Maps of Your Favorite Breaks

Starting with a bathymetric chart (the underwater equivalent of a topographic map), laser-cutters are used to carve the contours into sheets of Baltic birch and glue them together to create a powerful visual depth. Select layers of blue are hand-stained to discern land from water and major byways are etched into the land. Each piece is framed in a solid-wood frame and protected with a sheet of durable, ultra-transparent Plexiglas. Available maps are the Monterey Bay, Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands, Baja California, the Salish Sea, Catalina Island, the Hawaiian Islands, Maui, Oahu, Huntington Beach, Malibu, and Los Angeles to San Diego (pictured above). Click HERE for images, pricing and sizes.

Scale Models You Can Own!

NOW AVAILABLE AT SHACC

Logan Earth Ski - $575

Aipa. Sting model - $600

Noll, Ricky Grigg model - $650

Malcolm Wilson, world renowned artist and model builder, has been creating his unique brand of surf art for over 25 years. Malcolm creates custom museum quality models of all kinds, his specialties include, the history of the surfboard and famous surf breaks from around the world. If you can dream it, he can make a beautiful scale model of it.

malcolmwilsonc1956@gmail.com
malcolmwilsonmodels.com

A percentage of these sales goes to supporting SHACC

Vintage Surf Patch

This classic shot of Duke Kahanamoku, taken at the US Surfing Championships in Huntington Beach shows Duke wearing a jacket featuring the official patch from the contest. If you'd like to own one of these original patches, click HERE.

Greg Martz Art

Greg Martz, has glassed surfboards for over forty years, and is considered a master craftsman. He specializes in resin, color, and innovative design techniques with clients coming from around the globe seeking his expertise. We're stoked to have the loan of this beautiful piece of work and look forward to seeing what new designs he comes up with. You can view more of Greg's work by clicking HERE.

Book Donations

Long time SHACC supporter and volunteer docent, Allan Seymour donated 2 historic books including one by artist and poet, Don Blanding. Hula Moons, published in 1930 and featuring a beautiful surfing print. Here's a little more on Blanding, taken from Wikipedia:

Donald Benson Blanding was an American poet who loved the climate of Hawaii and was sometimes described as "poet laureate of Hawaii".

Blanding was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He later grew up alongside Lucille "Billie" Cassin (later known as Joan Crawford). Blanding would later make this incident the focus of a poem he wrote when the two met years later. He trained between 1913 and 1915 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

He enlisted (for a year, or the duration of World War I plus up to six months) in the Canadian Army's 97th ("American Legion") Battalion. He then trained with them for trench warfare for eight months in 1916, but left under unknown circumstances a few days before the unit shipped out for Europe. Blanding would omit reference to that service and training a year later when joining the U.S. military.

Blanding became fascinated by Hawaii and moved there in 1915, staying until his enlistment in the U.S. Army in December, 1917. Entering as an infantry private, he underwent officer training and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant before being discharged in December, 1918, soon after the Armistice.

Blanding pursued further art studies in 1920, in Paris and London, traveled in Central America and the Yucatan, and returned to Honolulu in 1921. Finding work as an artist in an advertising agency, he happened into two years of writing poems published daily in the Honolulu Star Bulletin for an advertiser. These featured local people and events, and became well-known and popular – whether because of or in spite of always mentioning the Aji-No-Moto brand of MSG.

The popularity of these ad-poems led Blanding to follow the advice of newspaper colleagues by publishing a collection of his poetry in 1923. When his privately published 2000 copies quickly sold out, he followed it with a commercially published edition the same year, and with additional verse and prose books. For his fifth book in 1928, he no longer used a local or West Coast publisher, but the New York publisher Dodd, Mead & Company. The result, Vagabond's House, was reviewed promptly by the New York Times, and was a great commercial success. By 1948 it went through nearly fifty printings in several editions that together sold over 150,000 copies.

In 1927, he suggested and founded the annual holiday, Lei Day, in Hawaii. While he remained strongly attached to Hawaii, his connections to the world of celebrities drew him often to the mainland, and his income made hotel life and multiple residences feasible. Blanding married the socialite, Dorothy Binney Putnam, on June 13, 1940, and they lived together in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Blanding was strongly affected by U.S. entry into World War II, including the knowledge of his island paradise as a military target, the reactions of those he met on his lecture tours, and the fall of Bataan. Bataan surrendered April 9, 1942, while he was on tour, and he wrote "Bataan Falls", 16 emotional lines in response. On April 25, he enlisted as a private at the age of 47. He served eleven months in the 1208th Service Corps Unit, Infantry, and was discharged as a corporal.

He divorced in June 1947, leaving no descendants. Blanding died of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles on June 9, 1957 at the age of 62.

Early '60s Whitey Harrison board

Long time Sano Hawaiian Surf Club member, Ed Escandon donated his second Whitey Harrison board. This one dates from the 1960s and has been refinished. The fin has the hole in it so Whitey could run a chain through the hole and padlock the boards together to a coconut tree. (We've seen some boards where the owner glassed a penny in the hole). Whitey was one of the first to experiment with early foam, even before Dave Sweet and Hobie Alter and came from the school of, "Why buy it when you can build it yourself." He even tried to fill his teeth using Bondo but when decided that wasn't such a good idea since it gets extremely hot when the chemicals go off. A true early California waterman and pioneer. Thanks for the boards Ed!

Pillow Case Surfing!

So the story goes, big pillow cases were wetted down and filled with air and used for riding the waves "back in the day." If we didn't have this picture as proof, we wouldn't believe it. And just where do you find a pillow case that big!

George Downing's Wooden Teak Fin

George Downing is credited with creating the first removable fin boxes. You can read how that came about by Clicking HERE. This fin goes to with a wooden balsa gun that was purchased by collector, John Mazza at SHACC's last California Gold Surf Auction. Here's the board's description: 1954 Hawaii’s soon-to-become legendary surfer/shaper George Downing built a handful of highly innovative surfboards, essentially creating the first modern big wave gun—and, in fact the design that virtually all modern boards are based on. Downing, who’s kept every surfboard he’s ever owned since 1951, still has the prototype pintail known as “Rocket”, making this version the only other one of the series known to exist. Hand-crafted entirely from balsa this 11’0”, commissioned in ’54 by local big wave rider Bob Muirhead (its sole owner), features Downing’s game-changing high-to-low rail, rolled-nose to flat-paneled bottom configuration, along with a teak wood, removable fin box—the very first of its kind. The board and fin will be featured in SHACC's exhibit, "Treasures" from the John Mazza Collection, from April 30 - June 30, 2016.

James Blears Memorial Tribute

If you remember Curtis 'Da Bull' Iaukea, Ripper Collins, Gentleman Ed Francis, Handsome Johnny Barend, Neff Maiava, and The Missing Link, you will certainly remember Lord "Tally Ho" Blears.

If you remember the early 1960s when Wrestling from the Civic was introduced on Honolulu TV's channel 4, you will certainly remember the formal visage of Lord "Tally Ho" Blears. If you remember the early surf contests at Makaha and on the North Shore of Oahu, you will certainly remember the booming voice of the beach announcer Lord "Tally Ho" Blears.

He was a fixture in the surfing, canoeing, and wrestling worlds of Oahu and Hawaii life. Mr. Blears died on March 6, 2016 at the age of 92. It was his wish that his ashes would be scattered at the beach that he loved, Makaha.

This video is the beach celebration of life for Lord Blears and is dedicated to the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of Mr. Blears.

Music on this video is courtesy of Michael Leonard and of Laura Blears' classmate Bill Brooks.

THANK YOU to Kyle Metcalf for filming this memorial tribute. CLICK HERE to view.

The Point at San Onofre

Before The Point wind vane came crashing down, it was gently lowered and the sign was salvaged along with the metal plaques that were bolted to the cement base. These 3 plaques were tributes to Terry McCann, Steve Farrell, and Doug Craig. Thank you Don Craig (Old Guys Rule) for donating them to SHACC! The wind vane itself was also saved and donated by Lonnie Argabright, we're trying to figure out how to attach it to our roof.

Thank you everyone that turned out for the event!

Jericho Poppler, Randy Rarick, LJ Richards, Ron Sizemore, Linda Benson, John Peck, Paul Strauch, Joyce Hoffman, Anna Trent Moore, Barry Haun, and John Engle.

Ron and Anna (Trent) Moore, and Patricia and Walter Hoffman. Linda Benson and Joyce Hoffman. 

Author, John Engle addressing the Sold Out crowd.

What a great night!
Bud Browne's classic film, Locked In had them hooting and the first surfing cartoon, Bobby Bumps, Surf Rider, from Bray Productions, 1917 (courtesy of Tommy Stathes of the Bray Animation Project and Cartoons on Film) had them laughing. Anna Trent Moore and author John Engle each gave a short talk while special guests from the movie turned out for a post screening Q&A—Linda Benson, Joyce Hoffman, John Peck, LJ Richards, Ron Sizemore, and Paul Strauch and other legends such as Steve and Barrie Bohne, Walter Hoffman, Jericho Poppler and Randy Rarick also stopped by.

  We still have a few signed copies of John Engle's Surfing in the Movies, A Critical History and Anna Trent Moore's Laughing at Water, available for purchase here at the SHACC gift shop.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Australian Surfing History

Thank you to Total Surfing Fitness for allowing us to post this on our site.

(please click on the image to view at a larger size)