Ah the shambhala like state of our oceanic friendly southern California sunshine city. San Diego is one of the worlds iconic locations for surfing. Like the Beach Boys said, it’s “hooo, HOOO, All Over La Jolla, Surfing USA, twanga twang.”
Many things endear us tenderly as San Diegans, like the fountain on the Prado that Nickel Creek sang about, or the top of Mount Soledad that looks like it belongs to the grinch, or the Mission trails that we all stroll along in.
What is the San Diego Insiders Code?
Certain things mark the voodoo that the true San Diegan insiders do do and don’t do. Like wearing socks with your flip flops–never do that. Go get an old hat and wear shorts and flip flops instead.
There is one thing that distinguishes a San Diego surf lover above all others, that’s ownership of a classic surfboard that has been restored by the G&S guild-ed master Joe Roper.
Brief History of Joe Roper
Joe was a surfer grom who loved surfing in Pacific Beach. G&S sponsored him as a skater, and he joined their guild of surf craft. He also joined the Wind An Sea surf club and charged like hell surfing big rock. Later he wonderfully distinguished San Diegian surfing by similarly charging the Pipeline. Gary Lopez gifted Joe a stunning lightning bolt surfboard, and they remain friends.
Joe has gone on to provide more than 47 years of epic aesthetic surfing services to the San Diego community with his shop Joe Roper’s Surfboard and SUP Repair.
Vintage Surfboard Restorations
Restored vintage surfboards are museum worthy displays of mid-century modern surf craft. Every time you look at one of these restored surfboards you take a mental surfing trip with them. I walk into my board room, and I’ve gone surfing, gone surfing, gone surfing, and gone surfing just by looking around at the aesthetic gems that Joe has restored to gleaming brilliance.
It takes a competent craft person to can navigate the many modalities of surfboard restoration, from cleaning, to sanding, to patching, to sanding again, laminating, more sanding, cleaning & prep—color matching, and applying a gel coat and buffing, surfboard repair requires many, often simultaneous levels of expertise to get the best results.
Tales of Eric Huffman & Joe Roper
Eric Huffman knows more about surfboard fins than anyone else I know.
His qualification include developing contemporary surfboard production at UC San Diego, his charitible contributions including the epic Plastic Fantastic he gifted the California Surfing Museum in Oceancide. Then there’s the pope’s surfboard signed in the shed.
The shed itself is a whirling vortex of the most iconic surfboard wave on planet Earth.
He can give you a dissemination on whatever surfboard question you bring to him, and he can do it in one video take.
In my Land Cruiser one days was a twin fin Santa Cruz that I had picked up from Mikey’s Pack Ratt Records the day. I pulled it out and walked into the original Bird’s Surf Shed on Morena Blvd. It was a treat, inside I found both Eric Huffman and Joe Roper.
I had never before talked with both Eric Huffman and Joe Roper at the same time, yet I have chartered both of them collaboratively to restore many surfboards in my collection. The moment I saw them both in person the iconic image of Bird getting the bird by roper on the same wave at Windinsea came to mind. Together, they emit a powerful energy that feels like Bpreas and Vulcanus Rex.
Joe was dropping off an epically restored Channin Surfboards, with a pipeline of pinlines that merged and diverged like an Esther pattern. The surfboard was incredibly emotionally evocative and left you with a sentient vide of a woken master.
Eric and I were gleaming over this newly restored surfboard masterpiece, and Bird dropped the mike, “Why do I do this again?” he asked me?
Spontaneously I replied, “Surfboards make people feel good, even non-surfers can feel better after experiencing a surfboard like this.”
Face it, in your moment of death you will look back on your life and think–well what was I up to, what did I look at? If you can say you spent much of your time looking at epic Joe Roper restored surfboards, you feel satisfied.
That’s why the mark of every true San Diegan, whether they live here or elsewhere, is ownership in a Joe Roper restored vintage surfboard.