Hey Robert,
See, ask and you receive.
I was reading up on the Exxon Valdez spill and noticed lotsa traffic and stopped by to see Jim and Thrailkill had updated the dialogue.
Funny how we can become myopic sometimes and miss things.
later,
Randy W
Robert,
The first surfboard taken to Alaska was a nice Challenger multistringer we made in NJ at the factory on the hill.
I took one up after the season in '69 …
Alaska has some good waves.
later,
Randy W
Hawaii is still the best surf place. Love your board
Tinker and the factory team charged up Route 95 to Nantaskett, Mass., there was a local contest and we had a dealer there so the time was right for some promo.
All of the factory guys put on their best performances for the local folks and after the event was over it was time to point it south again.
We left Hull and got on the old Rt. 128 heading off to connect with 95, it of course was late in the afternoon and all of metropolitan Boston was leaving on the same stretch of road.
Tinker was in command of the White Whale while we chugged along at an earth shattering 7 or 8 miles an hour hemmed in by 2 or 3 million other people. After about 30 minutes of going nowhere fast, Tinker says " Man I gotta take a poop". We are not on the outside lane and we are not going to ever get to the shoulder, time goes by and he says “Oh, I gotta really crap bad”. Tinker is now raising up out of his seat pinching hard and he says to me, “Spaceman, trade places with me”, I slide in behind Tinker ( a bad place to be right then ) and take over the wheel. The White Whale being a former bakery delivery panel has a small sliding window separating the drivers area from the back, Tinker shinnies through the windows and is now in the back with the rest of the team.
He pops open the twin back doors and drops his jeans around his ankles, he then steps out on the bumper, turns around and grabs both door handles, plants both feet against the bumper, sticks his now visibly bare ass out as far as he can and proceeds to drop a procession of logs almost into the grill of the car that is bumper to bumper with us. Thank god it was in an era of no cell phones, picture phones, what have you. We were all laughing so hard, tears were welling up in our eyes and our sides hurt, never a dull moment in the land of Bummer.
Now that sounds like the Tinker I KNOW !!! Hey does anybody know where " Artist John" went John Briden ?? One time on Kurzt st. he and I were glasing boards and in walks the husband of the girl he is banging . This guy is active Air Force and has been away for awhile ( Viet Nam ) Just as he walks in John has just poured out the amount of catalyst into our little shot glass he gets so nervous he starts shaking !! bad the catalyst is running down his fingers as this guy is interogating him His finger skin was really ate up !!! oh well !! Frank McCleary
Jim,
That is one funny story! I was laughing out loud as I read the tale. Quite a visual to imagine! A socially incorrect gesture worthy of the best of the old 50’s/60’s Windansea crew. You should be proud to have known such a colorful fellow. There is a similar tale about Buzzy Trent, doing the same thing on a surf trip with Bob Simmons, southbound on PCH, in the late 40’s. As always, Buzzy was on the cutting edge of rebellious social behavior. A pioneer in every respect!
I am curious about the “junkie” glasser you guys are speaking of. In 1970 or so I opened a factory with Bill Hixon in Atlantic Beach. FLA. Jim Phillips came and helped me for a week or so and shaped some boards when we first opened. Anyway…I hired this guy from Santa Cruz who had some sort of ex drug problem . As I recall he went by the name of “Martinez” but I think his real mane was Jeff Martin (?). He came to me (on the run) from Melbourne-Indiatlantic Fla where I think he worked for MTB or maybe Tomb&Reeves.If I recall right it seems as if he may have been at Challenger and also Haut boards in Santa Cruz. Does this ring a bell with anyone???
He was the one who taught me how to do a deep cherry red opaque lamination. The trick was about a pint of PDI red pigment per side with a dash of black. He was a classic California surfer-hippie and a superb craftsman. This is a great trip back in time. Thanks to everyone.
Hello All,
I picked up an Eastern Challenger and am hoping someone might be able to give me a little info on the board. Any ideas on who might have shaped it? Is it a 1967, 1968 or perhpas earlier. any thoughts on the logo being in the shape of a cross, I haven’t seen this any other boards.
thanks for help
dski
https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/deck.JPG
I love this thread! Between the real-time reunion of the Challenger crew and Jim’s hilarious stories it just doesn’t get much better…
dski, welcome to Sways. The guys that built it can tell you more about the board than I, but I can tell you the ‘‘cross’’ logo is probably just the laminator having fun cutting up decals and arranging them artfully. Or it could have been ordered that way.
Mike, that was one of the great things about the Challenger Eastern Surfboards logo, it has the capability to be turned into a myriad of different phrases.
Steve Haight, one of the Santa Monica gremlins, got “Rincon Rogue”, ransom note style on his winter board, while Rick Barry, after our fateful trip to “Cali”, got the “FBI don’t know” logo’s for his board.
The board above mentioned, would have been shaped by Tinker or myself at that time in history it would have been laminated by Randy or myself
Do i have the year correct. the guy i bought it from seemed to think it was a 1968 but wasn’t sure.
it has some great speed going down the line!
thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.
Hey dski,
Jim is correct, the decal-o-mania waxed and waned during the years. At that time, if it was at the factory that burned, the decal-o-mania was in more conservative mode.
Therefore it was probably a decal design requested by the buyer. (Or Patrick Reen may have ordered it that way … he spoke of decadence a lot during “a Christmas party that lasted till Easter” as Wally tells it … HA!) …
Another possibility. We did have a glasser at the first factory before I started glassing (was only glossing) who was a recovered addict from Santa Cruz.
He had been clean a couple of years and had left Santa Cruz as one pillar in his fight for freedom.
He was religious in a sense, because staying clean from smack was tough. He could have done the cross thing during that time.
Anyway, he kept telling us he was going back to Santa Cruz. We knew that would be bad news for him. So Dorsey and I used to rib him about “those unmakeable tubes at needles point” … He left anyway and we never heard from him again.
One decal I did in '69 was “AH … A SURFINGBOARD” … some chick up in the Northeast fell in love with it when she saw it on the beach, so her boyfriend bought it for her from me at a premium price … never saw that stick again …
Randy W
Mike,
“The laminator” … yeah … that would have been funny to call Frank, Jim, or I “the laminator” in those days.
I remember one time when I was “the laminator” in the factory on the hill in '69 (Springsteen early days) when I was doing 8 or so boards a day.
Usually the covering on the floor under a glassing area has to be cleaned of resin drippings because it traditionally builds up on the tar paper covering the floor and eventually becomes a moon scape of sorts.
Well, I decided I would calculate the resin quantity a bit closer because I did not like cleaning the damn floor.
Some weeks later Tinker walked by. He did that all the time, from his shaping berth across the factory, on his way to answer the phone in the office and such. One day he flashed and asked if I had cleaned the floor. Hell it had been twice the normal span of time and the floor only had a few drips of resin on it.
I said no, I just got this down … why waste resin? He flashed and began to wonder about it. Some of the other guys wondered too and since they had never seen a glasser keep the floor so clean they became superstitious and urged me to use more resin … lest the gods become angry.
They were afraid the boards would be weak I think. Actually too much resin puddling will make it weaker.
It was funny. Tradition and new things always clash don’t they?
later all,
Randy W
Jim,
That is gross.
Kinda like the way the surf spot “terds” was named in Belmar.
Barry “Buttman” Gordon and his crew from Santa Monica named it that. It stuck but it was a misnomer.
The only thing that drained into the ocean there was the water from the park.
… well unless Tinker or Velzy was in the area I suppose.
later,
Randy
Randy,
You’re wrong about “Terds”. The truth is, just south of the lake park you might remember that 8th Ave, where it meets Ocean Ave is wider than any of the other number streets. On the south corner there was a huge flag pole, way to big to be just a flag pole, and in fact it was not just a flag pole. It was a vent. On the north corner of 8th and Ocean was a small non-descript building that was actually a sewage treatment facility. You are correct that nothing but drain water from the lake park went into the ocean from June to September. Belmar’s dirty little secret in those days was the holding tank under the wide section of 8th Ave. where it met Ocean. All summer sewage was allowed to build up in this tank being “treated”. Heaven forbid the bennies should have to swim amongst the terds. But for anyone who was in the ocean past the regular season, and we surfed all the way through the winter, it was very common to see the terds that were released into the ocean after labor day. One time the terds were so bad, with toilet paper and all sticking to our boards, we marched into Taylor’s Hardware Store (owned by John Taylor, the mayor at the time) demanding that something be done about it. I am not exactly sure when this practice changed, but eventually the system was modernized and terds no longer flow directly from the pipe that extended into the ocean at 8th Ave. But for guys like us that surfed in full wetsuits, boots and gloves, ice in our hair, “Terds” was real, and the name was appropriate.
Hartson,
Now I know why I didn’t ever see any terds there.
I only rode there a few times in the summer way before labor day.
Randy W
Re. Decalomainia: My friend Kent Nakamaru got a really nice Challenger around 1967 with three balsa stringers. He was a student at Temple Dental School in Phila at the time. The glasser cut his decal to read “DDS” (Doctor of Dental Science)
Cyan will also help help “dirty” a red.
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