The quotes below are excerpted from "Shooting the Bull with Hap Jacobs," by Steve Pezman, which ran in the April 2010 issue of Surfer's Journal.


I was in Hawaii in 1952. George Downing and I served together on a buoy tender. At the time, George was dating his future wife, Gildia, and I was dating my future wife, Pat, who I’d met at a party. A friend and I had a room right behind a Waikiki hotel. It was one room with two beds and a bathroom, and George slept on the floor. We had the bedposts sitting in cans of water, but that didn’t do any good. The cockroaches could swim. But at $27 a month with three people sharing rent we couldn’t complain.

I was in the Coast Guard for two years and made a couple of boards while I was there. That’s how I got started shaping. I went out to Hickam Air Force Base because, being in the Coast Guard, I could use their shop. I made a balsa board from liferaft wood that we glued together and then varnished some sort of muslin fabric over it. We didn’t have fiberglass yet. I rode that board for a few months then it started to crack and pretty soon it was gone.


When I got back from Hawaii in 1954 and married Pat, we rented an apartment from my dad, right on the Strand. I thought the rent was too much, like $75 a month. So I said, “Hey, Pop, you know, I don’t make much money and we’ve got to pay rent and buy food.”

“Too bad,” he says. “If you’d move, I could rent it out for more!”

So I started working at UCLA on a job my dad got me as an apprentice carpenter. I worked for a year and paid the $75 rent, but I was always trying to get to the beach to go surfing. Finally, I told UCLA I was quitting, and they absolutely couldn’t believe it. “You can’t do that, that’s stupid. This is security. You’ve got medical and retirement. What are you going to do?” When I told them I was going to make driftwood furniture and build surfboards they wanted to have me analyzed.


Bev Morgan and I got together and started Dive N’ Surf. He made wetsuits, I made surfboards. Yeah, the glass itch from sanding the surfboards was getting in the wetsuits [laughing]. We had a good time. The wetsuits were good, and I was building pretty good boards, too. In 1954, Billy and Bob Meistrell were both lifeguarding in Hermosa; they came in and wanted Bev to work for them building wetsuits because he really had the know-how. So Billy and them hooked me up with Dale. He was in Venice then. I think I had six or seven orders and he had about the same, and we figured that would be a great idea because one of us could be surfing while the other was at the shop. It didn’t work out that way. We both locked the door and went surfing.

Early on, Dale said, “OK, we need somebody to fiberglass." What he meant was, "I’m shaping and you’re glassing.” I didn’t know anything about glassing, but I did it in a garage down the street for a year and then I started shaping. Dale was pretty good [at shaping], and he was fast. He’d always tell me, “You sure are slow.” And I’d say, “Yeah, but my rails are straight.” But he had a lot of good ideas about board design and overall we were producing really good boards, and they were well thought of. We had Alan Gomes’ dad, Abel, glassing for us down the street, and he was really good, not just the glassing itself, but putting color designs on boards and all that stuff.


We got our balsa from General Veneer. The guys who owned it surfed down at San Onofre. We knew them, but Grant was the guy in charge of the wood. Everybody called him “Mr. Grant.” We’d drive up there in Dale’s truck with George Kapu. Dale would go to the back and I’d go to the front, and we’d climb up on top of the bundles, and we’d pull the sticks we wanted. Kapu stayed on the floor and we’d hand him the wood and he’d stack it. We’d leave the wood that was heavy and hard. Eventually, Mr. Grant would come running: "Hey, you can’t just take the wood you want! You have to take the whole bundle.” And we’d say, “Oh, OK!” But pretty soon we’d have a truck full and we’d ask Mr. Grant, “What do we owe you?” Then he’d go, “Hey, you can’t . . . ” then he’d just give up, and we’d pay him and drive away with all the good stuff. Greg [Noll] says he always beat us up there, but he didn’t. But he liked to say it anyway. He might have beaten us a couple of times.


People would come in and order boards. They were only like $75 at that time. We’d write down the specs that the customer wanted, but Dale never paid much attention to that. We’d make a dozen or so boards at a time. When people called in and wanted to know when their custom board was going to be ready, I’d yell, “Hey, Dale, is so-and-so's board going to be ready soon?” And he’d yell back, “Yeah! Tell him it’s done.” And I'm still on the phone with this guy, knowing that Dale hasn't even shaped it yet. That Saturday, when all the new boards arrived, we'd have them all out front. Dale was amazing with a tape measure. He’d get the customer on the end with the hook on it and he’d be on the other, “How big was it you ordered? Nine-six? Well, it might be a half-inch over.” I always told him he should have been selling Maseratis.


Pretty soon Dale wanted to move down south. We went down there and looked around. I was thinking about going too, but was a little skeptical. Dale bought the building [on Coast Highway in San Clemente]. He wanted to go surfing down there—better waves. So I said I'd keep the shop open in Venice and he could go down there. We’ll just make a Velzy & Jacobs thing out of both places. We’d gotten together building boards in 1954, called ourselves Velzy & Jacobs, and he moved south in 1957. Dale was a great guy and everybody wanted to be his friend, but he wasn’t too good business-wise, which he would admit. I mean, if he sold a board, “Heck, that’s enough money. I’m going to Hawaii!” Neither of us could keep track of one another. It just didn’t work out too well. So I told him maybe it would be best if we did our own thing. We parted ways, but we never did argue about anything. We were completely opposite personalities, but we always had a good time.


When Abel and Alan Gomes moved from Oahu to California, I thought it was a bad idea. The whole family got a little place down the street from us. I don’t know if something went wrong over there for them, or what, but in Hawaii they were extremely well-liked and connected. Everybody knew Abel, and Alan was under George’s wing. Then they moved here and everything changed. California can be harder than Hawaii, but Abel was glassing boards and they did OK. Alan was known as a really good surfer, one of the best. I told him I’d take him to the [Redondo] Breakwater, that he’d really like it. He doubted there was any challenging wave here. So we went down there one day when it was big and I told him, “One thing you have to remember is to be sure you’re in the peak. It moves awfully fast.” He said, “I know, I know, I can see!” On his first wave he got caught behind the peak, and it just cleaned his clock. He had a whole different opinion of the place after that.


Ken Tilton, Chubby, and I surfed a lot together. One trip I remember was in my ’65 El Camino. Three of us in the front seat; there was no back seat. Chubby was so fat it was really difficult to be in the car with him. I’d slide way over to the left and Tilton would practically lean out the passenger side window. Ken would say, “Chubby you fat shit! Move over!” Chubby would slide toward me and I’d say, “Chubby, give me room. I'm driving!” But Chubby was a good surfer. We went to Hammonds once and the Santa Barbara guys were just staring at him. They couldn’t believe that a guy like him could surf that good Back in Hawaii, of all things, he became a cook. He might have eaten himself to death. He was a funny guy to talk to, a good surfer, and a really good guy.


After we finally got the shop opened up on PCH, I had all these different people working for me. They were all good surfers and they were mostly all from different areas. I had Tim Kelly, Dale Strubble, and Mike O’Neil who lived up here with all the PV guys, then Lance attracted the Malibu people, and Robert August from Orange County. Jim Graham worked for me for a long time, and Terry Woodall from Hawaii, and Robert Von Sternberg. When the surf team thing got ramped up, we had so many good surfers on our team I couldn’t afford them all. All I did every week was make team boards. Eventually, they went different ways. Like Don Hansen—Doyle went with him. David went with Bing. In the end, we kept a lot of good surfers, and we had a lot working for us. People would see Lance at Malibu one day and come in the next and order a board. At the peak, we had four shapers. We had some from the San Diego/WindanSea gang: Wayne Land, “Pal” Al Nelson, George Lanning, and Grant Reynolds. Grant did our glassing. Pal Al had this briefcase with “Visitor from Mars” written on it. We’d call him, and he’d drive up and work at the factory for four or five days; at night he’d sleep on the showroom floor next to the counter. If the street noise ended up being too loud, he'd move in back to of a pile of cardboard boxes that he’d pull over him like a blanket. Al's idea of cleaning up was, he’d go into the restroom, take his shirt off, turn the water on, rinse his shirt and put water on his hair, put his shirt back on, comb his hair, and he was all set.


Donald shaped for me too. His boards were so precise, especially with his three-stick model. He did other boards too, but he liked doing his model the most, and a lot of good surfers rode it. Every Takayama board looked identical, just different sizes. We worked in the same shaping room so I could see what he was doing, and he was fast and accurate. He worked for Dale when he first came over. He was a good friend of Kenny Tilton who also stayed with me shaping for a long time. After Dale, he came up and worked for me. Then he worked for Dewey, and then Bing, then he worked for me again. Larry Felker was another one who worked for me a long time. He was good, but he drank cough syrup all day.


We also had a model called the “New Shape.” That lasted about four years. It was always the same shape. But kids and their moms would come in asking about the new thing, and we’d tell them about the “New Shape.” We quoted four to six weeks on a custom order, and the moms would ask why so long when it was only two weeks at Greg Noll’s? Robert would tell them it was because our shapers surfed more than Greg’s did because we were field-testing our designs. That usually impressed them. Robert August was so good at that. Lance was real good in the front room too. Both of them wanted to learn how to shape, so I ended up them. Lance was slow and methodical, but the outcome was good. So it ended up being Pete Miller, Lance, and myself doing the Lance Carson Model. They were good boards.


When Dale and I were at the Venice shop, Johnny Fain was surfing for us. He lived up in the Malibu Colony, and between him and his mom they knew a lot of people in the movie industry. Fain came in one afternoon and said he needed a specialized board for the Steve Allen Show (the original incarnation of the Tonight Show)—a surfboard with skates fiberglassed onto the bottom so that Allen wanted to be pulled across the stage. They needed it in a couple of days. We said we’d do it but only if we actually got paid. We had a decent used board in back for $35, and so we agreed to put skates on it and sell it for $70. We asked when we’d get paid. Fain assured us not to worry, so we did the board, and I actually saw the show on TV. They'd attached a monofilament line to the nose so you couldn’t see it on camera. A singer finished their song and walked off, and then here comes Allen on the board, wearing a bright pair of surf trunks, and he’s super white and pudgy around the middle with his knees bent and arms out in a “surfer” stance. They pull him slowly across the stage in that position, and he disappeared behind the curtain on the other side. It was hilarious. Except we never did get paid.


My favorite surfers of that period were probably Lance Carson and Kemp Aaberg. Those guys were really special. Freddy Pfahler was good at beachbreaks. Dewey was hot! I made a lot of boards for Dewey in the mid-1950s. Mike Doyle didn’t do too well at beachbreaks. He just kind of worked his way up the coast and ended up at Malibu and started really catching on up there riding that perfect wave. He got so hot everybody started calling him “Malibu Mike.”


The Jantzen swimwear people approached me about doing an ad shoot at Malibu wearing their trunks. It was going to be a Jantzen Sports Club thing. The Club had guys in it like Warren Miller, Frank Gifford, and Bob Cousy, and I was going to be the surfing guy. They wanted to bring a camera crew and a big truck full of gear down and shoot right there on the beach. I said, “I have a friend you need to hire because he’s in control of the beach. Otherwise, there’ll be kids with surfboards running all over and getting in the way. But you'll have to pay him to do it.” I didn’t tell them his name either, because they would have thought it was a joke. They said, “All right, bring your friend."

I told ’Steak and everything was set. So they arrived at the beach at the appointed time, and everybody was wearing Jantzen polo shirts—looking really cool. “Where’s your friend?” We all walked down to the shack. That’s when Tube was living on the beach in the grass shack on stilts with a little balcony out front. They gasped, “He lives there?”

I called, “Hey, ’Steak.” Tube came out wearing these green burlap trunks, really baggy down to his knees like gunnysacks. His belly was sticking out and he was brushing his teeth, and toothpaste was running down his chest over his stomach.

“Yeah,” I said. “But don’t worry; he controls everything.”

We walked out to the point, and I swear everybody on the beach got up and followed us all the way out to the Point. The ad guy told me they were all going to have to move because they needed that area clear. Then ’Steak and I would go out and catch a couple of waves wearing Jantzen trunks. By then a ton of people had gathered, and I just knew it was going to be a problem. ’Steak turned to face the crowd, cupped his hands, and shouted, “OK everybody! I want you to move back near the fence!” And everyone got up and moved back near the fence, just like that. The ad guy was amazed. I myself never saw anything like it. And we both actually got paid!


I went fishing when we closed the shop in ’71. I’d sold the Jacobs Surfboards name because of shortboards and everything. People wanted shaping appointments, and they’d tell you how to shape the board. It was just a whole different deal, and I said, “No thanks.” It’s like Phil said, you couldn’t give a longboard away in the ’70s.

I fished commercially for 15 years and that was pretty good, but I ended up buying the lease for the fuel dock at King Harbor. So I had the fuel dock and my swordfish boat there, and I kept a little Seaway that I ran around in locally and fished halibut. When the season came, I went fishing four days a week, then come back and work the fuel dock Saturday and Sunday, do the books on Monday morning, then leave again that afternoon or evening. I’ve always made my living from the ocean—in different ways. I’ve pretty much enjoyed them all equally.


Jim Graham, who was working the counter at my shop, knew Stan Richards, the guy who did the 

 TV show on Channel 13. At some point, they called Jim to come up and describe the technical aspect of surfboards. Jim quickly worked his way up to being the show's host. Stan would just kind of hang to the side and chime in about the boards and his good friend Hap Jacobs. Of course, I’d never met Richards, but that exposure was all free. It was the first surfing on TV. Sunday afternoon, at 3:00, the beach around Hermosa would just clear out because everybody went home to watch the program.


Greg Noll wasn’t real stoked about it. See, Greg was on PCH first. Then we moved up there. Bing was up on the other side of Pier Avenue. Rick Stoner bought a small building where Dewey ended up. So, at first, Greg had it all to himself. But soon we were all up there. Parking was important. We were right next to Advance Muffler who had a huge lot on the corner, so that was good. Then we got a big sign up on the roof, this giant thing that said “Jacobs” inside a big diamond. The sign was made in Pasadena, and when they brought it down on a flatbed truck, people saw it on the highway coming to our shop. It became a Hermosa Beach landmark.

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