Gordon "Gordie" Duane, 81 - Surfboard maker & grump
BobF
http://www.surfersjournal.com/journal_entry/gordon-gordie-duane-1930-2011
Gordon "Gordie" Duane, 1930-2011
By Steve Pezman
(Photo)
Gordon Duane, 81, AKA the "Compton Cabinet Maker" or "Gordie" passed
away last night, July 28, 2011. For the years 1956 through the early
1960s, the city didn�t know it, but he owned Huntington Pier as far as
the surf was concerned.
He inherited the surfboard shop from the prior domo, Rocky Freeman, a
garage on the beach a few yards south of the pier, then just north of
the pier. The "Gordie Man," a modern carved foam figure of a surfer
performing a swank arched bottom turn with arms bent back overhead,
was mounted over the garage door entry. A rope was stretched across
the entry during business hours. If you had the balls to step over the
rope, he just might sell you a board.
Gordie was a supreme craftsman and his shapes were better than most.
In the late-'50s he was known as "King of the Abstracts," which was
what the multicolored abstract resin-flowed designs running the length
of the board were then called. Gordie would flow yellow and red and
blue ribbons out of black fields creating the most dramatic effects.
On the other hand, he signed his tails "Gordie Surfboards" over
"Huntington Beach" using crude charcoal sticks; he misspelled
"Huntington" on one of mine.
Gordie made a surf movie, "Sacrifice for Surf" and showed it. It
featured his crew, traveling by car to Mazatlan--a big deal then. The
pier surf was Gordie�s theater and he was famous for the "nose tweak"
at the end of a ride, the dark goatee, the fierce mean eyes. The first
time I stepped over the rope with eighty-five bucks in my pocket he
snarled, "What the f--- do you want!?" I stepped backwards over the
rope and drove down to Velzy�s and bought a balsa pig. Once, I lost my
new three stringer Phil Edwards model on the south side of the pier
and the whitewater swept it in and gently deposited it on the sand,
leaning against a cement piling. Gordie was right there waiting to
paddle out and just watched as the next wave snapped my board in two
around the piling. I couldn�t believe he just watched. As I got near
he said to me, "Next time get a Gordie!"
When Huntington started to become Surf City Gordie moved his shop to
Coast Highway and 14th Street, the Foam Man went with it. He had
rebuilt it after I had tried to steal it one night and ended up just
breaking the foot off. If he had ever found out I would have been dead
meat. My friend Stu Herz, who taught me how to refine my shaping
skills, began as a patcher for Gordie. One day he was using Gordie�s
planer to grind of some hardened glass on a patch job. Gordie saw him
doing that, and from three steps behind him, strode up and kicked him
in the ass full on! Stu said he deserved it but it still really pissed
him off.
Gordie was famous for being a grump. He had a crew of scary guys that
frequented his shop, Andy; a redhead with crew cut and huge muscles
was one. Hawaiian�s liked Gordie because he respected them and he was
so skilled. He had pictures of his visiting Hawaiian buddies on his
shop wall. As his local kids grew up they started a club called the
"Hole in The Wall Gang." It was a Gordie club, and to the end a few
members kept an eye out for his well-being.
In recent years he had been declining, living in a motel room in
Sunset Beach, just south of Seal. One of the old pier gang that
watched out for him, "Frog," passed word of his passing to Duline, and
she to Leo, and Leo to us. I can still remember Gordie and Chick
Edmondson at the Buzz Inn across the street from the pier (it was torn
down when they built the Golden Bear--now that�s gone too) where the
waitress had a red birthmark that covered half her face. There they
would sit at the counter eating undercooked pancakes and drinking bad
coffee on cloudy mornings. Those were great days, filled with the
characters that makes surfing special. - SP
--
"Goodnight sweet prince. And flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest."
Requiescat in pace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BobF
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:00:29 +1200, BobF <b...@surfwriter.net.not>
shouted from the highest rooftop:
28 July, 2011
Published by NorCalSurfNomad in Commentary, Editorials, Los Angeles,
Orange County, Shape, Surfboard Shapers, Surfboards, Surfing, Surfing
News, United States, USA, West Coast Surf Reports
PHOTO: Gordie Waikiki 1951.:
http://www.surfingwalkoffame.com/local_hero/Gordie_Duane.html
Legend in Surfing and Surfboard Shaping, Gordon �Gordie� Duane passes
away � RIP Gordie!
7/27/2011
By ; Chris Nomad
Reported today on Chuck Dent Surfboard FB page about one of the last
great original surfboard shapers and pioneers in surfing:
John "Frog" Van Oeffelen just informed me that Gordie passed away this
morning. Gordie was an HB legend. One of the original Huntington Beach
shapers and leader of the "Hole in the Wall" surf team. He was set to
be inducted into the Huntington Beach Walk of Fame with his team next
week."
PHOTO: Gordie Duane, High School picture:
http://www.surfingwalkoffame.com/local_hero/Gordie_Duane.html
A little history of Gordie showing his amazing influence on the world
of surfing and surfboard shaping, from Surfing Heritage Foundation:
Gordie�s Story
[ From: Gordie's Story by Steve Boehne ]
There was a shapers tree published in Surfing magazine around 1980
that showed the infant origins of our surfboard industry�s shapers up
to that point in time. I acknowledge that there were decades of
unknown Hawaiian shapers in the early pre-history of our sport, but in
the known times since 1900 surfing started in Waikiki with the
official ambassador, Duke Kahanamoku. Amongst Duke�s peers there was a
great waterman and surfboard shaper named Able Gomes who taught Gordie
how to shape his first board. Gordon Duane, Gordie is very proud that
his name appears in the shapers tree in the third tier right below
Duke Kahanamoku�s.
The second tier just above Gordie is made up of the first surfboard
shapers of the 1930�s and 40�s including Californians; Pete Peterson,
Tom Blake, Joe Quigg, Lorrin Harrison, Dale Velzy and Bob Simmons. All
these guys were introduced to shaping by the Hawaiians in Hawaii. The
third tier were guys who started shaping in the 1950�s. They included
(amongst others) Gordon Duane, Renny Yater, Hobie Alter, Hap Jacobs,
Johnny Rice and Greg Noll.
Gordie had the perfect background to become a surfer-shaper. He was a
star water polo player in high school and after high school; he worked
as a cabinetmaker in his uncle�s cabinet shop. There he learned to use
wood working tools and to appreciate quality craftsmanship. In 1950 at
age 20, Gordie joined the Navy where he was soon stationed at the
submarine base in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. Before long, he was renting
boards from the "bath house" at Waikiki and learning to surf. He
surfed the famous Queens reef where he met Duke, his brothers, Rabbit
Kakai and Able Gomes. Able offered to help him make his first
surfboard. After WWII there were thousands of surplus Balsa wood Navy
life rafts. Gordie got one of these from the base special services
officer and used the base wood shop to slice and laminate the balsa
wood into a balsa blank with three red wood stringers. With Able�s
help and his well developed wood working skills, his first board came
out perfect and rode like a dream. From that time on he was hooked on
the surfing and a life of surfboard shaping.
After service in the Navy, Gordie settled in Huntington Beach where he
surfed and made balsa boards in a garage for a while. His surfing
friend, Jack Haley had a connection with the concessionaire at the HB
Pier and arranged for Gordie to rent 4 rooms under the pier for only
$10 per month. Gordie set up his first surfboard shop.
He stored and glued the balsa wood in the first room, routed the
rocker out on the beach where the wind could blow the massive amount
of balsa dust away, shaped in the second room, glassed in the third
room and had a "show" room in the fourth. Gordie figures that he
probably glued, shaped and glassed over 6000 balsa wood surfboards
before Gordon Clark introduced urethane blanks
Gordie drove up to Dana Point and purchased one of the new foam blanks
that �Grubby Clark and Hobie were making. When he tried to shape it,
the thing would bow like a swayback horse. Gordie told Andy Jersick to
run up to the Chevron Station on PCH and buy an inner tube. Gordie
proceeded to saw the blank down the center, then glue the two halves
back together with a wood strip down the center. He used the inner
tube rubber bands to clamp it all together. From that time on Clark
Foam came with wood stringers.
When His friend Harold Walker started making foam blanks, Gordie
became his main customer. Harold was working in a boat shop in Costa
Mesa when he learned about urethane foam from Chuck Foss who later
also made Foss Foam blanks. Gordie made the original "plug" for
Harold�s first mold. Then Harold rented a dilapidated building with a
dirt floor that used to be a chicken ranch up on Beach Blvd. Gordie
would meet Harold every night and together they would make four or
five blanks. When Gordie went to shape the first blank, he was
surprised to find chicken feathers flying out of the shoot of his
planner. Apparently, the feathers had blown into the mold and become
mixed into the blank. For a while Walker claimed that his blanks were
as light as a feather.
General Veneer (lumber co.) on Firestone Blvd, in South Gate was where
all the shapers bought their balsa wood. Gordie met Velzy, Yater, Noll
and all the other shapers of that time at General Veneer. There was
always a competition to get the best wood after each shipment arrived.
Gordie had an advantage because HB was closest to South Gate. One day
he had come in early and hand picked all the best light balsa wood. He
spent $700 and bought 2000 bd. ft. He rented a trailer for this
massive load and filled it plus his station wagon with wood. Just as
Gordie was leaving, Velzy arrived with a moving van and paid $5000 for
all the balsa General Veneer had. Velzy was the biggest surfboard
manufacturer in the world. Gordie was blown away; he just couldn�t
believe anyone could shape that much balsa wood.
One of Gordie�s friends, Don Triece was the art director of Knott�s
Berry Farm. Don designed and drew Gordie�s first logo, a surfer made
from circles similar to the Michelin Man, which was dubbed "circle
man." In 1958 circle man was upgraded to the now famous Gordie shield
logo featuring the "free spirit" surf man inside a curling wave and
the slogan "The Only Way To Travel" written across the top. This
Shield logo was considered very avant-garde in the new modern art
world of the 1950�s. The slogan was probably barrowed from a famous
1950�s TWA airlines TV commercial where a cartooned passenger sang
out: "TWA; the only way to fly." Take a look at Jack O�Neil�s logo. He
simply turned Gordie�s logo backwards and copied it for his wetsuit
logo.
H.B. was a tough place to surf in the 1950�s. The easier spots like
Malibu, Palos Verdes Cove and San Onofre were more popular with the
old flat, heavy balsa boards. The HB surf pioneers were a tough,
aggressive group which included Blackie August (Robert�s dad), Les
Walen, Jack Haley, Bruce Brown, Walt Wessel, George Stremple, Dick
Thomas, John Gray, Rocky Freeman, Don Stuart, Del Cannon, Lloyd
Murray, Russ Jordan, Harry Schurch, Lynn Lockyer, Juan Montoya, Sandy
Rittle, Walt Sawyer, Dave Francie, Danny Robishaw, Timmy Mcgilraph,
Frank Ciarelli, Scott Robson, Buoy Wright, Harlow Lebard, Bill Vas,
Andy Jersick, Gordon Clark, Sam Buel, Denny Buel, Chuck Burgess, Louie
Tarter, Willie Lenahan, Danny Lenahan, Jack Haley and Gordie. Many of
these guys were in the HB High School Graduating classes.
The surf was always bigger than anywhere else at the HB pier, many a
balsa board broke in half against the pilings of the pier and Gordie
remained very busy. Wetsuits hadn�t been used yet for surfing and the
water was cold. Jack Haley would go the bull fights in Tijuana on
Sundays and bring back a big bota bag full of cheap wine. The Monday
morning surf session at the pier was always looked forward to because
he would tie the bota bag to a piling and all the guys would share the
wine as anti freeze.
Gordie�s shaping pros were becoming well known. Many of the best
surfers would come to him for their Hawaii boards. In fact, Gordie
made Dick Brewer�s first surfboard. For a while in Hawaii, Velzy
boards and Gordie boards were the two most popular boards. All the
Velzy guys hung out together and surfed a spot just North of Sunset.
After a while everyone just called the spot Velzyland. The idea came
from the newly opened Disneyland theme park. The Gordie guys mostly
surfed a spot just South of Sunset, which everyone called Gordieland.
Sunset itself was everybodyland. In 1960 the Kammie market opened
across from Gordieland and the spot in years to come became known as
Kammieland.
Gordie was one of the first to shape the forerunner of the modern
short board when Owl Chapman and John Boozer came to him for shorter,
faster boards to ride at Pipe Line. Everyone was trying to ride Pipe
with standard 9� to 10� long boards. They were too long to fit in the
hollow wave and too slow to make the section. Gordie made those guys
8� baby guns especially for big Pipe Line before short boards were
discovered. Butch Van Artsdale was named Mr. Pipe Line and John Boozer
was named Mr. Afternoon Pipe line.
In Huntington Beach, the Gordie shop under the pier became a big hang
out spot and the scene of many late night parties. It made sense, if
you were a surfer and went down to the pier to check out the surf,
before long you were hang�n with the guys at the Gordie shop.
Those were fun times with friends and full of goofy pranks. Gordie had
a pair of shears in the glassing room he called the "duty shears."
During the big south swells when the guys would ride their boards
through the pilings of the pier (shoot the pier) they would often get
tangled in the fishing lines hanging down from the fisherman up on the
pier. A big, nasty saltwater hook is enough to piss any surfer off.
The angry surfer would run up to the Gordie shop and grab the "duty
shears." It was now his duty to cut off every fishing line interfering
with the surfer�s right of way.
Surfing was growing by leaps and bounds; many of the hot young surfers
were skipping school to go surfing and then hang�n at the Gordie shop
afterwards. The Truant officer blamed it on the shop, but it was just
the overwhelming allure of surfing. The city council wanted to close
Gordie down. They passed a "no surfing after 10 am" ordinance and
Gordie was the first person to be arrested for surfing in HB. Gordie
was a tough son of a gun and he would give the authorities fits.
Gordie wouldn�t back down to Vince Moorehouse; head of the lifeguards
or anyone else who tried to boss him around. Gordie is a
straight-ahead guy, he will tell you right to your face what he thinks
about you good or bad. He didn�t walk away from a fight and probably
started most of them.
Sometimes, when Gordie was busy shaping, the guys would make resin
bombs by adding too much cobalt and MEK to the resin. They would throw
the batch off the pier. When it landed, it exploded like a land mine.
It wasn�t as easy to use resin in those days, there were several fires
caused by the extremely flammable early polyester resins and acetone.
In 1959, while Gordie was out of town visiting his friend Rennie
Yater, there was a mysterious fire that gutted the Gordie shop under
the pier. Gordie lost over 100 surfboards in the fire and was nearly
ruined. The sight of the boards lying out in the sand with their noses
burned off was a traumatic site for him. In addition, he lost his
lease under the pier. In searching for a new location, John "Frog" Van
Oeffelen, team rider and long time friend, found an old oil field
welding shop for rent up at Pacific Coast Hwy. and 13 th. Street. He
and the gang helped Gordie move into the new location. There they
entered the 1960�s and a new era of the polyurethane foam surfboard.
The new shop was typical of surf shops in the 60�s, it smelled of the
grass matt on the floor and laminating resin. You could only buy
surfboards and sometimes a T- shirt. There were no sunglasses,
skateboards or other superfluous junk. You bought paraffin wax at the
supermarket.
This was about the same time as the Gidget movie. Surf music and the
Beach Boys made surfing popularity explode. In fact, Gordie produced
an underground surf film, "Sacrifice For Surf" that featured the HB
pier and his favorite spots in Hawaii including one of the best
sequences of a young Dewey Weber ever filmed.
Gordie made several very special show boards with multiple stringers,
curved intersecting stringers, nose and tail blocks and radical
abstract color designs. These boards were all displayed at the worlds
first surfing trade show, the Surf O Rama at the Santa Monica Civic
Auditorium.
Gordie also advertised in the very first "Surfer�s Annual" the
forerunner of Surfer Magazine created by his friend John Severson.
From the exposure at the Surf O Rama plus advertising in the new
Surfer Magazine, Gordie gained many dealers in Ca. and the East Coast.
Most of the Surf shops of the time became so busy shaping the boards
that they now began sub contracting the glass work out to specialty
glass shops. The demand for Gordie surfboards was now bigger than
ever. He quite glassing the boards himself and sent his shaped blanks
to Jack Pallard�s glass shop in Redondo Beach to be glassed. Later, he
sent the boards to Bill Holden�s glass shop in Costa Mesa.
All the surf shops were experiencing stupendous success. Velzy was
driving around in big expensive cars and enjoying the high life, but
through miss management he lost the whole thing in the early 60�s.
Business pressures built up for Gordie too. Between 1956 and 1980 he
built around 46,000 surfboards. In his little shop in HB, he had a
show room for local surfers; he shaped the boards, and handled an
unrelenting schedule of packing and shipping boards to his dealers.
Gordie was CEO, advertising director, shaper, salesman, custodian,
packer and shipper.
He said the pace made him "grouchy." He just didn�t have time to hang
out with buddies or baby sit shoppers. Well, Gordie was never known as
a super tactful guy. When he was busy, if some kid or "looky-loo" guy
wondered into the shop Gordie would say: What do you want? If the poor
guy didn�t come up with the right answer fast, Gordie would say: "Well
then get the f- out of here." Once when Bob Carbonell came by to
visit, Gordie barked at him and Bob responding to Gordie�s grumpy
nature said "The next time I want to feel bad,I�ll catch the flu." Bob
stormed out of the shop, but was back the next day for cocktail hour.
Gordie wasn�t everybody�s best friend, but everybody respected his
craftsmanship and his fine surfboards.
Gordie�s shapes are unique; His "plan shape" (outlines) were always
graceful with smooth flowing lines. He hated big noses, fat rails and
thick boards. He always made boards designed for good surfers, not
beginners. The blanks were sculpted, foiled out to thin noses and
tails. Rails tapered in a perfect parabolic radius. Gordie didn�t make
a lot of templates over the years. He just changed the dimensions of
the boards as styles changed. I�ve seen the Mark 5 template used on a
1960 board with a 15.5' nose and a 16.5' tail, and then the same Mark
5 template was laid out as a 1966 era nose rider with an 18.5' nose
and a 15' tail.
When Greg Noll introduced the Miki Dora"�Da Cat" model with a step
deck, Gordie answered back with his Lizard model step deck, a nose
rider that featured an elliptical concave on the deck that was easier
to step into than the Da Cat model. His regular nose rider model had a
similar elliptical concave under the nose. When the Aussies introduced
V-bottom short boards, Gordie created the Assassin Pin tail V-bottom.
This was the beginning of the short board era and the Assassin became
shorter and shorter working it�s way down from about 9� to 7�6".
In the late 60�s Velzy really got into the "wild west" cowboy scene.
He loved to wear his cowboy outfit, ride horses and shoot his lever
action 30-30. Velzy spent many days wondering around in Death Valley,
the Mohave Desert, and Arizona.
Gordie often accompanied Velzy on his explorations of old ghost towns
and mine shafts. Gordie laughs as he recalls a time when they wondered
upon an old graveyard outside a ghost town in Arizona. Velzy was
hunting around for weathered pieces of wood for a project he was
building at home. He pulled a couple of big slabs of wood out of the
ground that had been there for a 100 years marking some crusty old
miner�s graves and loaded them into the truck. When Gordie saw them in
the truck, he said: "�Man you�ve got to put those back. We�ll be
cursed, those guy�s ghosts will follow us all the way back to
Huntington Beach and haunt us for ever." Velzy saw the potential
hazard and reluctantly returned the grave markers back to the rightful
owners. He just couldn�t remember which was which. It was this time
while Gordie was into hunting and guns that he chose the name Assassin
for his new pintail V-bottom short board. Gordie was thinking that the
surfer would assassinate the wave with this predatory surf weapon.
Unfortunately, Shortly afterward, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King
were assassinated which put a dark shadow over the word assassin.
Gordie muses now that the name Assassin was probably a big mistake,
but who could see the future in 1967?
During the busy, golden years of the 60�s, Gordie hired several
different shapers to help him keep up. He was very particular about
the quality of the work and he would inspect every board to see that
it met his standards. Gordie says that the first guy he hired was Mike
Oday. He is a soft-spoken guy who did top quality work for Gordie on
and off for years. He eventually became the head shaper for Bob
Russell of Russell surfboards in Newport. Finally, he quite shaping,
got a job with the Phone Company and retired to Oregon.
The next guy, Larry Felker was amazing; he could shape 10 boards every
night. Larry would shape all night and sleep all day, but Larry was
out of control. He would get his paycheck on Friday and spend it on
booze and gambling all weekend. Once Gordie got a phone call to come
and pick him up in down town Santa Anna. Larry was gambling, got drunk
and beat up. He had spent the night sleeping in a back alley. Larry
had a wife and two kids. When his wife found out he had a job at The
Gordie shop, She brought a tent and the kids and camped in the yard
behind the shop all week until the paycheck came. Gordie had strict
instructions to hand the check over to her.
Del Cannon was another guy who learned and shaped for Gordie. Del was
a hot surfer and well known in the growing surf industry. Del
eventually left and opened his own shop in San Clemente. Later, he
closed his shop and became a commercial fisherman in Hawaii.
Don Stuart, Bruce Jones, Steve Boehne, Jim Fuller and Randy Lewis can
all thank Gordie for their first shaping jobs. Randy once said, �All I
ever wanted to do was to shape high quality Gordie long boards�. Some
went on to make surfboards under their own labels. The Gordie shaping
alumni all agree that he was a tough guy to deal with, but he taught
you a lot about shaping, he was fair and there was always a paycheck
at the end of the week.
Gordie�s best years were the 60�s where the classic boards were suited
to his meticulous wood working abilities. Nobody could shape a rail
just like Gordie; they were unique. At a time when others made
templates with long straight rails, bulgee hips, and fat noses,
Gordie�s templates always had a continuous curve with a slight point
in the nose.
The hot surfers knew that a Gordie board would ride just right. As the
1970�s eclipsed the 60�s, the short board eclipsed the long board. You
would not be caught dead carrying a long board across the beach at the
pier. Gordie like Greg Noll, Jacobs, Bing and many of the other big
name shops of the 60�s found intense competition from hundreds of new
start up shops. The name of the new game was not quality; it was
CHANGE. Shape designs were changing so fast that the board you just
bought was old fashioned 6 months later. Consequently, prices dropped
by half; quality became secondary and the new experimental outlines
though often crude and unbalanced made the old long boards look
prehistoric. Despite this, Gordie had the most fun in the 70�s as he
and Randy Lewis shaped the boards for the rambunctious Hole in the
Wall Gang.
Gordie sponsored the �Hole in the Wall Gang� Surf team of HB. The Hole
in the Wall Gang was not named after the Butch Cassidy outlaws made
famous in the Cat Balou movie, but was named for a hole in the
retaining wall holding the sea cliff opposite the Gordie shop. Water
from the gutter in front of the shop flowed through a pipe and exited
to the sea through the hole in the wall. This is where the Gordie guys
surfed. The Gang was a strange assemblage of seasoned HB surfers who
weren�t part of the regular contest circuit, but like the typical
Gordie rider of the 60�s they surfed hot, partied hard and carried the
Gordie tradition of non conformity.
Wall Gang: Gordie � Jim Fuller � Duncan McClane � Bob Carbonell � John
Taylor � John Van Oeffelen � Randy Lewis � John Sweeny � front row
Lonnie Buhn � Morgan Floth � Bobbie Farley � Cindy White � Chris
Cattel � John Boozer � Robert Koogan. -- Gayle Chips � Vickie Reese �
Hal Sachs � Butch Cash � Bill Rainforth � Bob Milfeld � Guy Grundy
For the rest of the amazing story go here:
http://files.legendarysurfers.com/blog/2008/10/gordies-story.html
Links for more info on Gordie and Photo Credits:
http://www.surfingwalkoffame.com/local_hero/Gordie_Duane.html
http://hawaiiansurfauction.com/
Aloha Gordie!
--
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen