Tyler Hatzikian

Tyler Hatzikian is a Cal­i­for­nia surfer / shaper who was born and raised in the South Bay. Recently fea­tured in the films Sin­glefin: Yel­low and One Cal­i­for­nia Day, Tyler makes beau­ti­ful hand crafted boards in the tra­di­tional way. We caught up with him to talk about surf­ing, shap­ing, and sprint cars.

What was your child­hood like?
Well, since my dad surfed, I was exposed to surf­ing at an early age. I grew up get­ting car­ried down to the shore­line at Mal­ibu on his shoul­ders with my toy truck in hand. He would plop me down on the beach at Mal­ibu while he surfed, and I was obliv­i­ous to the famous surfers who prob­a­bly walked up to The Point right by me.

When did you get your first surf­board?
My first board was a hand-me-down from my dad when I was about 7—a 7’6” Pat Raw­son garage board (before he had a name). It was bright yel­low … although the rails were more grey, from patches of duct tape, than yel­low. I have mem­o­ries of hav­ing that board in my room, wax­ing it up with straw­berry Sex Wax and drop­ping in off my bed.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
The first time I remem­ber surf­ing was at El Porto in the sum­mer­time. My dad took myself and a neigh­bor­hood kid down to the beach. The fact that my dad surfed didn’t really make it cool to me at first though. Other influ­ences got me to com­mit to start surf­ing. It wasn’t until the older neigh­bor kid started surf­ing that it was cool, and that’s when I really started. That was when I was between 7 and 9 years old. It was a pretty big deal to be able to accom­plish that first ride. I got praise from my dad and friends, and that kept me going.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
It wasn’t really surfers at first. I would say my first idols/heroes were sprint car dri­vers. Before I started surf­ing, we used to go to Ascot Park in Gar­dena, which was a clay dirt half mile oval. Almost every Sat­ur­day night, we’d go and watch the sprint car rac­ers. We enjoyed going to the races together as a fam­ily. My dad was a plas­terer and so he usu­ally worked on week­ends and I would help him out. It was a big deal to be able to look for­ward to going to the races and hav­ing a good time at the end of the day’s work.

What is it about shap­ing boards that appeals to you?
When I’m shap­ing a board, I’m think­ing of surfing—surfing in my mind. Even though not in the water, I still feel con­nected. Basi­cally, if I’m cre­at­ing a curve on a board, I’m so con­cen­trated on shap­ing that it basi­cally feels like I’m surf­ing as I’m shap­ing a board.

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out and why?
I would say Cloud­break, Tavarua. That’s because that was a trip I was invited to go on when I was 21 with a bunch of pro long­board­ers that were at least 10 years older than myself. And that’s the first major trip I got to go on for a mag­a­zine where it was 13 days there paid by the mag. We showed up to Tavarua and every­one was tak­ing quiver shots—all the guys pulling their boards out of their bags, look­ing at my equip­ment and look­ing at me like I was going to get creamed, like I had no busi­ness being on that trip. I brought heavy sin­gle fins, 10 foot, and other guys had tri fins that were light with super rocker— basi­cally just long short­boards. I remem­ber going out in the boat and every­one waited for me to go out first to see me get pitched. They thought for sure I was going to get ham­mered. Prob­a­bly five of my top 10 bar­rels of my life are from that trip and that was in ‘94.

Who/what inspires you?
Cre­ative peo­ple. Peo­ple that don’t sit around, that are active and driven.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
Bal­ance … mean­ing not being too extreme one way or the other, but being open-minded yet realistic.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
I wouldn’t really change any­thing, but I would have liked to maybe dab­ble as a race car dri­ver, rac­ing sprint cars a lit­tle bit more. If I didn’t do what I do right now, that might have been a direc­tion that I would have gone. I’ve done a sprint car school, but haven’t actu­ally raced them.

What are you most proud of?
My daugh­ter.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
Surf­ing started out as a passion—with me want­ing to get bet­ter at it. It was my first real indi­vid­ual sport and I felt I had ten­den­cies lead­ing to that instead of team sports, although I liked team sports like base­ball and soc­cer. It was per­sonal time. But as I devel­oped my surf­ing and started build­ing surf­boards, it became not so much a break or relax­ation like it is for most peo­ple, but it was work—having to talk shop down at the beach (even if just look­ing at waves). It was the office and I had to per­form on a daily basis. If some­body has a bad day of surf­ing, no one usu­ally cares. But if you’re a label, the pressure’s on; every­body wants to say if you’ve had a good day or bad day, and that’s a lot of pressure.

The mean­ing of surf­ing has changed for me. It was dif­fer­ent when I was younger than it is now. So I look for­ward to find­ing dif­fer­ent ways to get back to that soli­tude, such as surf­ing my home spot with no one else out on big days. It kind of takes me back to when I was a kid when you’re focused on your own surf­ing, relaxed and mel­low. You didn’t have to worry about all of this drama. When you’re surf­ing big waves, it forces you to focus on the surf. It kind of clears your mind. When the surf is smaller, you’re think­ing about the guy next to you, the crowd. But big waves bring you back to the point where you don’t think about any­thing else. You’re just focused. Oth­er­wise, hot dog surf is just drama for me. Peo­ple want to chal­lenge you to a surf-off in the water. Big waves allow me to keep that dis­tance between all of that crap. It keeps peo­ple on the beach and I can be way outside.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Hap­pi­ness would be work­ing with my hands and get­ting them to cre­ate exactly what I want them to cre­ate. There’s a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion to that. Also, at my age, being able to build a fam­ily is impor­tant to me. My wife, Kather­ine, and I have been together for twenty years and my daugh­ter, Eve­lyn, was born two years ago.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
Prob­a­bly, in short­board realm, your Mer­ricks and Rustys—the guys that are out front … short­board guys that are actu­ally work­ing with top surfers in the world and also using com­put­ers to lock down base­lines for their team rider,s and being able to build off of that. It’s interesting.

In the long­board realm, it’s hard for me to say because my path is basi­cally try­ing to build long­boards with­out the short­board influ­ence. And it’s a con­stant refine­ment whether it’s the craft of glass­ing or shap­ing. There’s a lot of young guys that … I don’t know … make boards that I prob­a­bly wouldn’t say have tra­di­tional roots. They’re more kind of rough garage-ish, light long­boards. The way I view most other long­board builders … I don’t feel it’s as pure. My boards are an evo­lu­tion, an advance­ment and pro­gres­sion of tra­di­tional design. I think a lot of guys that build boards now make long­boards, but they’re try­ing to advance it to try to carry more short­board ele­ments into it. I’ve been try­ing to keep my aim true since I started mak­ing long­boards. I’ve tried not to muddy it up with other influences.

What is in your cur­rent quiver? What is cur­rently your favorite board? Your favorite surf spot?
777, Wing­nose, Balsa, 8’ gun, 6’6” squash­tail tri fin, Par­a­bolic rail Wing­nose. I’m con­stantly test­ing new designs. The one I’m most com­fort­able on is the balsa though because I’ve been surf­ing it so much over the last few years. My favorite surf spot is the north side of the El Segundo jetty.

What’s your favorite meal?
Prime rib.

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
I pretty much lis­ten to satel­lite radio so it’s all over the map, but I like Way­lon Jennings.

What are you most grate­ful for?
I’m grate­ful to my cus­tomers over the years who allowed me to build on my vision. With­out my cus­tomers, I wouldn’t have been able to be in the posi­tion I’m in right now as far as tra­di­tional design goes—refining and mak­ing my craft. First of all, you need rep­e­ti­tion to build and per­fect your craft, but the type of work that we do is so time-consuming that it costs a lot of money to make the boards. Vol­ume is low, so it takes years to develop. You can cut cor­ners and do mass pro­duc­tion but that’s not refin­ing, per­fect­ing. I’m also grate­ful that I pretty much knew what I wanted to do from an early age and that gave me the self-confidence to stay away from drugs.

What causes/organizations do you sup­port?
We sup­port the City of Hope.

What’s next for Tyler Hatzikian?
We’re try­ing to educate—letting peo­ple know more about our approach to surf­ing and board-building, and basi­cally try­ing to really build our cat­a­log. Keep­ing things fresh. We would also like to increase our involve­ment with our “test pilots” and to be able to cre­ate more pro­to­types with test pilots and customers.

Find out more about Tyler Hatzikian and his surf­boards here. All photo are pro­vided by film­maker Jason Baffa.