The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center is all about preserving surfing’s past – but the San Clemente institution is also setting a new course toward the future.
A new executive director, Jeff Alter, was recently appointed and a mostly new board of directors made up of surf industry leaders will tap their insider knowledge gained through decades of experience in retail, apparel, and other facets of the surf culture to guide the 25-year-old institute forward.
The organization’s founder, Dick Metz, 95, recently stepped down from the board and helped to hand pick the new leader, son of good friend Hobie Alter. Metz has known Jeff Alter since he was just a day old and his famed boardmaker father brought him home from the hospital.
“It was just time, in my judgment,” said Metz, one of the oldest early-era surfers living who helped create the retail industry when he teamed with Hobie to morph the brand into surf shops. “(The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center) certainly has come a long way, I am so happy and delighted.”
When Hobie Alter got his board-building business in Dana Point going in the ’50s, Metz became the business side of the operation, opening Hobie shops in Southern California and Hawaii.
In those early years, Metz would accumulate old surfboards people wanted to get rid of, and instead of allowing them to go to the dumpyard, he would use them as decor in the shops.
“Leave it here, I’ll give you a T-shirt,” Metz, of Laguna Beach, would tell them.
But one person’s trash is another’s treasure – and these early-era surfboards would become precious archivals of surfing’s storied history.
“There was so much interest, people looking at clothing and the new boards, but on the walls were these old ones,” Metz said. “It was apparent to me that we needed to preserve them for historic reasons.”
Needing a physical place to put all the acquired surfboards, Metz teamed with Newport Beach surfer Spencer Croul, another fellow surf history enthusiast, to acquire a building in the hills of San Clemente. Croul became co-founder and a longtime board member of the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center and will stay on the board of directors.
As the collection grew – which includes many turn-of-the-century boards ridden by icons of the sport such as Duke Kahanamoku and Lorrin “Whitey” Harrison – so spread the global interest and impacts of surfing culture.
“This is an unusual sport that has taken over the culture of the world,” Metz said. “It’s just amazing how it impacted and changed the culture throughout the world, whether it was lifestyle, clothes and music – all of that was impacted in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.”
Even at 95, Metz has an encyclopedia-like memory of nearly a century worth of surf history.
On a recent day, he talked about some of the unique boards lining the walls of the museum, like the first-ever to have resin covering balsa wood, inspired by a mosquito bomber aircraft in World War II using the same materials. Two aeronautical engineers at Douglas Aircrafts happened to be surfers, applying the idea to their craft.
“I’d like to still be a docent,” he said.
The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center is often called the “Smithsonian of Surfing,” amassing through the years the largest and most-significant collection of iconic surfboards and surf-related memorabilia – everything from art, fashion, film, photography, music and more. And, in 2015, SHACC loaned several items to the Smithsonian Institution as part of an exhibit about the “Endless Summer” and the surf film’s impact on society.
SHACC has three of the remaining Kahanamoku boards known to exist, along with 800 more spanning decades.
Jeff Alter, who lives in Laguna Beach, inherited his father’s building knack and started out as a woodworker, but it wasn’t long before he joined his father’s business, Hobie Designs, in 1989 to help build a 60-foot catamaran. A true waterman, Hobie Alter innovated designs for sailing and surfing and even a glider.
Jeff Alter later took over as the company’s president, retiring in 2018.
“I just wanted to try to keep this alive, keep the history alive,” Alter, 62, said about coming on board as the new executive director. “It’s just kind of exciting. We’re just getting our feet wet.”
Top of the list of priorities is getting a more public-facing building closer to the coast, with talks happening with several beach towns. Early in the Dana Point Harbor renovation plans, there were talks of a museum there, but nothing concrete has evolved from those earlier discussions, Alter said.
Longtime surf industry leaders Paul Naude and Mark Christy, both who live in Laguna Beach, will serve as co-chairs of the new board. Alter, Randy Hild, Greg MacGillivray, Dan McInerny and Royce Cansler will also have board seats, joined by existing board members Croul and Patti Paniccia.
Croul said in a statement that the “exceptional group of directors brings the horsepower and expertise needed to solidify SHACC’s position as the premier surf archive, research center, and museum worldwide.”
“Their leadership will ensure that SHACC not only survives, but thrives for generations to come,” Croul said.
While the large building tucked in the hills is great for archiving the massive collections, having a space more visible and accessible to the public is important, board members said.
Christy, who owns all the Hobie Surf Shops and also has a real estate background, said more people need to see what the building holds.
“It sits here, the greatest collection on the planet, in a building in the hills of San Clemente and even people who surf three days a week don’t know it’s here,” he said. “It just blows my mind.”
Surfing is the official state sport “and this is the mecca for telling that story,” Christy said.
“It’s an international culture, for the most part, but really it’s been taken to the next level by Southern California,” he said. “All the CEOs and surf brands started here.”
Naude is one of those industry leaders and is no stranger to the surf world, a longtime Billabong executive who a decade ago created his own brand, Vissla. He’s also an avid surfboard collector with nearly 600 in his personal collection.
“Surfing lifestyle and surf culture is all encompassing for me. Getting involved here, I’m a collector and I’m super interested in the heritage of surfing,” said Naude, who started doing ding repairs as a kid before he became a board shaper.
“I’m also very interested in seeing Dick’s legacy continue for perpetuity,” he added. “I think we have a responsibility to preserve surf culture.”
He recited the saying: “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you came from.”
Surfing is continuing to evolve, as evident in a wall at the museum now displaying high-performance surfboards dedicated to the recent Olympic games and the surfers who competed on the global stage.
“It continues to evolve as we go forward,” Naude said. “Surfing is very unique, it is one of the unique activities that is all encompassing – from a sport, lifestyle and industry. And collectively, we have earned a reputation for working together to perpetuate that lifestyle and everything that goes with it.”
Having the new board with a revitalized energy will bring a lot of “salt into the building,” Alter said.
Metz, who first learned to surf in Laguna Beach in the ’30s and in recent years earned a spot in the Surfing Walk of Fame and the Surf Industry Members Association’s Lifetime Achievment Award, said he’s excited to “pass the torch to a new generation.”
“Now at 95, knowing that SHACC will be in the hands of a team with the energy, focus, leadership, guidance, and fundraising acumen to take it to the next level, is just incredible,” Metz said. “I’m deeply grateful to everyone who made this possible.”
