Juliana MoraisJuliana Greg Noll Longboard Greg Noll might look like a big macho musclehead, but the man they call “Da Bull” is one of sur ng’s most in uential Renaissance men: the Henry Ford of production, a Geppetto-class craftsman, the Cecil B. DeMille of surf movie spectaculars, as cool as Elvis rocking those jailhouse-striped trunks, and a better salesman/huckster than Barnum and Bailey combined. Beginning in the early 1950s, Noll was involved in every aspect of sur ng: making and marketing , lming and showing surf movies, innovating surf clothes, writing for magazines, and anything else he could dip his hand into as he evolved from a skinny South Bay hotdogger into a moose who rode mountains.

This Greg Noll board is somewhat anonymous: clear, thick stringer, nothing really distinctive about it. There are three versions of that cameraman logo—the one in the oval here, appearing on both the body and n of the board, was rst used in 1955, but this is not a ’50s era surfboard. The wide hips in the back put this board in the early 1960s.

Greg Noll at the Pipeline shorebreak. Photograph © John Severson

Juliana MoraisJuliana MVP Books collection

94 95 Dewey Weber Performer, 9’6” The Performer model was introduced by Dewey Weber Surfboards in 1965 and went on to become one of the most popular boards of the decade. The shape was designed by Dewey Weber himself, who was a legendary “hot-dogger” during the 1950s before starting his own board company. The Performer had parallel rails and a fairly wide nose, features that Weber said made the board good in both large and small surf. It was produced in two designs—the West Coast Performer and the East Coast Performer—for maximum versatility and was sold in surf shops from Massachusetts to Florida, Texas to Michigan, and from North Carolina to . Hobie, 10’2” According to the ad for the model, the Performer’s “special ‘turn’ n designed for the performance shape allows maximum turning potential.” This beautiful board built by Hobie in 1964 was Butch Van Artsdalen’s personal board and was shaped by master shaper Mike Hynson. Van Artsdalen, known as “Mr. Pipeline” for his mastery of the Banzai Pipeline on Oahu’s , rode this board at both Pipeline and Sunset. The La Jolla native appeared in several seminal surf movies, including Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer. One of the stars of that iconic 1966 surf documentary was Hynson, a renowned board shaper and builder as well as an accomplished surfer. This board’s impressive pedigree also extends to legendary surf traveler Randy Rarick, who later restored the board. Rarick has surfed in more than 60 countries and was a pioneer in international surf competitions, helping to establish the International Professional Sur ng (IPS) circuit. He also spent nearly half a century shaping and crafting boards for top-line manufacturers. The namesake founder of the Hobie Surfboard company, Hobart “Hobie” Alter, began making balsawood boards for his buddies in the early 1950s before opening up Southern California’s rst surf shop, at Dana Point, in 1954. By the end of the decade, he was revolutionizing surfboard building with the use of foam and berglass and further establishing his legacy as the master builder.

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