were only a very few people making boards back then. (There are probably well over 100 back yard builders on the North Shore now.) And everyone needed boards and there were no reasonable alternatives. And there was a lot of open space, which doesn’t exist now. I also did some sanding for Tim Cousins at his shop across from Sunset. Tim later did Forgotten Island of Santosha with Roger Yates.
I was never a backyard board builder by choice or by mentality. Though I don’t frown on those who are, just because they are. I have no beef with the Backyard industry. Making your own boards, etc. When in Oregon with Tillamook Head 1969 we had a legit location in an old Gas Station. Later Evergreen had an industrial building in a properly zoned area.
I worked for Hobie in their legit factory and when I wound up in Hawaii I wasn’t planing to get heavily into the board building here. In fact, I had a house rented in Bend Oregon with my friend Randy Barna to go skiing later that winter. I just came to surf Pipeline a bit and then go skiing.
After being in Hawaii awhile and realizing that board building was likely going to be my income source…I began looking seriously for some kind of legit space to make boards, only to discover that there wasn’t any zoned industrial property on the North Shore.
Steve Walden, who had owned Dyno Glassing in Huntington, had recently moved to Hawaii and was Living at my house were I had a converted carport into a 3 room shop. This was across from the Chevron at Rocky Point. Reno’s shop was next door. We began looking together for some kind of facility, even considering going to Honolulu. We even looked at the building, that years later Town and Country eventually went into in Pear City Industrial Park.
I remember around this time a story circulating that George Downing was turning in all the North Shore backyard builders. Little did I know that I would some day it would be my name associated with a similar rumor.
My neighbor bought that house out from under me while I was in Japan. I came back to discover the rent was raised and at that rate it was better for me to own. So a friend that made fins at Three Tables, was into real estate and I found a friend with a house to sell at Log Cabins, that I could afford. But it was a wreck and wouldn’t even qualify for a loan. I bought it on contract and fixed it up enough to qualify for the loan.
I was on track with a rezoning project in Haleiwa by then and expected to have a legit shop built within about 8 months. So, I built a small shop in my back yard at the newly purchased house. I was so sure it would only be for a few months that I built the walls and roof from quarter inch plywood. The thing shook like a hula dancer! By this time my popularity was getting international exposure and Japan and the mainland was seeking boards. I had orders of about 100 boards per week and a funky little shop that could do no better then 20! I had the tiger, called success, staring me right in the face and no way to cage it! Or reap the proper rewards from years of hard work.
8 years later…. the zoning etc began to come to pass!!!
Was I a backyard board builder?..Hell yes! Were my neighbors bummed out… Never! My shop was spotlessly clean and many never even knew I made boards there. Of course it only had other houses near it on one side.
As you can see, while I was a full on backyard board builder…this wasn’t ever my desire nor was it a statement or rebellion against any social authority. My business was just growing up in a community that hadn’t properly planned for guys like me and the associated needs. I remember back at this time the Sunset Beach Community Association doing a survey about bad things that needed to be fixed on the North Shore. Backyard surfboard building came up #3 on the list. Just under drug dealing, if I remember right.
There has always been great confusion among backyard builders here regarding the communities acceptance of them. And I have been told by many new arrivals of backyard builders, that they “are just doing it in the tradition of the North Shore.” From their perspective I totally understand their sense that backyard board making is some kind of grandfathered in right of everyone who wants to arrive on the North Shore and be a cool surfboard building dude. But fact really is, that most people here just want to live in peace and quiet in the country and don’t want to hear planers whining, smell resin or get itchy sanding dust on their laundry drying in the normally clean air of the tradewinds.
Enough for now…I will add more to the story later
