posts: 134969
Data license: Public Domain
This data as json
| post_id | thread_id | thread_title | post_number | author_username | post_date | post_date_iso | post_body |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 134969 | 4461 | Stoker V machine - Fowler or Anderson? | 28 | Bruce Fowler | Aug 1, 2018 | 2018-08-01T11:26:49-0400 | Continuation due to word count limits: To make this long story shorter, bottom line was I agreed to make them, then banged out 2 he was begging me for, which I did in a turnaround of 18 hrs. start to finish and he & his driver met me at the SB Airport for a hand off as I was headed to Mexico with my wife. When I got back I figured out how to make them, which there is always a learning curve when you do something out of the norm. Rostoker wanted to sell them for $450 and pocket $100, and the only way I could do that was build them 100% on my own in my garage in Solvang. For the first couple years, that's where ALL of them were built..... I bank rolled the whole thing, and as business grew it became a massive overload in my garage set up including having to sand in my shaping room. During that time I also became afflicted with SLEEP APNEA, which if any of you have ever lived through that, it is one exhausting experience! Although I have glassed a helluva lotta boards since I was 15 or so....... first doing my own and a lot of Bradbury shapes, then later owning my own factory "The Surfing Underground" in the Radon Boatyard, where I worked briefly building Radon Boats with the Radon boys. But during that Stoker startup time period, I can't say I did my best glasswork, thank god the overall package that people received was good enough for me to build the business and make the jump to having Haakenson glass them after the initial first two years. Bottom line on glassing: Haakenson is doing excellent work now. Not sure what happened on the clear one mentioned here nor the color work someone else wasn't happy with, but Bob still glasses a lot of Channel Islands and they have very stringent QC on all of those boards. To add to that, Yater has all his work now done through Bob's factory. He is quietly shaping there, but does not want to make that widely known so please respect Renny's privacy. I have known him for many years, and at 85, I am still in awe of his work ethic, which I believe in and aspire to stand up to by comparison. 3. The Stoker website: "The Real Story Behind the Stoke". Well now, that's an interesting recall of how things went. It might be suggested that there is some "bad blood" between stoker & myself, and I would be hard pressed if I denied that there are definitely some less than warm & fuzzy feelings between us. If you read his story, he has himself set up with making one of the first shortboards ever with his teacher from "The Deveraux School" which he calls a 'private school' located on Coal Oil Point (Deveraux) just north of Isla Vista. His inspiration is seeing GG's "Innermost Limits of Pure Fun". Jeff Kruthers, his teacher at Deveraux, worked for Bing for a time when he lived down south, but by his own admisison, was never a career shaper. He worked with his wife Wendy at "The Chart House" and at Deveraux before progressing to Real Estate and becoming parcel owners at Hollister. Jeff owns a longboard I shaped him that he told me "it is the best surfboard I have ever had along with one Brewer". He has had that board for years, which got a radical twist in it from being stuffed somewhere on a hot day, and he told me it seemed like it worked EVEN BETTER, then he ordered another one from me asking if I could duplicate the twist in it somehow! He also rides a 7'4" V Machine that I made him that he knee paddles because he has rotator cuff issues that don't allow him to prone paddle anymore. He can knee paddle the 7'4" because, unlike so many of us, he still weighs the same weight as in high school and he told me he can still wear his PV Surf club jacket! But, the point here...... oh, yeah, bad blood.... Randy, Randall, Rostoker, Rodstroker, Stokie....... whatever you wanna call him, decided because of our rift, he would leave 7+ years of my hard work, bankrolling, shaping, redesigning what I consider a knockoff of "The Gypsy" (which was one of the pictures hanging on his wall in his I.V. cubby apartment next to a foto of me by Steve Bissell with hair down past my wazoo)... anyway..... as his enabling buddy Matt Wessen said "I've seen this thing just sit and quagmire for 15+ years or something, and it never got a life until you got involved." So, when you help out a friend that approaches you..... the same kid that rode my coat tails from age ten, rode in my car to every surf, came along with me when I was invited to a very small screening of George's rough cut of "Echoes" with 6 or 7 of us there in Montecito including Nat and I think it was Alby (Falzon)..... oh, and also having Randall LIVE under my parents roof when he fell upon hard times........ well, I think you get the picture. As one of our very close friends that has known both of us forever, she said "c'mon Bruce, you know Randy, never a bad word for anyone, but he has always been a leach, he's spent his life mooching off of you". Cut me out of your convenient truth, but the history is there, documented, matter of record of countless guys (and women for that matter) ripping on boards that I shaped, refined, and made available to people worldwide while doing everything from soup to nuts, A to Z, answering all the questions, shaping, building 100% until I could hand off to Haakenson, running boards in to Hawk's, picking them up, packing, shipping, handling all deposits, keeping customers regularly in the loop (not something all shapers are famous for)...... promoting "HIS" so called design while building his brand. There wasn't ONE of those guys around doing it next to me....... they were at the beach surfing & working on their tan. The reason his label/brand took off was there was finally someone that worked at it like a job..... me. So when I was told "Randall's surfboard company", "Stokie's surfboard design" I clarified it a few times for people and said "What surfboard company"? To the best of my knowledge Randall has never shaped a surfboard. Where is his surfboard company? You mean my place, Haakenson's or Anderson's? Business license? Tax returns for all those checks I paid him after we agreed to $50 per "Label Royalty"? Clarification : Randall Rostoker owns a LABEL. He "popularized " a shape that has been commonplace since the late 60's or early 70's....... how many surfboards did you see or ride that had a nose rocker of 4' to 5", flat bottom with some vee in the tail, wide rounded diamond or something similar around 20", 21" 22"? I mean, you stick a logo on it and that becomes YOUR design? I don't think so. Randy is a talker, not a shaper. He's a nice guy with his own m.o. - a very easy to like guy that for whatever reason everyone ends up feeling obligated to help him. I'm like a big brother to him and I see it differently, I once said all his enablers remind me of the story "The Emperor's New Clothes". Seems to me he's helping himself just plenty. I got fed up.... I'm the little kid in the story that saw the Emperor parade down the street buck naked. It's just a matter of perspective on what you wanna believe. For a guy that has lived off the gov't. tit and his dad's social security he has done just fine, but when you forget to thank people that are making your life immeasurably better, enabling you to live a pretty carefree lifestyle traveling & surfing every day there are waves... - by working their ass off putting money in your pocket for doing nothing..... well, how would you feel? Okay, so I didn't wanna make this a goddamn novel, but so much for my introduction to Jamboards. Maybe they will blackball me after this,, but I'm trying to be as honest and as fair as I can be. It just seems to me an unkind cut to be left out of...... uh,"the real truth" when the historical record everywhere else says different. Just figure I'm a historian of surfboards that's been shaping for over fifty years, and I have difficulty when someone gets a logo, no matter how cool or not the logo is, then decides to hijack a known surfboard shape and claim it as their own design. I mean, c'mon are you really drinking the kool aid, really? At the end of the day, the thousands of dollars in "Label Royalty" checks, the promotion & brand building, the shipping worldwide, the built up following and believers in this approach to riding waves...... all of it..... it would have been enough to just have some grace and say "Thank You for making it easier than ever before to sell the boards I ride with MY label"......... and that is regardless of WHO makes them. Not spell checked, but you can read between the lines, I gotta get in the shaping room before it hits 90 degrees. Peace! |