Paul Gross

Paul Gross is one of surfing’s Renais­sance men. Best known for his 4^th Gear Flyer surf mats, Gross is also a surf­board designer and shaper, for­mer edi­tor of Surfer Mag­a­zine, and is quoted often in surf­ing pub­li­ca­tions. Paul was gra­cious enough to let us speak with him.

Where did you grow up and what was it that drew you to the ocean?
My father worked for Gen­eral Motors, so we moved around. I grew up in a num­ber of places, but all of them in the PNW and Cal­i­for­nia. But we never lived near the ocean—which, in ret­ro­spect, was a bless­ing in dis­guise. It made surf­ing and the ocean seem all the more spe­cial. Even today, I don’t take any­thing related to the ocean for granted, and I’m thank­ful for that. It really pisses me off when peo­ple act like they are jaded with the ocean.

My father grew up in Oahu between the wars. His father was the rank­ing Mas­ter Sergeant at Schofield Bar­racks for many years, and they lived in Wahi­awa. My father was an avid com­pet­i­tive swim­mer, and grew up in the water along the North Shore. He was keenly aware of surf­ing, although the surf­ing on Oahu back then was pri­mar­ily done on the South Shore. My father had some con­tact with Duke Kahanamoku through his swim­ming activ­i­ties, so The Duke and his exploits as a swim­mer and surfer were leg­end in our house!

I grew up hear­ing all about surf­ing and the ocean. Finally, in the mid-50’s, when I was around 4, I demanded that my par­ents take me to the beach so I could see surf­ing. We were liv­ing in Fresno at the time, and we drove over to Cowell’s in Santa Cruz. There weren’t any surfers in the water the day we were there, but there were lit­tle waves break­ing in the cove, and I was hooked. It was just so beau­ti­ful. To this day, a point with a lit­tle cove and the sun set­ting behind the land seems like heaven to me, surf or no surf.

It took a long time for any of this to really reach any kind of fruition, but from a very early age, I con­sid­ered myself a surfer. Which, if you lived in Fresno in the 50’s, is kind of weird!

What came first for you—the surf­board or the mat?
Oh, the mat for sure. First rentals, then dime store cheap­ies, then real Hodg­mans. I didn’t get a board until I was maybe 10. And even then, I liked mat surf­ing and belly­boards bet­ter. Part of it, I think, was because I am not a nat­ural ath­lete. Stand­ing up put a pre­mium on your appear­ance, whether you liked it or not. And I was kind of self-conscious about being so awk­ward. On a mat or belly board, I was free!

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board? How did it dif­fer from the feel­ing you got while rid­ing a mat?
I thought that rid­ing a surf­board was almost com­i­cally heroic. And it seemed slower because you were so high up off the water. In ret­ro­spect, I real­ized that I actu­ally tried to repli­cate the feel­ing of rid­ing a mat when I surfed a board. I tried to trim across the wave, even if it was just a white­wa­ter wave. And I didn’t like step­ping back and rely­ing on the fin at all. It seemed like cheat­ing. When fins on long­boards got skin­nier and more flex­i­ble in the mid 60’s, it seemed like a lot more fun. Rely­ing on the rail for con­trol still is a pri­or­ity for me even on surfboard.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
The Duke, for sure, because of all the sto­ries I heard when I was lit­tle. And base­ball play­ers like Willie Mays. But then, when I was in Lit­tle League as an 8 year old, I kept pop­ping out in games and the coach asked me to try a dif­fer­ent bat. It was a Nel­lie Fox model with a really thick han­dle. And all of a sud­den I could hit… or at least not pop up every at bat! So now I had a new hero—Nellie Fox—and for the right rea­sons. I could take what he had devel­oped for him­self and apply it directly to my life. No way I could do that with Willie Mays or The Duke! That was one of the best learn­ing expe­ri­ences I ever had.

How does one go from film school stu­dent to edi­tor of Surfer to maker of mats and shaper of surf­boards?
Wow, that’s a long, con­vo­luted jour­ney! I got into film­mak­ing because of my love of going to surf movies. Then, when I was in col­lege as a film major, I wrote a fea­ture arti­cle for Surfer on a whim. They pub­lished it and asked if I wanted to fill their vacancy as photo edi­tor. I was pretty frus­trated with school. Film­mak­ing is such a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort. I spent most of my time deal­ing with other peo­ple rather than the cre­ative aspects of mak­ing a film. Plus, I was tired of being broke all the time. So I took the job and, after a year or so, ended up work­ing as the edi­tor. It was a brief tenure! I wasn’t cut out to deal with finance and pol­i­tics, even at the puny level that surf­ing was at dur­ing that period. But I will say that I was the first edi­tor at Surfer who grew up read­ing the mag­a­zine and tak­ing it to heart. And I was the last edi­tor dur­ing the bi-monthly era. I left when they went monthly.

I’ve been shap­ing since 1966, on a garage level, and since the early 70’s on a pro­fes­sional level. Shap­ing has always seemed like a fas­ci­nat­ing puz­zle that can’t be solved, so no mat­ter what else I’ve been doing, I’ve always man­aged to get some shap­ing in.

The mats are a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story. We always rode what­ever mats were avail­able and that was a source of fun because you didn’t have to think about the design—you just went out and bought one and went surf­ing. But when the Converse-built Hodg­mans dried up in the late 70’s, it even­tu­ally became nec­es­sary to make our own.

Your rela­tion­ship with George Gree­nough is a long one. What have you learned from each other through­out the years?
I have no idea what, if any­thing, George has learned from me! But what I’ve learned from him could fill an ency­clo­pe­dia. The bot­tom line is that he has never been afraid to draw from other areas of engi­neer­ing and apply it to surf­ing. This sounds sim­ple and obvi­ous, but the post-Simmons his­tory of surf­ing has been very insu­lated. Part of the rea­son that George has been so influ­en­tial is that his boards are the result of “clean-sheet” design. He draws from the best of what­ever he can find, regard­less of the source.

The skate­board world knows you as the co-writer of The Search for Ani­mal Chin. How did you become involved with that project?
I’d known the prin­ci­pals at Powell/Peralta for years. And I had a strong back­ground in film­mak­ing. (Besides my school­ing, I had done a lot of edit­ing work for Hal Jepsen.) They had made two or three Bones Brigade videos at that point and one of their dis­trib­u­tors from the Mid­west sug­gested that they do some­thing with a story beyond the action. They kind of mulled that over for a few months. Then we started talk­ing about it just as friends.

Craig Ste­cyk had done a P/P ad with a char­ac­ter named Ani­mal Chin, and he thought that the Chin char­ac­ter might serve as the father fig­ure that skate­board­ing never had. That kind of struck a chord with every­one. So Stacy and I started work­ing on the story. As it pro­gressed, it started to seem like a good idea. I took the story we had writ­ten and laid it out in script form. The final film was struc­tured almost iden­ti­cally to the shoot­ing script, but of course the dia­logue and gags all came about dur­ing film­ing. What’s inter­est­ing is that there were over 100 hours of tape shot, which was edited down to just over an hour. It could have had well over 20 plot res­o­lu­tions based on what was shot!

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out and why?
I think that the three or four years I drove from our home in South Ven­tura County up to Ven­tura and Santa Bar­bara in the late 60’s/early 70’s really sticks in my mind as the best time of my surf­ing life in terms of travel. I know that sounds pretty tame, but it involved “leav­ing home”. None of the big surf trips I‘ve taken in my life—Hawaii, Aus­tralia, Cen­tral Amer­ica, the Caribbean—have been more mean­ing­ful. Maybe it was the time in my life, but that was a great era to be surf­ing in that area. Crowds were min­i­mal. There were no long­boards and there were no leashes. For me, if there was a golden era of surf­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, that was it.

Who/what inspires you?
Beside my wife Glo­ria, who was and is inde­scrib­ably sup­port­ive, I really like the younger surfers who are open-minded enough to try stuff out­side the media– val­i­dated thruster par­a­digm. And I still get a buzz off Greenough’s enthu­si­asm for surf­ing. The guy’s push­ing 70 and he’s like a stoked grem­mie all the time!

I will always look back on the years I was either get­ting boards from Greg Lid­dle or work­ing for him as a glasser as a kind of grad­u­ate school. His method­ol­ogy of tun­ing in the board he had, rather then go off on tan­gents, was hard to fol­low when I was younger but I really appre­ci­ate it now.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
That there’s always a lot more to learn…and it’s fun!

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
That’s a good ques­tion. All the things I did in my 20’s seemed very ratio­nal at the time. But for the next 20 years, I really beat myself up think­ing I should have done this or that dif­fer­ently. But now that I’m in my late 50’s, I see that the choices I made were indeed the right choices for me.

What are you most proud of?
The 4th Gear Flyer mats. I never dreamed that I would ever be able to con­vey that spe­cial feel­ing mats give you in such a direct manner.

What mean­ing does mat rid­ing (and/or surf­ing) hold for you and how has it changed your life?
It defines my life in so many ways—I can’t put it into words.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Get­ting a big belly laugh out of Gloria—usually while com­ment­ing on a bad tele­vi­sion show.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
The peo­ple who are con­vey­ing their surf­ing expe­ri­ences on a daily basis over the inter­net. They have suc­cess­fully bro­ken down the stran­gle­hold the surf mag­a­zines have had over surf­ing for nearly 50 years and the results are fan­tas­tic. We need to end the influ­ence of con­test surf­ing once and for all.

Which mat is your favorite?
I still like the 4GF Stan­dard the best, but the Fatty model is a close sec­ond!

What is your favorite mat spot?
Rin­con, although that’s pretty much off the list due to the crowds even on small, windy days. But if I could ride four foot plus Mal­ibu on a mat with no one out, that would be the ulti­mate expe­ri­ence … in my opin­ion. Mats love long, tex­tured waves and Mal­ibu has those! Mats offer the most range, wave-wise, so I don’t get too hung up on spe­cific spots any­more. I like any wave that’s got some bend in it and not too crowded. I’ll take junk over crowds any day of the week!

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
Shiny Beast by Cap­tain Beef­heart. Dated, I grant you…but some­how still fresh!

What are you most grate­ful for?
My wife and still being able to func­tion physically.

4th Gear Flyer Mats are avail­able here.