Shea Weber and The Performer Staying Close to the Soul

9.6 Performer - Dewey Weber

 “The Performer was, and will always be, the very best traditional single fin longboard on the market. Period!”
That conviction and pride is part of what motivates Shea Weber to go to work each day, where he is carrying on a legacy bestowed by his dad, surf legend Dewey Weber.    

Shea Weber

Shea and his siblings, who were born in the late 60s and early 70s, “didn’t really know how big a deal our dad was in the 50s and 60s. We just knew our mom and dad owned a surf shop and that they made surfboards.” He describes his dad as being “like a kid trapped in a grown-up’s body. He got you excited about whatever he wanted to teach you. Our family had so many great adventures, including trips to Mexico, Catalina and Hawaii, but even a day at the beach was an adventure. When everyone from our neighborhood would go to the beach, my dad was the one that went body surfing with the kids, and then we’d all get out, lie down on the beach, and listen to him tell us the most amazing stories.”
Growing up, Shea recalls “we spent a lot of time at the shop. My brother and I terrorized that place. The factory was attached to the retail store, so we grew up seeing the whole thing. The employees were like our big brothers. We had some great times going to contests and watching the team.”
Dewey is most often associated with longboards, but Shea reminds us “my dad was one of the first big manufacturers to push shortboards. He was blown away by what he saw the Australians doing” and “was insightful enough to put Nat Young and Mike Tabeling on the team. The team we grew up with in the 70s and 80s was a shortboard team.”
Although surfing was the family business, Dewey let Shea forge his own path. “The coolest gift my dad gave us was that he never pushed us into surfing. He just let it happen organically, but he was hell-bent on teaching us his love for the ocean. He taught us to body surf and boogie board, and how to read the waves, currents and tides. My dad loved surfing, started a surf business, and helped to create an industry, but when things changed in the early 70s, I think he realized that there was more to life than ‘just surfing.’ Maybe it was having kids. It wasn’t like our whole lives were consumed by surf. He wanted us to enjoy the ocean and surfing, but he also wanted us to learn about and appreciate so much more. My dad encouraged us to play any and all individual and team sports. He thought there were great lessons in each. I am very much the same way with my kids today.”
The family also fished often, and Dewey “loved fishing so much that he eventually became a commercial swordfisherman.” Shea “got to go on a couple of five day trips with him through the Channel Islands” and “will never forget those trips. They were absolutely magical.”
Shea helped out in the surf shop when he was young, but didn’t continue straight into the family business. In 1989, when Shea was 18, “my dad had closed his shop, gone fishing and licensed someone to build the boards. I was surfing a ton and riding a longboard pretty much all the time. I was asked about Dewey Weber tees pretty often, but you couldn’t get them anywhere. I called up my dad and asked him, but he said he didn’t know of anywhere, so I asked him what he thought about me getting some printed and trying to sell them. I think he must have dropped the phone or fallen out of his chair, but when he finally spoke, he was so friggin’ excited that I wanted to do that. He gave me the name of the last screen printer he had used, and I ordered six dozen shirts. I had about two dozen pre-sold. I threw the rest in my car, drove from Carlsbad to Solana Beach hitting all the surf shops, and the rest of the shirts were gone! It seemed pretty easy. By the end of the summer, I had a steady little business going. I had a booth at the Oceanside Longboard Contest and my dad came down. He was so jazzed that he went home and opened a new store in Hermosa, named ‘Surfboards by Dewey Weber & Sons.’ Shortly after, I went to college in San Luis Obispo. He ran the store and I hustled up new wholesale business.”

Dewey Contest

Dewey passed away in 1993. The brand and shops have undergone several transformations since he opened the original in 1960, but the Performer longboard, designed and initially produced by Dewey and Harold “Iggy” Ige, has transcended the years. Shea describes Harold, who died in January 2012, as “an awesome human being and arguably the greatest shaper ever. He was my dad’s best friend, partner and accomplice.” Shea is keeping their creation in production, and provides these insights.
The Performer “was the first surfboard given a model name, and it is the most popular single surfboard model in history.” Shea believes the reason “the Performer is so popular is this: my dad and Harold had a goal, to design one board that would work for a variety of people in a variety of conditions, and they nailed it! If someone walks in looking for a good board to learn on, the Performer is perfect, because it’s wide, stable, forgiving, easily catches waves and is easy to turn. But it is not a beginner board. If an experienced surfer is looking for a good traditional single fin, the Performer is perfect. The Performer is my board of choice, and I’ve been riding waves for over 30 years.”
“People think the Performer was designed as a noserider, but that’s not true! It’s a great noserider, but my dad was a hot-dogger, a high performance turn style surfer. There is no way that he would have designed a surfboard that didn’t turn on a dime.” Several design innovations, including an asymmetrical rail cross section, contributed to maneuverability. “The pinched 60/40 rail was pretty progressive. Prior to the Performer, every manufacturer was making their version of the Velzy pig shape, with wide hips getting narrower at the nose, really thick 50/50 rails, and a big ‘D’ fin slammed right on the tail. The Weber Hatchet Fin was designed by my dad, specifically to go with the Performer. Again, most assume it’s a noseriding fin and difficult to turn, but it was originally called the ‘Turn Fin.’ Function came first, but the outline had ‘Dewey the promoter’ written all over it. He wanted people to immediately think of the Weber Performer when they saw it, even if it was on top of a car.”

Shea doesn’t know how many variations Dewey tried before arriving at the final design, but says “he wasn’t afraid to keep trying if they didn’t get it right. The Performer as we know it launched in 1966, and the response was staggering.” Dewey’s marketing and sales programs for The Performer changed the way companies approached selling surfboards.

Shea estimates that over 10,000 Performers were produced from 1966-68, and he has built over 5,000 more since 1994. He’s seen many vintage Performers priced from $1,000 to $10,000 but they hold a different value for him, “because of what that board means to the history of our company and the history of surfboard design. The fact that I get to run a company that has over 50 years of storied tradition is pretty special. My dad would be so stoked that the brand is still around, still family owned, and that the Performer is still our best selling board.”

Dewey Weber Surfboards
San Clemente California
www.deweyweber.com

© Tom Fucigna Jr.
TomFucignaJr@hotmail.com
www.SeventyFivePercent.com

A footnote from Shea Weber:

"A book about Dewey Weber titled The Little Man on Wheels will be out in August and it is incredible. My dad was an amazing person in and out of the world of surfing, but he did so much for the industry. His hot-dogging style, marketing and promotion approach, surf team, board design and manufacturing process, and 1981-87 Longboard Contests changed surfing. I honestly feel that he doesn’t get the credit that he deserves because he died so young. Too many people focus on how he died, but our family chooses to focus on how he lived: balls to the wall, full of life, energy, ideas, and the ability to tackle the unknown with a childlike fearlessness. The book is great because it captures his essence, but also paints a pretty rad picture of a really magical time in surfing’s history."

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