A portrait of the craftsman Mike Olivares. Photo: Ger-I Lewis
Environmentally friendly? Not a chance. Making surfboards never has been. Foam dust and cigarette smoke hang in the portion of remaining breathable air of a claustrophobic closet that is a shaping bay. What’s foam dust you ask? Keep quiet and learn a little. This is no Quiksilver/Roxy pop-out, made in China, Google analytic marketing hustle designed for the bourgeois, it’s something else entirely.
The craftsman and I shuffle through small drifts of the snow-like (or if you lived through the Studio 54 years, Peruvian Flake powder) freshly shaved foam. A Skil 100 lies on the soon-to-be cosmic, wave riding dream machine. Sinbad wished he had a magic carpet of a ride like this beauty! “Look man, I pulled in the rails so she’ll hold in the tube, yet still flow,” a ghost from Dogtown’s past tells me, puffing his smoke. “Kids don’t know how to flow these days. Look at their hands when they surf! No flow.”
This ghost is Mike Olivares, a certified legend – and not in today’s loosely used terms, which are tagged and hash-tagged in an attempt to describe many a juvenile and/or apprentice. Nope, he’s an actual legend.
I stare at his gnarled hands; the callouses, lines, blisters, age spots and scars reveal a life of shaping boards by hand. Dimensions, weight, and the intangible yet necessary are computed in his mind. He wants to talk to the rider about style and flow. He wants the board to work for the rider. “It won’t stick in the wave,” he says. “It will be loose, and your cutback will be like butter, man,” he says, waving his hands over the double barrel concave to vee bottom.
Michael Olivares got his start humbly enough. He roughed out boards, playing the role of whipping boy. These days, it would be certainly termed “child abuse,” but back then was known as “paying dues.” Those were the days of yore, when surfers were usually military veterans or other sturdy, non-conformists looking to tune out of squaresville. Dick Dale numbers blared on transistor radios, Pall Malls were inhaled without filters, and the surf movie reigned supreme at locales such as the Santa Monica Civic and the Hermosa Bijou. These cats used paraffin wax for traction, had surf knots on their bodies and boards made from balsa.
Michael began his apprenticeship under the tutelage of another legend, Con Colburn, who founded Con Surfboards of Santa Monica, California. His first experience with surf culture harkens back to hanging around the Wilkens Brothers Surf Shop in Santa Monica, back in the days before the abominable invention of the leash, developed by the weak-minded and weak-bodied smartphone addicted surf zombie of today. “We would hang around Bay Street waiting for boards to wash in when a surfer wiped out, then paddle them back out there to the guys swimming in,” Mike says, staring down the lines of the half-shaped board.
It was different back then: no one had the newest thing of the day. Most of it was hand-me-down junk, beat up and barely usable. “Shoot, our crew of kids had a little shack we kept our stuff in when we finally got our own boards, but we only had one or two wetsuits, so we had to share ‘em,” he remembers. ”If you showed up late, you were assed out and had to wait. The wetsuits were all surplus Navy Dive stuff and hand-me-downs, stiff as a board and they never fit.”
Every few minutes, he’ll let out an approving grunt as he carves magic from foam. “Yeah, that’s it,” will slip out of an otherwise tight-lipped ship. In this case, “ship” refers to a US Navy man, a Vietnam veteran. Mike spent 18 months’ duty on Midway Island, and as the surf was inaccessible or off-limits, he found an old type of Paipo board and modified it to a skimboard, then commenced slashing up the lagoon shallows and backwash. “Time of my life,” Mike says a bit wistfully. “When I got out in 1974, I had two years left on my active reserve status and had to report at Point Mugu Naval Base. The wave out there is a top-to-bottom tube with nobody out. The best summer wave in SoCal, bar none.”
Decades ago, where Olivares got his start, Bay Street actually broke with a consistent, nice wave. The heavies of the era included Jeff Sibly, Rolf Arness, and Barry Amos. Of course, there was the POP Pier also to sharpen one’s skill as well.
Mike adjusts, calculates and tinkers with the finite as the cosmic dream machine takes shape before my eyes. As he works, the craft gradually appears. Those decades of tinkering have paid off in spades. Learning the hard way from the Bay Street heavies shaped him as delicately as a one of the surfboards he shapes. If you’re lucky enough to pass muster, you perhaps might be recruited to add a hand-shaped piece of functional art to your quiver. That would be number 20,000-something for Mike. What’s a quiver you ask? Why, I oughta bust ya one across the chops, gremmie.
