Surf Royalty: Catching Up with Herbie Fletcher

Catch Up – Season 2 Episode 3

If California surfing had a royal family, the Fletchers had to be it. For this Catch Up second season episode, we hooked up with the family’s patriarch, Herbie, and had him review some of the key moments of a remarkable tale of a life. Tune in to see this episode.

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Hi, I’m Herbie Fletcher,
and this is my Catch Up . Getting addicted. What happened was that during the
summer we always lived on the beach in a trailer on Huntington
Beach by the pier. When I was 9 years old, we took a trip to San Clemente and we
were on the north beach. But we always went to T
street and saw the surfers and they lost their boards. And I would grab their board and
ride small waves as they came back. And then the older ones
came to get their board and they didn’t care, I was
just playing with the boards. So I went back to Pasadena
and went to deliver newspapers and I saved 25 euros and bought a
Velzy Jacobs that I saw in the newspaper. So my dad took us to Doheny,
where all the surfers go, right? And my brother had a
surfboard and we went surfing. And it was very natural for me
because I was a gymnast at the time. It was so much fun I couldn’t believe it. Small waves and a big board
that you could ride on them. It was the best thing ever, man. But my mom used to come to the
piers when I skipped school to surf and said: ‘I know you’re down there!’ She would shout it to me from the
top of the pier and I would hide below. And it was a lot of fun, but
back then there were no wetsuits. That’s why it was very cold. Pioneer in Hawaii. I’m from Huntington
beach and from Pipeline. Because I moved to
Pipeline as soon as possible. I dropped out of high
school and went there. And I lived in Sunset
but I walked every day in the afternoon, after surfing at
Sunset, I walked around Pipeline. In 1965 I surfed a tube there and it was crazy for
me because I was a kid. And I think in 1967 they
put me in a magazine to surf the tube, and it was:
‘Tips on how to surf a tube’. Homeless on Sunset. I was homeless living in
the bushes on sunset beach because all the other
people lived in the city. There were no more people
on the North Shore, no footprints. you know? Val Valentine lived there
and there were few people who lived there. We bought Dewey
Weber’s Cadillac after he left. I think it was 93 euros and it
was a 1956 Cadillac, you know? So there was a big bed in the
back seat and in the front seat. and we were 4 who bought it together. Trading Foams. I gave up on the competition, I
just wanted to be in the Duke exam. And I was there, and it was amazing. There was no money, so I made surfboards. And then, in 1969, I got the Hawaiian
Islands franchise for Clark Foam. So I sold foam boards and delivered them. It was so much fun, I was
able to go see all my friends. And then on the North Shore, Barry
Kanaiaupuni and I would come here and to get foam and then everyone
would come to my house to get foam. Getting to know Dibi. Dibi’s father was a surfer from Makaha. Walter has always been a jury in
the Makaha surf competition and his daughter, Joyce Hoffman,
was the world champion. And then I was on Makaha
Beach in 1965 and I see Dibi and she was training
together with Don Hanson. And Corky Carroll left my gun
’cause we were on the same team He left his weapon which became my weapon. It was a Dick Brewer, a
10’4 I think, or it was a 10’2. He dropped it off at Joyce Hoffman’s. And someone said to me, ‘Corky left his
surfboard at Joyce Hoffman’s apartment, it’s down there in the Makaha’ area. So I went there and there was a girl at
the door, it was Debbie. And I asked, ‘Do you know
where Joyce Hoffman lives?’ And she said, ‘Yes, it’s my sister.’
And I was amazed. And she took me to the apartment
and I took my board and the subway. And 6 months later we were in a surf competition
and we got together. She was 14 years old at the time. And then she ran off with
me in 1968 to Pipeline. And her father came looking
for us but he couldn’t find us. We went to Maui and I
had a few months in Hawaii but it got radical with
a lot of drugs there. So we decided to leave and go
back to the North Shore and live there. I was in the same business because
her Dad and her sister were surfers. Her mother was a beach girl and they had the opportunity to like
me and understand what was going on. And we had grandchildren or rather, they had grandchildren,
Christian and Nathan. Be a father early. It was very radical to have a child
at that age and take care of him. I did not know anything. I needed Debbie’s help for everything. And she took care of me, knew
what was going on and taught me. We’d come to California
and then come back to Hawaii. But then, when Christian
needed to go to school, we moved to California. The emotion returned. And then when I got back to California
and started my surf shop in 1975 The excitement came back because I
couldn’t get waves to surf in California. And I had a longboard, I always had one and surfed with her on the North
Shore, and in the summer at Rocky Point. What I thought was that there
was no surfing in California. I had my longboard and surfed Trestles, Newport and wherever. And on the bigger days I
surfed with my shortboard, but most days the waves were small. So what do you do when
the waves are small? I wanted to go surfing, I’m a surfer. So I said, ‘The enthusiasm is back!’ And I started doing longboards And I went to Obi, and I
asked him to varnish my board. And he said, ‘We don’t
varnish longboards.’ And I said, ‘There’s an 8’6 Lightning Bolt
gun over there that you’re varnishing.’ And he: ‘We don’t varnish longboards’. And I said, ‘This is an 8’6
longboard, what’s the problem?’ And he says, ‘We don’t
varnish longboards.’ So I went to Ricky, and
he said, ‘Yeah, let’s rock.’ He varnished it and that made his day. Because he made boards and then
he also started making longboards. I sold so many, I sold 500 longboards in my first year of business, but then… … the fashion for longboards exploded
and other people started making them… … down the coast. Maalaea cover photo. It’s a strange wave. And I called Jerry Lopez, who
was living in Maui at the time. And I said, ‘Jerry, call me when the
waves are big, I want to go to Maui and surf my longboard in Maliah’. And I surfed a lot of waves. But when I got there the Buttnson Awol and other people like Mark Ladel
was out there on the grass. And they had some rum there. But we got there and I bring
this board as I walk to the beach and they say, ‘Hello, Herbie!’ And they’re laughing at me and
asking, ‘What is that?’, and I said, ‘I’m going there to do a
hang 10 and 360 on the nose’. And they burst out
laughing when I said that. Onward, I went in there and did
this and they were flabbergasted. And this is the photograph, I’m
way up on the face of the wave. And you had to hang on
to the top of the wave face. It’s a wave you can never make a cutback You take off on the shoulder, and paddle
towards it without making maneuvers. And you are very high
on the face of the wave. And if you go to the bottom, it’s over. Astrodeck. Well, there was this guy, Jim
Van Vleck, and he came to my store in 1975 and had a very
thin tensile membrane. And Mike Doyle was researching
waxes and then sex wax came along. So afterwards we were always looking
for something better than paraffin. And white paraffin was
acceptable you get traction with it but it wears out, especially if
you’re in the water for 3 hours. So I wanted something that
would stick together forever. So we brought this thing
that more or less worked It made your skin irritated
because it was hard. So I smoothed it out and
left it hard in the middle so that the center of your chest would be stuck
there but you wouldn’t have sore nipples. They keep calling me
saying: ‘We want to buy’. I will never sell. I don’t care if I go broke, I don’t sell. It is closely associated with my name. I love it. Wave Warriors Videos . Okay, at that time everyone was
making surf movies, they weren’t videos. And what I did was an ad for Astrodeck with Michael Ho, Shaun Thompson
and Court Lawnard, the windsurfer. And I made this ad and I
had so much footage that after I thought: ‘What do I do with
all these things I’ve recorded?’. I had a friend in the music
industry and I said, ‘Look can you provide me with music? AND I have all the footage
to make a surf movie.’ I didn’t know I was making a
surf movie when recording this. And then we put it all together
and made the first ‘Wave Warriors’ . And it was so fun to put
it all together because get to see all these guys
surfing over and over again. To make the films at that time
it was in the Super-8 format. You had to send it in to develop it. And you had the 3-minute clips, right? That you gathered, analyzed and
said: ‘That one looks good to me’, and then you cut that part out,
put it in a box, numbered it and… … you would record it on your list
as: ‘Number 1 – Dave’, or whoever. And I glued this to the
box around a big box. And it was all rolled up in this big box. Then they would take
it out of the box and we would cut the film
together, and take it And we had these movies
with all these old surfers and he did it in Flippy South, but the
biggest boos he got was from the girls. It wasn’t the two brides or anything like that, it was the bikini
girls on the beach. You could hear everyone booing. Art and Inspiration. I’ve known Julian Schnabel since I was 17. I met him in Texas, he was a
surfer in a surf competition I won and some guys showed up in a red
Mustang and I said, ‘Can I go with you?’ And they were just chilling, you know? So I got in and Julian
was in the back seat. I always kept in touch with
Julian, he became a famous artist but he also became a director. And he was making a movie, ‘Basquiat’ and called me and said,
‘Hi, Herbie, do you have any… filming waves with light
coming from behind?’. And I said, ‘Yes, I have many.’ So I sent him footage of waves backlit in Pipeline. Forward, I sent it to him and he I was looking for the ‘Basquiat’ , in the middle of all the
skyscrapers in New York… …with the big wave, you know? And he was saying,
‘I want to go to Hawaii’ because he always wanted to go to Hawaii. And I’ve always been a painter. We’ve always painted surfboards but when I was a kid, we
always painted album covers. Because it was all we had to work with. Or painted the wall at
home with big flowers leaves and things like in Hawaii. And in the cabin we
had to go around the roof and then there was a window
where you could see the sunset. Yeah, we always painted
and drew and whatever And I worked with oil and then I found a Kerlix when I was 17 and it
dried fast so I painted it in my bedroom. Have you ever seen rainbow boards? They were colorful and had many patterns. I loved them, I love color. I still do. It’s all around me. Surf Engines. I was surfing logs on the outside, right? I surfed 100 waves and came and Laird was living
in my house in Pipeline. And Buzzy and Hans
Hedemann were there, and I would go to the beach
and they would hide. because they didn’t want
to bring the jet skis upstairs. So I would go up and
say, ‘Laird, let me tow you, I have a ski rope here.’
And then he would fan her like that. I said: ‘Come on, leave me’.
And they’d say, ‘You’re crazy, Herbie. Leave us alone, we’re
watching football, go away’. And they didn’t tow with me. And I say, ‘I just surfed 100
waves on the log on the outside’. Probably not 100, was an example,
but I must have surfed 25 big ones. Big and giant waves on jet skis. And I just wanted to tow them but they weren’t ready, maybe
they were too young or something. Laird was 22 or so, young. Peter Cole said it was the biggest
wave he’d ever seen anyone surf there. Investment in tow surfing. Pots was out, it was the second
choir, it ended up in the third and couldn’t escape. I saw him there, they were
rowing around and couldn’t escape. So I went in, I ran to the house and
I went to get a tow rope, I came back and I was standing on the back of
my water scooter clinging to the irons. I went slowly and I was shaking the rope. And Pots grabbed it. So we were waiting a wave on the outside of
the pipeline, but it didn’t arrive. So I took them to the second tube,
and that day everything was very hectic. And he surfed a good tube on
that wave and headed for the beach and then Carroll grabbed it…
and so did Con. Created to Create. I love creating new boards and new things. Like the longboard and all
the things we have nowadays. you know? And you’ve got Alex
Knowles making all kinds of weird boards. And I love going to film Alex and
all the new things that are done. It’s reverting to the
old days and it’s fun. It’s just imagination, you know?
We sat there listening to music and dreaming of surfing and
how to create new things. ‘I’m afraid of Nathan’. Well, I’m afraid of Nathan. I can’t even, you know? He rides big waves and I don’t
even think about it, I just say, ‘Okay’. And that’s the attitude you have to have. It doesn’t matter, if you can go
there and surf, then it doesn’t matter. It’s like I told you
about the 4 year old who if you could climb to the extension
and Nathan has the same attitude… …you can go, and there are
videos that prove it. and truth. And it goes on, and it goes out in…
they’re all boys. you know? And Debbie
promotes and sets everything up. ‘I will not stop’. I still surf, kid! And I won’t stop. Well, I go to work every day. Practically minus the weekends. And then I go surfing in
the afternoon when it’s nice. I don’t like getting up in the morning
on those cold mornings anymore. I like it when it’s nice and warm. But I paint a lot, I make sculptures,
I dream a lot, I have meetings and we talk about different
things, I still make movies. And I love going to Hawaii and spending the whole day on the
beach taking pictures. I won’t have lunch. I sit there all day. And people say, ‘I’m going
to Holly Eve’s for a hot lunch.’ And I say, ‘You’re going
to lose him. As soon as you’re gone, it’s lunch
time and they’re gone. One of the good ones will row and
you’ll miss that, you won’t be here’. And I did my scene and I did well. And in the art world,
it’s a progression of surf for art. And I did it because I felt I
couldn’t be a surfer to rule myself. So, I knew I could do art and surf
and I was gradually getting there. Bonus Content. Point your Spotify camera at this code. Catch Up Translation and Subtitling
Filipe Bonita Bernardes / FUEL TV