Surfing Heritage and Culture Center gives sneak peek at new home

Its move to Laguna Beach has been a labor of love, and the people instrumental in helping the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center get settled in got a sneak peek at the museum’s new home.

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Officials opened the center’s doors, temporarily, over the weekend to showcase the ongoing transformation of an abandoned building in downtown Laguna Beach, just steps from the sand where founder Dick Metz’s own story began at Main Beach. The center is expected to open to the public by September.

The idea is for it to be a place where the public can relax, have fun and enjoy the history of surfing, said Metz, 96, surrounded by longtime friends, donors, volunteers, surfing icons and the center’s expansive collection of historic surfboards, many of which couldn’t be displayed at the old location.

“It’s a great honor to be here and make this to last in perpetuity for all the young people who come along,” said Metz, an industry icon who is one of the oldest living surfers with roots to the early era of the sport in California.

Attendees at the invite-only viewing were greeted by a board honoring the 100 founding partners who first had the vision for what’s today considered the “Smithsonian of Surf.” Hawaiian boards made of heavy wood displayed along one wall of the expansive building tell the story of the early days of wave riding, while smaller, brightly colored boards on another wall progress the story to modern-day surfing. Under each board, a description noting the design and era’s significance to the sport.

“There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t up yet. It’s going to be way more exciting,” Metz said. “It’s going to have the versatility to do a whole lot of stuff.”

The vision for the new center isn’t just to have a place to showcase surfboards, though the collection is impressive, with wooden relics dating back to early Hawaiians and to boards ridden by current world champions and Olympians.

Metz envisions a “historic hangout” place that the next generation can learn from through events, lectures and school field trips, a gathering spot with a menu for people who want to pop in for lunch or dinner and sit amongst surfing’s past.

A small stage was set up with the Seaview Serenaders playing in the backdrop, showcasing how the museum will double as an entertainment venue, with the capacity to hold 400 people. There will be a screen for showcasing films and documentaries.

Laguna Beach surfer Norman Clark found a tucked-away aisle filled with boards lining the wall, marveling at the collection.

“It’s insane back here, it’s crazy,” he said. “For me as a surfer, and living here in Laguna, this is heaven… to have this means a lot to the people of Laguna Beach.”

For nearly three decades, the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center had been located in the hills of an industrial area of San Clemente, about 2.5 miles from the coast.

Just over a year ago, the museum’s leadership announced its move to Laguna Beach, and closed escrow in December.

The new building is an expansive 12,000-square-foot space — about 9,500 square feet downstairs slated for exhibits and entertainment, and another 2,400 square feet upstairs for offices, storage and archives. Large wooden beams stretch across the 30-foot-tall ceilings of the building that sits at Broadway Street and Ocean Avenue.

The new location puts the surfing artifacts in a high-traffic beach town with ample parking where visitors could stumble upon the world’s largest collection of surf memorabilia. The space is large enough to hold hundreds of surfboards and thousands of invaluable relics, museum leaders say.

In the 1940s, the building was home to the Sprouse Reitz Co., and for years it was a drugstore, but most recently it has been empty for several years.

Laguna Beach is where the center got its start, Metz first renting a small office in the ’90s on top of the Royal Hawaiian just next to Main Beach to keep his collection, which he has been acquiring since the ’60s.

Not long after, he met Spencer Croul, also an avid board collector with a passion for surf history, and the two joined their collections to get the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center off the ground.

In-house historian Chris Mauro, a longtime journalist and former editor at Surfer Magazine, talked about the detailed work it took to archive every piece in the center’s collection, from boards to articles of clothing to movie posters and images, during the move.

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“It’s phenomenal,” Mauro said, noting the hard work of countless volunteers. “What’s really cool is, there’s all these different spokes on the cultural wheel: there’s art, there’s magazines, there’s books, there’s music, fashion, equipment, accessories.”

It’s part of California culture that has spread across the globe, he said.

“If you think about it, surfing changed California, and California has changed the world. It’s had a much bigger impact than people think,” Mauro said. “And you trace it from here to Hawaii, where it came from.

“What’s interesting about this location, is that we are right down the street from where Duke Kahanamoku basically landed and hung out for most of the ’20s,” he said of the famed Hawaiian surfer credited with introducing the surfing spirit to the mainland. “This was his home away from home.”

Metz, born and raised in Laguna Beach, echoed the importance of surfing history on a global scale.

“It had so much impact on the world’s population — clothing, music, all these things emulated from surfing itself,” he said. “Surfing, more than any other sport, has had an influence in our culture, not just in California, but all over the world.”

Metz, who sold his home in Sun Valley, Idaho, to help make the building purchase possible, has stepped away from executive and board duties during the transition. He’s glad to see new board members and Executive Director Jeff Alter, son of surfing and sailing icon and good friend Hobie Alter, overseeing the new wave ahead for the museum, he said.

Alter said the gathering was a chance for supporters and contributors to get a look at how the place is shaping up, though it was no easy task to pull it together for a public showing.

“We still have a long way to go, the rooms are filled with construction stuff and Monday morning it will look ugly again,” he joked. “I think the building itself makes us look good.”

Looking around, the height of the building lends itself for the best display of the boards, set upright and off the ground, allowing storyboards to tell their background beneath.

“We are able to tell a little more story about the eras and the boards’ story, which we couldn’t really do in San Clemente,” he said.

Female champion surfer Jericho Poppler admitted getting teary-eyed as she was greeted walking into the new building with an artistic portrait on a surfboard of her dear friend, Hawaiian surfer Rell Sunn. The duo helped pave the way for women’s surfing to become a professional sport in the 1970s.

“For women, there wasn’t much at all. They were going ‘no way,’” Poppler said of the naysayers. “But we didn’t care, because we loved what we were doing.”

She hopes stories like hers and other iconic wave riders’ will inspire the people from near and far who will come to the museum in future years.

Board member Paul Naude, who also calls Laguna Beach home, talked about first laying eyes on the new place, knowing it would become something special.

“It was almost like it was tailor-made for the purpose of a surf museum,” he said, looking out to the building-tall surfboards that fit snugly under the high ceilings.

That will become even more important as the Olympics get ready to ride into town for LA28, just down the road at Lower Trestles. The center will be a destination, Naude predicts, that will be a big deal for the city of Laguna Beach.

“For me, I’m super proud of what we’ve created in a facility as impressive as this, that is now available for surf culture to be showcased — surfboards, the history and culture — to be displayed for the public,” said Naude, an apparel industry leader who owns the brand Vissla. “I think now we have so much opportunity for people to be able to experience and learn about the history of not just California surf culture, but surf culture at large.”

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