Dewey Weber’s 22nd Street cutback becomes history written in bronze
Leroy Grannis’s 1966 photo of Dewey Weber doing a cutback is one of the most iconic images in the history of surfing.
Most of the lengthy board is out of the water. The tail end is sunk into the wave, buoyantly fighting for the surface like a man drowning. A jet of white spray churns against the black surface of glassy sea. The rider floats above it all, his arms lifted to the sky as though protesting his innocence. You could almost believe him, were it not for the look of terrible strain on his face.
It all happened on a three-foot day at 22nd Street in Hermosa Beach. And after more than 10 years of planning, a statue depicting the famous image will take its place in front of the Hermosa Community Center, with the unveiling this Saturday at 11 a.m.
The 2,500 pound bronze statue recreates Weber in the photo, down to the board under his foot: a Dewey Performer, the same kind of board Weber rode that day in 1966. It will be mounted in the middle of a fountain, and surrounded by drought-tolerant plants evocative of a coral reef.
Not surprisingly, there were challenges along the way in creating a still life of a man defined by movement. But with its completion, the project’s backers envision it as a kind of Colossus of Hermosa, standing at a gateway to the city and inspiring the awe of those passing through.
“I don’t think city officials are completely aware of how popular Dewey Weber is around the world,” said Phil Roberts, the sculptor behind the statue. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this can create tourism, with surfers worldwide coming to town just to see this statue.”
And while the statute does cast a wide net, linking one of the area’s most famous surfers and most celebrated photographers, it also aspires to be something for those who tread down Pier Avenue more regularly: a reminder of the city’s foundational place in surfing history.
“This was the mecca, the epicenter. That’s why we don’t care about fighting with Huntington [Beach] or Santa Cruz,” said John Grannis, son of the legendary photographer. “Real surfers know that this is where it started.”
Good Forecast
The project began in the same place as surfing itself — in the Hawaiian Islands.
Jean Lombardo, a long-time Hermosa activist, was on a vacation there, strolling through the beaches of Waikiki. Scattered above the surf and sand, she noticed a number of bronze statues of surfers.
She returned to California, and shared her vision with her coworkers, said Rick Morgan, a former public works director who helped shepherded the project through its early days. Staff were keen to the idea of a monument near the city’s community center.
“This was originally a goal of the Public Works Commission,” Morgan said. “We wanted something at that corner. It’s a gateway, we wanted some kind of statement.”
In the beginning, there was some uncertainty over whom the sculpture ought to depict. But eventually, the answer came to seem obvious.
“We hadn’t settled on anything yet, but one picture kept coming up: Dewey Weber doing his famous cutback,” Morgan said.
Weber, sometimes known as the “Little Man on Wheels,” stood only 5-foot-3, but moved with power and authority. He learned to surf in the beach breaks of the South Bay and ascended to the top of the ranks as the sport exploded in popularity in the fifties and sixties.
“I grew up surfing in San Diego, and my friends and I knew all about Dewey Weber,” said Jeff Duclos, recently re-elected to the city council and a member on committee with Morgan in the project’s early days. “He was an incredibly innovative and exciting surfer.”
Grannis was a Hermosa native. According to Matt Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing, he suffered from stress-induced ulcers, and took up surf photography as a way to relax. His rise to fame, contributing cover shots for publications like Surfer, coincided with Weber’s.
Duclos said that the selection of Weber cranking out a drop-knee turn as the subject of the statue owed as much to Grannis’s photo as it did to the high-performance surfing.
“It’s not just Dewey Weber; it’s that famous LeRoy Grannis photo,” Duclos said. “It’s one of the most famous of the era.”
Shea Weber, Dewey’s son who took over Dewey Weber Surfboards after the senior Weber died in 1993, said that Grannis and Weber shared a deep connection in the water.
“All of the best photos of my dad were LeRoy’s photos,” Weber said. “It was much, much more than a surfer-photographer relationship.”
Ideal Conditions
Having settled on a statue, Hermosa needed hands to craft it. Morgan turned to Surfer’s Journal publisher Steve Pezman, who suggested artist and surfer Phil Roberts.
Roberts has a long background in surfing-themed art. Among other accomplishments, he adds the art to the Gerry Lopez “Lightning Bolt” board given out each year to the winner of the Pipeline Masters surfing contest.
Even before Morgan approached him, Roberts was steeped in the surfing history of the era. He is friends with Greg Noll, and has previously constructed a statue of “Da Bull.” But to prepare for the Dewey Weber project, Roberts had to immerse himself in Weber’s surfing.
The result has been a deep appreciation of what Weber could do on a wave.
“He is throwing so much body weight into that turn,” Roberts said of the Grannis photo. “A lot of his surfing was really being off balance and then recovering.”
In a brief biography of Weber prepared in association with the project, Pezman notes that Weber’s surfing was shaped by the waves he grew up in: the unpredictable, barreling beachbreaks of Hermosa. Although the hotdogging era is better associated with the more forgiving waves of San Onofre and Malibu, Weber adapted and provided the template for more aggressive surfing on more critical waves.
“That’s why so many of the best surfers in the world came from Hermosa Beach,” said John Grannis, son of photographer Leroy. “The waves can be difficult to ride, you’ve got to get to your feet quickly.”
Roberts has a background in anatomy, and became keenly attuned to the contortions that the Little Man on Wheels had to put himself through to move the bulky boards of the day.
“I did a lot of research, watched a lot of surf movies to get an essence of what Dewey does with his body,” Roberts said. “He was only 5-foot-3, but he was built like a gorilla.”
Roberts became an obsessive student, attempting to put himself inside the surfer’s mind.
“He had a thing about throwing his hands up in the air,” Roberts said. “I really noticed it with videos of Dewey surfing at Haliewa on the North Shore. It’s as though he is trying to make himself taller to counterbalance the weight.”
Roberts found a steady source of inspiration in the Grannis photo. He spoke to Grannis before the photographer died in 2011, getting the story behind the famous picture.
“He said, ‘Dewey scared the bejeezus out of me when I was taking that one,” Roberts said. “‘He was coming full guns right at me, and just cranks it hard right in front of me.’”
The experience left a deep impression on Grannis.
“It was his favorite photo,” Grannis said of his father. “Out of the tens of thousands of pictures he took, that was the one. Every drop of water is perfectly in focus.”
Fans on the beach
Roberts also reached out to Shea Weber to sculpt the Performer model that is featured in the sculpture. The board is a replica of the one his father rides in the Grannis photo. Shea Weber was honored to contribute, and said the board would add to the statue’s authenticity.
“He’s essentially replicating not just a photo of my dad, but one of the most famous surf photos of all time,” he said. “Those salty dogs around here have an incredible attention to detail.”
Roberts said that the inspiration for using an actual Weber surfboard shape for the statue came in part from another of Weber’s historical legacies: the Weber Competition Team
“The team fans, they know every historical detail,” Roberts said. “It’s a tough crowd to please; the board really had to be spot on.”
Known as “The Redcoats” for their vibrant Eisenhower jackets, Weber mentored and coached a group of young surfers who participated in some of the very first surfing competitions.
The group formed in 1961, and the trademark red jacket quickly became a must-have item for aspiring surfers. One of those who dreamed of wearing it was Joe Melchione.
Melchione was an environmental attorney and surfer who participated each year in the annual Dewey Weber Classic, a longboard contest first held at the Manhattan Beach Pier in 1981. At the 2008 competition, Melchione was talking with Shea Weber and revealed his lifelong dream of being part of the surf team. Weber responded with a gift of a red jacket.
Meanwhile, the project had hit a snag. Leadership Hermosa led a 2008 fundraising campaign, and while the group raised nearly $40,000, the statue remained stalled.
Then in 2010, Melchione provided $50,000. The donation allowed the city to sign a contract with Roberts, and continue progress on the statue.
But Melchione was not done giving. After he died of lung cancer in 2012, it was revealed that he bequeathed $329,000 for the statue, enough to ensure its completion. The city broke ground in May of this year.
Roberts, who was also friends with Melchione, said the gift from Melchione proved that the statue was meant to be.
“There was a synchronicity to all of it, the whole chain of events, all the people involved,” Roberts said. “It was kind of a magical thing. It was always going to happen; it was just a matter of time.”
‘The Real Surf City’
As the unveiling approaches, Morgan, the former planning director, is hopeful that the statue will prompt reflection on an era when Hermosa looked very different from the way it does now.
“So much of the press in Hermosa Beach is about the bars,” Morgan said. “But there was a whole era when it was just a little surf town.”
Weber died in 1993, having witnessed a renewed interest in his surfing and boards with the longboard revival. But, Morgan and others recalled he was a pioneer in making Hermosa the center of the nascent surfboard shaping industry. Many of the most prominent manufacturers had their shops in a stretch of the city along PCH.
“Everybody knows that Hermosa is the real surf city,” Weber said. “When you talk about [Dale] Velzy, [Hap] Jacobs, [Greg] Noll, Weber, Bing Copeland…it’s an unbelievable cast of characters.”
Roberts sees the sculpture as commemorative of Hermosa’s contributions to surfing as a worldwide phenomenon, with its native crew of shapers contributing significant innovations.
“Look at the core crew from Hermosa Beach,” Roberts said. “They were very inventive in the shaping bay to create wave-riding vehicles, experimenting with aqua-dynamics and materials.”
Several months ago, with the long project coming to a close, Shea Weber had a chance to go to the foundry with Roberts and see the statue. He was pleased with the results.
The fine detail, he said, captures the efforts of his father and the era in more ways than one.
“My wife said to me, ‘Can’t Phil [Roberts] change his face a bit, make him a bit more happy?’ I said, ‘Turning that board that heavy, your face is going to look like that.’”
See a photo gallery of the Dewey Weber statue at EasyReaderNews.com statue after its unveiling Saturday.
