Shawn Ambrose

Canadian-born shaper Shawn Ambrose is a man of many tal­ents, from shap­ing to music to play­ing hockey. He remains hum­ble and pas­sion­ate about his cho­sen pro­fes­sion in the face of try­ing eco­nomic times. We took some time with Shawn to learn more.

What was your life like grow­ing up?
I was born in a nun­nery in St. Johns, New­found­land, Canada! It gets pretty com­pli­cated from there, but let’s just say I had an inter­est­ing upbringing—with a great fam­ily and many stops around the world—before set­tling in San Diego, California.

When did you get your first surf­board?
Got a G&S sin­gle fin pin­tail that was 6’4” or so at age 8.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
“Hey! This sure beats stand­ing up on my boogieboard!”

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
Evel Knievel, Elvis and Tiger Williams

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out and why?
We went to the Olympics this past year in Van­cou­ver, and came as close to expe­ri­enc­ing world peace as is prob­a­bly pos­si­ble. Even got to check out a cou­ple of off-the-beaten– track surf spots on Van­cou­ver Island! Every­one should make an attempt to go to an Olympics; it’s a mag­i­cal thing to expe­ri­ence, and we had a good pow­der day at Whistler while we were there! Guess I could throw my early Indo and main­land Mex­ico trav­els in there as well.

Who or what inspires you?
Peo­ple who are con­stantly involved in crit­i­cal think­ing and doing their own thing. I’m down with orig­i­nal thought—write your own song, pave your own path.…

What prompted you to start shap­ing surf­boards and when did you know you would make this your liveli­hood?
I guess I was just that kid who likes to tin­ker and take stuff apart or mod­ify it, so it was nat­ural to want to make a board. That and it was hard to buy a new one on a 12 year old kid’s salary! As for mak­ing this a career, it just kind of hap­pened. I went to col­lege for a bit and had a go at being a union fire sprin­kler fit­ter, but I always yearned for the trav­el­ing surfer lifestyle that my friends from my con­test days had man­aged to keep alive.

I would con­stantly hear about extended trips to Main­land or Indo or wher­ever, and wanted to be able to take off for months at a time for surf travel as my friends were. So I kind of turned to build­ing boards as a way of liv­ing the lifestyle my pro­fes­sional surfer friends were liv­ing at the time. I could build a bunch of boards and keep my over­head low, and just split for two to three months in Indo—or wherever—then come back and start sav­ing to do it all over again. Sure, a lot of my friends bought houses before I finally was able to buy one, but I wouldn’t trade my life expe­ri­ence for any­thing. There’s noth­ing like set­tling in at a remote spot and just being in the moment for as long as it takes to fully appre­ci­ate it!

You’ve been shap­ing since 1980. How do you think the surf indus­try had changed since that time?
Oh, man! That’s a loaded ques­tion. I started this because I’ve always liked mak­ing stuff, from sewing trunks for my bud­dies in junior high and high school to wrench­ing on cars and bikes and mak­ing boards. Then, it became a way to keep the dream alive. And in a way, I guess I’m still liv­ing it .

I can remem­ber when I started being able to charge decent money for shap­ing and pay my rent with it! I couldn’t believe it, I had been doing it prac­ti­cally for free for years. I try to remem­ber that when over­head, insur­ance and all the other things start to pile up. I mean, I get to make toys for a living.

So, for the kids out there, don’t take it to seri­ously in the begin­ning; get into it because you love and enjoy it. If you can make some­thing more out of it, good for you. It’s not get­ting any eas­ier, but there is always room for a pas­sion­ate young shaper with good busi­ness sense and some talent.

If you were on a deserted island with a point­break on one side and a beach break on the other, which one of your boards would you want to have with you?
At the moment, one of my S.F.E. mod­els although I think I would have to put some side bite boxes in just for kicks, so I could also ride it as a 2 + 1. That’s if it was a punchy beach break. If it’s a burger, I would have to go with a 4 + 1 setup so I could skate the quad at the mushy beach break. Bet­ter yet, maybe I would just work on mak­ing some fruit wine and wait for the point to fire!

How do you find enough time in the day to pur­sue all of your inter­ests (surfing/shaping, clas­sic cars, ice hockey, music and snow­board­ing)?
By forc­ing myself to be organized—something that doesn’t usu­ally come easy to the artistically-inclined, I’m told! I also believe that the mind is a mus­cle, and you’ve got to use and chal­lenge it. So, rebuild­ing a motor on a dif­fer­ent bike or car, and hav­ing to trou­bleshoot on the fly or mak­ing a hand­plane out of a chunk of wood or boo­gie board foam, keeps my mind sharp and ready to chal­lenge my lim­its when I put the planer to the foam. Same as mak­ing a cre­ative play on the ice or pick­ing a good line down a chute in the Sierras.

Do you think you, your truck and your surf shop (the last two hav­ing been involved in dra­matic acci­dents involv­ing idi­otic dri­vers) have mag­netic personalities—the kind that attract cars?
Well, I like to believe things hap­pen for a rea­son. That rea­son isn’t always known in the present tense though. I guess … you just gotta roll with it.

It’s all good as long as what­ever gets hit is insured, and it’s not me on my bike! We won’t talk about the jay­walk­ing pedes­trian I hit last year on my Shov­el­head while split­ting lanes.

Tell us about your band.
My good friend Mike Palm makes a liv­ing as a punk rocker and wanted to get a side project going to scratch his life­long itch to play “surf music”. And that’s what we do. The Deo­ras play tra­di­tional reverb-drenched surf music played on vin­tage Fender instru­ments and amps. Actu­ally, half the fun is acquir­ing and dial­ing in the old gear!

We haven’t been play­ing much lately as Mike has been busy tour­ing and is gone lit­er­ally half the year. But we do have a mostly fin­ished sec­ond album recorded, and hope to fin­ish that up and do a few gigs this sum­mer. Maybe, in my spare time, I’ll put up a new web page. (Laughs) In the mean­time, I think we do have an old Myspace page if any­one wants to check out our tunes. I think we even have one of Mike’s more pop­u­lar songs with Agent Orange (“Blood­stains”) on there.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
No regrets—I just do my best in the moment and keep going forward.

What are you most proud of?
Being able to make a liv­ing and hold down a nice lifestyle for my fam­ily in this crazy ever-changing industry.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
Well, if you look behind the “golden cur­tain”, there’s a bunch of guys like me who have fig­ured out how to carve out a niche in this mod­ern global econ­omy. The prob­lem is most peo­ple are more caught up with the guy play­ing the organ grinder and the mon­key in the pin­striped suit. So I guess all us lit­tle guys will keep inno­vat­ing and grind­ing away in the trenches, and the big guys will keep lurk­ing and plot­ting and scheming.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
Surf­ing has given me a way of life, and the abil­ity and free­dom to pur­sue the Amer­i­can Dream.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Trav­el­ing with my family.

What is your favorite board? Your favorite surf spot?
Lately, I’ve been rid­ing my S.F.E. a lot. It’s a round-tailed, retro-influenced egg-type thing. Feels good to go back to basics with a sin­gle fin. I’ve been dig­gin’ the super smooth turns and it’s great in the barrel.

More often than not, I go right out front of my shop. Give me a combo swell in the fall when the kids are back in school and I’m a happy man.

What’s your favorite meal?
Sushi at The Fish Joint right here in beau­ti­ful Ocean­side, California!

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
Ipod? Isn’t that like an 8-track now? Pretty much just Pan­dora sta­tions for me now. Cur­rently in the rota­tion is Great Big Sea, The Fire­balls, Chet Atkins, Stompin’ Tom , Old Crow Med­i­cine Show, John Prine, David Allan Coe, Steve Earle and var­i­ous old school punk (Agent Orange, Fear, TSOL, Cir­cle Jerks, The Dick­ies, etc.).

What causes or orga­ni­za­tions do you sup­port?
Surfrider, The Mam­moth Foun­da­tion, Cal­i­for­nia Surf Museum and the A.R.F.

What are you most grate­ful for?
All of it — my fam­ily and friends and the oppor­tu­nity to do what I love every day.

What’s next for Shawn Ambrose?
I’m just gonna keep liv­ing the dream, push­ing lim­its and try­ing to keep the orig­i­nal thoughts coming.

Prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy by Mag­gie Marsek. Last image cour­tesy of Shawn Ambrose.