Paul Strauch: The Gentleman Surfer
[Paul Strauch surfing Montauk, summer of 2014. Photo by James Katsipis (@letstaukgrams)]
Paul Strauch Jr. is arguably the most stylish and influential surfer to come out of the ‘60s Waikiki scene. Known for his ingenuity and versatile grace, Strauch pushed the boundaries of surfing maneuvers in waves both big and small. His most notable move is now known as the Cheater Five or the Strauch Crouch; he squats low on his back leg and extends his front foot out to the nose to increase stability and avoid wind resistance while noseriding big waves (12ft Sunset, for example), a move both practical and elegant.
Never basking in the spotlight, Strauch’s authority in the water has always been of a quiet confidence, though he’s won his fair share of competitions over the years. He was one of the few surfers on the official Duke Kahanamoku Surf Team, and spent his formative years observing and learning from the Duke. Now in his early 70’s, Strauch still surfs and is heavily involved in the preservation and cultivation of surf history, serving as the Executive Director of the Surfing Heritage & Culture Center in San Clemente.
Strauch tells us about growing up in Hawaii in the ’50s, his time spent living in New York, and his experiences learning from Duke Kahanamoku.
Chelsea Burcz: How and when did you become interested in surfing?
Paul Strauch: I was born in 1943, and when I was about four my dad wanted me to develop my chest because I had trouble breathing. He wanted to build my appetite and make me physically stronger. He had already been a surfer for a long, long time. In fact, he had one of the first balsa boards. His father was responsible for importing the wood from Ecuador, and then he had someone fashion a surfboard with my father’s guidance. He began surfing in Waikiki when he was a teenager with redwood boards — so that was my background. I didn’t really start surfing at age four, but that’s when I started going to the beach with him and he would push me on his redwood board. I got my first board when I was 10, it was a 8ft hollow board that we got from someone, without any fin on it of course. Starting on a board like that, it really helped me learn all about weight displacement. After that, I got a redwood board which was finless as well. I started surfing in Waikiki at a place called Baby Queens where most people started, and then graduated to Canoes which is another spot in Waikiki. Then, eventually I started surfing at Queens.
My first balsa board was made when I was 12, it was a 8’6” balsa board that Tom Blake shaped in our back garage. He made one for my dad, which was a 10’6”, and then he made a 8’6” for me. We went down with him and purchased all the balsa wood and then he brought it up to our house. He then fashioned it himself cutting a portion of the front end of these long planks off. He cut it on a bias for about 3 or 3 ½ feet on one edge of these blank board strips and then glued them to the top of the board creating a scoop in the front end of the board, like the old Malibu boards. It was 1955 when he made that board. I used to watch from our back door — we had a rear garage in our property so that’s where he worked. I just watched quietly, observing what he did until finally he invited me out and said, ‘You have any questions?’ I started asking him little questions about what he was doing and why and as a result, I learned a great deal from him.
Blake was a quiet man, he would ride his bike up to our house. We lived on the slopes of Makiki and so he had to walk uphill to our house. He was a vegetarian at that time, so he only ate nuts and grain and fruit and green vegetables. I learned a lot about what he was doing in terms of the shaping of the boards and how he did certain things on the rails. For example, he made a 10’6” balsa board for my dad which had a square tail. When he got down to cut the plan shape for my board, he cut a swallow tail in the back end on the tail. I said ‘Why are you making it like this instead of like the tail you made for my father’s board?’ He explained to me that, in his opinion, the pintail was the fastest turning board if you could control it, because all you had to do was lean over and it would roll automatically. He said, ‘You’re so light, you’re not heavy like your dad, when he steps back he’s going to press down with his weight on the board and then as he leans to an edge it’s going to roll over. The square tail gives him more flotation, but he can handle and distribute his weight better than you can because you’re so light. So I put two pintails on the tail of your board because when you step directly back it’s going to press the tail and cause drag and all you have to do is lean on one edge and it’s going to automatically turn in that direction.’ That was one of the first things I learned about hydrodynamic design.
I went through the whole process, putting together the boards and then fiberglassing the boards. Blake had this little fin mold for the skeg and I told him it looked awfully familiar. He said, ‘Yeah, it should, it’s from the tail of a B-52 bomber.’ He had two parts to the mold, so he would put some sort of mold release on both sides and then start laying up the fiberglass on one side and then put resin in it until it was saturated. He did it on both halves, and then he flipped it over so one half was on top of the other one, and then he had bolts running through it where he just tightened it up and squeezed out all the excess resin. When it was cured, he would take it apart and pop it out, and it was basically finished except for the edge line around the entire fin.
[Paul Strauch at Sunset Beach, 1963]
[Paul at Haleiwa, 1960. Photo by John Severson.]
CB: What was the atmosphere like growing up in the early ‘50s in Hawaii?
PS: My dad knew a lot of the Beach Boys [in Hawaii]. I learned very quickly from watching the Beach Boys who ruled the roost out in the ocean. I learned there was a hierarchy, and if you were disrespectful to that hierarchy than you paid the price. I saw them bash in faces because someone was rude or discourteous or they did something that had the potential to injure somebody else indiscriminately. They regulated the entire area and ruled by their own authority. Watching that, you realize very quickly that you have to have respect for your elders. If you just treat them with respect and are courteous, you’re welcomed. It’s social etiquette no matter where you go, and it’s a shame that it doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
Duke Kahanamoku’s favorite line was, ‘Hey, you catch this one! More will come and I’ll get mine later.’ That was his attitude and it was true. That might be questioned now because there’s such an overpopulation in the ocean, surf wise, that there may not be another time. But I still think that idea holds true, there will be another wave. One thing I see that a lot of the guys practice when they come to a new area is that they’ll come out and just sit in the line up and wait until they are invited by someone — I’m talking about in Hawaii. That holds true in Makaha because it’s the old world of sociological structure out there, you have a hierarchy out there, too. If you’re not part of the family there and you paddle out and you just sit and wait, they’ll say, ‘Why don’t you catch this one?’ Because they notice how patient and respectful you’ve been. It was the way I was raised being Hawaiian. My mother was three quarters Hawaiian and a quarter English, and my father was a quarter Hawaiian and three quarters German. We had Hawaiiana in our household and it was practiced on a regular basis. Part of the Hawaiian culture is honoring the people who have come before you, but also honoring places where you are a foreigner. I was taught that you always ask for permission first, and you always ask silently, mentally, by putting the thought out. In all cases I’ve always been given an answer, it’s either an affirmation or it’s a warning not to enter. It comes in different ways, it comes with the wind. If you have a soft soothing wind, like a puff of air, that’s usually encouraging you that it’s ok, but if you have an abrupt hard wind that blows and stops and blows and stops or rain, you’ll know exactly what the answer is.
[Phil Edwards picks Paul Strauch as a top ten noserider in Surfer, Vol. 6, #5]
[Paul Strauch on far left with the Duke Surf Team, 1965.]
CB: Tell me about your experiences learning from Duke Kahanamoku.
PS: I was a part of the Duke Kahanamoku surf team. I like to make the declaration that when I was born, Duke was 53 years old. So when I met him and was on the Duke Kahanamoku surf team, he was in his senior years, he was already 70 years old. I’d seen him on the beach when I was growing up when I was 8, 9, 10 years old, he’d always be down at the beach, either paddling a canoe or surfing. When I actually started surfing a lot he had already migrated to sailing boats, but I had the good fortune of being asked to become a part of the Duke Kahanamoku surf team, and so I got to be very close with him. Because of my hawaiian background, we would talk to each other in Hawaiian, I can’t speak it fluently but I can understand it and I can use a lot of the words. He was very gracious, a gentleman, and very kind and extremely humble. We had some great laughs, he loved to be around people. I’ll never forget we were on a tour through different states in the US, we had flown up to Hawaii for an event sponsored by Pan American airlines and the May Company, which is a department store chain. We were autographing pictures and giving them away. I remember a man came up to Duke and said ‘Hey Duke, I saw you in 1932 on the east coast in New Jersey. You were there and you were an Olympic star! I remember meeting you and talking with you, do you remember me!?’ It was abrupt and forceful, and I remember looking at Duke and Duke looks at him and he immediately sticks out his right hand, and as his hand’s being extended he looks at the man and says, ‘Gosh, it’s so nice to see you again.’ That greeting took the anxiousness out of his system and the man returned Duke’s smile. It was something very special to see, the way he disarmed him. That’s how he handled himself, just a gentleman.
[Paul and Duke]
[Paul at Sunset Beach, North Shore of Oahu.]
CB: You are one of the very few surfers that have surfing maneuvers named after you, do you remember how you arrived at these maneuvers? Was it a competitive tactic or a creative expression?
PS: We all have our idols, we all look up to people for different reasons. There were several surfers in Waikiki that I had a fond appreciation for, one of them was Ed ‘Blackout’ Whaley. He was part Hawaiian and he stood erect, and it was very graceful. He never looked like he was nervous or out of control, and he kept his feet very close together. While everyone else had their feet separated and were crouched down, he was the opposite of that, so it really struck me. There were others like Conrad Canha, he wasn’t very tall, he was like 5’6” but he was a goofy footer. He was one of the guys I learned a lot about weight displacement, just watching him surf how he displaced his weight up to the tail and how he could swing the board around and run up very quickly. He took very short abrupt steps to gain pressure and weight displacement to maximize trim on his board.
There were several that were extremely graceful. Joey Cabell, for instance, had a great finesse and I used to look up to him. There was this Hawaiian guy, and he used to surf in Waikiki, named Dickie Boy Abby and gosh, the way he turned the board around and then ran up to the nose, I’ll never forget him. Both Phil Edwards and Dewey Weber, although they surfed completely differently, I admired both of them because they used their body weight and their torso and their arms to help when they would turn their body, they would bring their board around like a delayed reaction, but it was very, very stylish in how they executed their maneuvers. I paid attention to those people particularly since there were no magazines back then. The first surf magazine that came out was John Severson’s in 1959 and I’d already been surfing for a while already, so the ones that made a biggest impression were the ones I could see in front of my face. When the Californians came over and the magazines came out we were able to look at surfers as they were captured in photographs and then learned from them, too.
Most of my surfing was all functional, it wasn’t always for show and tell. It was all about getting the board to react to take advantage of the steepest part of the wave and then make it move faster through the white water to get back to the shoulder. Riding the nose in Hawaii, there’s always so much wind coming up the face of the wave, especially when you get into larger waves, and just to penetrate on a take off, to trim the board, it was a lot easier if you didn’t have your body acting as a big wind obstacle. It was more aerodynamic to crouch, so [the Cheater Five] was a functional maneuver.
[“Be respectful of others who are just as privileged in the surf as you.” – Paul Strauch at age 19, Surfer Vol. 4, #1]
CB: You lived on the east coast for some time?
PS: I opened up my real estate company in 1966 in Hawaii, I’m a third generation real estate broker. My grandfather migrated from Germany, he was a chemist by background and then he eventually became a real estate broker and developer, my father followed suit and so did I. One of my real estate clients offered me a position to head up his marketing department in New York City, so that’s when I went to New York in 1985 and I was there for 7 years. We were marketing to all the large architectural firms in New York, so I got to experience Manhattan like the back of my hand because I went to all these different buildings. It was really an experience, but it was like landing on Mars when I first got there, it was completely opposite to everything I had been accustomed to in Hawaii. I lived in Manhattan for two months and then I bought a home in New Jersey, in Maplewood, and I would commute back and forth to New York. Then eventually we opened up an office in Bloomfield, New Jersey so I worked out of there and also worked in New York.
CB: You mentioned surfing Seaside Heights and Lavallette last time we spoke?
PS: Seaside Heights and those areas are mostly beach breaks, but the waves were really good. I enjoyed it. Sandy Hook particularly, that wave is an exceptional wave. I also surfed out in Montauk a couple of times during the winter, and the waves there get really big and it’s really great if you get the right conditions. I couldn’t believe how much of a surfing population there was on the east coast back then in ‘85, not that that was an early time, but it was very well received and very popular.
CB: Did you get to know the surf community at all when you were out there?
PS: I knew Grog down there in New Jersey and I went into his shop down in Seaside Heights. I was only surfing on my off time for the most part.
CB: Now you’re involved with the Surfing Heritage & Culture Center on the west coast.
PS: I was asked if I’d give thought to becoming a board member here, and so I said sure. I wanted to make sure Hawaii was not overlooked in the process because this is a California museum, that was one of my primary reasons for joining the board of directors. I served on a board for about six years and the position for executive director became available and they asked me if I would consider it. I thought I could make a meaningful difference in contributing my background and expanding the organization to its benefit with my contribution, so that’s why I’m here.
[Paul Strauch, 2007]
CB: The last time I saw you you were in Montauk working with the people at the Montauk Surf Museum, could you tell us about that project?
PS: The mission statement for the Surfing Heritage & Culture Center is to preserve, protect, and educate those who have an interest in surfing and surfing’s heritage. We are trying to preserve surfboards, photographs, and any archival information connected with wave riding for the benefit of future generations to enjoy. We try to make sure that is preserved in an accurate manner. We were asked recently to come out to visit Montauk by a good friend of mine, Rusty Drumm, who has been working diligently to develop a nonprofit in Montauk to celebrate its longstanding surf history. So I went out with the purpose to see what their plans were, and we had a really great meeting with Jimmy Buffett, who’s a close friend of Rusty Drumm’s and several others, and to lay a foundation to what and how they would be undertaking this mission to preserve Montauk’s history. Jimmy Buffett is a very strong and important patron for surfing heritage here in California and he has an interest and property in Montauk as well, and so he is very interested in preserving that history, too. I understand they have a space to operate from at the Montauk Lighthouse where they will illustrate Montauk’s history and make it part of a visitor tour. This will be in addition to the Montauk Museum, which celebrates Montauk’s fishing and cultural history. It’s an exciting opportunity for the whole entire New York community to have a museum where they can start to build and share a history that is a very important.
– Words by Chelsea Burcz
BY: http://pilgrimsurfsupply.com/paul-strauch/
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