Surfing Heritage and Culture Center’s new Laguna Beach location is now ready

Walking through the doors of the newly opened Surfing Heritage and Culture Center is like entering a time capsule into surfing’s past.

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Large, heavy wooden boards line up tell the story of the sport’s evolution. Old cameras used by early era storytellers are on display, while swimsuits of yesteryear show styles worn generations ago.

There are displays on every aspect of surfing, also telling the story of how surfing has had influence on everything from culture, fashion, film, music and beyond.

The “Smithsonian of Surf,” as it is often called, reopens to the public this weekend in its new location, a long-awaited moment that puts the world’s largest collection of surf history and memorabilia just steps from the ocean in Laguna Beach.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony and traditional Hawaiian blessing were held Friday afternoon at the new home of Surfing Heritage and Culture Center, welcoming dignitaries, volunteers, surf history enthusiasts and others who marked the moment 30 years in the making.

“The people are stoked, the city has been great,” SHACC Executive Director Jeff Alter said. “It’s been a good ride so far, and it’s only going to get better.”

What once was an abandoned building in downtown Laguna Beach now boasts historic and modern-day surfboards, offering more space for their display than SHACC’s previous location in the hills of San Clemente.

Under each board, descriptions talk about their history and the era’s significance to the sport.

Randy Hild, a member of SHACC’s Board of Directors, pointed at four wooden boards on either side of a 10-foot wide, 16-foot-tall flat screen that will be used to show movies or sporting events, like the Lexus Trestles Pro that was streaming on opening day, the competition reaching the final heats just down the way south of San Clemente.

For Hild, those boards made by the godfather of modern-day surfing, Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, are the most special among the hundreds on display, he said. Two of them were shaped right down the road in Corona del Mar, when the Olympic swimmer visited to share the aloha lifestyle with Southern California.

Hild also pointed out an upstairs area to be used as a conference room and library, available to the public, where every issue of Surfer and Surfing magazines are carefully organized. He pulled out the first-ever magazine article about surfing, published in the May 1935 National Geographic, authored by early-era surfer Tom Blake, a good friend of Kahanamoku.

The downtown building is just steps from where founder Dick Metz’s own story began at Main Beach, the 97-year-old beaming on opening day as congratulations flowed in throughout the afternoon.

Metz said SHACC’s new home is bigger and better than he ever imagined.

“It’s the whole thing, to have this building with this big roof and it’s so open, and having it so close to the Main Beach where I grew up, and to have a parking lot in downtown Laguna, is beyond,” Metz said.

His hope, looking ahead at the LA28 Olympics, is that SHACC can be a meeting place for organizers and teams from various countries.

The space is a “historic hangout,” and can easily transform to meet the needs of events such as weddings and corporate meetings, he said. Exhibits in the center space are portable so they can be tucked away and up to 400 people can fit. A bar and restaurant are available for entertaining.

“This is not a subdued museum,” Metz said.

The building had to be completely gutted, the flooring and walls replaced, the design work throughout the center done by Alter’s wife, Laurie, who owns the upscale furnishing company Tuvalu.

Laguna Beach is where the center got its start, Metz first renting a small office in the 1990s on top of the Royal Hawaiian just next to Main Beach to keep his collection, which he has been acquiring since the ’60s.

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

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That building — SHACC co-founder and avid surfboard collector Spencer Croul helped with the purchase — gave the budding museum a chance to grow as both Croul and Metz combined their personal collections, said Alter.

The deal to move to Laguna Beach closed escrow less than a year ago in December, and SHACC volunteers and staff quickly got to work sprucing up the 12,000-square-foot space at Broadway Street and Ocean Avenue, in the 1940s home of the Sprouse Reitz Co., and later a drug store.

Alter, son of surfing and sailing icon Hobie Alter, said to be in such a public area is “pretty exciting.”

“We’re pretty excited to hit the finishing line,” he said. “It’s been a big project, and we had a lot of great people helping us.

“It feels really neat to be downtown a block from the ocean,” Alter added. “This just feels like where it should be.”

Croul said his favorite part of the building is that it is ready for the public.

“It’s arrived. My favorite part is that it’s done,” he said, noting that since they bought the original building, the goal was to sell it and get closer to the beach. The sale of the San Clemente property helped, in part, fund the Laguna Beach building.

Croul said his hope is that a 10-year-old kid will walk through the building and ask questions about decades-old boards, helping to preserve the history and culture. The museum allows for storytelling and “to have a home where you can tell stories about surfing history,” Croul said.

Board member Mark Christy, who helped facilitate the building deal, said the “planets aligned” for it all to come together: from finding an empty building big enough to hold the extensive collection, to the timing, to the location 100 yards from where Metz’ parents owned a burger shop in the epicenter of the Southern California surf scene.

“I literally just tingle when I walk in here,” Christy said. “It’s a dream.”

Filmmaker Greg MacGillivray, a Laguna Beach resident and SHACC board member, showed off an interactive exhibit highlighting 20 waves around the world, from Nazaré in Portugal to down the road at Lower Trestles.

The Stoke Machine has everything from a live cam, to a geography lesson, to an explainer on “why is the wave so sick?”

“It’s beyond what everyone expected, it’s beyond what the board members expected, what I expected,” MacGillivray said, crediting an energized Alter who has been working around the clock to make it a reality.

MacGillivray pointed out an animation done by surf artist Phil Roberts playing on the wall called “The Ocean People,” highlighting the origin of surfing and Hawaiian culture.

An entire exhibit is dedicated to filmmaking, including several relics from work MacGillivray did early in his career.

“It’s going to be fun for me to get my grandkids here,” he said, talking about how surf filmmaking, like many facets of surf culture, started in Orange County.

“I love the fact that surfing is the only sport that has our own music, our own movies, our own fashion,” he said, pointing to an exhibit that shows wool bathing suits and the evolution of boardshorts. “It’s not just the sport itself, it has a culture around it.”

SHACC will be open to the public from 12:30 to 7 p.m. on Saturday for an open house and grand opening festivities, but closed on Sunday for a grand opening fundraising gala.

In the near future, the surf center will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays through Sundays at 239 Broadway St., Laguna Beach.

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More information: shacc.org.