Steve Adler Passes Away! RIP Friend

Tomorrow Tuesday March 15th we will be opening late (1pm) since we will be attending Steve Adler's Service at the St. Cyprian Church 4714 Clark Ave Long Beach, CA 90808.

Board Builder, Craftsman, Surfer, and all around incredible guy Steve Adler passed away last Thursday March 11, 2010. Steve was a lifelong friend and he had the idea to start Foam E-Z. He presented the concept to me on the way home from an evening mountain bike ride at El Morro. Within a couple of weeks of that bike ride we began Foam E-Z in May of1993. Foam E-Z and I would not be what we are today without Steve's involvement. Adler was an accomplished board builder having built his own brand under The Surfboard Board Factory name. Recently he was working with Tim Stamps helping to develop Stamps SUP line. Steve was incredibly involved in the SUP World and a business partner with Jodie Nelson in the SUP Spot.

Check out Steve's Facebook Page for more information on this incredible person. A college fund for his only son Clark has been set up at Farmers & Merchants Bank. Checks should be made out to CLARK ADLER, please still write Clark Adler in the memo. All payments can be mailed in or dropped off at any Farmers & Merchants Bank

He will be dearly missed by everyone who had the chance to meet or spend any time with him. It is hard to believe that he is gone.

RIP

Brad, the Nadell Family, and the entire Foam E-Z Crew.

Bali Trip is a life changer! Notes from a Foam E-Z Customer.

Here's a cool email we recieved from one of our happy customers. Sit back and relax!


Hey guys. Just wanted to thank you for all the info and supplies that you've made available. I'm mostly landlocked here in DC except for the few times a month that I make the two hour junket to the coast. Its a stark contrast with Bali, Indo where I'd been living 2008-2009. I went there with extremely limited funds and made my peregrinations at extremely low cost. Even still, by the time it was time to come home, I didn't even have the hundred some dollars necessary to ship my boards. As such, I sold two (both badly abused in epic surf), and left one with a friend. Not having a board when I arrived back in the states, I bummed around, borrowing boards here and there while I tried to scrape some money together to buy my own. A friend gave me an old 6'8 Clark Foam blank he had had sitting around for the past half a decade, in the hopes that it would help push me along to self-sufficiency. I felt apprehensive, as I had no experiencing shaping or glassing. In the mean time, I took a trip down to Avon, NC when a swell of superb caliber rolled through and promptly broke my buddies board in half. So now not only did I not have one for myself, I owed one to my buddy. I resolved to fix the one myself (with his permission), and shape the blank I had. I called around while in NC looking for some resin, but it seemed as if most distributors were bone dry, and most shops didn't sell by the gallon. In one last ditch effort I stopped at the store front of famed East Coast shaper, Tim Nolte, who put me off to a good start supplying me with a gallon of resin, 9 yards of glass, fins and fin boxes, catalyst, and styrene monomer, all at distributor prices. The man nearly singlehandedly restored my faith in the goodwill and common decency of American businessmen (but not quite corporations as a whole).

Returning home, I managed to piece the one board back together within about two weeks, but found my talent at glassing to by wanting. Nevertheless, I commenced to shape and glass the blank. Aside from nearly fatal errors, a waste of at least half a gallon of resin and about 4 yards of glass, a few ruined sets of cloths (and brain cells), I managed to shape something rideable. Ironically, the day that I applied the hot coat, my buddy from Bali called me up to inform me that my board had arrived in NYC, and that I should come up promptly. And so packed up my grip, hopped on the bus, and went for a surf out at Rockaway on my board that just made a 12,000 mile journey on an overseas shipping crate amongst a load of cheap plastic jewelry imports. I don't live a boring life, that's for sure. I couldn't have done it without all the beta and necessary supplementals you supply. You even supplied the Rasta keel fins I've got in that fishy while I was in Indo (its cheaper to have something shipped there from here than to deal with imported stuff there).

Thanks so much.
Jake

Photos: (In order from first to last) 1)Ed in Indo: epic, pumping, deserted waves right in front of malaria ridden camp sight. Only took 3 days on mopeds to get to. 2) Jake shaping Clark blank. 3) Ed pre-glassing. Should have followed the directions and put fins in after laminate coat. 4) Jake: Hot Coat. 5) Twin Fin Fish on left shipped from Indo, arrived same day board on right was finished. Board on right: 6'5" quad 20" wide. Who knows how thick.... Road map of Java in between.

PRO-SHAPER PROFILE- Jason Hoffman by Grizzly

Here I am with this month’s Pro Shaper Profile and I’m proud to say we have a video interview with Jason Hoffman. We are highlighting the artisan board builder which Jason and business partner Casey McCrystal truly define. Like many other shapers over the past five years, Jason has been building his boards from start to finish in house. He used to shape out of a room he rented at Foam E-Z and just crank them out and then drop them off at a glass shop. Since times are tough he made the move and bought the glass shop next door to the old Foam E-Z location and has been building his business even during this crazy time. As I mentioned before he has teamed up with Casey McCrystal to form a company called Ricochet. They are hands on and build each board from start to finish, that’s right, they take your order, shape it, glass it, and even hand it off to you when it’s done.

It’s been great knowing and working with Jason over the years so take a second to check out the conversation I had with him on this video. Check out their websites for more information.

Seal Beach - Big Waves, Friends, Crowds, and Chaos!

Yesterday Sunday February 28th 2010 was one of those days in Seal Beach history when everyone you know is out and about. The waves were the biggest of this winter, the weather was perfect and everyone was in a good mood! As usual when the waves get big and the tides are high all the local news vans show up and prepare for flooding etc... Sometimes it is a bit of a false alarm but yesterday didn't disappoint. The water flowed from NorthSide over to SouthSide and filled up the area between the berm and the houses, in some places it was up to four feet deep. Mitchy Dejarnet even got the opportunity to paddle from NorthSide down to his house at Twelfth street (check the pic in our slide show). On Saturday there was a Tsunami warning from the terrible earthquake in Chile. It obviously never arrived but the tidal surge along with the big surf, and high tide made for this flooding. These are days that remind me of my youth since they only happen about every five to ten years with the most exciting one being back in 1983. That was the year when the Pier came down along with Esther the oil Island. They say it's an El Nino Winter maybe it's true!?

The images for the slide show were given to us by Jim "J.B." Boswell. He takes some pretty amazing shots of the local surf, check out his site JB Photography.

BOARDROOM: LEGENDS OF SURFBOARD SHAPING

BOARDROOM: LEGENDS OF SURFBOARD SHAPING
Features the greatest legends of modern board shaping. We hear first hand on how they got started, who gave them a break and how they changed surfing history forever. We hear about the transition from balsa to foam , from long board to short board, from California to Hawaii. Get ready for a trip back in time to the beginning of modern day shaping.

Looks like it's gonna be a cool flick. Can't wait for it to come out!

Check out www.boardroomthemovie.com for more info.

Mike Marshall Long Time Harbour Shaper, RIP

We lost a a great member of the Harbour Surfboards extended family this past Saturday Feb 6th. I was lucky enough to meet Mike Marshall back in the early Eighties while I was starting my stint as an employee at the Harbour Shop. Mike would often stop in and heckle us guys in the back. He was one of Rich's original production shapers back in the sixties. One of my fondest memories of Mike was from the Harbour Surfboards 25th Anniversary party back in 1987. He was just the life of the party amongst the many surf characters from the Sixties and Seventies eras. It was always a pleasure to run into Mike and Sharon at various events and talk shop, I think he especially enjoyed talking education with my wife (she's a high school teacher) since he was a long time teacher himself.

It sounds like Mike's last days were as pleasant as can be expected. Here's what Rich Harbour emailed me:

As many already know Mike Marshall, my dear friend of more than four and half decades, had a stroke early Monday morning. After arriving at
emergency, they found he had a very aggressive form of leukemia.
Brain surgery was performed to relieve pressure and he remained in an unconscious state thereafter.
Later in the week the family was informed that he was not going to survive, so they decided to remove him from all life support and take him home to live his final days where he was most comfortable.
He was transported by ambulance Thursday, and on the way to his home they convinced the ambulance driver to take a lap around the parking lot at Blackies. With that done, they delivered him to his house where he rested in the "Museum Room" on a hospital bed, now in a Blackie's T-shirt in place of a hospital gown - much more appropriate. I visited Friday and Saturday. There were family and friends near him, all in a very positive mood, prepared for the final moments of his life that ended shortly after I left yesterday.
I wish his wife Sharon and family well. These are going to be tough times and my heart and thoughts are with them.
May he rest in peace.

I'm gonna miss bumping into Marshall at the various surf events.

Best wishes to Sharon and his family from the Harbour Surfboards extended family.

FEBRUARY'S RAFFLE; Three Sets of Future K1 Bamboo Keels

Up for grabs this month (February) is three sets of Future K1 Bamboo Keels. That's right, three winners this month!!! All you have to do to be entered is purchase at least $30 worth of stuff either online or in the shop. We'll announce the winners at the beginning of March.

January's winner of the Fusion Install Kit is Leroy Haight of Weirsdale, Florida. Here's what Leroy emailed us after finding out he was the lucky winner;
"I have never won anything this is great. I have to say it is so great being able to get materials here in the middle of nowhere. Being raised in San Diego and living there for 40 years where materials were so easy to get. I have been making surfboards for 35 years and there is nothing better than riding a board you designed and hand crafted. So I would like to say Foam E-Z has enabled me to continue to rip in the water. Thanks"

Check out our February Newsletter for more information.

It's that E-Z! Happy raffling!