Bollocks on the Family Tree

Industry Talk
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Just relaying a comment I heard from several guys way up on the list, but how does a guy like DK end up on there and in the Reef Board Builders Build off for the convention? Alot of guys who’ve paid their dues kind of think of it as an insult. Hell Keith, John and a host of others here should be there too then…

The thought crossed my mind too… No disrespect to DK, I have MUCH respect for the path he’s taken and the level of commitment he has to the craft. But he is clearly the reaping the benefits of being introduced to some top-level industry folks. Obviously if you don’t have some talent, all the connections in the world won’t get you anywhere. But connections help. I’m sure he’s aware of the great gift he has been given, he is a very down to earth and humble young man. But on the other hand, I can see where some more established shapers who never got a hand up from the top might feel a bit bitter. But hey, someone has to be taken on as the next generation apprentice, it may as well be DK, right?

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Like I’ve said before… it’s just a list. We started down this path thinking we’d get it as close as we could, then turn it over to someone else to update and correct - probably the Surfing Heritage Foundation.

Kendell, Again…your heart seems to be in the right place…but why turn it over when your into it for so much money? The Surfing Heritage Foundation is an institution. All institutions end up political and only those that pay proper homage to the institution or who you know will ultimately matter. If they let one person in who simply buys ads or gives money to the foundation the entire thing will be tainted. Also…many of these shapers don’t really need anyone telling them how good they are…“they” after all are the ones that paid the dues. It was obviously your dream…why not do it right yourself or drop it completely?

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Again..your heart seems to be in the right place...but why turn it over when your into it for so much money?

I like starting balls rolling and letting others, who are better equipped, take over. I’m good with broad strokes, but I get lost with the details. I’m good at things like determining the information fields, how they interact with the front-end, userablity, and things like that. I also know many people in the industry, so it makes sense to fill in what I can. The money is really in the software and its development. The info on the tree is blood and sweat. We’ll end up selling the software to some internet giant so they can use it to hock their wares online.

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The Surfing Heritage Foundation is an institution. All institutions end up political and only those that pay proper homage to the institution or who you know will ultimately matter. If they let one person in who simply buys ads or gives money to the foundation the entire thing will be tainted.

We are but men… aging ones at that. We don’t really own anything… we just take care of it while we’re around. The Surfing Heritage Foundation is the best place I can think of to do a better job than us. Dick Metz is one of the most pure hearted guys around. He started SHF because he saw a need to preserve surfing’s history. He’s put his fortune into insuring it will outlive all of us. Other friends and supportes are helping to make it better. Tom Pezman is the executive director, Berry Hahn is the curator. This group pays more homage to guys that are dead than they do to any corporate intrests. They were their friends and fellow surfers. Their list of supporters IS the history of surfing. If you haven’t done so yet, go pay them a visit.

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Also...many of these shapers don't really need anyone telling them how good they are...."they" after all are the ones that paid the dues. It was obviously your dream...why not do it right yourself or drop it completely?

The point isn’t to tell shapers how good they are. This is a record of some significant people in the sport of surfing. That’s pretty much it. My dream includes handing this over to someone else to manage. Like I said, I just want to go surfing.

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Advisory Committees

The Board of Directors has recruited a growing list of friends and associates from the surfing and professional worlds to serve on the SHF Advisory Committees. [indent]

Photographic Committee: Jeff Divine/Chair, Brad Barrett, Art Brewer, Grant Ellis, Rob Gilley, Leroy Grannis, Jeff Hall, Joe Scarnici, Tom Servais, Pete Taras, JP Van Swae, Steve Wilkings

Technology Committee: Tracy Mikulec/Chair, Scott Bass, Tim Chandler,Danny Evans, Rob Klug, John Maddox, Tracy Mikulec, Kendall Nishimine, George Orbelian, Jonno Wells

Oral History Committee: Debi Spindelman-Handysides/Chair, Nick Carroll, Chris Coté, Tim DeLa Vega, George Downing, Ben Finney, Malcolm Gault-Williams, Sam George, Paul Holmes, James D. Houston, Eric Jordan, Drew Kampion, Cecil Lear, Craig Lockwood, Chris Malloy, Ben Marcus, Sharon Marshall, Ira Opper, Paul Strauch Jr, Matt Warshaw

It kind of looks like a whose who of Surfing magazine, Surfer Magazine and Surfer’s Journal. Among others. [/indent]

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It kind of looks like a whose who of Surfing magazine, Surfer Magazine and Surfer's Journal. Among others. [/indent]

Those are just members on the commitees. Other friends include Hobie Altar, Bing Copeland, Flippy Hoffman, Walt Hoffman, Spencer Croul, Reynolds Yater, Gerry Lopez, Woody Ekstrom, Karl Ekstrom, George Greenough, Bob McTavish, Rabbit Kekai, Dale Velzy, Greg Noll, Robert August, Steve Pezman, Bruce Brown, Mickey Munoz, George Downing, and… the list goes on and on. Sure it includes guys from the mags, industry guys, pro surfers… all kinds of people… the common thread is they think preserving surf history is important. If you can honestly walk through there, and come out thinking they’re corporate sellouts, I don’t know what else to say.

Dick Metz has BEQUEATHED HIS ENTIRE ESTATE to the foundation. How much more pure can you be than that? He’s spent a lifetime making money… now he’s GIVING IT ALL BACK to us. All kinds of surfers are pitching in. Dick’s not swayed from his mission by their contributions. Donors get the satisfaction of knowing they’re contributing to a good cause. They get to hang out at cool events. They get to tell others how cool they are for supporting SHF. That’s about it. SHF’s collection is totally across the board. It represents the most significant crossection of surfing history anywhere, with the resources to exist forever. It’s photos, oral history, video, surfboards, fins, tools, trunks, wax, research of all kinds, even Dale Velzy’s shaping room.

Alot of these guys were surfing before your parents were born… when there were no surf mags, “lifestyle” companies, or surf shops. They made their own equipment. They surfed because they were driven to. It was a small tribe, and they mostly knew each other. We owe everything we know about surfing to them. You can talk about staying pure all you want, but without these guys paving the way for us, we wouldn’t even know what that means.

Can you say you owe nothing to these pioneers?

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Kendell,

I never said the SHF were corporate sellouts. I said thats where most if not all institutions end up. I doubt in the end this will end any differently. Hey…I noticed a friend or two among your list. I think if you polled many on that list they would say the same thing as me if they had to guess how things would turn out down the road. Surfing’s heritage is important to people like Quiksilver who try to buy up as much of it as possible and turn it into profits for themselves. Again…I have no problem with free enterprize…only that looking after surfing’s heritage and free enterprize don’t have anything to do with each other …yet usually collide somewhere down the line.

Yes…if you surf…you have some debt to those pioneers. Since I have been riding wide tail narrow noses since about 1979 the vast majority of my personal influence is from Geoff Mccoy and his line. I give full credit to all of those pioneers of the sport…I just personally see no reason to institutionalize them. If they were to ever get a correct list of influence free from the magazines need to use their henchmen to do the writing from their perspective…that would be something I admit. I like the between the lines stuff and the stuff not palatable to your average reader your rarely read about that really made up our sport.

Best of luck,

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Just relaying a comment I heard from several guys way up on the list, but how does a guy like DK end up on there and in the Reef Board Builders Build off for the convention? Alot of guys who’ve paid their dues kind of think of it as an insult. Hell Keith, John and a host of others here should be there too then…

The thought crossed my mind too… No disrespect to DK, I have MUCH respect for the path he’s taken and the level of commitment he has to the craft. But he is clearly the reaping the benefits of being introduced to some top-level industry folks. Obviously if you don’t have some talent, all the connections in the world won’t get you anywhere. But connections help. I’m sure he’s aware of the great gift he has been given, he is a very down to earth and humble young man. But on the other hand, I can see where some more established shapers who never got a hand up from the top might feel a bit bitter. But hey, someone has to be taken on as the next generation apprentice, it may as well be DK, right?

You could say the same about Rob Machado, he’s a surfer not a shaper . . .

In that forum, that guy PSIDawd would have been a better choice than DK for that builder’s build off . … PSIdawd has better shapers, cleaner lines . . . and he’s been shaping same amount of time …

But since DK is cool with the major movies in that forum, he’s got the hook up.

I love DK’s dedication to shaping though

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Well said!!!

I have a question for the fraudulent authors of this so called tree. How did you differentiate between the real craftsmen and the wanna be shapers that either bought a machine or jumped on one and became over night shapers? Do you think this will be a serious facter in the years to come? And what about the guy in the middle of China who makes pennies a day shaping for surftech, will they be added to internet version?

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I am surprised how much people dislike Randy French. Though I have never met him or own a surftech I do admirer his abilities as a waterman and total package board builder. The composite band wagon was built by Randy French over 20 years ago.

I picked up one of his sailboards about 20 plus years ago and it was light, durable and fast. I wanted to know how this thing was built and that was essentially how it all started for me. The sailboard heyday has longed past for me but all those skills easily translated to surfboard building.

Randy French’s business abilities are second to none. Anybody else here sell 80,000 surfboards last year? His factory affiliations in Asia are a beef issue for some but those jobs are good jobs in those places and the factories look like the buckingham palace comepared to 95% of the board manufacturing hell holes in the U.S.A.

Why be jealous? Who cares about the list of shapers? If you are so concerned about the losers on the “official” list or those deservent who didn 't make the list just…do your own reasearch, make your own list with your set of rules. J. Roten won’t care cuz he is dead.

Spend your own 5k for your full page add and advertise your spin on reality.

To conclude: Randy French’s influence on water board sports is world wide. A few have tried to copy his business model but with poor quality results. When 90% of the cosumers of boards look at the shapers tree and recognize very few names, Surftech has single handedly brought the locally known shaper to a world market. When I hear the shapers with thier models available by surftech start complaining I will give them an ear. To the rest of the basically jealous minor league players… you are the industry and the sex pistols of surfboards(surftech) has passed you by a decade ago and you didn’t even know it.

back to arguing about who is on the shaping tree now.

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I found the “Shaper’s Tree” to be an interesting list. Plenty of names were included. In fact most. There were a few that I wondered about. Mostly regional shapers( Ralph Miller, Jerry Grantham.) Spitzer was on there. So I don’t understand the Swaylocks “bitch”. I’m not on there and I am not suprized. I am sure it took a fair amount of research to put such a list together. I can only say thanks to those that put the work into it. Interesting read. The whole “Surfing” issue was a good “state of the union” for our industry and our pasttime.

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I found the “Shaper’s Tree” to be an interesting list. Plenty of names were included. In fact most. There were a few that I wondered about. Mostly regional shapers( Ralph Miller, Jerry Grantham.) Spitzer was on there. So I don’t understand the Swaylocks “bitch”. I’m not on there and I am not suprized. I am sure it took a fair amount of research to put such a list together. I can only say thanks to those that put the work into it. Interesting read. The whole “Surfing” issue was a good “state of the union” for our industry and our pasttime.

Kendell said they dropped over three hundred names from the list how could most of them be there? Also…I personally know at least two of the trees are completely off. The bitch if you read the first post is not with the work in putting a tree together…but that Surftech and Surfing Mag have used to it to self promote at the expense of the shapers that did actually make the list. Even Surfing admits in the ad that they know the list is not correct.

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What’s a matter? Didn’t find your name there among the greats? Or did your canidate loose in November’s election? “Most” to me means those that I would recognize and relate to from the West Coast and Hawaiian Islands. As I said an “interesting read”. Cerainly not something “I” would get my panties in a buch over, but whatever ? I’ll leave the emotional rhetoric to others.

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OK! So I got a drop or two of resin on my last good pair of glasses and on closer examination I did find JG’s name , but no Ralph Miller of Pismo Beach Surf Shop.

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What’s a matter? Didn’t find your name there among the greats? Or did your canidate loose in November’s election? “Most” to me means those that I would recognize and relate to from the West Coast and Hawaiian Islands. As I said an “interesting read”. Cerainly not something “I” would get my panties in a buch over, but whatever ? I’ll leave the emotional rhetoric to others.

Ha Ha Ha…

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Heyotay

How about replying to posts that concern you. How about a reply from the author if you can stomach it.

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I am surprised how much people dislike Randy French. Though I have never met him or own a surftech I do admirer his abilities as a waterman and total package board builder. The composite band wagon was built by Randy French over 20 years ago. I have nothing personally against French. I have spoken with him a few times when I had my shop…he was polite but… I think he is a bit arrogant and a bit in love with himself. However I know many people I like with those qualities. On his boardbuilding. Sorry…got to call it like I see it. Randy was never more than a B league board builder…that went over to the windsurfing to make a living and came out with a niffty idea to ride the longboard and retro bullshit into high dollars. I don’t down him a bit for making the money and competing in a very hard to make it industry. I will say this from personal experience…he plays the same bullcrap games as the clothing companies do by protecting the big shops at the expense of the little shops…but…I think it’s mostly because those big anything for a buck shops were probably the first to jump on board. His claims that his boards are superior and the future is utter and complete Horse hockey.

I picked up one of his sailboards about 20 plus years ago and it was light, durable and fast. I wanted to know how this thing was built and that was essentially how it all started for me. The sailboard heyday has longed past for me but all those skills easily translated to surfboard building. Have fun on your new surftech. It’s a free country.

Randy French’s business abilities are second to none. Anybody else here sell 80,000 surfboards last year? His factory affiliations in Asia are a beef issue for some but those jobs are good jobs in those places and the factories look like the buckingham palace comepared to 95% of the board manufacturing hell holes in the U.S.A. Ha ha Ha…I can’t argue against the hell holes comment. So true. However…my gripes with the asian factories are idiological and don’t pertain only to surfboards. I think it’s a crock to deal with countries that mistreat their people. It makes you part of the mistreatment in a way. As I say to those that really think it’s a palace…simply trade places with those workers for a month and give us a report.

Why be jealous? Who cares about the list of shapers? Ah…the age old Jealous remark. Again the post is idiological. Surftech and surfing magazine made the claim that “shapers” are the future of surfing and “Surftech is the future of surfboards” Then they put together an admitted incorrect list of shapers and call it a family tree to make themselves look like the sages of Surfing and the institution that speaks for surfers and surfing. I called bullshit on it and I stand firmly by the claim. There are millions of surfers around the world that are all unique individuals that all happen to share a love for the art of surfing. Nothing more. French as added nothing new to the sport. He is using 25 year old tech, savy marketing and solid business skills. We owe him nothing. If you like his boards…buy them…if not don’t. Surfing Magazine has always been a vampire of Surfing… attempting to create a lifestyle and look to keep their buddies in the clothing companies happy so they will keep buying ads. A lifestyle and a look thats false and mostly sold to kids looking for an identity. I remember French being called one of the most important men in surfing…exactly what does that mean. If you are so concerned about the losers on the “official” list or those deservent who didn 't make the list just…do your own reasearch, make your own list with your set of rules. J. Roten won’t care cuz he is dead. No concern at all. Especially not enough to call any of them losers. I know a load of crap when one is presented. Been around the industry long enough. As for Johnny Rotten…he is alive and well and still producing some great music. He also wrote a great autobiography.

Spend your own 5k for your full page add and advertise your spin on reality. I am glad we agree it’s spin. Though I think Kendall’s intentions were to put together something correct.

To conclude: Randy French’s influence on water board sports is world wide. What influence on board sports. He has simply shown folks how to make money in the surf industry off cheap Asian labor. Nothing new. Just new to surfing. I see no other influence at all. A few have tried to copy his business model but with poor quality results. When 90% of the cosumers of boards look at the shapers tree and recognize very few names, Surftech has single handedly brought the locally known shaper to a world market. When I hear the shapers with thier models available by surftech start complaining I will give them an ear. To the rest of the basically jealous minor league players… you are the industry and the sex pistols of surfboards(surftech) has passed you by a decade ago and you didn’t even know it.

back to arguing about who is on the shaping tree now. I don’t really care what the shapers think of surftech. Most that play into the surftech thing have done it so they can retire or been handed free money for years of toil and little payoff. Great! No problem. However…they have also legitimized something that in the end could come back to bite them. I don’t blame some of them…might as well make hay while the sun is shinning. However…they have helped sell their industry out to Asia. However long it takes. I also have no real problems with the tech R.F. uses…I simply don’t like the way it looks or rides. As for the Sex Pistols analogy. I used Johnny Rotten because he called bullshit on institutions claiming to speak for the entire music industry (rock and roll hall of fame) I make the same claim with the shapers family tree (from Surfing Mag’s perspective)…Surfing magazine and most industry magazines…also 90% of the rest of the so called surfing institutions that make this claim or that. I enjoy writing ideas and going surfing. I could really care less about Randy French being one of the most important men in surfing or Surfing magazine putting it’s advertisers that don’t even shape in the “shapers family tree.”

Thanks for the reply…I respect that you have a different view.

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I don’t understand what you are talking about?

you relation to JN automotive group?

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surfing consists of a surfboard, a leash, shorts ( a bikini for JNHAWAII), wax and some waves. Not complicated at all.

Randy French has brought this simplicity to the surfboard consumers at 80,000 units per year with consistant quality.

Most surfers do not have the need to go to a shaper, talk story, feel the blank and have a religious experience over the whole ordeal. The shapers tree will be of interest to even fewer surfers and not because of innaccuracies. Lets face it, surfing is held on a pedestal by those who need to profit from it. So surftec is guilty for promoting its product in a stupid way in my opinion.

It’s only a surfboard. My sewer service, clean water and garbage pickup is more important and necessary.

B league shaper says you. That’s the funniest thing I have read all year. Almost as funny as you talking about the 25 year old technology that he helped develop, had success with and eventually will be the demise of the 60 year old technology you hang on to. That 25 year old technology is weekly “rediscovered” on sites like this as the cutting edge and a whole new idea. It’s laughable when the new pioneers are trying the things the windsurfers have used in thier construction for the past 20 years. B league shaper in your opinion but an A+ total package board builder in my book.

To conclude. Yes we do owe Randy French. He pioneered epoxy “old tech” and made many smart builders think, design, compete, change, adapt and make better boards for themselves and for the surfing consumers on Earth.

It is the American way.

Thank you Randy French!!!

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Otay, I don’t know how much of the forum posts you have read or how long you have been a member, but imho you have a skewed view of what this forum is about and the areas being explored. Its about performance and working with whats available to improve the performance of boards.

As for surftechs, I have owned 4 and got rid of them all for 60 year old technology, not one was even in the ballpark in terms of performance of my Bonzer. But good lock to Randy french, he is performing a valuable service.

The shapers tree was a bit of fun, I’m surprised people took it seriously.

Its only surfing after all, a distraction from real life.

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Well said!!!

I have a question for the fraudulent authors of this so called tree. How did you differentiate between the real craftsmen and the wanna be shapers that either bought a machine or jumped on one and became over night shapers? Do you think this will be a serious facter in the years to come? And what about the guy in the middle of China who makes pennies a day shaping for surftech, will they be added to internet version?

You are correct - a direct reply is indicated. You are very quick to label someone else a fraud. It appears that you joined In May, have made a grand total of 5 posts, and have entered no name or email. BTW, 4 of those posts were very negative, and IMO none of them had information or anything else of value to offer. Now, who is more likely to be the fraud here, Kendall, or you? Or, rather than “fraud”, should I write “TROLL”?

-Samiam