The Surf Community Says Goodbye to Legendary Shaper Dick Brewer   Photo Credit to @dick_brewer Around 15 years ago, I have the privilege of designing two Hawaiian South Shore surfboard models with master shaper Dick Brewer. A true legend of our sport, Brewer started shaping in 1959 and soon became renowned for his unmatched skill at designing big wave guns. Over the years, he shaped big wave boards for just about every noteworthy charger in the game, from Buzzy Trent in the early 1960s to Nazare pioneer Garrett MacNamara today. He was also instrumental in helping bring about the Shortboard Revolution, cutting boards down to the point where he effectively invented the mini-gun, giving surfers like Gerry Lopez the tools they needed to take Pipeline surfing to the next level. Three decades later, he also built the first tow boards for guys like Laird Hamilton at Jaws. But Brewer was also a well-rounded shaper, building everything from longboards to high-performance shortboards and fish shapes. The boards that he designed for our shop were five-fin hybrids with pulled in noses (one actually had a round nose!), built for going fast and having fun when the waves get small here in Town....

Lynne Boyer Surfing World Champion & Hawaii Artist The other day I was at Kewalos checking the surf, and I was two women painting in the grass. I decided to go over and check out what they were doing, and while I was talking to them I found out that one of them was Lynne Boyer, the 1978 and 1979 surfing world champion! I ended up talking to both women for a while, and Lynne told me her story, which was really quite interesting! She moved over to Oahu with her parents when she was 11, as her dad was in the Army and was stationed here. She started surfing immediately, and soon was hooked. Her parents were super supportive, and before long Lynne was competing in the HSA events, where she was quite successful. Right around this time, the world tour began with the first contest at Sunset, the Smirnoff Pro. The event put one woman in every six-man heat, and then combined the scores of all the women from the different heats to determine the winner. The next year the women had their own event, and by the late 1970s there was a proper world tour. Margo Oberg and...

  Randy Rarick is a surfing legend—both in Hawaii and around the world. He moved to Honolulu at the age of five, and by the time he was 10 he was being mentored by Waikiki beach boy Rabbit Kekai. Since then, he has been involved in virtually every aspect of the sport and industry, from ding repair and owning a surf shop to helping form the ISP and running the Triple Crown. He is widely considered to have surfed in more countries than anyone else in history, represented Hawaii in the 1970 World Contest, and received invites to The Eddie. Today, Randy continues to influence surf culture both on Oahu and abroad. At 70 years of age, he continues to paddle out on the North Shore on legit days, and is an innovator in a variety of forums. He recently decided to bring his self-designed Black Tip fin to market. Here at Hawaiian South Shore we are pretty excited about anything that Randy does, so we decided to carry his fin, and sat down recently to get the skinny on it. What inspired you to develop your own model of fin? I have been getting fins from Fiberglass Fin Company...

Know more about him and his Revolutionary fin!

Who is Donald Takayama?

The Surfing Legend Donald Takayama

Hawaiian South Shore

CATCHING UP WITH SURF HISTORIAN ROGER HOLMES PINCHES    A while back we had the opportunity to sponsor the Lost and Found Collection event here on Oahu. This event featured a collection of old photographs of legendary surfers that Doug Walker stumbled upon at a flea market. Interestingly, our blog post about the event ended up getting us in touch with another surf historian via comments on the blog thread. I’ve spent some time getting to know Roger Holmes Pinches via email and found his story to be an interesting one. Roger was born in South Australia, which is 60 miles from the surf spots at Waitpinga, Middleton and Boomer Beach. He spent weekends on the coast surfing, camping and eventually he got into South Australia School of Art when he was 15. After finishing art school and still an avid surfer, Roger met John Arnold. John Arnold ran a surf shop in Adelaide and ended up hiring Roger to run the shop’s design and advertising department. At the same time, the shop picked up the O’Neill franchise from California. This gave them the rights to manufacture O’Neill products in Australia. They also had the rights to Golden Breed clothing....

The Hawaiian model – Coming Soon! We’ll have 9’2, 9’4, and 9’6 coming in. First time hearing about this model? Not many know about it, so read on to find out a little more!   TALKING BOARD DESIGN WITH DONALD TAKAYAMA   Donald Takayama has been a legend of our sport for decades, enjoying a success-ful competitive career and a second career as an influential shaper. When we lost him half a decade ago, we lost one of surfing’s greats. His influence both on a surfboard and behind a planer can never be fully quantified. He surely touched thousands of lives throughout his lifetime. I was fortunate enough to be one of those people. The time I spent chatting with Donald made for some of my favorite memories and taught me so much about surfing and surfboards in particular. A few years before Takayama passed away, I had an opportunity to chat with him about board designs. At the time, his In-the-Pink model was one of my favorites. In-the-Pink is a high-performance nose-rider that is probably the most popular model in Takayama’s range, and it definitely worked for me. However, on bigger, windy days, I found that the nose would sometimes...