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E L P M SA E L C I T AR #16
Issue #16 R.R.P $14 USD
R.R.P $20 AUD / NZD
surf a PiG + raiLs & taiLs Jai Lee + GreenLand + ryan CraiG CreoLe MosaiC + oz CyCLone + BinG + north isLand
suRF PIG A
Words by Mike Black
Today was grand at Slider’s Point for the likes of a pig. It was pig slide city! During my predawn walk down to the beach, the rabbits were hopping, birds singing, and the sun was rising. But I also saw ranks of potato chip thruster sheeple along the path, which unnerved me a wee bit but also got me thinking: How can a person be so stuck on one design that they choose to ride it regardless of the conditions? Then, in a surprisingly ironic thought, I pondered: Well, why would you think past one design if it works in most conditions? Facts are, little thrusters aren’t right for the waves all the time, yet few are the days when I feel like my pig is the wrong board. When I surf, I surf a pig. Back to the birds and the rabbits. There is a condition that the ocean has every now and again, when it says very clearly, “Ye shall ride the log and enjoy it!” It was just small enough to frustrate the thruster kids but still had enough push to hold the pig’s rail
in. It was a day where you fade a bit, whip it around, set the tail, walk up and perch—right into the nuclear void—then cross-step back and huck a turn. The people on thrusters were butt-wiggling their way to somewhere, while I, on a proper log, was levitating. I bought my first log in 1988 for $60. My affinity for heavy, wide point aft, narrow nose, bellied boards with a D fin must have begun that day. I didn’t buy that board because it was a pig—I didn’t even know what a pig was—I bought it because it was long and I could afford it. I’ve spent decades on all sorts of boards over nine-feet long. That said there is something unquantifiable, something special about the slide of pig surfboard. It has a beautiful turn, trims fast, and noserides great. Combine great noseriding with insane turning and, in my opinion, you have THE all-around perfect board, a board that fits perfectly in the curl and nearly drives itself. I prefer a board that, when on the nose, is a clean trim-holder instead of battling a board’s tendency to climb out the back of a wave. Rather, I like the opportunity to subtly manipulate my inside rail to keep the board in the sweet spot. David Allee of Almond Surfboards & Designs describes it like this: “The pulled-in nose is great for noseriding high and deep in the pocket. With so much board buried in the wave, and so little nose width, the board is a less likely to get ‘washedout’ when standing on the nose.” With pigs, the very design elements play off the board’s weight. Vintage surfboard stylist John Haffey states it precisely: “Size, thickness, and weight—they give you that full drive momentum and glide.” Furthermore, a pig surfboard does not lose any of its performance as it matures. Barry McGee, celebrated San Franciscan artist and surfer, has this to say about old pigs: “The weight is perfect with the D fin on the ass of the tail. Let’s shred our waterlogged smashed-up boards!” A Little Pig Tale To the uninitiated, the term “pig” has been used to describe any fat, chunky, bloated-with-foam surfboard; yet, this is simply not the case. A legit pig adheres to a few staple design factors: the board’s wide point is aft of center, its nose is narrow, it has wide hips, generally with a baby squash tail and a honking D fin attached. But how did board design arrive at that point during surfing’s golden years? Going in, I am aware myths and inconsistencies abound when it comes to surf lore, but I really wanted to get the true dirt.
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1. Let’s go surfing! Early ’60s pigload. [Jim Driver/AFrame]. This Spread: 1
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1. When surfers were men. Unknown pig enthusiast. [Jim Driver/A-Frame]. 2. Michel Junod, beyond stoked with his Pignar collaboration with Thomas Campbell. [Nikki Brooks]. 3. Early ‘60s pig by South African John Whitmore, of The Endless Summer fame. [Courtesy Surfing Heritage Foundation].
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According to Bing Copeland, during the early-’50s, mid’50s say, Matt Kivlin and Joe Quigg were building boards suited for Mailbu. This design became the Malibu chip, with its wide point forward. When Dale Velzy started building boards he was using that same template type shape, wide point forward. In fact, when Bing went to Hawaii in 1955, he rode a chip. It was a good thing, too, because a wide point forward board worked better in Hawaii than it did at the local beachies. Back on the mainland, though, Velzy was always messing around and just took the [chip] template and turned it around. He moved the wide point back and made the nose a little narrow. And, historically, that is how many believe the pig came about. Jim “The Genius” Phillips, David Platt, and Mickey Muñoz, among others, echo this sentiment. In the book DALE VELZY is Hawk by Paul Holmes, Velzy concurs: “One day I told Hap [Jacobs], ‘I’m going to make
and Kivlin. Well, it started with [Bob] Simmons when he put glass on balsa, but Simmons had a handicap, he made a shitty board. When Quigg and Kivlin came back from the islands they had a design. Velzy had the advantage of making a lot of boards; Velzy stepped off the edge and did radical shit. A lot of the stuff might have only lasted two or three boards, but the pig board was one of those boards that got a following. … It made a statement.” Talking to Brian Hilbers of Fineline Surfboards about this chain of events, he adds: “Velzy was making some pig designs. Just post kookbox, post finless boards. The guys that were doing the first pigs were doing this all in balsa. Velzy was still kinda in the quasi-kookbox style—a pretty flat top and just rolling the rail. Quigg and Kivlin were also making pig templates out of balsa. They were the first ones to actually start sculpting the boards in the third dimension. In other words, like ‘hulling’ it or whatever you want to call it. Theirs had the D fin, of course. Quigg’s and Kivlin’s were going more and more foiled, though. [Renny] Yater saw their boards, and that is when he started doing it. From Yater, that is where [George] Greenough started doing it, and they got more and more foiled, which is where [Bob] McTavish got it. That is
Velzy had a huge part in the evolutionary process. ... Velzy stepped off the edge and did radical shit. —Greg Noll something different. I’ve made thousands of them and I can’t stand this [Malibu chip] plan shape anymore.’” Velzy goes further: “I drew on the plan shape backwards, using the nose of one as the tail and the tail of another as the nose. It looked just like the outline of a pig if you were looking down on it from a fence rail.” In a somewhat differing yet similar account borrowed from an online source, Jacobs allegedly states, “In the balsa days there was a lot of sawing involved, and Velzy wished we could just leave the tails blocky to save the trouble. Well, on one board, he just left the tail fatter than anything and had her glassed. When he saw the finished board, he shook his head and said, ‘It looks like the ass end of a pig.’” “Velzy had a huge part in the evolutionary process,” Greg Noll graciously discusses. “It all started with Quigg
how it all started blowing up. Back in 1955 to ’56, Quigg was doing 8’2 to 8’8. They were 16” nose, 21.5” width, 16.5” baby squash tail. D fins. But the wide point was in the middle.” Matt Calvani of Bing and Hap Jacobs Surfboards takes it a step further. He claims, “The pig worked because of the fin. If you stick a big ass fin on a board and you don’t move the wide point back you can’t turn. With a big fin you need more distance between the base of the fin and the rail of the board. That way, when you go to turn it, you don’t have as much resistance. If you put a big fin on a narrow tail, you are not going to turn. They kind of knew this. I think the key is, they really kind of built the pig around the fin.” Accidental Fortune? Seemingly everyone I interviewed for this feature irrefutably agrees Dale Velzy is responsible for moving the wide point behind center— perhaps the single most defining measurement of a true pig—and, in doing so, created the paradigm of the classic design. The only dispute, however, is whether or not it was intentional.
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1. Hitting the sweet spot. Junod on a Pignar. [Nikki Brooks]. 2. Pigged out car stack. [Jim Driver/ A-Frame]. 3. Tim Elsner, former Bing12 employee, archival piggy pose, early-’60s . [Courtesy Tim Elsner Collection]. 4. Nick Palandrini adding the pig motor, a checkerboard, Phil Edwards template, stained glass, reverse D fin by Rainbow Fin Company. [Nick Borelli]. 5. Mike Black at Slider’s Point, maiden voyage on the first Cooperfish Blackboard prototype. [Miles Cooper]. 6. A Palandrini pig outline, lit. [Nick Borelli]. 7. Ever heard a pig sing? Alex Knost has. [Dane Peterson]. 66 ¤ SLIDE ¤ SURF A PIG
Some, like world-renown shaper Marc Andreini, claim: “It was an accident, Dale Velzy’s glasser put the fin on the nose instead of the tail.” When I asked Bing about the discrepancy, he nonchalantly responded, “Well, a lot of it is, when you go back that far, 50, 60 years, you take two or three guys that were there, at the same place at the same time, and you are going to get different stories from every single one of them.” Greg Noll, though, says he heard the answer directly from Dale’s mouth: “Velzy was into coming up with something new. Dale had a wide nosed board with a narrow tail.” As Noll recalls, the board was about 10foot and 19” at its widest point. It was a Hawaii style board. But, he says, “The glasser fucked up and put the fin on the nose of the board.” When I mention the contradiction to this claim in the Velzy book, Greg tells me a story: “About a year before Dale died, Dale and I had been having a few
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17+” tail, 8” tail block, and a beautiful combination of curves. At first glance they look pretty simple, but, if you take a closer look, every contour and design element is very thoughtful and exactly in the right place, never better. “I’ll just say that the design is ‘subtly complex,’ or ‘complex in its simplicity,’ not unlike what was being created by the artists and architects of the mid-century,” continues Cooper. Velzy’s design was groundbreaking, enduring, and those early examples were pure art. I’m glad we live in a time when many surfers embrace surfing’s roots and designs. Riding a proper pig, nice and dense, sans modern rocker and modern foiling, is just pure fun. A clean, solid feeing that defies description, I’m hooked, … again.” The Turn Heard ’Round the World A pig board is a quirky shape. A number of the old boards (especially the mass-produced “popouts” that subsequently hit the market) were terrible riders. However, some of the pig boards worked so well that surfing went from being a sport of awkward stances and going straight (for most participants) to a fun activity of radical directional changes and surfer performance, as
Size, thickness, and weight—they give you that full drive momentum and glide. —John Haffey
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1. Brother John Haffey, the very definition of a roots surfer, on a vintage Bobby “Challenger” Thomas shape. [John Slavin]. 2. Radical direction change. Unknown. [Jim Driver/A-Frame]. 3. Two angles of the pig design that started it all. Coveted Velzy/ Jacobs. [Courtesy Surfing Heritage Foundation].
beers. Dale told me the fin being glassed on the nose of a wide point forward board was an accident the glasser had made. That stuff in the book must have been his answer when he hadn’t been drinking.” Whatever the true story behind that famous, first Velzy pig, the outline and dimensional equation quickly made their way to shapers around the world, allowing the design to dominate the surfboard market for several years, something no single design has been able to achieve since. But why was the pig able to hold court for so long? Gene Cooper, who has recently created the line of Cooperfish “Blackboard” pig models based on the earliest pig designs, explains: “The plan shape on some of the earliest Velzy pigs from the mid-’50s was pretty extreme, and I find those the most interesting—16” nose,
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experienced by many of Southern California’s coastal youth. But who was the world’s first pig test pilot? Jacobs claims the first pig board was ridden by Muñoz at Manhattan Beach Pier. Says Hap: “Muñoz tried the thing out at the pier, and it went great.” I also asked Muñoz about it, to which he replied, “Hap mentioned that he and Dale gave me the very first pig board ever made, and I went out and rode it. They were totally dazzled on how well it worked. My performance on it solidified the design in their mind.” DALE VELZY is Hawk corroborates this declaration. Still, there seems to be some hazy history associated with this session. The inimitable Noll told me the claim that Muñoz was first to ride a pig is “pure bullshit.” Noll seems to think the first pig rider was some kid known as “Maggot.” But, when I mentioned the story that Hap Jacobs shared, Noll believes that Jacobs would know best, while acknowledging, “Guys in surfing love to take credit for stuff.” The first fellow who threw down the first full-rail turn on Velzy’s pig is not really the point; more importantly, the pig design, perhaps single-
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handedly, introduced real turning to the sport. Before pigs, there were only a handful of people that were really laying down full-rail turns on the Malibu chips, among them Dewey Weber, Leslie Williams, Phil Edwards, Miki Dora, and Muñoz. Jim Phillips eloquently says, “The Malibu chip was on the road to the pig, but it lacked the ability to be put over on
first time, surfboards were swooping out of bottom-turns, fading, being swung around and resetting rails, and enabling some of the earliest noserides. Of course, surfboard evolution moved past the classic pig shape by the mid-1960s as focuses turned toward full noseriders, sleeker guns, the shortboard revolution, and on to modern, über-lightweight shortboards and longboards; but, if
It’s interesting, if you shrink the [pig] template down, it is essentially what contemporary boards are today. —Mickey Muñoz
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a rail. The pig has a short turning radius, which lent itself to the inception of ‘hotdog’ surfing.” Muñoz agrees: “The pig boards were really responsible for introducing turning to the masses.” The pig also did well to discount a few design myths. Marc Andreini concisely states: “Before the big curve aft of center that is characteristic of a pig, people believed the back end of a board needed straight lines in order to maintain speed. After Dale Velzy introduces wide point aft boards, we see curves do not impede speed but can actually enhance it by letting us place our boards precisely in the best part of the wave which generates the most power (which equals speed).” Andreini goes further, “Increased outline curve in the tail allows greater, even radical, maneuverability. Trim speed is unaffected. A wide tail planes up quicker at slower speeds; a wide tail stabilizes the nose, and the added curve helps hold the tail, which opens the door for noseriding! Overall, the pig design is best suited for small waves. Due to the wide tail, the board really turns well at slower speeds, and planes up quickly. The pig design lends itself well to radical turns and cutbacks in small performance waves.” So, does Velzy’s “Pig” design essentially represent THE BIGGEST TURNING POINT in the history of performance surfing? Ancient shapes like the olo and alaia, kookboxes, and even finless boards were basically ridden straight to shore or angled across the wave face. For the
you look closely at the outline of a vintage pig and the outline of any ASP-style thruster shortboard clone, you easily recognize the similarities in shape: wide point behind center, pulled-in nose, wide hips, squash-like tail. As Muñoz slyly comments: “It’s interesting, if you shrink the [pig] template down, it is essentially what contemporary boards are today.” Author’s Note: Special thanks to all the legends, modern shapers, Jim Driver, and Surfing Heritage Foundation (SHF) for their time, quotes, and piggy imagery. Please visit SHF, the California Surf Museum, or any depository of surfing history to view some of these pig relics, or check www.surfapig.com for more information.
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1. Mitch Abshere lays down a piggy cutback at Church. [Dane Peterson]. 2. Junod, out of the shaping bay for some local R&D. [Nikki Brooks]. 3. Period pig goof-off session. [Jim Driver/A-Frame]. 4. Gene Cooper (left) and Black, discussing the first Blackboard design. [Ryan A. Smith]. 5. Captain Blackstoke, lined up for piggy super power. [Miles Cooper].
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