The year:1969. Richard Nixon is President. Humans walked on the moon. Gasoline is thirty-five cents per gallon, and The Beatles gave their last live performance. Change is electric in the air. The country is ill-at-ease. Peace, war, and civil rights dominate the headlines. Protests, like concussion grenades rock the established order. For three days in August, high in the Catskill Mountains of New York state, in the tiny hamlet of White Lake, the Woodstock nation shouted, “It’s a new dawn,” and the revolution was born.
Surfing, surfboard design, and it’s entrenched old guard was in the midst of its own cultural rebellion in ’69. The insurgency was headed by the likes of Greenough, McTavish, Young, Lynch, and Spencer in Australia; Brewer, Lopez, and Abellira in Hawaii, and Hynson and Frye in California. Surfing, until Simon Anderson’s Thruster, would never seem the same. The revolution brought the demise of the longboard. Crap was happening fast. Surfboard length was being chopped as fast as old growth redwood trees in the Pacific Northwest. It wasn’t until Rolf Aurness’ win at the 1970 World Surfing Championships at Bells Beach, Australia that the blunder of too short (for the time) was discovered.
This weeks surfboard is The Revolution. Born in the tumultuous uproar of “The Shortboard Revolution,” the templet of The Revolution is what Gerry Lopez, or Jock Sutherland, or Sam Hawk may have been riding at Ala Moana, or Rocky Point in ’70 or ’71. This twenty-first century version, by Hobie master shaper Gary Larson, ends its similarity with its outline. Gary has added all the up-grades of today’s modern surfboard: single concave with vee running off the tail. A slight beak to the nose, and contemporary shortboard rails. Gary says that this beauty, with its wide point forward of center, is for fast, pocket oriented, down-the-line surfing in waist to over-head waves.
To check out The Revolution stop in at the Hobie Surf Shops, Dana Point store, or call Andy at the San Clemente, Del Mar Avenue store, (949) 542-3400. While you’re in Dana Point look into Gary’s shaping room. If he’s in bang on the window and have him come out and tell you about this amazing surfboard. See you in the water.
-Andy Cowell
Hobie Surf Shop 