In the summer of 1970, I rolled into Encinitas in my 1964 Chevy wagon and 25 bucks in my pocket.
The Chevy was both my car and my home, sheltering me and my only other item of value, a 7-foot 2-inch blue single fin I had built in my parents’ garage. I landed in paradise with nowhere to live.
I was drying off in the Swami’s dirt parking lot when someone mentioned there was space for rent at “The Brother’s House,” a dilapidated structure with walls so rotten that the termites had moved out before the next crew moved in and named the place “The Rag Pile.”
Many of those living there during my stay were both surfers and Christians, something I had previously considered an oxymoron. Some there considered our address, at the corner of 3rd and G, a sign that God had blessed the place, as there are three persons in one God.
I was never convinced by that argument, but was lured in by the rent, a hundred bucks, split 12 ways! Shoot, I could find $8 in the cushions of any well-used couch. Problem is, not everybody paid.
Even in our time when $100 buys a modest dinner for two (hold the drinks) in our bustling ultra-hip town, it nonetheless seems absurd that we had trouble raising that money.
Rent was due in a few days when I wandered down the street into the little surf shop on Coast Highway and asked for a job. The shop was called Sunset Surfboards and I wanted to help build those beautiful resin lollypops.
With nothing available at the time, I found employment at the flower fields, paid everyone’s rent for a month and lived as a surf bum for a while longer.
Five years and twice that many houses later, I again applied at Sunset and was hired as a polisher. I was saddened to discover that I wasn’t much good at making surfboards. While I didn’t learn much about building surfboards, the place proved a master class about the people who did.
Peter “Pinline” St. Pierre could lay down a line of catalyzed resin that would make Ed “Big Daddy” Roth jealous. Master laminator Gary Stuber had once worked at Surfboards Hawaii and with the infamous Black Dot crew in the “Hanger,” a house so named because it teetered by a thread above the Pacific.
Gary was the resident cool guy who had been there, done that. The late, great Kenny “Tumbleweed” Mann was the energized sander and newly crowned king of inside Swami’s.
Mike Willis, teen wonder boy, ripper, shaper and designer, would eventually make a name on Oahu’s North Shore through his futuristic surfboards while riding them on some of the world’s biggest waves with his twin brother, Milton.
Shapers like the not-yet-famous Rusty (R. Dot) Preisendorfer came and went, while Sunset’s owner, “Steady” Eddy Wright, was always there. Aided by the talent, Pat Flecky, Syd Madden, Bill Shrosbree and many others, Eddy was the head shaper and the force that brought Sunset to the top of the surfing world.
Eddy remains a brilliant craftsman, a close friend and someone who changed the personality of our town through his faith and kindness.
The legacy and quality of Sunset Surfboards continues through its new owner, Todd McFarland. Not sure when it will happen but stay tuned to this column for part two of the Sunset Surfboards story.
