Left : a Hobie shop in Lahaina on Maui ( circa 1962 ); right : Metz , Al Weimers , Herb Nolan and local guys checking out the surf at Makaha , on Oahu ’ s west side , in a Ford Model A car in 1954
I could sell them as fast as I could get them .” Then other manufacturers , like Velzy in Hermosa Beach , California , all started making extra boards to sell if someone didn ’ t want to wait and didn ’ t care about having a particular color , Metz says . “ So everybody started making extra boards and that ’ s when surfing started to really blossom and the public got interested in it and it became a real sport . Up until then , … the boards were too heavy — girls couldn ’ t surf [ and ] kids couldn ’ t surf . They couldn ’ t carry a board , they couldn ’ t take it home [ or ] put it on the car .”
BIRTH OF THE SURF INDUSTRY Pretty soon , a company started making surfboard racks for cars , which the Hobie store sold along with boards and repair kits that Metz created with resin and fiberglass , as well as pieces of wax — a square of paraffin wax used for canning at the time — before commercial surfboard wax came about . Then surf trunks and T-shirts started filling the shelves including shirts with a Hobie logo that said “ Dana Point , California ,” which Metz changed to “ Honolulu , Hawaii ,” and they began selling like hotcakes .
“ I sold thousands of them because that showed that you ’ d been to Hawail ,” Metz says . “ So all of a sudden , on the beaches in California , you ’ d see ‘ Hobie , Honolulu , Hawaii ,’ and that gave you a certain status . The ideal , cool , cool status was a pair of M . Nii trunks and a Hobie Honolulu T-shirt . That right away said , ‘ I ’ m a big deal , I ’ ve been to Hawaii , I ’ ve surfed bigger waves [ and ] I ’ m the coolest dude in town .’ ”
“… That started the surf industry as we know it because then manufacturers came along ,” Metz says , mentioning brands like Hang Ten , which made corduroy shorts . Metz even got in the business , starting a company called Surf Line Hawaii with design partner Dave Rochlen , which made Jams trunks and aloha shirts . The brand was a hit and even made the cover of Life magazine . “ It just went crazy ,” Metz says . “ So we were all of a sudden , we were the biggest deal in town .”
Metz lived in Hawaii for 30 years , but came back to Laguna all the time , going back and forth , and opened more Hobie stores in Florida — which didn ’ t work out because they were too far away to manage properly — and other islands in Hawaii , which were close enough to oversee . He also took over the Dana Point store and opened locations across California from Laguna Beach up to Santa Cruz . “ So this is how we became the biggest surf shop company in the world ,” Metz says . “ We had 22 stores .”
Alter went on to invent Hobie Cat catamarans , the Hobie Hawk radio-controlled glider , scratch-resistant polarized sunglasses and more , which would eventually be owned by different entities . But Metz remained in control of Hobie Sport , which ran the surf shops . He was involved with the Hobie stores for 50 years , off and on . “ I sold them four times … and the guys couldn ’ t run ’ em and I got ’ em back four times ,” Metz says . “ And so , every time I thought I was retiring , I got the stores back . And I knew them so well , it was easy for me to take them back .”
Part of the problem was understanding the Hawaiian market as it demanded a different range of sizes than in California . “ In Hawaii ,
From left : Phil Edwards , Metz and Duke Kahanamoku in Honolulu in 1965
it ’ s totally different ,” Metz says . “ You ’ ve got great big Samoans and you ’ ve got little skinny Chinese kids , so those size scales and color scales [ from California didn ’ t work ].”
Eventually , the fifth time Metz sold the stores and they went broke , he decided not to buy the company back . So local Mark Christy bought the Dana Point and Laguna Beach stores out of bankruptcy and still owns those remaining stores .
As Metz looks back on his years working with Alter , he explains it was a different
LAGUNA BEACH MAGAZINE 39