Hap Jacobs has popped up from time to time in past entries on this blog, but his life and role as one of the founding fathers of surf culture in the South Bay cries out for a more detailed exploration.
Dudley George “Hap” Jacobs was born in Los Angeles in 1930. His father was a plumber, and the family originally lived in West L.A. They moved to Hermosa Beach in 1938, when Hap (short for “happy”) was in the fourth grade.
At first, he didn’t like the idea of having to leave behind his West L.A. friends, but he soon took to the beach lifestyle. At 16, he got a job working at California Surfrider in Manhattan Beach, an outfit that rented out inflatable rubber mats for wave-riding.
His job was to sweep off the mats and keep them inflated them properly. As a side benefit, he was allowed to use them to ride waves at the Manhattan Beach Pier. Around this time, roughly 1946, he also noticed a group of older guys riding their crude redwood surfboards and congregating at the base of the Hermosa Beach pier, led by the brusque, charismatic Dale Velzy.
He graduated from Redondo Union High School in 1951. Next, he decided to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard for a two-year hitch. He was stationed in Oahu, as luck would have it, and fell in with a group of seasoned surfers at Makaha. The group included fellow South Bay surfing pioneer Greg Noll.
While in Hawaii, he began to learn the art of surfboard shaping from transplanted American surfing legend George Downing. In addition, he met his wife, Patricia, while stationed there.
After his Coast Guard stint, the couple returned to Hermosa, living in a small apartment. Jacobs tried out a job as a carpenter’s apprentice at UCLA, where his dad often did plumbing work. Despite the benefits of health insurance and a pension, he hated the job too much to stay.
His fellow employees were stunned when he quit. “ I told them I wanted to make driftwood furniture and surfboards. They said, ‘You have to be analyzed. This is a bad idea,’” Jacobs told Daily Breeze reporter Douglas Morino in 2011.
Jacobs and South Bay diver Bev Morgan decided to pool their resources in 1953 and go into business together. Jacobs shaped the surfboards, and Morgan designed and made custom wetsuits. They opened their store, Dive ‘N Surf, at 223 Hermosa Ave. in Redondo Beach.
Jacobs didn’t stay long. Later that year, he sold his share in Dive ‘N Surf to twin brothers Bob and Bill Meistrell, who went on to create the Body Glove empire from there.
Looking to concentrate on creating quality surfboards, Jacobs met up with Dale Velzy through Bill Meistrell. The pair opened the Velzy-Jacobs surf shop at Venice Beach. After several profitable years, the duo split up in 1959.
Shortly afterward, Jacobs opened his Jacobs Surfboards shop at 422 Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa, a combination retail and manufacturing site. One of the first things he did there was to design the iconic diamond-shaped Jacobs logo, which quickly would become the hallmark of a quality board.
He was in the right business in the right place at the right time. The surfing craze swept Southern California and the nation in the early 1960s, and, for a while, Hermosa Beach was ground zero. At one time, more than a dozen surf shops lined PCH and environs, including those run by Greg Noll and Dewey Weber.
The business started to change in the late 1960s with the advent of shorter, more maneuverable boards in place of the longboard style favored by Jacobs. Sales dropped off, and in 1971, he sold his share in the business.
He used the money to become a commercial fisherman for the next twenty years, buying a swordfishing boat (the “Patricia J”) and operating the fuel dock at King Harbor between swordfish runs. Around the same time, he and his wife settled in Palos Verdes Estates, where they still live.
In 1991, amazingly, he returned to boardshaping. By now, with decades of experience, his boards more resembled the work of an artist than merely a craftsmen, and were sold mostly to private buyers. Along the way, he had won the enduring respect and admiration of a whole new generation of surfboard makers such as Donald Takayama, Robert August and Matt Calvani.
Jacobs shaped his final surfboard in April 2019 at age 88.
For his lifetime of work, he has been honored many times. In 2003, he was named a charter member of the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame, with a plaque in his name installed on the Hermosa Beach Pier.
A surprise tribute dinner celebrating his life and work was held at Captain Kidd’s restaurant in Redondo Beach in September 2014. More than 100 of his former friends, colleagues and admirers attended the event, which Jacobs attended with his wife, Patricia.
As Daily Breeze reporter Carly Dryden aptly put it in her story about the event, “In true form, the humble Jacobs spoke few words, standing seemingly in disbelief with a sheepish grin, as grown men cried tears of joy and thanked Jacobs for changing their lives.”
Sources:
Daily Breeze files.
“Hap Jacobs,” International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame website.
“Hap Jacobs” (interview), by Glenn Sakamoto, Liquid Salt website, April 2010.
“Hap Jacobs, last of Hermosa Beach’s Golden age of Surfing shapers, shapes final surfboard,” by Kevin Cody, Easy Reader, April 7, 2019.
Los Angeles Times files.
