This photo came from a page a day calendar my wife got me for Christmas. I wasn’t real enthusiastic about it, until I started flipping through it. A great shot of Eddie Aikau at Wiamea. Some other stupid posed shots of guys looking at boards and ignoring girls.
But this one (below) is interesting. What is the idea behind 8 ½ foot LB’s with hips? Who are the people in the photo and how do you think these boards would ride?
my personal geuss is it is from when the us board makers right at the start of the shortboard revolution(right after nat young spanked everyone), when the us board makers dropped nearly a foot off of their boards though they didn’t quite have the design elements of the more modern aussie boards. I could be wrong I don’t have my archives at college with me and I wasn’t alive then.
They look like Velzy “Pig Boards” I think the pronounced hips were touted as a pivot point.I used to read a lot of mags back then.They actually had surfboard ads instead of nothing but clothes and sunglasses—shoes etc.
Likely based on Velzy’s Malibu “Pig” design.
Weber and Takayama both were affiliated with Velzy at some point either as riders, shapers or both. Movies from the era show riders, notably Weber himself, really cranking those boards around. Considering the big blade D fins used then, the maneuverability of the boards likely was due to the wide point back, tail rocker and belly.
An early Weber Pig I had was measured by me as having the wide point 23" behind center. That might be close to what the boards shown in your calendar photo might have had.
I think one of them might be Takayama.
EDIT: Sorry Roger… You got that in while I was still typing.
…is like the other guys said
from where you think the shortboards came?
the concepts were always the same: more tail area less nose area, hip, curved outline= more maneuberability in small arcs
Hi- I showed the photo to Johnny and Rosemari Rice and this is what they said:
“Harold Iggy is on the right…Donald Takayama is on the left and Johnny thinks the guy in the middle may have been called Sammy…”
I have a Weber Pig- 9’6" really fun and trimmy.
I believe the middle guy is Peter “Pope” Kahapea, he posts on surfermag.com sometimes and there was a discussion around this pic there a while back…I found a post here
http://www.atomicbride.com/surfwrite.html
in which he says he surfed for Dewey Weber in the 60s and lived with Iggy & Donald at one time so that all fits…
The ‘‘rule of thumb’’ I was taught, in the late 50’s, was that the wide point on a Pig, would begin 1/3 up from the tail. Another popular design of the period was the Double Ender, with the wide point dead center.
I have a board with that same basic Pig shape, a 1964 Daytona Surf Shop and I ride it regularly. It’s really fun and rides quite well. Not quite as stable cross-stepping and noseriding as some of the boards that came a year or two later, when the noseriding craze really kicked off.
IMHO the pig is the most useful longboard shape available. Hips back of center, a pulled in nose and a big fin for shoulder high and under. Although they were ridden in everything back in the 50’s there are better designs today for bigger waves.
I like them with a modern twist to the rocker, width, fin placement, rail and bottom contour. Okay so everything but the outline. The boards just work… they have a ton of drive, trim wonderfully and nose ride surprisingly well. My go to shape pretty much 8x outta 10. Get your dancing shoes on…
.
Modern “pig” by Dale Velzy 1992:
Modern “pig” by Jim Phillips 2007:
IMO Velzy’s “pig” design coincided (some might say facilitated) the big boom in surfing in the late '50s. You can talk about “Gidget” all you want but without those hips (and some new materials) all those new surfers would have had a lot harder time learning to surf. The turning ease of these boards lessened the learning curve considerably. My 1st board looked exactly like the board Donald is holding (as did almost all the boards built during the late '50s.)
Just another way that Velzy really made surfing what it is today.
This photo came from a page a day calendar my wife got me for Christmas. …Some other stupid posed shots of guys looking at boards and ignoring girls.
Blasphemy! The photos in that calendar are by Leroy Grannis, the godfather of modern surf photography.
Those “stupid posed shots” are probably photos of guys like Hap Jacobs, Bing Copeland, Rich Harbour,etc.
If you cannot grasp the significance of those pics, I feel bad for you.
Anyway, L to R in that pic is Donald Takayama, Peter “Pope” Kahapea, and Harold “Iggy” Ige. The pic was taken at Hermosa Beach in 1963. And, those boards are probably more in the range of 9’6", or longer. Hardly anyone rode a board less than 9’ back in '63.
Please post some of these “stupid” shots, so that you might be educated.
TonyM is damn right.
Did I say I love he pig?
Velzy’s new Pig (he shaped it in 2004 in the pic below) is an example of a pig board that didn’t work for me. For a few years I had been asking him to shape me a pig but he said he didn’t like doing that old stuff and then bam, he showed me this a few years later. Dale hadn’t surfed in 40 years and was “reaching back” to bring this shape up and modernize it. It was traditional in the tail shape with a bit of kick to the tail, 50/50 rails and the textbook Velzy nose with belly and rails that were up. Dale gave me the board for a few months and I surfed it up and down the coast but I just couldn’t find her sweet spot. It was one of those boards that didn’t fit in my mind and feel good in my hand right off the bat.
This sounds like a LB that i would like to try, can anyone post some rough dimensions for an 8’ 2’’ pig??. Widepoint location, noase and tail, and rocker would be great. They look nice
Can you elaborate on why Dale stopped surfing? Thanks
Howzit Keith, Peter is a very close friend of mine, I don't think the guy in the picture resembles Peter in any way. I will ask Peter if he ever was in a picture with Donald and Harold. Aloha,Kokua
Howzit Kokua, I don’t know Peter but check this out pic (also posted on urfermag.com), same T shirt even.
Kokua,
Yep, that is Peter (“Pope”). The fact that Peter’s head is now shaved may have thrown you.
Remember him in his “Small Kid Days” in Waikiki. Used to live on Maui, before heading to the Garden Isle.
Kokua, ask him where Peter got his nickame, “Pope”.
It’s definitely Pete. He appeared in a Weber ad sometime around '63, with that very same board.
If you check the second Grannis book, that same photo is in it with the info I already gave (people, location).
Pete’s nickname is a short version of the Hawaiian slang term for a dark-skinned person. Another permutation
of that term is “olopop”.