There are -no- markings or writing on the board whatsoever.
Looking here:
It looks sorta similar to the Hot Curl but my board has a pin tail - looks more like the ‘Greg Noll Fain’s Formula’ on page 108.
thanks for all the good info!
Mark
The link you provided wouldn’t load. Just sat there and spun forever.
Anyway, your board looks very much like a Hot Curl. If you’ve ever seen or owned one you’d know what we’re talking about.
This is mine:
Hmm ya maybe you’re right - altho my board does not have that cool stringer action that the Hot Curl does. Fin box & fin look the same. & mine is a little bit more pinned at the tail & nose - but similar…
Mark
Another great history thread. We need to consolidate all these transition era nuggets into one ''history of the revolution'' or ''post your transition boards'' thread. There's so many people on here that can contribute real, first-hand info (while we can still remember it, LOL).
Ignore the stringer
Ignore the fin
ignore the fin box.
We are talking about the outline, which is very similar. Both boards came from the same factory within about a year of each other. Might have even been shaped by the same person, off the same template.
Try this. Take measurements of the nose, tail and wide point. Let us know what you find.
Stringers and color create optical illusions when comparing outlines.
This ad is from March '69. That means the mag would have hit the stands in January, and the ad copy might have been put together in December. So, the design is late '68 or early '69 (very early). It seems the Fourth Dimension was a roundtail.
So, there’s a good chance that Joe Kitchens glassed your boards back then?
Inter Island ad from Summer, 1965.
[quote="$1"]
[quote="$1"] Jasper's was our G&S dealer too, He also sold Plastic Fantastic. The shop was in the back of an Esso station and had a sand floor. He sold a lot of boards for us. Mike Houghton was the owner and his Dad had founded the publishing co, Houghton/Miflin. Every one who went to school has had a Houghton/Miflin book at one time. [/quote]
I stand corrected. I do recall they sold Plastics, too. Gary Chapman came through that Summer, as well. A guy named Kevin Foley also worked there. he wound up being the manager for a while.
A buddy and I sort of camped out back that Summer, in a van.
Here's a shot from Doc. Sand floor and brand new shipment of Webers, fresh off the truck. July, 1969.
[img]http://fbates.home.comcast.net/~fbates/xmasinjuly.jpg[/img]
[/quote]
Yep, that's me. Back when I had hair. I started out working in the Esso station out front and went from there.
Under that sand was a front end alignment pit, filled in. It was later a lawnmower repair shop. The whole shebang, at one time ( when my grandfather had it) was set up so you could just about build a complete car, between the tooling he had. My uncle inherited it and it kinda went downhill from there.
And then it was Jasper's. I hung out there for 40 years, worked there for something like 30. Pretty much managed it for the last 25.
Jasper's was indeed the Weber dealer, also we carried ( at one time or another)
Phillips Surfboards out of Rhode Island
Design 1 ( out of Long Island )
Aquajet honeycombs ( gawd, what a disaster those were )
Natural Progressions (for a bit )
A whole lot of rental boards plus a few new, retail boards from a company on Long Island that just this moment escapes me. Basicly a knockoff of a Weber Performer, with lots of extra glass. Surprising number of those still around. Dammit...the name was Spoilers, that's what it was.
Plus one or two others, briefly.
And at the end, in a fit of nostalgia, we got in a very few Velzys ( shaped by god knows who ) and Hansens ( shaped by Hank Byzak and, I suspect, one Jim Phillips. ).
Ken's was, back when, a mostly Hansen shop. When the first wave of twin fins hit, he got into it big. And, being an honorable guy, the next year when you couldn't do much with a twin fin other than use it as a shelf he took tradeins on the boards he had sold and he also took a big bath. I think that kinda put him under.
We sold maybe three twin fins that year, special requests only. Back then, there was an industry 'trend of the year' and we'd been burned a couple of times already.
Nauset Surf: Jesse Kithcart ( alive and well in Florida, last I knew of) plus Ralph Rincones ( alive and well here) and Pat McCarthy and Dennis Moran, more or less backed by a banker called Dave Willard. I think the banker backed off and they basicly folded.
There were also Paul's East Coast Surf Shop ( folded around 1968-70) , Pamet Surf Shop, the Fox Shop out in East Orleans and a couple others that whoosed through.
Mike Houghton wasn't, actually, tied in with the publishers. If he had been, he woulda told me sometime in the last forty years, y'know? He always thought pretty hard about what to do with money and did pretty good with it.
His folks were schoolteachers, his father died quite young. Anything he had, he earned himself, working at various jobs since the age of about 12, started off pumping gas in Woburn MA. Worked as a schoolteacher too, until he retired on a medical - had quite a fair heart attack at the same age as his father died. Heredity, y'know?
Retired, somewhat, now.
His mom, Frances, was quite a lady. And yes, her chowder was superb. I remember pre-screening surf flicks at her house, back when. Heh- she liked the Players Navy Cuts I was smoking back then, she'd get a few from me now and then. when Mike and her daughter weren't looking.
Employees over the years ( not a complete list and not in chronological order)
Kevin Michael Foley, aka Fogbank Foley, Doctor Fogbank and ( when well lit) Focktor Dogbank. Spoke a very Worcester dialect of English. Sometime schoolteacher, now running a schooner.
Dennis O'Neill, also a schoolteacher, now retired and having a helluva good time at it.
Ted and his brother Paul. Last names witheld to protect the guilty. MIT students when they worked there. Ted is a stockbroker in Montana someplace, Paul is a marine geologist in Hawaii.
Big Al- print and graphics guy now, married to a gossip columnist.
Kenney Norton - died young, cancer. Good guy, when he died I went back to peddling surfboards.
Pinhead 1 and Pinhead 2 - Mike's nephews. One writes networking systems and runs one for a major university besides being a professor there. Pinhead 2 is a graphics guy and general magement guy, works for one of Mike's businesses.
Icky Go Left - named for his resemblance to Ichabod Crane.
Small MacPherson
and last and least, me.
It was a lot of fun, that. Sometimes I miss it.
Sometimes I don't....
Oh, and- back to the original question: I happen to have a 5' x 19" G&S kneeboard with what is pretty much the same rocker, same rails and outline ( scaled down, of course) and a similar fin, though I surformed it down some back in the day. Bought it new for $55, employee discount.
hope that's of use.
doc...
Re: Doc’s list…
An ad for “Paul’s” from Atlantic Surfing mag, ca. 1966
My father had been stationed at Otis AFB for 7 years before we were transfered to Hawaii, we took summer trips to the outer Cape, but knew nothing about surfing or whether it even existed.
When his tour was over in the fall of '64, we drove cross country back to the Cape, but my surfboard was still in transit and I actually saw surfboards on cars on the mid Cape Hwy.
By the time my board arrived in mid October, it was already getting cool in Delaware, surfed once at Bethany Beach, skinning it and lasted about 15 minutes.
The next summer would be when I went back up to the Cape and got to surf Nauset Beach, crystal clear water, small offshore peelers. but what a bitch, the water was 46 in mid July and all I had was my Dive and Surf shortie, thank goodness it was about 90 degrees on the sand and good for a warm up between sessions.
I met another surfer from Pocasset, Peter Stokes and he built his own boards in his basement, they looked pretty darn good, he was the first person I have ever seen that used his foam cut offs to do a final sand with, it polished the foam super clean.
I got some board repair work from the guys who sold boards at the Packet Landing and Nauset Beach road, can’t remember their names.
The entire Cape area has potential, but accessing the breaks is tough with so much private property, I always was on the hunt for a way to get to Monomoy Island and out to the Elizibeth Islands. My Dad used to fly over Monomy and said not to waste my time as it was nothing but a complete tidal flush around it, but Surfers Journal did a story on secret New England point breaks and they were the Elizibeth Islands. I last was on the outer Cape when I met Kevin Casey after my Fathers funeral
While Cape water is known for never really getting warm, 46 in July I find hard to believe. Average water temp that time of year is closer to 60. For comparison’s sake, water temps in nearby Newport RI will be closer to 70 by mid July. The south coast of New England benefits from the gulf stream. Unfortunately, it veers nearly due East when it reaches Nantucket and all places North of there tend to be cooler.
Pete was the first person to write an article about Cape surf. It appeared in Competition Surf Mag, Winter of '66. Two pics of Pete from that article attached, here. (See below)
You wouldn’t want to surf Monomoy these days, even if it had decent waves. I’ve heard rumors of guys catching it when it was working, but…
It is now pretty much a wall to wall seal rookery. In recent years there have been eye witness accounts of attacks on seals by great whites. Not only near Monomy, but along some of the Chatham beaches as well.
That article in TSJ pissed off a lot of guys. The writer is someone I used to surf with. He is not welcome in certain parts of MA anymore. Too bad about his 15 minutes of fame. “Secret point breaks”? Well, once you publish an article with some blatant clues, it’s not a secret anymore, is it?
Two pics of Peter Stokes
I did not have a thermometer that day, but the chalk board at the guards tower said 46, it burned like fire, that is what’s great about being 19.
Peter Stokes, where are you ?
Elizibeth Islands, fickle too with all the Buzzards Bay water moving through there
Sam Cody called me today, He had seen this thread. He lurks but doesn’t post so he asked me to pass this on.
He says Paul Bordieri shaped an Inter Island for him back then. He said it was one of the best boards he ever had.
We talked about Paul and what a great shaper he was but not well known.He shaped several boards for me that I could say were some of the best boards I ever had.
I saw him at the G&S 50 year celebration in Oct in San Diego. He’s retired now.
I guess I need to actually take it out and surf it. So far I haven’t mostly because anytime a good swell shows up, I’m reluctant to take out an unknown board.
Interesting though - I was telling an older friend (surfer/shaper) that’s been around for a while that I had just bought an older G&S single fin from around 1969 or so (or whatever year you guys told me) and before I could finish, he immediately asks “Shaped by Paul Bordieri?”
Judging by the lines it closely resembles my 1969 Gordon and Smith "Magic". I dropped from a 9'6" Surfboards Hawaii to that 7'6" Magic. It was one of the 1st boards that featured an interchangable skeg. Mine had a beautiful multi-colored floral design on the nose.
Note: Got back from Nam and my younger brother had it all dinged up.