THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603280169
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 234 lines
``When you catch a wave, you'll be sitting on top of the world.''
- Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys
WHEN BOB HOLLAND began riding Outer Banks waves nearly 40 years ago, his mahogany board was so heavy he had to drag it across the sand in a wagon.
The hollow, hand-made 12-footer weighed more than 100 pounds - and often filled with water. So he had to pull out its cork plugs frequently and drain it before it would float again.
Back then, in the late 1950s, fewer than a dozen teenage boys dared to venture into the head-high surf off North Carolina's barrier islands.
Today, the Outer Banks are known as a mecca for East Coast swells. Thousands of surfers flock to these beaches each summer. And more people seem to be riding that wave each season.
``I guess I was one of the first ones to surf on the Outer Banks. I'd go down for the day with one or two other guys. The waves have always been better down there,'' Holland, 67, said last week from his Virginia Beach home. ``We'd hop in my convertible Porsche speedster, put our boards behind the seat - and go. That's all we lived for then.''
Holland's father started surfing Tidewater tubes on a 13-foot paddleboard in 1939. Holland himself has ridden waves from Australia to Hawaii and has won a variety of national and world titles during almost a half-century of competitive surfing. Recently, Holland and his Virginia Beach neighbor, Pete Smith, were inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame.
Two years ago, he won the U.S. Surfing Association's 55-and-older competition on a fiberglass and foam model. He still surfs as often as he can, he said.
And his 17-year-old grandson also is into the sport. ``He rides a 6-3 board that only weighs a couple pounds,'' Holland said. ``Surfing really has evolved a lot since I got into it. But some things - like the waves and the feeling you get inside them - thankfully, they won't ever change.''
From an activity of 18th century Polynesian princes to a late 1960s cult of bleach-blond burn-outs to a lifestyle steeped in the enjoyment of the earth's oceans, surfing has grown not only in its own identity, but also in its popular portrayal.
In the 1990s, surfing has enjoyed a resurgence of sporting and social significance. It has continued to seep into music, clothing, speech, hairstyles and outlooks on what's considered ``cool.'' People who may never even have seen an ocean now ``surf the 'Net'' on home computers and ``channel surf'' from couches in front of their televisions.
But more than that, boardheads say, surfing is beginning to harken back to its roots - while still progressing steadily, like a great set stirred up by a tropical depression stalled way offshore.
``Surfing isn't just surfing ocean waves any more. There are all kinds of waves people say they surf now. But, of course, we still prefer the ones that actually get you wet,'' said Steve Hess, owner of Secret Spot Surf Shop in Nags Head and one of the Outer Banks' first board shapers. ``There's a lot of people who want to be surfers of some sort. We call them `posers' when they carry a board, buy the shorts and shades or put surf stickers on their cars - but never really ride a wave.
``These young guys today need to know what the soul of surfing is,'' said Hess, 40. ``They need to help surfing get back to the cleaner, more classic sport and style it used to have.
``We've always looked at ourselves as more or less a tribe,'' Hess said of his generation of Outer Banks surfers. ``We consider surfing the focal point of our lives, the way we try to get in tune with nature. Everything we do is surrounded by the surfing lifestyle.''
Environmental specialist Brant Wise agreed. At age 30, Brant Wise already has helped form an active Outer Banks chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. And he even served a stint on the organization's national board.
His 4-month-old son is named Dewey Weber Brant Wise, after the country's most renowned surfer, who helped the whole wave-riding scene explode in Venice, Calif., during the early 1960s. And Brant Wise lives his personal and professional life in continual awe of the oceans, environment and glory of great surf.
``People don't understand that surfing isn't just a sport or pastime you do while vacationing at the beach,'' Brant Wise said. ``It's an entire culture. It's a lifestyle. It's a way of relating to the world.''
To help surfers and ocean lovers rediscover surfing's roots, Hess and Brant Wise each are opening their own form of an Outer Banks surfing museum.
Hess is displaying his collection of antique boards, photographs and memorabilia at a new restaurant, Surfriders Grill, that he plans to open in Rodanthe by mid-May.
Brant Wise and museum co-founder Steve Wise, no relation, already have set up much of their treasure chest of wave-riding history in the new Corolla Surf Shop, which opened last week.
The two establishments aren't related. They're located more than 70 miles apart. But together, they may help preserve pieces of the Outer Banks' - and the nation's - surfing past for those who crave getting inside the waves, and folks who've only sloshed in the foamy shore break.
``Surfing is as much a part of the Outer Banks' history as anything else,'' said Brant Wise, flipping through a pile of black-and-white photographs that show tanned teenagers hoisting huge wooden boards overhead during a 1930s Pacific Coast surfing contest. ``This surf brings people from all over the world to our beaches. More people come here to ride our waves, even, than to cast a line during bluefish blitzes.''
There ought to be some place, Hess said, where folks can go to see how the sport started.
``Surfing used to be more of a brotherly type of gig. When you saw another surfer back when I was a kid, everybody gave each other the thumbs up or thumbs down sign riding the roads. That showed whether the waves were good or bad,'' said Hess.
``You don't quite see that same camaraderie you used to. People are more in competition with each other now. But maybe, if we remind them where surfing came from, they might help it get back to its heritage - the true soul of surfing.''
Hess has more than 50 surfboards dating back about 30 years that he's beginning to hang around his restaurant. The Wises have an equal number of boards between them that they have been collecting for over 15 years. Brant Wise's oldest is a 12-foot solid wooden 1920s paddleboard - complete with brass screws, nails and drain plugs. The 4-inch-thick board weighs about 40 pounds. It, and about a dozen other antique models, line the ceiling of Gary Smith's new Corolla Surf Shop.
``Conceptually, the museum is separate from the shop. But right now, the memorabilia and merchandise are kind of mingled in here together,'' Smith said while setting up sunglass displays at his new store off N.C. 12. ``We're forming a non-profit group for the museum right now. And if we can ever get enough funds, I'd like to turn at least one room into nothing but a museum of surf stuff.''
Besides old snapshots of Hawaiian, Californian and East Coast surfers, Brant Wise also has surf contest programs and tickets, 1960s surfing magazines and bathing suits that must have once been worn by some pretty groovy surf babes.
His boards, however, are the crest of his collection. And they help even non-surfers understand how wave riding has gotten more prevalent - and possible - over the years.
``With those old paddleboards, you had to ride them straight into the wave and drag your foot to turn them even slightly because they didn't have any fins,'' Brant Wise explained. ``They had V-shaped hulls to them, like a boat. And some weighed 80 pounds or more before they even got wet.''
By the 1940s, hollow boards formed by planking together wooden strips started to take off. That design made them lighter and easier to float. In 1951, West Coast surfers began laminating their boards to help them repel water and last longer in the salty oceans.
Balsa boards, made of much lighter wood, started showing up about that time, too. By the early 1950s, surfers began adding fins to the bottom of their boards to help them steer through the swells, similar to the idea behind a boat rudder. Brant Wise has a photo of a 1965 ``turbo charged'' surfboard Dewey Weber designed that contains a fin made from a fiberglassed toilet-paper roll.
``In the 1960s, people began shaping boards out of foam instead of wood - so they were a lot lighter and more malleable than the former models,'' Brant Wise said. ``That really changed the shape of the boards - and of surfing. Dewey Weber was one of the first guys really to do maneuvers in the waves instead of just standing up on his board and riding them into shore.''
Some of the old boards have pointed ends, shaped almost like the tips of kayaks. Others are rounded off, squared or smoothly curved. A light green 1965 ``Con Ugly'' model displayed in Corolla Surf Shop has an almost concave end.
``A trash can lid was used as a template to create a design for that nose,'' Brant Wise said of the unattractive, wide board with a red stripe down its center. ``You can probably guess how it got its name.''
Hollywood started exploiting the sport in cheesy surf flicks. Wetsuits made of tire innertubes also worked their way into the surf scene then. With these additions, surfers could ride a greater variety of waves - in much cooler weather than that found in Hawaii and southern California.
``When I started surfing here in 1962, there were only six or so surfers that lived on the Outer Banks, and a handful of other guys came down for the day from Virginia Beach,'' said Larry Gray, the 46-year-old owner of Gray's Department Store in Kitty Hawk. ``A lot of us learned to surf by watching Holland. The `Gidget' movies of that time, too, had helped popularize the sport by then. Surfing became part of the counterculture. It was certainly the cool thing to do.
``It was - and still is - a really healthy sport. We all were outside all the time. It kept us busy and intrigued,'' Gray said. ``Each wave is a new challenge. The boards back then weighed at least 35 pounds. That's a far cry from the five-pounders the kids prefer now.''
Hess said some of the earliest Outer Banks surfboards were sold from the local Western Auto shop. Holland opened the area's first full-fledged surf shop at Milepost 5 on the Beach Road in 1963. He rented foam surfboards for $5 a day.
``We want the people who've been here, bought the T-shirts and seen the surfers to understand the roots of this sport - and the entire lifestyle,'' Hess said. ``Surfing is the only sport with its own brand of music. It's the only one I know of that's had its clothing style catch on with so many people who don't even participate. They need to know how it all got started.''
Holland agreed.
``I think it would be a good thing to have a little surfing museum or something on the Outer Banks to preserve the area's surfing past. There's always plenty of surfers coming down to that area from all over,'' Holland said.
``It would be good for them to have something that showed where surfing came from.'' MEMO: WHAT & WHERE
Located in the new Corolla Surf Shop in Corolla Light Shopping Center
off N.C. 12, the ``Nalu Kai'' Surf Museum opened this month and will
feature about a dozen antique boards and scores of historic surfing
photographs from across the country. Boards will be rotated at least
monthly - with some dating to the 1920s. ``Nalu Kai'' means ``Waves by
the Sea'' in Hawaiian.
The surf shop will be open at least on weekends until Memorial Day
and seven days a week in summer.
For more information, call 453-WAVE (9283).
The new Surfriders Grill is scheduled to open by mid-May and will
include dozens of antique surfboards, snapshots of surfers and other
wave-riding memorabilia.
Owned, in part, by Nags Head board shaper Steve Hess of Secret Spot
Surf Shop, the new restaurant will be open seven days a week in season
for lunch and dinner.
Call 987-2220 or 441-4030 for more information. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by DREW C. WILSON
Brant Wise, left, and Gary Smith...
Photo courtesy of the OUTER BANKS HISTORY CENTER
The members of the Outer Banks Surf Club met for a ``formal''
photograph by Aycock Brown in the 1960s.
Two unidentified surfers in the mid-1960s stopped surfing long
enough to be captured on film by photographer Aycock Brown.
Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Brant Wise, left, and Gary Smith have collaborated to create a
surfing museum at their store, Corolla Surf Shop.
Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Brant Wise has framed the plans drawn up by famous surfer Thomas
Blake for the square-tail, hollow surfboard that Wise will display
in his surf museum.
Photo courtesy of Brant Wise
This snapshot of Hawaiian surfers is among the many old photogaphs,
surf contest programs, magazines and bathing suits to be displayed
in Brant Wise's surf museum.
Photo courtesy of BRANT WISE
Dewey Weber, the country's most renowned surfer, who helped the
whole wave-riding scene explode in Venice, Calif., during the early
1960s, during a visit to Virginia Beach.
by CNB