2002 - New Jacob's, Old Woody

In 1962 if you turned 16 and needed a way to transport the 9'4" surfboard to the beaches of Southern California's South Bay, a Woody was a perfect choice. You could have bought it for $80.00 from the used car lot before you'd even got a driver's license. You and your best friend may have sat in it on the lot imagining all the surfing trips you'd be taking while you waited for your older brother to drive it home for you. 

The 1948 Mercury was humble of finish and short on interior seats by two, but it's 100hp flathead would easily cruise at 65 mph on 25 cents a gallon gas. You may have started surfing at 13 on borrowed boards and worked part time all summer for a dollar an hour when you were 15 to buy your first new surfboard. You haunted the shops near your home break at the Redondo Breakwater deciding on which one had that perfect board. Velzy had colorful boards, many with red or blue pigment. Greg Noll would be shaping in the back of his P.C.H. shop and loose patience with all the questions you kept stopping his work to ask. Bing carried long sleep boards that stood in rows along the walls as you walked in to the converted real estate office.

Hap Jacobs had recently opened the shop at 422 Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach. The building looked like it had been built to manufacture and sell surfboards with forty to fifty new boards on display and a large shaping area in the back. Hap himself shaped many of the boards, but he also had a crew of shapers who between them turned out 125 boards a week at the shops busiest. When you'd finally saved enough money it was the middle of summer and the waiting list was 2 weeks long, an eternity at that age. You'd patrol the shop daily waiting for the moment when your first new surfboard could be picked up. Hap patiently told you how it was progressing ("It's getting gloss coated tomorrow.") and finally it was done. The surfboard had carried you on hot summer days at the local breaks in Hermosa, Redondo, Palos Verdes and on trips as far flung as San Diego's Cardiff Reef and Santa Cruz's Steamerlane.