‘Old Logs’ Rekindle a Flame : Once Believed to Be Extinct, Venerable Longboards Undergoing a Revival Among Surfers of All Ages

The recent California Beach Party--a sports-and-music weekend that temporarily transformed Ventura’s staid Promenade into Venice Beach without the chain-saw jugglers--produced its share of dramatic moments, not the least of which was the presentation of the Big Kahuna Award at the Longboard Surfing Championships.

Before a distinguished gathering at Surfer’s Point, Jimmy Harasta, a 39-year-old carpenter, climbed to the stage to accept the honor, brimming with pride at being named the Old Log Division’s most popular surfer dude. Then, in keeping with the spirit of the tournament, he tripped over the top step-- ooooooops --and went stumbling across the plywood, his 250 pounds nearly taking out the announcer and the microphone stand. The crowd loved it.

Harasta’s pratfall put a perfect ending to a not-so-serious surfing weekend at Surfer’s Point, the best point break in Ventura and usually the scene of territorial conflict among rival factions--longboarders, shortboarders and bodyboarders--to see who rules the crowded surf.

If the laid-back atmosphere brought back memories of surfing’s mythic past--when the sport was gentlemanly and spiritual, and the surf didn’t look like Interstate 5 at rush hour--that was the tournament’s intention. With a 1942 Woody parked by the stage, a live band playing Beach Boys classics and surfers walking the nose on old logs, one almost expected Gidget to show up with LaRue in tow.

Because of the beach party, the normally congested point break was reserved exclusively for contestants, 190 longboarders who had the waves all to themselves, which immediately removed the tension factor from the water. Nobody was cutting anybody off and starting fights.

But what really set the tone for the tournament was the playful, tongue-in-cheek attitude of the 26 contestants in the Old Log Division. Mostly middle-aged family men like Harasta, they were caught up in the nostalgia, allowing themselves to return to the romantic, carefree ‘50s and ‘60s when they and surfing were young and mellow. It was the era of longboards, now affectionately termed “old logs.”

The contestants were not only there to remember the old days and ways. They were celebrating the rebirth of the longboard. Once thought to be extinct, it is now very much back in style, a sleek projectile that has risen from the ashes of the clunky old log.

“There’s definitely a resurgence in longboards,” said Rick Hazard, production manager at Stewart Surfboards in San Clemente, one of the biggest longboard manufacturers in the world.

Gidget, who thought she was as good a surfer as the guys, no doubt would have wanted to “take a ride on the sidewalk,” a reference to the size of the old logs. But LaRue would have wanted to know more about the history of longboards, so she probably would have drifted over to the C-Street Surfing Museum, which is off the Promenade a couple of hundred yards from Surfer’s Point. There, she would have seen photos and memorabilia that trace the history of surfing through the evolution of the board.

The original longboards--which are like doors on a very large house, only heavier--go back to the 1920s and were made by Hawaiians from redwood, said Jack Cantrell, 62, a longtime Ventura surfer whose wife Joyce runs the museum. Among the museum’s old logs is a monster ‘30s longboard that is 21 1/2 feet long, with a rounded nose and “the maneuverability of a truck,” Cantrell said.

Redwood boards did little to popularize surfing and even made it unappealing for many. With the boards at 80 pounds, even grown men found them difficult to muscle in the water and even more unwieldy on land. In essence, the boards excluded women and children from the sport, but they kept the crowds out of the water.

It wasn’t until the late ‘40s that the use of balsa cut the board’s weight in half. Balsa was also more malleable than redwood. About 1950, designer Bob Simmons is credited with introducing aerodynamics to board-making, shaping his designs in balsa. His 1954 Spoon Board was one of the first boards with a fin.

Balsa was popular for about 10 years--or until plastic began eating America. In the late ‘50s, when Formica replaced the maple table in America’s kitchens, foam longboards began appearing. Sheathed in cloth and bonded by resin, weighing as little as 30 pounds, longboards were suddenly space-age in substance and style. Such designers as Morey-Pope and Tom Hale, operating in Ventura, shaped boards that became famous all over the world and are still equal to today’s boards in performance.

“A guy could surf these today,” Cantrell said, referring to the museum’s display of Morey-Pope and Tom Hale boards.

Surfing’s popularity began to surge in the ‘60s, primarily because of the comparative lightness of the boards and Hollywood’s romanticized treatment of the sport. But the real boom did not occur until the late ‘60s with the introduction of the shortboard, which was as much as three feet shorter and many pounds lighter than the longboard.

Now kids could handle the board--a six-footer weighed only 10 to 12 pounds and was more fun than the longboard, faster and more maneuverable, allowing a surfer to catch longer rides and do cutbacks and perform all sorts of wondrous aerial maneuvers. Overnight, longboards became antiquated old logs, so slow they let the wave catch a surfer and crash over him.

Suddenly, young shortboarders were the dominant species. Even longboarders were defecting to the other side. By the early ‘70s, “Longboards were dead,” Cantrell said. Old logs either wound up as coffee tables or, if they were made out of foam, were recycled into shortboards. Old log holdouts were ridiculed as “old men” by shortboarders. A generation gap evolved.

“The younger guys made the transition to shortboards and the older guys stayed with longboards,” said Tom Williams of Ventura, an official at the tournament.

Since then, longboarders have become the minority, steadfast in their devotion to the longboard and their disdain for shortboards, which are more difficult to paddle, ineffective in junk surf and easily overpowered by large swells. In Ventura, “Shortboards were not pleasurable because the slow, rolling wave here made them difficult to maneuver,” said 41-year-old Bruce Douglass of Ventura.

Surfers who sold their old logs or gave them away and started using the new shortboards found “it was quite an adjustment,” Williams said. “To someone used to a longboard, shortboards were very unstable.”

A lot of defectors even went back to the old log. “I used a shortboard for two years but bought a longboard at a garage sale in ’70 and got back on it because it was just more fun,” said Harasta, who rode a 10-foot-2, 65-pound foam behemoth in the contest.

In the early ‘80s, technology resurrected the longboard when designers created a lightweight 9-foot board with three fins. Now surfers had the acrobatic possibilities of the shortboard to go along with the elegance of a slow ride and the pleasures of sitting up out of the water.

When longboards became the hot ride, some shortboarders converted, lapsed longboarders returned to the fold, and today, “Longboards are bigger than ever,” Cantrell said.

Shortboarders are still vastly superior in numbers, but “longboarders are the fastest-growing minority,” said Sam George, a senior editor of Surfing magazine.

According to Rick Hazard, who builds Stewart and Hobie models, “We’re selling an increasing number of longboards every year.”

And more expensive ones. Redwood boards once cost $60 to $80; balsa boards topped out at $125 and the early foam boards went for $100. The C-Street museum has an invoice for a 1976 Morey-Pope that sold for $161. Today’s longboards are $500, and because of their lightness, they are not as durable as the old logs.

New longboards get broken when surfers try to do too much with them, treating them as if they were shortboards. “It doesn’t make sense to try to do aerials and floaters and cutbacks on a longboard,” George said. “That’s what shortboards are made for.”

New longboards--called “progressive” boards to differentiate them from old logs--are also popular because they give surfers a natural advantage over shortboarders in the surf war. Easier to paddle and less likely to get battered around by swells, a longboard can go farther out to sea, thereby letting the surfer claim a wave a lot sooner than a shortboarder can.

“Eight of 10 guys who ride a longboard do it because they can get more waves,” George said.

Friction also exists within the longboard community. “The progressive longboarders,” George said, “snub the traditional longboarders.”

And the recent creation of a new a sub-species of surfer has only muddied the waters. The new seven- to eight-foot egg-shaped boards have brought a lot of older surfers back into the sport, some with an ax to grind with kids on shortboards. Called “beer-belly boards,” they’re not as hard to paddle as a shortboard and don’t require the stamina of a longboard, but they can dominate a shortboard like a Mack truck.

Of course, today’s well-equipped sensitive surfer will be above the squabbling and have a variety of boards in his “quiver,” selecting the right one for the right occasion. Hawaiian surfers like to have 10 boards starting at 6-foot-3 in length and increasing in two- or three-inch increments up to 9-6.

Despite the rivalry, longboarders can be charitable toward shortboards, crediting them with opening up virtually every beach in California to surfing. “That’s one positive thing you can say about the shortboard,” Williams said. Before the advent of the shortboard, surfers usually were able to surf only the larger waves at point breaks. Shore breaks were out, longboards being unable to fit into the smaller curve of a shore wave.

The hostility between shortboarders and longboarders probably will never end, but longboarders are confident that their future is secure. At Southern California point breaks, Douglass said, “Longboards will eventually be king.”