The quotes below are from Paul Holmes' 2013 biography "Hobie: Master of Water, Wind and Waves." Holmes and Alter recorded their conversations in the winter of 2012-2013.


I'd been wanting a surfboard, and my dad bought me a 12-foot Catalina paddleboard, a skinny board with a pointed nose and no fin that weighed about 55 pounds. At low tide when there were one- or two-foot waves, my little group of friends would ride our paddleboards, standing up. We'd never seen surfing, really, other than on postcards from Hawaii, but that's how we got started. One evening a guy paddled out [at Brooks Street] on a real surfboard, the first modern board I'd ever seen. It was Walter Hoffman. He had one of those Bob Simmons foam sandwich boards, polystyrene core, balsa rails, plywood deck and bottom, weighed about 30 pounds. Walter was about two years older than me. 'Hey, I used to have one like that,' he said. 'Here, you try my board and let me try that one.' It was a snap! [surfing on Hoffman's board]. Really easy! Walter said, 'You've got to get yourself a real board. I'll build you one, or I'll tell you where to get the materials and you can make one for yourself.' Well, I like trying to make things, so I told him I'd make one myself.


My dad wasn't a surfer, but he was the one who encouraged me to go into the surfboard business [in 1953]. He had two thoughts. One, he probably didn't think I was going anywhere in school. Also, he couldn't believe that amount of business I was getting there in the family garage, because I was already making 20 boards or more each summer with no advertising, no nothing. People would just find me.



Our resin salesman, Kit Doolittle, came by one Friday evening and he had this little chunk of foam, about three or four inches in diameter. He showed it to me. 'Look at this,' he said. What is it?' I asked him. 'It's a foam, hard as balsa wood, won't absorb water, and polyester resin bonds to it.' So I gave it the fingernail test, and it was hard. I threw some styrene on it. Nothing happened. I dribbled some resin on it. Nothing happened. That night there was a party, and I went and showed everybody this little block of foam, telling them it was new material would be used to make the surfboards of the future


The odd thing about the surfboard business [in the '50s and '60s] is that it was almost all custom. It was important that the salesman you ordered your board from knew what he was doing, and that he'd be there when you came to pick your new board up, and that he made sure it was exactly right for you. It was hard to find people who were qualified for the job. It had to be a surfer, obviously. It had to be someone who was customer-friendly, and would get to know the people who came in. All that plus, for the guy you hire, he didn't know if there'd be any security working in a surfboard shop. There weren't too many people like that.


In the '50s, it was still seasonal. There wasn't enough work for most of the guys I hired in the early days. It wasn't full-time work. A lot of people who worked for me were either firemen or fishermen or lobster and abalone divers. Guys who had flexible schedules.


I thought it was appropriately named. I didn't think much of them. I thought they were for younger surfers. I liked to have buoyancy in the middle of the board, not in the back, so I didn't think they rode well. But Velzy could sell things like that; he was good with coming up with a name, like the Pig, and he could sell them.

THE TAXMAN COMETH: VELZY SURFBOARDS IMPLODES, 1960


We suspected it was coming for a long time. Velzy was a good salesman and he made decent boards and had good riders. But he had a group hanging around the shop that we always thought might have been selling one board for Dale and another for themselves. He had people working for him that I wouldn't have had in my shop. And then we heard he had a big unpaid bill to [supplier] Reichold Chemicals. We felt bad for Dale when he went under, though. I mean, you didn't want to see that happen to anyone.



Nobody cared about surfing contests [in the 1950s]. Newspapers didn't even publish the results. But if you won a paddleboard race, you could get your name in the paper. And if you won a tandem surf contest, you'd get your name in there, and a photo too.


We already had the Corky Carroll Model and the Phil Edwards Model; we wanted something for the East Coast, and [Propper] was the first East Coast surfer to really get noticed. He came [out to California in 1966] with a bad reputation. He was an aggressive surfer and still just a young kid [17], but he was really good and getting popular fast. Gary was a hustler. He worked really hard and I found out he was always responsible about whatever he did with us. I never had even an ounce of a problem with Gary. He and I got along great.


I questioned it. I didn't think it was the right way to go. But we'd make whatever people wanted, whatever the shapers were being asked to make. I wasn't paying that much attention. By then, I was more into the boats.

Hobie Alter

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