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To understand Greg
Loehr, you must realize he’s not so much a human as a ball of energy.
He’s a whirlwind of ideas, opinions, hair, and if overly excited—spittle.
He exclaims, pontificates, pauses, and exclaims again. And he’ll
laugh at every pointed statement, good or bad. But that scattered image
is merely the leading edge—the swirling eyewall of an extremely
focused individual who cares about little more than surfing’s progression. GL: Oh, very
much. In ‘67 or ‘68, change was going on all around us. The
Vietnam War, music, surfboards—everything was revolutionary. And
during that time—right around ‘65—they started building
the jetty at Sebastian. Suddenly, when it was waist-high and mushy in
Cocoa Beach, it would be a foot overhead and tubin’ at the Inlet.
I believe in revolution. I don’t believe in slow change. When I
grew up, it was okay to be different; it was almost better to be different.
Whereas today, the sport is so stagnant. Look at today’s surfboard:
it basically hasn’t changed for 20 years. GL: A lot
of it’s just the mentality of people building boards. I think a
lot of the best people designing surfboards today don’t have their
focus on the boards. There’s not a real desire to create. I read
on Swell.com’s shaper forum where they’re talking about blank
selection. And to me, it’s like, “Gosh, guys, don’t you
want to create anything on your own?” If I use this blank, all
I have to do is take a pass of each side and turn the rails—it’s
paint by number shaping. Do you think DaVinci was sitting there going,
“Today, I’m gonna paint the Mona Lisa. Let’s see, what
canvas has it already sketched out with little numbers on it?”
It’s bullshit. And because shaping’s become like that over
the last 20 years—there isn’t much creativity. I think the
shortboard is really off the mark now. GL: It’s
a surfboard for professionals. And people are getting ripped off. Because,
unless you’re a very above-average surfer, you’re going to
be frustrated, not catch any waves, and sit there neck-deep in the water.
This sport needs an oversized driver or an oversized tennis racket for
the recreational surfer. The funboard sort of fills that role, but you
go to surf shops and there’ll be 20 longboards, 100 shortboards,
and half-a-dozen funboards. The dealers, by what they supply, really
force everybody down to where it hurts the sport. There needs to be
awareness in shops that a 180-pound guy who buys a 6’4” chip
squashtail isn’t going to enjoy it. He’s going to quit, you’re
going to lose a customer, and you’ll never see him again. That’s
another thing—the shops’ salespeople have so little board
knowledge. Every shop needs to hire a pro. Like a golf pro, or a tennis
pro: he fixes surfboards, and he’s knowledgeable. The shops need
to become pro shops and not just boutiques with surfboards. GL: I started
out surfing 16th Street as a kid with guys like Mike Tabeling, Bruce
Valluzi, Mike Shay, and Fletcher Sharpe. So I got to see awesome talent,
and that’s what I aspired to. I eventually ended up on Tabeling’s
Weber team for a few years, then I rode for Oceanside, and I had a Hobie
model. I got second in the 1971 East Coast Championships, beating all
my heros like Tabeling and Valluzzi—that was the first Hatteras
championships, which Charlie Baldwin won—then I finally won in
1974. I only surfed about two or three contests a year. I mean, guys
do it every weekend now. But back then, I only had to go out in a heat
to qualify for the East Coast Championships. Then I’d go to the
US Championships and was usually invited to one or two Hawaiian contests,
and that was it for the entire year. GL: I built
boards. There was no money—no clothing money, no surfboard money.
The guys before me were making 20 grand a year, which in the ‘60s
was like “phew!” Sam Gornto, who wasn’t even one of the
top guys, was getting $300 a week—more money than his dad who was
an engineer at the Cape. Tabeling had a Shelby Cobra, Claudie had a
Porsche, Valluzzi had a Porsche, the Sharpe brothers both had Vettes.
That’s how much money the surfboard industry had at the time. But
then, 1969 hit, the surfboard industry ate it, and there was no clothing
industry yet. I had a model by Hobie, and I was getting $25 a week [laughs].
GL: Absolutely.
They were still putting out magazines, and I was in plenty of those.
In California by 1973, there wasn’t anybody out there, except for
Purpus, who was even competitive with us back here. There were 10 guys
at the Inlet who were better than anyone in California. GL: [sighs]
Fletcher Sharpe, Dick Pollack, Jeff Crawford, Mike Tabeling, Jim Cartlin,
Regis Jupinko, Lewis Graves, Claudie Codgen, Roger Kincaid, and me [laughs].
On the west coast, there were only two guys who we even worried about:
One was Tony Staples, and the other was Chris O’Rourke. Of course,
this was still considered the surf ghetto. There couldn’t possibly
be any talent on this part of the map. GL: Mags
started using Larry Pope’s photos first. That was the first real
quality that ever came out of here. Before that it was a bunch of black
and white pictures of guys who couldn’t surf. Then Pope came along,
we discovered the Inlet, and suddenly there’s a place with a peak
that throws out, with blue water, that you could shoot from all angles—it
was like a studio. I mean, Sebastian Inlet—regardless of what any
East Coaster thinks of it—was, and still is, the place that put
us on the map, and that’s partially because it’s photogenic.
It’s also partially due to the people who developed their surfing
skills there. Without Sebastian Inlet, believe me, we’d still be
the whipped little brother. GL: Pope’s
photos were huge. I went to Hawaii the first year and guys like Rory
Russell are walking up to me saying, “I saw those pictures of you.
God, you guys got great waves!” Yeah, right [laughs]. And the fact
that Tabeling surfed as good as he did, and Claudie, then with Crawford
and my presence, and onward to Charlie Kuhn and Wes Laine—we chipped
away at that prejudice. And it took 20 years until Kelly Slater came
along, and it’s like, ‘Okay, maybe you guys can surf’
[laughs].“ GL: That’s
true. But there is an interest in what’s going on out there. And
there’s a lot of things that developed out here that Californians
actually took credit for. GL: The chip
surfboard. That was developed here in the mid-’80s—that’s
Bill Hartley’s thing. He was the one who pushed the width down
under 19”—he and Mike Notary. Bill brought it all the way
down to 17 1/2”, and he was who started putting concaves in the
boards. Well, actually, I got that one from Brewer. And when Bill started
going real GL: I rode Owl’s boards, which were Brewers. And I rode my own boards over there in later years. I built boards in my garage from when I was in high school until I started working for Catri in late 1972. From hot coats and fin boxes, through laminating and glossing—I’ve done all the jobs. I started shaping for Natural Art in 1974, and I worked for them for a long time. The influences were of course, Brewer and Owl in Hawaii, Terry Martin in California, and Joey Thomas when he was here. Those were the main guys. ESM: How’d
you end up starting Resin Research? GL: I started
Resin Research in 1981 while working for Fox in Palm Beach. Epoxy came
through windsurfing. The first time I stepped on a windsurfer made of
epoxy I couldn’t believe the difference. So I built a surfbooard,
and I got the same feeling I got as I did going from a thirty-pound
longboard to a fifteen-pound shortboard. This thing weighs nothing,
it’s light, more responsive, and more fun. At that time, there
were certainly disadvantages to
GL: Hey,
the average guy putting a planer to the foam is about five years away
from being history. There’s going to be machines that cut foam
exactly to shape that are going to cost $50,000—about what a good
shaper will cost you for a year’s work. And when that happens—and
it will—then the machine will take the place of the ghost shaper.
So, any kid who thinks they’re gonna be a surfboard manufacturer,
don’t quit your day job because the traditional surfboard industry
isn’t going to be around much longer. GL: That’s
what it’s going to be. The Pat Rawsons are going to be cutting
record albums basically. Shapes are going to be passed around on CD
or DVD. And there’s always going to be innovators. But the innovator
may be working in front of a computer screen. There’s already CAD
programs for designing and testing boats and airplanes. GL: I see
him trying to control the industry, and he’s been successful to
an extent. Like with the Doc Lausch thing. I can see his point-of-view,
but I see a lot of freedom in what I do. And I feel as a designer, freedom
is what it’s
GL: Look
at how stagnant the sport is. These are the leaders, and I’m one
as well. I’m busting my ass, and have been for twenty years. I’m
trying to provide something different, whether it’s right or wrong,
or whether you agree with me or not, it’s different. There’s
a great JFK quote, “Only those who dare to fail greatly, ever succeed
greatly.” So if you want to make something that’s really different,
go ahead. They’re just surfboards. If they don’t work, nobody
dies. It’s not like a plane or something. GL: You always
move forward. I mean, if I took Kelly Slater’s latest chip board
in a time machine and handed it to Greg Loehr in 1970, I couldn’t
even have stood up on the thing. Because surfing advances in the water,
and that’s what changes the boards—the guys in the water.
One example I like to use is this guy in Hawaii whose nickname was Helicopter.
All he did was 360’s—like six, eight, or ten, on one wave.
And he did ‘em real nice, right in the hook. It was cool, and he
was real good at it. So let’s say the sport had evolved differently.
Let’s just say Helicopter had all of a sudden become “the
man” and won all these contests, and that had become the acceptable
way to surf. Then what would surfboards look like today? What would
surfing look like today? And, shit, maybe it all would’ve happened
GL: Certainly,
because it’s fun. I mean, if you’re not, you’re missing
out on one of the great experiences of surfing. Surfing offers so much.
It offers travel and riding a lot of GL: Or a new idea. And we don’t do enough of that in boards. We’re allowing it to be stagnant, and those of us who are leaders, we need to branch out. We need to give people more than what we’ve given them. I love what I make, I love how I do it, and there’s no way I would ever change—unless something else better came along [laughs]. Matt Walker/Surfing. |
Loehr
has a history of conflict with the ruling class: ditching third period
to sneak into the high school library, being swept up in the shortboard
revolution, and his mid-’70s rants against the California conspiracy.
For decades, the 52-year-old former East Coast Champion and Hawaiian
standout honed his mad scientist appeal alongside his surfing and shaping
skills. In 1981, he discovered the cause he’d soon become most
identified with: epoxy surfboards. The discovery was the product of
a two-decade crusade for better designs and more environmentally safe
materials. Twenty years later, Loehr’s company, Resin Research,
continues to investigate every possible application and remains responsible
for most of the current technology. Even those who disagree with Greg’s
theories still admit—or even tout—that he’s one of the
few shapers with enough brilliance to blaze his own trails. 
ESM:
How so?
GL:
You’ll eventually buy it. See me now, or see me later, but you’re
going to see me someday because this is the way surfboards will be made
in the future. Polyester resin just isn’t going to continue. There
are environmental laws on the books right now that outlaw it, but they’re
not enforcing them yet. Eventually, people are going to want the freedom
polystyrene foam gives. For example, two years ago, Doc Lausch came
out with a flat-deck surfboard. Now that board rides better than most
high-performance boards today, and pretty much everyone knows that.
Yet Clark Foam won’t make those blanks because they’re a little
more difficult to pour. Just cut the blanks out of big blocks, make
a rocker template, and I can shape it this afternoon. 
GL:
Clyde Beatty. He’s one of the original guys to bring epoxy here
to the United States from Europe. And he’s still making them in
Santa Barbara. But otherwise, it’s so stagnant now that it’s
hard to really admire anyone. I mean, Rusty put out the C-5, which is
kind of a neat idea, and it has some hydrodynamic elements that make
it really cool. But he’s been beating this dead horse for six or
seven years. Let’s have some more creativity here. Every year,
Detroit puts out new cars, because if they didn’t, nobody would
ever buy a new one. So, a good portion of the buying market purchases
something new because they want a new feel. I’m not going to buy
a 6-foot, chippy squashtail every fucking year of my life, because I’m
going to get the same feel from every single one. You know, the market
wants us to broaden our horizons, and there needs to be more creativity.
Do I respect anybody right now? Nobody’s really doing anything
that I respect.Interview |