Glide Magazine Article
Check out this article that long time friend Mike Keller wrote for Glide Magazine in Japan:
It
all began with a ratty 1973 Dodge Tradesman van the moment Tyler turned
sixteen. You know, the van that your uncle had in the 70s with the
carpeting, captain’s chairs, wood paneling, and the rear bench seat that
turned into a bed. Only this one had already seen its prime long ago.
It was an eyesore at best, but it was literally the vehicle that
launched Tyler’s career as a surfer, shaper, and hot rod builder. The
Dodge would soon be packed full of El Segundo kids and their shortboards
for afternoon Topanga sessions where the prevailing wind would brush
side-offshore; creating launch ramps for the Christian Fletcher-inspired
generation. At sixteen years of age Tyler was bursting at the seams to
explore the world and his wheels would enable him to do just that.
Fast
forward to 2011 and Tyler is at the top of his game with building
beautiful boards and hot rods. But today is like every day in the life
of arguably the most under-spoken craftsman in the world of surfboards
and hot rods. After playing with his adorable (and huge due to towering
genetics) three-year-old daughter, Tyler hops in his stock white Ford
van to get coffee at The Donut on Main Street in downtown El Segundo as
he has done for countless years. So routine and welcome is the stop,
The Donut cashier often refuses money as Tyler is seen as a family to
them. A few quick laughs at The Donut and Tyler heads down to El Porto
for the daily surf check. As forgettable as his daily-driver white Ford
van is, Tyler’s arrival in the parking lot at El Porto is noticed by
most due to his local legend in the water and in the garage.
Christian
Tyler Hatzikian was born to Chris and Betty Hatzikian in January 1972.
Chris Hatzikian, known as Zeke, quickly indoctrinated Tyler into his
worth ethic and love of surfing. Chris was at the time a home builder
and was accustomed to working hard by his Armenian heritage, working
with his hands, and having an overwhelming attention to detail. Chris
made Tyler his first surfboard which was a six-foot, diamond-tail,
Lightening Bolt-style single fin. Chris soon began to teach Tyler the
art and skill of shaping, glassing, sanding, and polishing. Chris was
also well-versed in reading the conditions and knowing the California
coastline long before the Surflines of the world. Chris would often
load his work truck with boards and a sleepy Tyler in the pre-dawn hours
for a surgical strike at Rincon. It was Chris’s experience that
influenced Tyler knowing where to be when for the best waves on the
right board back when .com was nothing more than a typo.
Interestingly
enough, hot rods and cars have influenced Hatzikian’s surfing much more
than his surfing has influenced his hot rods. Working on classic cars
led Tyler to wonder what surfing was like at the time of the respective
car. While still an aerial-punting shortboarder back in the early 90s,
Tyler picked up a ‘56 Chevy four-door Bel Air, nine-passenger wagon.
Hatzikian calls it “the ultimate surf wagon”, and it was this classic
that shifted his future to the past. This path would lead Tyler into
classic yet innovative board designs and an unmatched traditional
surfing style in the water.
Tyler
comes from a long line of hot rodders starting with his grandfather Art
Hatzikian. Part of the close-nit Armenian community in Los Angles in
the 1940s, Art was frankly known for raising hell on two wheels. Tyler
has two pictures of the elder Hatzikian that are early indicators of the
Hatzikian legacy in Southern California. In one 50s-era photo, Art
races his Triumph prone down the Saugus drag strip with one hand on the
fork for stability, tripping the traps at a then-crazy one-hundred-nine
mile-per-hour pass. In the other, Art surfs his 40s-era Harley drag
bike (standing goofyfoot with one foot on the tank and one on the seat)
down Gage Avenue in Los Angeles in 1945. Tyler’s dad Chris carried on
the legacy of speed during the muscle car era with projects such as a
‘59 Chevy El Camino, numerous ’57 Chevys, and a lightening-fast ’68 SS
Chevy Camaro powered by a healthy 396 big-block. Tyler’s energetic
grandmother, Mimi, recalls hearing Chris drag-racing his Camaro several
miles away on summer nights then coasting down the street home with
headlight doused to slip unnoticed to the police into the family garage.
Chris later brought havoc to the family garage by almost burning it to
the ground while welding traction bars to a ’57 Chevy. Today the
Camaro and ‘57 might be long gone, but the garage is still standing and
the Hatzikian passion for hot-rodding thrives.
Tyler’s
first foray into the hot rod scene was during high school via a stock
’55 Chevy 4-door powered by a 265 cubic-inch V8 with a Powerglide
transmission. The glass-packed growl emanating from the ’55 and the
classic yellow-and-white color quickly became part of Tyler’s persona in
the late 1980s in Los Angeles’ South Bay. His cars have included
countless Chevy El Caminos, Nomads, and others before moving to his
current 327-powered ’32 Ford Coupe cackling through classic zoomie
headers and his ’41 Ford .
Tyler
buying, restoring, and selling cars and hot rods elevated his home life
and career. Tyler toiled endlessly sanding boards at a glassing shop
and building boards under his own label to generate cash which he used
to buy cars. You would never find Tyler at a new car dealership. You
would find him checking out a car on the tip of a friend-of-a-friend, or
combing through old neighborhoods looking for neglected project cars.
Diamonds-in-the-rough as Hatzikian would call them.
One
of Tyler’s highlight builds was a beautiful, black-and-yellow, ’56
Chevy Nomad with a 327 restored to showroom condition. His turned over
this investment into to ’41 Ford woody where he slowly brought it back
to its glory, wood and all. Not long after completion, Hatzikian parted
ways with this beauty to help make a down payment on his first and
current home in El Segundo. While others invested in stocks and
bonds, Tyler invested in cars and used his own passion and hard work to
build his nest egg. While trading up in value was nice, Tyler was
driven purely by his passion, enjoyment, and respect for old cars and
hot rods.
Hot rodding’s influence
on Tyler’s surfing has continued long past his period-awareness epiphany
triggered late in the 1980s with his nine-passenger ’56 Chevy wagon.
Working recently on his now-traded 383 Chevy stroker-powered ’50
Mercury, the light bulb switched on with Hatzikian. He was working on
the body with the time-honored technique called “metal bumping”. This
method of body work eschews body filling and instead slowly works the
metal by lifting lows and holding down highs using a hammer and dolly.
It is not unlike using a trying to straighten a coat hanger with one’s
hands. There are not a lot of shadows , visuals, and thus a lot of the
work is done by feel. Patience and skill are requirements to say the
least. After working on the Merc for several hours, Tyler walked over
to his shaping bay to work on a board design. After working
painstakingly on metal for hours, he immediately and saw new angles and
areas of surfboard shapes in the well-lit shaping bay. “I thought, what
a joke, you gotta be kidding me!” recalls Hatzikian. Hot rods and
metal craft had again given back to Hatzikian’s bread-and-butter
surfing.
His classic longboards are
arguably the most coveted in world. Tyler’s quest for perfection in
quality is relentless at the very least. He has committed himself to
“advancing traditional design” by continually honing his single-fin
beauties. In a nutshell, Hatzikian is seeking to continue what board
evolution may have occurred had shortboards not exploded into the
surfing world in 1967. Or had longboarding not imploded, based on
perspective. Looking at where Hatzikian is with traditional longboards
today, one need not wonder what 1970 or 1972 may have been without
shortboards. How David Nuuhiwa was forced from his 1966 noseriding
grace at Huntington Beach to his wrestling match with a shortboard four
short years later.
Perhaps in an ode
to his restoration of the ’41 Ford, today Hatzikian’s board of choice is
a 1950s-design, solid balsa craft modeled after Malibu chips of that
era. Though honed for trim and glide, Tyler places himself deep in
beach break tubes and carves gouging cutbacks with his balsa beauty. He
credits his love of this board to its unique characteristic and the
fact that balsa “doesn’t lose its spring”. Unlike most modern balsa
boards, this design has a strong period influence from the early 50s and
is “made to be ridden”. To perhaps accentuate his disdain for
wall-hangers, Hatzikian’s balsas have a non-buffed finish. To date
twenty-three Tyler balsa boards have been made and are cherished around
the world.
As easy as Tyler makes
it look in the water, he asserts it is not always so easy. First, as a
designer, Tyler is doing much more than blowing off steam and honing his
already silk-smooth cross-stepping during a regular surf. Being the
craftsman of his equipment means that every board under his feet is also
a test bed, subject to constant scrutiny and analysis. A slightly
off-tempo cutback to the layman might mean an errant sixteenth of an
inch to Tyler. All the while, most eyes are on him when he paddles for a
wave at El Porto or other Southern California surf spots. “I still
need to perform even though testing, it is not a like dyno in the back
room where you can test privately. With surfing you wear your stats on
your sleeve”. There is an unquestionable expectation for Hatzikian to
perform every time he rises to his feet, or for that matter, whenever a
beautiful new board passes over the threshold of his factory. But Tyler
takes it all in stride knowing it is he himself who continues to raise
the bar and continually improve in surfing and craftsmanship.
What lies in the future for Hatzikian? Perhaps a new pintail balsa
design. Maybe finishing his current ’41 hot rod powered by a 455
Oldsmobile. Definitely not following the latest trend. Only Tyler
knows how much he can elevate surfing and hot rodding by looking to the
past.
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