The surfing industry has drastically changed over the past five decades. Hank Warner, a 73-year-old California shaping legend, has experienced the change firsthand. Born and raised in Southern California, Hank has shaped over 35,000 surfboards since 1967–an average of more than one board daily for a consecutive 55 years. With an insider perspective, he has seen the sport develop and has learned how to adapt his shaping to the time.
I walk into 1163 Cushman Ave. in San Diego.
As I approach unit 4, Hank Warner welcomes me to his second home.
“You must be Alysse,” he says with a smile.
I reply, “Yes, it’s very nice to meet you.”
Hank then turns to his friend, Mark, and says, “Hank, she’s here to talk to you.”
“Just kidding. I’m Hank,” he laughs.
1163 Cushman Ave. looks like any other mini-storage, with rollup garage doors on six units.
But surfing icons hang out here.
“Jim Ellington works next door. Skip Frye and Bob Mitsven across the alleyway, and three buildings up is Micheal Miller,” Hank says while pointing out each shaper’s respective workspace.
I recognize those names immediately–anyone who knows boards would, too. Hank has earned his spot with this exclusive crew.
“This complex produces a lot of surfboards,” he tells me.
The inside of Hank’s shop is aligned with previous and future projects. Various boards of different shapes and sizes surround me. I find myself in awe of the history inside these walls.
“Some of the most famous surfers that lived in San Diego–Mike Hynson, Bill Caster, Skip Frye, Larry Gordon– would make my boards, so I didn’t feel that it was necessary to shape my own,” Hank remarks.
In 1967, at 18, Hank shaped his first board. It was a single fin with a reverse fin template, inspired by a Phil Edwards Model from ‘64.
“I rode it and it worked ok, but the bumpy outline and dippy rail line stuck out like a sore thumb,” he explains.
At that point, Hank thought shaping a board was too difficult–physically and mentally. He went on to seek input from professional shapers on how to correct his “first visual mess.”
Three years later, Hank moved to Australia and worked at the Gordon Smith Surfboard shop in Cronulla. There, he shaped himself a personal board, and one of his coworkers said, “Oh, I’ll have one of those.”
That was his first custom board.
“Here we are over 35,000 boards later,” Hank says as he reflects on his hard work.
He says that number so casually.
“I must have misheard him,” I think. I ask him to repeat himself.
I did indeed hear him correctly. Hank has shaped over 35,000 boards–an average of more than one board daily, for a continuous 55 years.
That number is mindblowing. To put it into perspective, 35,000 is the number of seats at Snapdragon Stadium. 35,000 is more than double the amount of Mcdonald's locations in the United States. 35,000 is approximately five times greater than the number of days I have been alive.
In the ’80s, Hank would shape five to six boards a day, every day. At one time, he had 30 dealers across the country that he would supply with his boards.
Now, he chooses to shape one custom a day.
He tells me that he likes doing it this way because every board counts. It’s for somebody that he gets to meet face-to-face. His boards are not just going to sit on a rack in a surf shop and get discounted in 10 years to nothing because nobody bought them and they turned yellow.
“Each individual board from start to finish is a new challenge. It’s just fun to do it all differently and I don't really do the same model over and over,” Hank says with a smile.
He puts his heart and soul into every board he builds. Each hand-shaped board is a unique piece of art that cannot be compared to Costco's mass-produced foam boards.
The industry started in the middle '50s and shapers couldn't find enough Balsa Wood trees to fulfill the demand, so they began using polyurethane foam. This created the '60s when everywhere started going “crazy.”
“When I was young I thought, ok, you can surf in California and you can surf in Hawaii. Then I start hearing, oh, there's surf in Florida. Oh, there's surf in Japan. Well now, there are manufacturers worldwide,” Hank describes the industry change.
Within the last 15 years, a major supplier of polyurethane foam went out of business on purpose. This is when China started manufacturing boards.
“They’re low cost and low quality, but just as expensive. But, they filled the demand when there was an absence of being able to get proper blanks to manufacture boards,” Hank comments.
Hank adds, “It's not the spirit of how surfboards were.” He continues, “Surfing used to have a soul attached to it which has slowly eroded down.”
Now, the majority of the boards that Hank builds are for loyal customers who have been purchasing his work for decades.
Hank explains that in the ‘60s, most surfers only had one or two boards for the entire year. Now, several surfers have up to six boards so they can ride different types of waves.
“The more they add to their quiver, the longer the boards last. So, when you need a timeless design it makes sense to spring for another surfboard in your quiver. It makes all of the other boards last longer and then you have the right board for the right condition,” Hank explains. This is beneficial for Hank, in terms of business.
In recent years, Hank has had an increasing amount of sales from female surfers.
When he first started his career, very few women were seen in the water.
“In the '60s you would see just a handful of girls, mostly younger, getting into surfing. Now, there are times when the majority of people in the water are women and they’re not just out there to get in the way. They are really good surfers and they know what they want. They’re fun to watch,” Hank exclaims.
He describes the evolution of female surfers as “unbelievable.” He then claims that women surfers tend to be a bit more visually oriented by particular colors they want and you can't really grab those off the shelf. So, a lot of his business comes from female surfers who desire specific colored boards.
As a female surfer, I can confirm that this statement is very true. I recently purchased a pink longboard simply because of the color.
Longboards are another aspect of surfing that Hank has watched evolve.
The shortboard revolution started in 1967, the same year Hank shaped his first board.
“You couldn’t give away a longboard up until the middle ‘70s and later,” Hank says. “No one even knew they could be built,” he emphasizes.
Hank explains that a lot of collectors are trying to find old boards that were made pre-'65, but at that time a lot of them were cut down and restriped because the surf industry could not make shortboards fast enough for what they wanted.
“To give you an idea, up until 66/67 a really nice longboard would sell retail for about $160-$180. They practically gave those away for $30-$40 and people would strip them down. Now, they’re worth thousands if they’re still in good shape,” he tells me.
According to Hank, collectors have the best luck looking in the garages of Southern California homes.
This is because, in the '60s, Southern California made at least 80 percent of the surfboards in the entire world.
Putting it into perspective, Hank says, “Santa Barbara to the Mexican border is 200 miles. East Coast, from Maine all the way around the Gulf Coast to Texas, you know, that’s thousands of miles.”
Now, there are manufacturers worldwide but there are still a fair amount of surfboards shipped from Southern California.
“I send boards to Japan, the Caribbean, and Europe. I've even sent boards to Sweden and other obscure places like that,” he tells me.
This leads us to a conversation about material change.
“The big transition in material all happened when the oil market got scarce in the United States because surfboard manufacturing is almost 100 percent petroleum products, but it’s the very best part of the petroleum that you want to use,” Hank says.
The products that surfboards are made with–even down to the tape–are mostly made with petroleum products. As any vehicle owner knows, petroleum prices have skyrocketed in recent years. The prices of surfboard manufacturing have gone up in the last 2 years more than it had in the last 10 years or more. Hank describes this change as “crazy.”
We end the interview by chatting about The Beach Boys, an American rock band that formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961.
“That’s something I have a big opinion on,” Hank exclaims when I first asked him about his thoughts on The Beach Boys.
“Let me tell you something…When I was 13, we went to a Bruce Brown surf movie, Surfing Hollow Days, and they had The Beach Boys playing at intermission. Well, we bombarded them with our popcorn cups and booed them off the stage because to us they were just hodads,” he chuckles.
He explains that surf music in all the original movies was hard jazz. Hardcore surf music that people would listen to when going to the beach was not The Beach Boys' thing.
“Oh if everyone had an ocean,” Hank laughs. He continues, “Ya know it’s cute, but it didn’t really speak to anybody that was grounded in the surfing roots. I will say that it has come true. Everyone has gone surfing.”
“They came out with one of the best albums of all time though, Pet sounds in 1966, which influenced The Beatles and The Rolling Stones,” Hank remarks. He emphasizes that the popcorn incident occurred before Pet Sounds was released.
As our conversation comes to an end, Hank gives me a tour of his shop. He shows me an old, black-and-white photograph from 1964. He identifies himself and then begins to identify the people surrounding him. In the photo, he is surrounded by Skip Frye, Mike Hynson, Rusty Miller, Phil Edwards, and several other successful people in the surfing industry. Once again, I know the names of every single person he points at.
“Believe me, none of those boys had a Beach Boy album before Pet Sounds,” he laughs.
Although he has shipped boards all around the world, Hank’s home remains in San Diego. Hank’s tenacity and dedication to the sport have earned him the reputation of being a board-shaping legend.
I left the shop with a better understanding of the board-shaping process and with a ton of respect toward Hank. There are very few people that share such a strong passion for the culture of surfing as he does. In terms of surfing, he is a living encyclopedia of knowledge.
Board shapers like Hank Warner are the artists that work the hardest to keep the culture of surfing alive.
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