Without Hobie there would be no a foam blank as we know it today. Whithout Hobie we wouldn’t associate the name Phil Edwards with the Hobie diamond. Without Hobie there would be no a Honolua Surf Shop chain or Brand. Without Hobie there wouldn’t have been any foil logo/lams. In surfing alone you could go on and on. Naming models and innovations. Shapers, glassers etc. Henry Ford and Allen Seymour had some good stories the few times I ran into them at the San-O Contest. He was there one year. No pretense or god complex. I followed him around the “shack” looking at the old boards on display. He made comments about the history of each. Munoz, LJ Richards, Phil, Bruce Brown(heavy smoker) guess those guys are still around. Back in the 90’s I had two Phil Edwards and a couple of early 60’s Stock Hobies. Though I only rode one of the Phils occasionally in the right conditions; I still had a Hobie diamond in the back window of my old Chevy truck. If you want to remember Hobie; Put the Hobie diamond in your back window. That’s a nice tribute to a man who did it his way. Lowel
Had a couple of roommates back in the early 70’s that worked for Hobie. They had to end all conversations with customers with, “Have a Hobie day”.
Drove everyone nuts with that saying at the time.
Hobie was not just an innovator, but what a marketing genius.
A true legend.
“Have a Hobie day”
Considering how important Hobie was to our sport, the coverage by our sport’s media has been piss poor. The best stories of his passing have not been from the surf media they’ve been from the sailing media. Heck the best Surfline could come up with was a weak 5 picture story…hell, they’ll do a stupid 30 slide presentation featuring the latest social media tweets from low grade pros and hipsters. Surfline should be ashamed. Others haven’t done much better.
may he live in our memories…forever!
herb
Surfline has been pretty lame from the get-go. Would you expect anything of substance from that website?
Brown and Hobie were half of the Dana Point Mafia. After Velzy helped Brown get his first film off the ground, Hobie was a big supporter of Bruce’s efforts.
Brown also did a promo film for Hobie when the label entered into a surfwear partnership with McGregor Sportswear. It was no accident that Phil Edwards
appeared in many of Brown’s films, especially Surfing Hollow Days, which has the first footage of Edwards riding Pipe.
What label was Hynson riding in The Endless Summer? I’ll give you a hint. the lam was diamond shaped.
Hobies last personal boat was a unique one of a kind gem that checked all the boxes. Seaworthiness, speed, comfort and economy. He often said the years he spent cruising on this self-designed beauty were some of the best of his life. Here’s his boat docked in front of his house on Orca island up in the San Juan’s. His next door neighbor for many years was Warren Miller. Hobie split his time between there, his home in California, and his place on the east cape of Baja.
Some acts are hard to follow. Other, like Hobie’s, just never will be.
Hobie, what else can I say but thanks. There would have been foam surfboard blanks without him, and plenty of surfboards made, but wow, what a life, and what a guy. A trip to Domingo St. when I was a grom was like seeing the promised land, and the characters that worked there through the years were the best in their time and what they did, and that had to do with him. He changed the meaning of recreation, and lifestyle. Shalom! Compared to him we are all a bunch of wannabees.
Read it carefully Sammy, GR said there would have still been foam. Dave Sweet= South Bay correct?
Not trying to be somebody here but out of respect to the man could we please keep it focused on Hobie and avoid junk between us.
The premier mark in ocean recreation products and its rumored he helped start Grubby Clark with a pretty good biz to boot. I bet he gave many others (outside of the stables of shaping greats) help along the way too. Hobie logs are probably more iconic boards than a Dick Brewer gun. Not too mention the great kayaks, cats, kick boats, etc. that Hobie helped to innovate. Hobie is a synonym for high end quality water tools and toys.
The Hobie polarized glasses were all you could buy in the Newport Beach Marine Dept. for years. They were great shades.
Surfers, sailors, flyfisherman, yakers, and many more will miss Alter.
RIP
Here it is and take it for what its worth, and consider I have a degree in History and for the most part was there, or someone in my family was there. The foam came from the aerospace-defence industry which was a primary employer in Southern California at the time, and it found its way into other uses. Eugene Weber from UCLA argues that: “All human inventions first have a military function.” Hobie didn’t invent the stuff- think about it. I have asked Harold Walker and he always told it there were a few guys working on it. Here is a likely way it found its way into use: A dad comes home from work with a chunk of foam from Douglas or Hughes and the kid, or the dad figures it would work for a surfamaboard. I am going to lunch with Harold soon if anyone is interested I will post what he has to say, and that doesn’t take away from Hobie or Sweet, or Walker, it only adds to it. Hobie was one of the players, and in my opinion the best at the table.
Yes, I’m interested. Many of the best boards I ever made, were made with Walker Foam. It was the preferred foam for my personal boards. Velzy used Walker Foam, and that is where I made my leap from shaping Balsa, to shaping foam, in 1960
Bill.
Funny how things get started on this website. People sometimes are just plain stupid, thin skinned, can’t read or are just down right Dislexic. “as we know it”. Of course there would have been foam. But I doubt like hell there woud have been an Arctic or US Blanks or Millenium if there had not been a Clark Foam. And there would not have been a Clark Foam without Hobie Alter. I finally saw an Obit today in a local paper. “Son of an Orange County orange grower”. I wonder if that book on Hobie by Paul Holmes is still in print and can be found??
Ralph Parker, Terry Martin, The Patterson Bros., Timmy Patterson. Hynson was riding a Hobie in the Endless Summer flick. Yater glassed for Hobie at one time.
Looking at the calender. Schedules can be arranged to pay homage.
Well, here’s Hobie’s own words about how he came to use foam.
“Our resin salesman from Reichold
Chemicals, Kit Doolittle, came by one Friday evening and he
had this chunk of foam, three to four inches in diameter,
not a clean little block but a chip that looked like it had
been broken out of something,” remembers Hobie. “He
showed it to me and said, ‘Look at this.’”
“What is it?” replied Hobie, feeling the hard chunk
of strange, small-celled plastic stuff
—like an ancient dried out piece of sponge cake.
“It’s a foam that is as hard as balsa wood, won’t absorb
water, and polyester resin will bond to it,” said Doolittle,
who knew by professional experience that no polystyrene
foam could be used with the polyester resins preferred by
the surfboard makers—it dissolved on contact.
Hobie checked out the sample in detail: “I gave it the
fingernail test, and it was hard. It was high density foam,
probably in the six-pound range. So then I threw some
acetone on it and nothing happened to it. Then I threw
some styrene on it and nothing happened. Then I dribbled
some resin on it and nothing happened.” Hobie was
impressed and immediately grasped the implication.
“Gee, you really do have something there,” he told
Doolittle. “That night,” says Hobie, “there was a party at
Keyhole’s house—there was usually a party at his house if
he had the night off as a fireman. I went there and showed
everybody, telling them that this wonderful material would
be used to make the surfboards of the future.”
It was December 1957, the week before Christmas.
Hobie ordered some small tubs of the newfangled foam
compounds from Doolittle—two main ingredients. With
simple additives like water, he got to work making test
samples—with lower density and lighter weight, mixed and
poured into Dixie cups—aiming for just what he’d need
as a balsa substitute for a surfboard blank. With foam, he
figured, he’d have a supply chain as unlimited and reliable
as the giant US-based industrial chemical companies.
Long before the movie “The Graduate” Hobie had realized
—just like Dustin Hoffman’s character would be told—
plastics were the future.
**From the book,
Hobie: Master of Water, Wind and Waves
by Paul Holmes, © 2013, croulpublications.com**