Herbie Fletcher: The 8th Wonder of the World
By CHASEN MARSHALL
(For Longboard Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2007)
You can say what you like about surfers, but the ones that have managed to make a career among all the hoopla that comes with the industry—they’re a precocious bunch. Not the WCT crew, those guys have cash thrown at them like strippers on a stage. The men of distinct honor are the ones who were on the scene before the onset of the surf craze: the Triple Crown, multi-million dollar “surf” companies and Kelly Slater.
Back in the days when the North Shore was still country, the shortboard was a forthcoming concept and Off the Wall wasn’t even “Off the Wall,” there were those who were the scene. They were the movers and shakers; the innovators; the pioneers of anything and everything the surf industry would and has become more than 40 years later. Within this group of core surfers—which included Gerry Lopez, Jock Sutherland, Eddie Aikau, Jeff Hakman, Barry Kanaiaupuni, Mark Martinson, Mike Hynson and Paul Strauch, among others—was one individual, who over the course of his career as a surfer and businessman has had more labels laid upon him than a canned food drive. He’s been called a rebel, anti-social, anti-establishment, a master self-promoter, eccentric and surfing’s Mick Jagger. But Herbie Fletcher is a tough character; he knows that labels come with the life that he has created. No longer the 17-year-old up-and-comer that placed seventh at the 1966 World Surfing Championships, Herbie remains true to the roots of the sport, unabashedly passionate and stoked on life.
“Well, they all fit pretty much,” admits Herbie, referring to his various labels. “But I feel good, I feel like I’m energetic and young, and I want to go surfing and play hard and keep going, and that takes a lot of energy. You know, I’m 58 now, so I’m pushing it. But you just gotta go, you can’t stop. Once you stop, you get old.”
Now in the apparent twilight years of a glamorous and eventful career in and around the surf industry, Herbie is embracing his role as a connoisseur of everything surf-related, and has come to realize that there is a demand even outside the surf domain for his advice and expertise. Based on the press releases and Internet reviews I found when Googling his name, Herbie has whole-heartedly embraced life in the limelight and deviated from the anti-establishment mentality.
Most pressing among Herbie’s recent forays into the mainstream media is his involvement in a soon-to-be premiered HBO series, “John From Cincinnati,” for which the sideslip aficionado, along with his wife, Dibi, are serving as consulting producers. Beyond explaining that the premise of the show is focused around a family of surfers who live in Imperial Beach and that David Milch (the creator of HBO series, “Deadwood”) is involved, details are few and far between due to contract agreements. The show has been picked up by HBO for 12 episodes and the first is scheduled to air in June 2007.
Also garnering worthwhile attention was his choice of trading island scenery—the sun and laidback lifestyle of Hawaii, for the skyscrapers and bombastic personalities of the Manhattan art scene. A longtime photographer and artist, Herbie fell into the good graces of Julian Schnabel, one of the most highly touted contemporary artists.
“I’ve been working with Julian and he’s taught me a lot about how to paint in the last six years,” Herbie says. “You can’t even get a professor like that, he’s just a great guy. We go surfing together, we paint, we go to art museums, we go to galleries, he explains stuff to me, and he tells me what’s going on. How do you get a professor like that? It’s like getting surf instructor like me.”
Recently the two collaborated on a project that unveiled in December 2006 at the MetLife building in New York City. Schnabel blew up eight of Herbie’s big-wave riding photos to be used as large canvases (some as big as 20 feet), and each is now on display throughout the building.
“When I first saw them I was just sort of stunned,” Herbie recalled. “It was like watching a big wave break; I was really impressed because everybody’s walking through there and they glance at it from the corner of their eye and double-take.”
Although at a point in most people’s lives when they tend to take a step back and allow more time to indulge in the simple pleasures, Herbie has again challenged the status quo. Instead of easing on the breaks, it is clear that he has opted to shift into yet an even higher gear, racing away from the dreaded R-word. Retirement is not a term found in Fletcher’s Dictionary: “I’ve been really fortunate in life to be able to make work a lot of fun … I’ll work until I die, probably.”
And that mindset has rewarded Herbie. Never one to settle for what is provided for him, he has constantly seized opportunity and enabled it to grow. His recent steps into Hollywood and the art world are not coincidental. He has earned his place. He has sacrificed and taken risks when others opted to place it safe. And because of this, he has managed to establish a credibility and respect that most can only hope for.
Nestled in an industrial complex in San Clemente, Calif., the World of Herbie is housed in a simple, white, nondenominational building. Surfboards (both broken and intact), artwork, photographs, memorabilia and more are littered about the building, which serves as a headquarters, studio, gallery and warehouse. A quick walk from the back entrance to Herbie’s office does more than unveil his various commercial (namely Astodeck traction pads and sandals) and artistic endeavors, it gives you the idea that you are in the presence of a walking, talking surfing encyclopedia—and he has the experience and stories to fill a fair number of volumes.
Walking the Walk
With a lifelong portfolio as diverse as the ocean is deep, Herbie is a well of information that envelops the spectrum of surfing’s present, past and potential future. His time in the water began as soon as he could find his sea legs. Born in Orange County and spending much of his adolescent life near the Huntington Beach pier, Herbie had his introduction to the ocean at a young age. Rafting, bodysurfing and diving, he was in and around the water as much as possible. He finally made the plunge when he was 9 years old, and got a surfboard of his own when he was 10. It was a Velzy-Jacobs and cost a whopping $27. During the summers the U.S. Surfing Championships would come to town and Herbie was exposed to some of the top surfers of that day and age.
“Everybody would come from Hawaii and up and down the coast, even some East Coast guys would show up,” remembers Herbie. “It was like a big luau. Everybody would go surfing and have a good time. We’d watch each other and really watch the champions, and that was who I wanted to hang out with and get to know, and surf with, the best surfers in the world. So living in Huntington, it was sort of like a dream.”
He was hooked, and he was determined to live the life of a surfer.
Moving to the Islands at 16 years old, Herbie was on the scene for the dawning of a new era in surfing. When he arrived in 1965, Hawaii was still an untapped resource for the traveling surfer. Sure, there were a number of guys who had migrated to the North Shore, but for the most part (and especially compared to what it is today) it was nothing more than greenery and your occasional beach house. For Herbie and his group of fellow surfers, the Seven Mile Miracle was their stomping grounds, with the various spots to be surfed at their leisure.
“Well, I was a Backdoor guy, but I lived at Pipeline and that was my spot,” says Herbie, with a no-big-deal manner. “The first year I was there, there were no houses on the North Shore except like Dick Brewer, Jose Angel and Bob Shepherd. I surfed Pipeline in ’65; I think the first year it was surfed was ’62 and I’m still surfing it.”
As an exceptional North Shore surfer, Herbie was among the 24 invitees for the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational held at Sunset Beach in late December. This contest is one of Herbie’s most memorable, only because others refuse to let him forget. The world was a different place then. Lyndon B. Johnson was in office, the Beatles had just released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the hippie counterculture (flower-power, drug experimentation, sexual freedom) had come into the public awareness following the “Summer of Love.” On the Islands, the drug scene was very much a part of the soul surfing experience, and it came to the forefront for Fletcher at this particular event. Having been told the contest was cancelled for the day, Herbie and a few friends opted to slip some LSD and come on while relaxing in the hills overlooking the various North Shore breaks. They never made it up to their intended destination.
“”So I’m driving down the street before I come on to go up the hill to Cammy’s and we’re listening to the radio and it says the Duke contest in on, ‘First heat, Mike Hynson, Dick Catri, Herbie Fletcher’ and I go, ‘Oh, shit! I can’t do this, I won’t be able to feel my surfboard or anything!’” recalled Herbie. It should suffice to say that he didn’t advance out of his heat.
Herbie’s experimental nature only served to enhance his understanding of the world around him. When the shortboard revolution came about and transformed the face of the sport, Herbie and his surfing compatriots were among the first test pilots, chopping down their boards and performing R&D at their favorite spots.
“Chappy [Gary Chapman] and Jock [Sutherland] moved into the house at Bonzai Beach and we’d all hang out there,” Herbie said. “We’d look down the beach and see these two perfect rights, Backdoor and Off the Wall, which we just called Pipeline Rights. I moved in when Jock moved out, and it was that whole winter, boards were going down in size. Mike Hynson moved in next door and he had plenty of dough and blanks. He built a shaping room and he was just experimenting on surfboards … 9’2”, 8’6”, 7’9”, 7’2”, 6’10”, they just kept going down to 5’6”.”
It was soon after this influential period in the development of surfing that Herbie became fed up with the scene. After being introduced to the world in the pages of Surfer magazine and other publications, the North Shore experienced a global migration by every Tom and Sally wanting to get noticed or looking to prove their mettle on the surf world’s grandest stage.
“Everybody from Riverside and San Bernardino, from the Valley and Oregon, everywhere started moving to the North Shore,” Herbie said.
Over the whole contest scene and not wanting to paddle out into crowded lineups that were nearly empty only a few years prior, he decided it was time for a change and he moved to Sun Valley, Idaho. Dibi came too.
“The First Family of Surfing”
On those same Hawaiian shores that he was turning his back on was where the Herbie and Dibi life-story encountered its opening chapter.
Dibi, although never a surfer, had the chops to hang on the beach considering she was born into surfing royalty, the Hoffman family: Walter, Dibi’s father, a big-wave pioneer and a beachwear industrialist; Philip or “Flippy,” Dibi’s uncle, also a big-wave rider and involved in the surfwear textile industry; and Joyce, Dibi’s sister, a two-time world surfing champion and three-time U.S. surfing champion. Her adolescent life was one spent on and around the beach. A dancer as opposed to a surfer, she was initially known because of who she was, but she etched her own mark in the social scene of the time.
When the two first came to meet, it was less than ideal, but quite classic.
“We met on the beach at Makaha, at a surf contest. I think I was 13 and Herbie was 16. He thought I was too young, and I thought he was too young,” Dibi recalled with a laugh. “We didn’t see each other again for a year. But my dad was a Makaha surf contest judge, so I went over there for Christmas and we saw each other and we started going out … and we’ve been together ever since.”
Herbie and Dibi have now been married for more than 37 years. And while the married life does implement a different mindset, it didn’t change the way the two lived their lives. Both are just as active and enthused as ever.
“Our lives have really changed so much, and really not changed at all,” says Dibi. “I think you kind of grow, but in some ways you’re always who you started out to be and you just have a lot more life experience to draw from. A lot of it has been hard; a lot of it has been great, you know, it’s been a life.”
The same open-minded outlook flowed into their two sons, Christian and Nathan. After years of playing guinea pig to Herbie’s tow-in ideas and looking to escape the shadow the family cast, both went on to make their own individual impacts on the surf world. Christian was among the forerunners in initiating the aerial movement—“[Christian] turned all the pro surfers into dinosaurs instantly,” said Herbie of his son’s role in riding above the wave—while Nathan went into skating and motocross before getting hooked on the adrenaline rush of charging big waves—“[Nathan] just called me recently and said he got in from surfing a 35-foot wave in the fog … and I got to tell him, ‘Great Nathan, now you ride bigger waves than anyone in the family.’ ”
It’s obviously a family act.
“It’s great because we all have something in common, from the 75-year-old great grandpa all the way down to the great grandson,” Herbie says with a smile. “We’ve got surfing in common.”
Life is Art
Herbie insists that he has been an artist for the majority of his life—well, a surfer and an artist.
“Living in Hawaii we painted the inside of houses, we painted on surfboards, painted on lots of album covers because that was the only thing that we had for a canvas,” Herbie says. “But making surfboards and going surfing, that’s my main art. That’s my real art.”
Ever the opportunist, Herbie has managed to intertwine two of his favorite pastimes, shaping and art. And just like with his surfing he enjoys the spontaneity and unpredictability of what his artwork provides.
“I don’t usually know what I’m doing when I start, it’s sort of like paddling out surfing; anticipating taking off and just getting stuff on the canvas and then it just sort of happens, it flows,” says Herbie.
Art plays more of a role than simply designs on his boards or a canvas. Herbie has had his works displayed at numerous shows and the gallery in his warehouse could stand alone as a worthy art and surfing exposition. He has gathered praise from industry affiliates, surfers and even members of the art world. And though he works in numerous mediums—including oils, resin, acrylic, polyurethane foam, inks, wood and stone—there are those that stand out from the group. His “Wrecktangles” are a barrage of broken surfboards, salvaged from beneath the houses at Pipeline, which tell a rudimentary story of the sport and its dangers. He also has a wide variety of pieces hanging from the walls of his gallery/warehouse that demonstrate the diversity of his ability.
“I don’t want to get locked into one thing,” he explains. “I like to work with resins and pigments and paint and fiberglass and carbon-fiber; I don’t want to do the same thing over and over, I mean, how boring is that? In surfing, you get to surf all kinds of different surf spots, different boards, it keeps your interests going. It’s like music, if you sing the same thing over and over, it gets pretty boring.”
And while Herbie does profit from all of his various artistic projects, it serves a completely different purpose on a personal level.
“When it comes five o’clock, I usually have my paintbrush, my camera or my surfboard in hand,” Herbie said. “And if there isn’t any surf, it’s always six foot and glassy if you’ve got your paintbrush.”
It probably helps that his biggest critic is also a lifelong artist and just so happens to be his wife, who is always willing to provide blunt honesty. But they also serve as a healthy support system in their various individual and collective undertakings.
“Everything we do is kind of a collaboration because we use each other for a sounding board, we have a critic in one another,” Dibi explains. “Most people aren’t honest; they aren’t honest with themselves, so they’re certainly not brave enough to be honest with you because they want you to like them. And you see, I’m not worried about that with Herbie. I tell him, ‘F*@k, is that really what you’re going to do?’ But I think it’s nice, I think you need that, you need to hear that.”
Herbie enjoys the constructive criticism and advice, but he maintains that they have their own styles and opinions.
“She’s a perfectionist and she likes really glamorous stuff,” he says. “We’re totally different, but along the same grain, which is nice.”
Living in the Now
More than 30 years after making the claim that “The Thrill is Back” at his Dana Point, Calif., surf shop at the onset of the longboard renaissance, Herbie remains an ambassador for the sport. And just like in his early years, he has had a number of labels thrown at him, but these qualify in reference to his various ventures: shaper, surfer, artist, photographer, director, mentor, husband, inventor and father.
Although he spends more time on land, he still finds time to continue to push his limits. He isn’t racing his Jet Ski’s in front of massive Waimea Bay walls like in years past, but he still finds time to get his feet wet and turn some heads. He tends to spend more time on the sand, documenting the progress the sport is making, and luckily for him, it couldn’t be a better time to be doing so. With the new crop of longboarders changing the perception of how a board can be ridden and with all the new board-making technologies, the sport is in a new realm of progression and change.
“I like the new style of longboarding, I like where the youth are taking longboarding, this really high-performance stuff,” Herbie says. “Some of the kids down at San Onofre and all up and down the coast are ripping. They’re doing things we didn’t even think about.”
And Herbie has the proof. He’s made more surf films than he can count and his photos are regularly seen in surf publications. But it doesn’t much get to Herbie that he is now behind the camera as opposed to out in front of it.
“It’s like the second part of my life, I’ve got to rest now,” he explains. “Before I was in the water all the time; I’d come out of the water, lay down and then get up and go back in, like 10 hours a day or something like that. But now I’m slowing down, so it’s two times out, hour and a half or two hour go outs.”
This is not to say that Herbie isn’t still charging—the guy still surfs Pipeline—he’s just a bit more cautious with the risk taking, and luckily, he has plenty of people looking out for him.
“I’m recognized out there (at Pipeline) by all the top guys since I’ve been there longer than anybody,” Herbie claims. “So when Bruce or Andy [Irons] or Sunny [Garcia] or any of those guys are out in the lineup and I show up, it’s always, ‘F#&k Herb, right on!’ And if somebody takes off in front of me, I don’t have anything to say about it, but sometimes they get beat up because they don’t want to see anybody hurt. They slug him and tell him to go home. It’s a bummer, but somebody has to keep the lineup regulated, I mean, you don’t go out on the [Los Angeles] Lakers court and try to take the ball from them, and that’s what’s out there, all the best surfers in the world.”
Herbie realizes that he is years past his prime, but what he lacks in physical ability, he makes up for in first-hand knowledge. He has served as a mentor to endless groms that have picked up a longboard. Among his first sponsored longboarders was the King of Soul himself, Joel Tudor.
“Technically the first sponsored package that I ever received at my house was from Astrodeck,” Tudor recalls. “I was stoked because at that time in the late ’80s, Astrodeck was the s&#t! Everyone rode for them.”
A photo in Herbie’s warehouse tells the story. In it, anyone who was anyone on the surf scene at that time—Mark Foo, Mark Richards, Johnny-Boy Gomes, Rory Russell, Buttons Kaluhiokalani, Fast Eddie, Martin Potter, Gary Elkerton and Tom Carroll, to name a few—were a part of the Astrodeck team.
“I think a lot of it, though, it wasn’t so much that Herbie was business savvy and was paying all of these people, it was just that everybody liked Herb,” Tudor says. “If you look at the amount of people that have done stuff for him for free, and in the category of their talent, I think the respect for Herbie sort of speaks volumes.”
As active as he remains, it’s difficult to believe that Herbie is, in fact, a grandfather. But when you live life the way Herbie has and believe whole-heartedly that age is truly only a number, there is no need to step back or slow down. But considering his clientele and colleagues, along with the general nature of his industry, Herbie simply sits back and smiles about the life he leads.
“I’m traveling and surfing; I get to work with all the surfers, and that’s my passion, going surfing and being around the beach,” he says. “And with that, being around people that really enjoy it and push your limits and that are inventive and want to change things.”
Surfing is Life
Surfing is still an integral part of what makes Herbie tick. It plays a role in practically every element of his life. And while all the financial pursuits and appearances can be draining at times, there are the simple reasons of why he does what he does.
“I just enjoy watching the sun rise,” Herbie reflects. “I can just be standing in the water with my surfboard after wiping out, looking at the sun come up in the white water, and it’s un-f&*king-real.”
It’s evident that despite all the wild-man antics you hear and read about the guy, Herbie Fletcher is more than a sun-bleached surfer laboring over how to keep connected to the scene he’d help to foster; he is an ever-diversifying entrepreneur with an innate ability to find potential and opportunity around every new bend along his life’s path.
No one knows where Herbie will be in five years, not even Herbie. The one certainty is that you’d be wise to keep track because the tale is certainly not nearing its end. He’s still a surf-stoked grommet at heart and as long the industry continues its steady rise on a global scale, he’ll be among the leaders of the pack pushing it forward.
(For Longboard Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2007)
You can say what you like about surfers, but the ones that have managed to make a career among all the hoopla that comes with the industry—they’re a precocious bunch. Not the WCT crew, those guys have cash thrown at them like strippers on a stage. The men of distinct honor are the ones who were on the scene before the onset of the surf craze: the Triple Crown, multi-million dollar “surf” companies and Kelly Slater.
Back in the days when the North Shore was still country, the shortboard was a forthcoming concept and Off the Wall wasn’t even “Off the Wall,” there were those who were the scene. They were the movers and shakers; the innovators; the pioneers of anything and everything the surf industry would and has become more than 40 years later. Within this group of core surfers—which included Gerry Lopez, Jock Sutherland, Eddie Aikau, Jeff Hakman, Barry Kanaiaupuni, Mark Martinson, Mike Hynson and Paul Strauch, among others—was one individual, who over the course of his career as a surfer and businessman has had more labels laid upon him than a canned food drive. He’s been called a rebel, anti-social, anti-establishment, a master self-promoter, eccentric and surfing’s Mick Jagger. But Herbie Fletcher is a tough character; he knows that labels come with the life that he has created. No longer the 17-year-old up-and-comer that placed seventh at the 1966 World Surfing Championships, Herbie remains true to the roots of the sport, unabashedly passionate and stoked on life.
“Well, they all fit pretty much,” admits Herbie, referring to his various labels. “But I feel good, I feel like I’m energetic and young, and I want to go surfing and play hard and keep going, and that takes a lot of energy. You know, I’m 58 now, so I’m pushing it. But you just gotta go, you can’t stop. Once you stop, you get old.”
Now in the apparent twilight years of a glamorous and eventful career in and around the surf industry, Herbie is embracing his role as a connoisseur of everything surf-related, and has come to realize that there is a demand even outside the surf domain for his advice and expertise. Based on the press releases and Internet reviews I found when Googling his name, Herbie has whole-heartedly embraced life in the limelight and deviated from the anti-establishment mentality.
Most pressing among Herbie’s recent forays into the mainstream media is his involvement in a soon-to-be premiered HBO series, “John From Cincinnati,” for which the sideslip aficionado, along with his wife, Dibi, are serving as consulting producers. Beyond explaining that the premise of the show is focused around a family of surfers who live in Imperial Beach and that David Milch (the creator of HBO series, “Deadwood”) is involved, details are few and far between due to contract agreements. The show has been picked up by HBO for 12 episodes and the first is scheduled to air in June 2007.
Also garnering worthwhile attention was his choice of trading island scenery—the sun and laidback lifestyle of Hawaii, for the skyscrapers and bombastic personalities of the Manhattan art scene. A longtime photographer and artist, Herbie fell into the good graces of Julian Schnabel, one of the most highly touted contemporary artists.
“I’ve been working with Julian and he’s taught me a lot about how to paint in the last six years,” Herbie says. “You can’t even get a professor like that, he’s just a great guy. We go surfing together, we paint, we go to art museums, we go to galleries, he explains stuff to me, and he tells me what’s going on. How do you get a professor like that? It’s like getting surf instructor like me.”
Recently the two collaborated on a project that unveiled in December 2006 at the MetLife building in New York City. Schnabel blew up eight of Herbie’s big-wave riding photos to be used as large canvases (some as big as 20 feet), and each is now on display throughout the building.
“When I first saw them I was just sort of stunned,” Herbie recalled. “It was like watching a big wave break; I was really impressed because everybody’s walking through there and they glance at it from the corner of their eye and double-take.”
Although at a point in most people’s lives when they tend to take a step back and allow more time to indulge in the simple pleasures, Herbie has again challenged the status quo. Instead of easing on the breaks, it is clear that he has opted to shift into yet an even higher gear, racing away from the dreaded R-word. Retirement is not a term found in Fletcher’s Dictionary: “I’ve been really fortunate in life to be able to make work a lot of fun … I’ll work until I die, probably.”
And that mindset has rewarded Herbie. Never one to settle for what is provided for him, he has constantly seized opportunity and enabled it to grow. His recent steps into Hollywood and the art world are not coincidental. He has earned his place. He has sacrificed and taken risks when others opted to place it safe. And because of this, he has managed to establish a credibility and respect that most can only hope for.
Nestled in an industrial complex in San Clemente, Calif., the World of Herbie is housed in a simple, white, nondenominational building. Surfboards (both broken and intact), artwork, photographs, memorabilia and more are littered about the building, which serves as a headquarters, studio, gallery and warehouse. A quick walk from the back entrance to Herbie’s office does more than unveil his various commercial (namely Astodeck traction pads and sandals) and artistic endeavors, it gives you the idea that you are in the presence of a walking, talking surfing encyclopedia—and he has the experience and stories to fill a fair number of volumes.
Walking the Walk
With a lifelong portfolio as diverse as the ocean is deep, Herbie is a well of information that envelops the spectrum of surfing’s present, past and potential future. His time in the water began as soon as he could find his sea legs. Born in Orange County and spending much of his adolescent life near the Huntington Beach pier, Herbie had his introduction to the ocean at a young age. Rafting, bodysurfing and diving, he was in and around the water as much as possible. He finally made the plunge when he was 9 years old, and got a surfboard of his own when he was 10. It was a Velzy-Jacobs and cost a whopping $27. During the summers the U.S. Surfing Championships would come to town and Herbie was exposed to some of the top surfers of that day and age.
“Everybody would come from Hawaii and up and down the coast, even some East Coast guys would show up,” remembers Herbie. “It was like a big luau. Everybody would go surfing and have a good time. We’d watch each other and really watch the champions, and that was who I wanted to hang out with and get to know, and surf with, the best surfers in the world. So living in Huntington, it was sort of like a dream.”
He was hooked, and he was determined to live the life of a surfer.
Moving to the Islands at 16 years old, Herbie was on the scene for the dawning of a new era in surfing. When he arrived in 1965, Hawaii was still an untapped resource for the traveling surfer. Sure, there were a number of guys who had migrated to the North Shore, but for the most part (and especially compared to what it is today) it was nothing more than greenery and your occasional beach house. For Herbie and his group of fellow surfers, the Seven Mile Miracle was their stomping grounds, with the various spots to be surfed at their leisure.
“Well, I was a Backdoor guy, but I lived at Pipeline and that was my spot,” says Herbie, with a no-big-deal manner. “The first year I was there, there were no houses on the North Shore except like Dick Brewer, Jose Angel and Bob Shepherd. I surfed Pipeline in ’65; I think the first year it was surfed was ’62 and I’m still surfing it.”
As an exceptional North Shore surfer, Herbie was among the 24 invitees for the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational held at Sunset Beach in late December. This contest is one of Herbie’s most memorable, only because others refuse to let him forget. The world was a different place then. Lyndon B. Johnson was in office, the Beatles had just released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the hippie counterculture (flower-power, drug experimentation, sexual freedom) had come into the public awareness following the “Summer of Love.” On the Islands, the drug scene was very much a part of the soul surfing experience, and it came to the forefront for Fletcher at this particular event. Having been told the contest was cancelled for the day, Herbie and a few friends opted to slip some LSD and come on while relaxing in the hills overlooking the various North Shore breaks. They never made it up to their intended destination.
“”So I’m driving down the street before I come on to go up the hill to Cammy’s and we’re listening to the radio and it says the Duke contest in on, ‘First heat, Mike Hynson, Dick Catri, Herbie Fletcher’ and I go, ‘Oh, shit! I can’t do this, I won’t be able to feel my surfboard or anything!’” recalled Herbie. It should suffice to say that he didn’t advance out of his heat.
Herbie’s experimental nature only served to enhance his understanding of the world around him. When the shortboard revolution came about and transformed the face of the sport, Herbie and his surfing compatriots were among the first test pilots, chopping down their boards and performing R&D at their favorite spots.
“Chappy [Gary Chapman] and Jock [Sutherland] moved into the house at Bonzai Beach and we’d all hang out there,” Herbie said. “We’d look down the beach and see these two perfect rights, Backdoor and Off the Wall, which we just called Pipeline Rights. I moved in when Jock moved out, and it was that whole winter, boards were going down in size. Mike Hynson moved in next door and he had plenty of dough and blanks. He built a shaping room and he was just experimenting on surfboards … 9’2”, 8’6”, 7’9”, 7’2”, 6’10”, they just kept going down to 5’6”.”
It was soon after this influential period in the development of surfing that Herbie became fed up with the scene. After being introduced to the world in the pages of Surfer magazine and other publications, the North Shore experienced a global migration by every Tom and Sally wanting to get noticed or looking to prove their mettle on the surf world’s grandest stage.
“Everybody from Riverside and San Bernardino, from the Valley and Oregon, everywhere started moving to the North Shore,” Herbie said.
Over the whole contest scene and not wanting to paddle out into crowded lineups that were nearly empty only a few years prior, he decided it was time for a change and he moved to Sun Valley, Idaho. Dibi came too.
“The First Family of Surfing”
On those same Hawaiian shores that he was turning his back on was where the Herbie and Dibi life-story encountered its opening chapter.
Dibi, although never a surfer, had the chops to hang on the beach considering she was born into surfing royalty, the Hoffman family: Walter, Dibi’s father, a big-wave pioneer and a beachwear industrialist; Philip or “Flippy,” Dibi’s uncle, also a big-wave rider and involved in the surfwear textile industry; and Joyce, Dibi’s sister, a two-time world surfing champion and three-time U.S. surfing champion. Her adolescent life was one spent on and around the beach. A dancer as opposed to a surfer, she was initially known because of who she was, but she etched her own mark in the social scene of the time.
When the two first came to meet, it was less than ideal, but quite classic.
“We met on the beach at Makaha, at a surf contest. I think I was 13 and Herbie was 16. He thought I was too young, and I thought he was too young,” Dibi recalled with a laugh. “We didn’t see each other again for a year. But my dad was a Makaha surf contest judge, so I went over there for Christmas and we saw each other and we started going out … and we’ve been together ever since.”
Herbie and Dibi have now been married for more than 37 years. And while the married life does implement a different mindset, it didn’t change the way the two lived their lives. Both are just as active and enthused as ever.
“Our lives have really changed so much, and really not changed at all,” says Dibi. “I think you kind of grow, but in some ways you’re always who you started out to be and you just have a lot more life experience to draw from. A lot of it has been hard; a lot of it has been great, you know, it’s been a life.”
The same open-minded outlook flowed into their two sons, Christian and Nathan. After years of playing guinea pig to Herbie’s tow-in ideas and looking to escape the shadow the family cast, both went on to make their own individual impacts on the surf world. Christian was among the forerunners in initiating the aerial movement—“[Christian] turned all the pro surfers into dinosaurs instantly,” said Herbie of his son’s role in riding above the wave—while Nathan went into skating and motocross before getting hooked on the adrenaline rush of charging big waves—“[Nathan] just called me recently and said he got in from surfing a 35-foot wave in the fog … and I got to tell him, ‘Great Nathan, now you ride bigger waves than anyone in the family.’ ”
It’s obviously a family act.
“It’s great because we all have something in common, from the 75-year-old great grandpa all the way down to the great grandson,” Herbie says with a smile. “We’ve got surfing in common.”
Life is Art
Herbie insists that he has been an artist for the majority of his life—well, a surfer and an artist.
“Living in Hawaii we painted the inside of houses, we painted on surfboards, painted on lots of album covers because that was the only thing that we had for a canvas,” Herbie says. “But making surfboards and going surfing, that’s my main art. That’s my real art.”
Ever the opportunist, Herbie has managed to intertwine two of his favorite pastimes, shaping and art. And just like with his surfing he enjoys the spontaneity and unpredictability of what his artwork provides.
“I don’t usually know what I’m doing when I start, it’s sort of like paddling out surfing; anticipating taking off and just getting stuff on the canvas and then it just sort of happens, it flows,” says Herbie.
Art plays more of a role than simply designs on his boards or a canvas. Herbie has had his works displayed at numerous shows and the gallery in his warehouse could stand alone as a worthy art and surfing exposition. He has gathered praise from industry affiliates, surfers and even members of the art world. And though he works in numerous mediums—including oils, resin, acrylic, polyurethane foam, inks, wood and stone—there are those that stand out from the group. His “Wrecktangles” are a barrage of broken surfboards, salvaged from beneath the houses at Pipeline, which tell a rudimentary story of the sport and its dangers. He also has a wide variety of pieces hanging from the walls of his gallery/warehouse that demonstrate the diversity of his ability.
“I don’t want to get locked into one thing,” he explains. “I like to work with resins and pigments and paint and fiberglass and carbon-fiber; I don’t want to do the same thing over and over, I mean, how boring is that? In surfing, you get to surf all kinds of different surf spots, different boards, it keeps your interests going. It’s like music, if you sing the same thing over and over, it gets pretty boring.”
And while Herbie does profit from all of his various artistic projects, it serves a completely different purpose on a personal level.
“When it comes five o’clock, I usually have my paintbrush, my camera or my surfboard in hand,” Herbie said. “And if there isn’t any surf, it’s always six foot and glassy if you’ve got your paintbrush.”
It probably helps that his biggest critic is also a lifelong artist and just so happens to be his wife, who is always willing to provide blunt honesty. But they also serve as a healthy support system in their various individual and collective undertakings.
“Everything we do is kind of a collaboration because we use each other for a sounding board, we have a critic in one another,” Dibi explains. “Most people aren’t honest; they aren’t honest with themselves, so they’re certainly not brave enough to be honest with you because they want you to like them. And you see, I’m not worried about that with Herbie. I tell him, ‘F*@k, is that really what you’re going to do?’ But I think it’s nice, I think you need that, you need to hear that.”
Herbie enjoys the constructive criticism and advice, but he maintains that they have their own styles and opinions.
“She’s a perfectionist and she likes really glamorous stuff,” he says. “We’re totally different, but along the same grain, which is nice.”
Living in the Now
More than 30 years after making the claim that “The Thrill is Back” at his Dana Point, Calif., surf shop at the onset of the longboard renaissance, Herbie remains an ambassador for the sport. And just like in his early years, he has had a number of labels thrown at him, but these qualify in reference to his various ventures: shaper, surfer, artist, photographer, director, mentor, husband, inventor and father.
Although he spends more time on land, he still finds time to continue to push his limits. He isn’t racing his Jet Ski’s in front of massive Waimea Bay walls like in years past, but he still finds time to get his feet wet and turn some heads. He tends to spend more time on the sand, documenting the progress the sport is making, and luckily for him, it couldn’t be a better time to be doing so. With the new crop of longboarders changing the perception of how a board can be ridden and with all the new board-making technologies, the sport is in a new realm of progression and change.
“I like the new style of longboarding, I like where the youth are taking longboarding, this really high-performance stuff,” Herbie says. “Some of the kids down at San Onofre and all up and down the coast are ripping. They’re doing things we didn’t even think about.”
And Herbie has the proof. He’s made more surf films than he can count and his photos are regularly seen in surf publications. But it doesn’t much get to Herbie that he is now behind the camera as opposed to out in front of it.
“It’s like the second part of my life, I’ve got to rest now,” he explains. “Before I was in the water all the time; I’d come out of the water, lay down and then get up and go back in, like 10 hours a day or something like that. But now I’m slowing down, so it’s two times out, hour and a half or two hour go outs.”
This is not to say that Herbie isn’t still charging—the guy still surfs Pipeline—he’s just a bit more cautious with the risk taking, and luckily, he has plenty of people looking out for him.
“I’m recognized out there (at Pipeline) by all the top guys since I’ve been there longer than anybody,” Herbie claims. “So when Bruce or Andy [Irons] or Sunny [Garcia] or any of those guys are out in the lineup and I show up, it’s always, ‘F#&k Herb, right on!’ And if somebody takes off in front of me, I don’t have anything to say about it, but sometimes they get beat up because they don’t want to see anybody hurt. They slug him and tell him to go home. It’s a bummer, but somebody has to keep the lineup regulated, I mean, you don’t go out on the [Los Angeles] Lakers court and try to take the ball from them, and that’s what’s out there, all the best surfers in the world.”
Herbie realizes that he is years past his prime, but what he lacks in physical ability, he makes up for in first-hand knowledge. He has served as a mentor to endless groms that have picked up a longboard. Among his first sponsored longboarders was the King of Soul himself, Joel Tudor.
“Technically the first sponsored package that I ever received at my house was from Astrodeck,” Tudor recalls. “I was stoked because at that time in the late ’80s, Astrodeck was the s&#t! Everyone rode for them.”
A photo in Herbie’s warehouse tells the story. In it, anyone who was anyone on the surf scene at that time—Mark Foo, Mark Richards, Johnny-Boy Gomes, Rory Russell, Buttons Kaluhiokalani, Fast Eddie, Martin Potter, Gary Elkerton and Tom Carroll, to name a few—were a part of the Astrodeck team.
“I think a lot of it, though, it wasn’t so much that Herbie was business savvy and was paying all of these people, it was just that everybody liked Herb,” Tudor says. “If you look at the amount of people that have done stuff for him for free, and in the category of their talent, I think the respect for Herbie sort of speaks volumes.”
As active as he remains, it’s difficult to believe that Herbie is, in fact, a grandfather. But when you live life the way Herbie has and believe whole-heartedly that age is truly only a number, there is no need to step back or slow down. But considering his clientele and colleagues, along with the general nature of his industry, Herbie simply sits back and smiles about the life he leads.
“I’m traveling and surfing; I get to work with all the surfers, and that’s my passion, going surfing and being around the beach,” he says. “And with that, being around people that really enjoy it and push your limits and that are inventive and want to change things.”
Surfing is Life
Surfing is still an integral part of what makes Herbie tick. It plays a role in practically every element of his life. And while all the financial pursuits and appearances can be draining at times, there are the simple reasons of why he does what he does.
“I just enjoy watching the sun rise,” Herbie reflects. “I can just be standing in the water with my surfboard after wiping out, looking at the sun come up in the white water, and it’s un-f&*king-real.”
It’s evident that despite all the wild-man antics you hear and read about the guy, Herbie Fletcher is more than a sun-bleached surfer laboring over how to keep connected to the scene he’d help to foster; he is an ever-diversifying entrepreneur with an innate ability to find potential and opportunity around every new bend along his life’s path.
No one knows where Herbie will be in five years, not even Herbie. The one certainty is that you’d be wise to keep track because the tale is certainly not nearing its end. He’s still a surf-stoked grommet at heart and as long the industry continues its steady rise on a global scale, he’ll be among the leaders of the pack pushing it forward.
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