Bing Copeland is the founder of Bing Surf­boards, one of the best known brands of the ‘60s. Bing Surf­boards pro­duced the famous David Nuuhiwa Noserider and intro­duced The Bonzer with the Camp­bell Broth­ers. Bing took some time and speak with us.

What was grow­ing up in the South Bay like for you?
I grew up in Man­hat­tan Beach in the late 40’s and 50’s when the South Bay had only a hand­ful of surfers and we all knew each other. There were no free­ways and very lit­tle traf­fic. It was a won­der­ful atmos­phere for young teens to grow up and learn to surf in.

When did you get your first surf­board?
My father owned a hard­ware store in town and was pretty handy with his hands hav­ing built a small sail­boat in our garage, he told me that he would make me a surf­board. He got the plans out of a Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics mag­a­zine and put together a nine foot fish tail pad­dle board. It was painted yel­low and he painted a pic­ture of Don­ald Duck on the nose.

I remem­ber car­ry­ing it down to the beach in front on our house and hav­ing a hell of a time try­ing to keep it going in a straight line when I didn’t pearl it. After I came out of the water, the life­guard on the beach told me that if I put a fin on the back and rubbed some can­dle wax on the deck that I would have a bet­ter luck. I went home and made a half round fin out of masonite and screwed it on with some angle iron from my Erec­tor set. My mom gave me an old can­dle and I was set.

The next day, I went to the beach and actu­ally rode a few waves suc­cess­fully. It was soon appar­ent that any hol­low board would take in water and boy, mine sure did! After com­ing out of the water three or four times to drain the board I decided it was time to get a real board.

One day in 1948, one of the old guys at the pier, loaned me his ten foot Sim­mons to try and I knew then that my first real board had to be a Sim­mons. After hound­ing and hound­ing my dad, he finally agreed to the $45.00 for a new Sim­mons – pro­vid­ing I took the trash out for the rest of my life. I ended up hav­ing two Sim­mons, until Velzy started build­ing balsa boards at his shop at the pier.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
I grew up two blocks from the ocean, and three blocks south of the pier in Man­hat­tan Beach. When I was 12 years old (1948), Greg Noll was work­ing as a bait boy on the end of the pier and we began a friend­ship hang­ing on the rail­ing watch­ing the older guys surf the big heavy redwood/balsa boards next to the pier. Velzy was a life­guard on the pier at that time, and one day he asked us if we would like to try rid­ing an old board he had on the beach. Well, let me tell you, the board was about eight feet long and weighed about eighty pounds (and by the way so did we) we would drag that thing across the sand stop­ping to rest sev­eral times before we got to the water. We pearled for the first ten or so waves but then finally, I remem­ber stand­ing up and rid­ing straight off all the way to the beach. I knew at that moment that this was the sport for me.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
I would have to say Dale Velzy. His shop became my sec­ond home and I spent every day after school and on week­ends hang­ing around his shop until he started giv­ing me lit­tle jobs like help­ing glue up the balsa blanks, shap­ing wood fins, repair­ing and sand­ing boards. And mostly he let me sweep up the balsa shav­ings. At the time, I never gave a thought to the fact that I would some­day have my own shop,

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out? And why? Like most surfers from the 50’s and 60’s, Hawaii was the Mecca of surf­ing. In Sep­tem­ber of 1955, six of us flew to Hawaii. I was 19 at the time. The six of us were myself, Sonny Varde­man, Rick Stoner, Steve Vorhees, Mike Bright, and George Kapoo.

We spent the first two weeks in a crappy lit­tle rental in Waikiki and surfed Queens every day. We all chipped in and bought an old Ply­mouth sedan with a rusted out floor­board so that the exhaust or any pud­dles would either fume us out or soak us to the bone. We then moved out to Makaha in the coun­try to expe­ri­ence the big win­ter surf, and rented a Quon­set hut. It had no fur­ni­ture but that didn’t mat­ter we had sleep­ing bags that we padded our boards with on the plane. We divided the fridge up into six sec­tions so that each guy had his own treats and no steal­ing, right! Luck­ily we got to surf a lot of small Makaha surf in the begin­ning and were able to work our way up gradually.

When it did get big – 15′ to 18′ – we thank­fully had some of the big wave guys like George Down­ing, Buzzy Trent, Peter Cole and oth­ers to show us the line ups and coach us into our first expe­ri­ence with big waves. We spent the next two months rid­ing some pretty big waves and hav­ing a lot of fun. Finally, with funds run­ning low, Rick and I were both in the Coast Guard reserves and went active and were lucky to be assigned a ship in Hawaii for the next two years. Sonny and Steve were in the Navy reserves and had to go back to the main­land for their ser­vice time. Mike Bright went back to Cal­i­for­nia to his life­guard­ing and vol­ley ball career.

You have men­tored and influ­enced long line of tal­ented surf­board shapers. How did you go about select­ing them?
I was lucky that I had a pretty good rep­u­ta­tion as a boss as well as a shaper and other shapers were hon­ored to shape for us. Some made the cut – and some didn’t. There was only 3 or 4 shapers that we taught from scratch.

What period of surf­ing holds the most cher­ished mem­o­ries for you?
The whole trip has been good, but I’d say the 1960’s was the most fun for me. There was a lot of fun and inter­est­ing changes dur­ing that ten-year period.

Who inspires you?
I’m inspired by any­one who seeks to improve the sta­tus quo in our sport.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
To try to be hon­est, kind and understanding.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently
I think every­one has a few regrets. Some­times when you try to “think out­side the box” it’s only nat­ural to make some regret­table mis­takes but as long as you learn from it and move on, you’ll be ahead in the long run.

What are you most proud of?
I’m proud of the fact that my vin­tage surf­boards (from the 50’s & 60’s) have been held in such high regard and have become sought after by the seri­ous surf­board col­lec­tors. I’m also very proud of Matt Cal­vani for the crafts­man­ship and effort that he has put into the re-birth of the Bing Surf­boards name worldwide.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
I really can’t say since surf­ing has been part of my life for the past 61 years.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
My fam­ily and my reputation.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
There are many. Most are good for the future of our sport, and there some that are just after the money and con­tribute noth­ing to surfing’s future.

What is in your cur­rent quiver? What is your favorite board?
Right now I have a Sil­ver Spoon that Matt shaped, a Pipeliner, and a Light­weight that Dan Bendik­sen shaped, and a 9’9″ senior cit­i­zen model that I shaped and glassed. They are all my favorites.

What’s your favorite meal?
I love a good steak and salad. I also eat a lot of stir-fried veggies.

What are you lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
It’s all Hawai­ian slack key gui­tar music.

What’s next for Bing Copeland?
To stay healthy so that I can do my best to help Matt and Mar­garet (Yao) pro­mote the inter­est in our surf­boards worldwide.

Bing Copeland’s web­site is at www.classicbingsurfboards.com. For cur­rent Bing Surf­boards, www.bingsurf.com. The book Bing Surf­boards, Fifty Years of Crafts­man­ship and Inno­va­tion is avail­able at your local surf shop or here.