Brian Bent

Brian Bent has worked for us since he was 16 I think. He has risen through the ranks and for the last ten years or so has been the creative genius behind our stores look, and the company's vibe. He sings and plays guitar in a ripping band, is a minister at his own church (Hotrod Church for Sinners), is one of the finest creative multimedia artists I have ever known, and quite frankly rips with style in the water.

He likes to go where few have gone before (or better yet, no one). For the last few months he has been riding an old kook box at San'O and Doheny. He shows up in his custom jalopy, dons his farmer john, and gets more than a few hoots and hollers when he drops in. Dragging his foot in the wave swings his sled around, and then it is full swath trim. He says she trims real well.

The photos speak volumes

Photos courtesy Don Craig...

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They never guess it...

I love to work the showroom at our stores, and love to fin up new boards for folks. Working the templates, colors and choices of fins is just as much fun as actually finding the right board for them. I rarely finish the process without acting serious and asking this question of the new owner (or anybody that is listening for that matter):

"Do you know what country makes all of these fins?"

Not a person has ever guessed the answer, and the question always causes pause and reflection. I love this part. I always give them time, just as I am giving you right now.

Give up?

Finland.

Most folks laugh and get it. Some folks take a moment, and I have had more than a few actually say, "wow, I would not have known that. Why Finland?"
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We got company.

On the afternoon of the second day at Petacalco two rogue gringo drug guys showed up out of the brush and told us in very short terms we needed to leave. They had machetes, and were definitely acting the part of tough guy. They said we were not welcome and had some bullshit reasons why we had to leave. They pretty much were calling it their place and backing it with a threat of violence, but I think we stumbled into some other drug crap. I call them drug guys because we knew this area was a big producer of pot, and we had more than a couple of heavy searches on our way through by military checkpoints. These guys seemed pretty strung out, and reason did not seem a very good option at this point. We were a bit taken aback by the confrontation, but given the perfect surf out front and the inability to talk among the four of us for a strategy to confront them the best we could do was "we will think about it". Needless to say, neither group said "goodnight, sleep tight" as they pulled back.

After they left, we decided to call bullshit on their threats and hold our ground. We had a couple of Singapore slings and one spear gun so it was not like we could not huff and puff too. Calling bullshit is easy, sleeping in the middle of nowhere with who knows who in the weeds behind you is another thing. Not much sleep that night, but perfect surf the next day with no bogey men around kind of settled our anxiety. At the end of day three, it seemed that these guys either did not surf, or waited until it was far less than perfect to quit smoking and paddle out.

That night they came back. They were playing the machete card hard and saying leave now or someone was going to get hurt. We stood across the fire with the three spears and basically said "lets go". My heart was beating pretty damn good, but my three partners played the bluff perfectly.

They changed tactics and kinda became bros for a moment. Probably because they did not want to lose face by retreating but not wanting to call our bluff because in reality they were So Cal mommy boys (like me). We all dropped the threats, and found a little common ground. After a bit of conversation they found out we had a jar of peanut butter (please don't ask me to remember whey we mentioned that). They offered us a bag of pot for it, and we politely declined the offer and just gave it to them (Oh, I know you are all calling bull. No we did not take it).

They seemed to reluctantly accept our compromise of leaving in a couple of days, and keeping the place a secret. They left and we did not sleep.

We surfed perfection for the next couple of days, got tired of looking over our shoulders (you have to realize how vulnerable you are when you are camping on a deserted beach) and pulled out per our agreement. In retrospect, we should have killed them as the world would have been a better place. But, in our minds if we had just found this one perfect point there is probably another one a day away-without clowns.

We drove 8 hours a day for over a week before we found our next gem. La Libertad, El Salvador. http://www.surflalibertad.com/galleries/beach-LaLibertad.html

And, yes, Peterson and Naughton were here a month before.
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Memories of Petacalco, the discovery

We had had a long day driving in late 1970 on our way to Central America, and were just looking for a beach to set up our tents. Mainland Mexico was proving to be very hard to explore as the maps did not exist and we had no inside knowledge. We pulled down a long dirt road with no idea where it would end (we knew we were pretty close to the beach), just wishing it was not one of those go to nowhere roads that won't let you turn around without getting stuck. We were tired and it was going to be dark soon.

Low and behold we found sand. Lots of sand. A sand point that we guessed was probably half a mile long. It was getting dark and we could see surf, but we had no idea what we had stumbled upon.

Turns out we had stumbled upon a break that was soon to be legend. We had no way of knowing that Craig Peterson and Kevin Naughton had been here several weeks before and were putting together their legendary Surfer Mag story of the place http://www.savethewaves.org/peta.asp. We had the point to ourselves that evening, and in the morning we had it again. In fact, for the five days we were there we never saw surfboards that were not under our arms.

That first morning it was about 3-4 feet out in front, and there were perfect peaks all the way up the point. The amazing part was it was the same long grinding rights, and super hollow short lefts all the way to the tip of the point, but at the tip you could count the seconds it took for the wave to break. It was hard to judge, but we reckoned it was a solid 15 feet at the tip of the point, and gradually got smaller down the point to where our camp was set up.

New place, no one out, easy call. We opted for our first go out to be in front of the camp. Looks super fun. My first wave pitched me so far and and so hard I saw stars. Now, for those who have seen me surf in the last 10 years I can just hear you saying "what else is new", but honestly I had a bit of game back then and that wave shook me pretty good. The worst part was I broke my Dale Dobson bungy leash and I only had three for the trip. I went in, regrouped, releashed and went out for another. The second wave pitched me further and harder than the first, and now I had two snapped leashes.

As the morning progressed we worked our way up the point. Progressively bigger, perfect and mindblowing. Tom Curtiss kept going up the point long after we had found our limits, and I will always have a mental picture of him on a solid 10' plus bomb. God, where were our cameras (back in the jeep, way too far to walk), and who the hell films when it is this good anyway?

Well, Craig Peterson was filming weeks before, and his photos of that place blew minds when the issue came out. One of his captions was "how can a 3' wave pitch 6'!" I sure found that one out.
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Never teach a newbie on a brand new steed.

Years back, when my grems were small we had a wonderful Norwegian nanny named Hege. I remember when we picked her up at LAX, 18 years old and never been out of Norway. Now she was in L.A. and man she looked excited and scared.

We had a tradition of going to San O' at least once a week back then, and she was a fish out of water at that beach scene. I do not think she had ever even been to the beach before she joined our family. But, she had seen the movies and had inherited the Hollander spirit of "I will try anything four times", so on the second week told us that she was ready to try surfing.

I was teaching a bunch of the grems to surf back in those days and had a foolproof method. Wait till low tide, wade out to about shoulder deep water, get them to paddle to you, turn them around and give them a gentle push. No one ever goes more than 10 feet before they fall, and repeating that enough times in an afternoon eventually produces a 30 foot ride and a ton of stoke.

I had just waxed and finned a beautiful new 9 footer custom built at our factory by Phil. First day at the beach for that baby. I gave Hege the standard beach talk about hopping up on both feet at the same time, balancing the board to keep the nose up a bit when you paddle, the usual.

She looked nervous that was for sure, but she had that Norwegian spirit. I walked out a very long way as the tide was perfect to start her on a small crumbler 100 feet from shore. I got her outside, waited for the perfect little wave and gave her a gentle push. She was off, she was up and to my amazement she was riding. I was cheering, hooting and laughing at the same time. But, I realized she had not fallen, was looking good and was halfway to the beach. It dawned on me that I had not mentioned the dismount part of the surfing lesson-the part about jumping off before you ride my brand new board up on the rock scattered beach. Well, she rode that sucker dry. Just pile drove it onto the rocks and sand and then stepped off. Man, you gotta laugh at that. Who would have thought the best first ride you had ever seen was from a person who had never been to a beach in her life until two weeks ago.

The board was a mess. Rode it that afternoon, repaired her the best I could, and sold it the next week.

Hege was with us a couple of years, and is representing So Cal hard in Norway to this day.
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Honolua partnership

I met today with the honchos from Honolua sportswear, and am proud to announce we are going to up the ante online with their products. We love the stuff, and it justs keep getting better and better. Their threads are hard to find, and we think expanding our offering of their product line will make a bunch of folks happy! Stay tuned.
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Hate to get mushy...

I need some help here. My wifey is on the couch watching American Idol (gag me with a spoon) and is just looking pretty damn lovely. Our 25th Anniversary is at the end of the month and I have no idea how to celebrate it. Oh, I can guess the obvious, a beautiful dinner and candles...But do any of our loyal readers have a suggestion? I have loved this women for 25 years and it is a damn big day. I would kill for an off the wall suggestion. Why are guys so lame at this stuff?
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The banner planes may be gone...

Three years ago at our local vball court at 24th St. in Hermosa Beach I finally snapped. For years I had been aggravated by the summer squadrons of loud obnoxious planes towing banner ads. They were getting worse by the year, and to be honest there were days when I could not hear my self think. I would head home to nap in the backyard after losing every game I played (I never win) and there they were, using our Hermosa airspace to make their turns to make another pass. I had wondered for some time how society let these planes completely pollute these beautiful beaches at the prime of the year (not that pollution knows seasons). The more people were at the beach the more planes were in the air. It is a numbers game. The more people are completely annoyed the more successful the advertisers were.



I knew with all the environmental awareness in the air that this old tradition of sky advertising was a dinosaur, but they were bolder and louder by the season! I could not believe the audacity of their assault, even pointing air blasters to pierce the air out the side door. Beaches just seem by nature to be the one place in our life where we hear the wind, waves, little children and feel at peace with our environment.



A light went off in my head that day. I had been so frustrated by environmental issues that were just too large and encompassing to solve. I saw them all around us, whether it was the bay pollution or the quality of our air. I saw this issue as one of the biggest pollution issues facing our beaches (noise, the visual I could live with), and knew this one had a start and a finish.



I contacted SIMA (surf industry manufacturers association) and they politely told me their plate was full. I argued that this issue was a National one, and that the press they got and the changes they could make by addressing it would make a huge difference. Their plate was full. I had an idea, "Boycott Sky Advertisers", that could be incorporated into hangtags and advertising. Their plate was full, and in actuality it was as they were addressing big hard to solve issues (hats off).



At this point I gave up on the National attack and just said, "fuck it, I will do it myself and see what happens". Beckers ran ads starting the next week in a local paper condemning the pollution of these planes and urging people to "BOYCOTT SKY ADVERTISERS". The local publisher of the paper we picked for our campaign said he had never had such a backlash on any ad he had ever run. Seems everyone was fed up, had enough of this noise crap, and was indeed ready to boycott these advertisers. He said we had hit a serious nerve.



To go back a bit, my research showed there was not much we could do about the planes (I was partially wrong) so I decided to go after the advertisers-that was the light that went off in my head.



So, we ran ads three weeks straight at the end of the summer while the air assault was at its climax and the shit hit the fan. We named names. We named the companies who had polluted the beaches with their ads the week before. My feeling was these companies had no idea where their ad money was going but they soon would and I am guessing that was right. The Boycott was the talk of the town and folks were into it. My guess is that the advertisers said crap, why piss people off with ads when we can buy billboards. My guess was that these advertisers were good corporate citizens and had no idea what the impact of their ad dollars were having on our beautiful beaches. I was guessing the big decision makers were not at the beach reading the paper and hearing the backlash, but their employees were and would tell them.



Well, that was the end of the summer, but before we knew it it was another season and the LA Times was calling for an interview about this issue. Other papers ran it too. The plane and ad companies cleverly laid out their defense of the practice. There were big meetings with the FAA, ad companies, plane guys, airport authorities, and all the local So Cal cities. Hermosa Beach and specifically Peter Tucker took the lead on all this, as they had had it too and had thought their hands were tied until the local response forced them to research the idea and they realized there were options. http://theenvelope.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-outthere1-2008aug01,0,6156949.story?page=2



This weekend on plane flew by. One. You just take for granted how peaceful that beach is, what a wonderful break in your week until that one plane came over. But, I am not complaining. It was one, and last year and the years before there would have been twenty.



If you are reading this blog and they are flying your skys, know you can make a difference by speaking out. I only know the South Bay here, and it would appear they are gone.



Cheers
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Memories of Petacalco

In 1973 we took a landcruiser and a Volkswagon squareback from Southern California to El Salvador. The trip down and back was a full three months, but the memories were priceless. I will share them with you from time to time. My buddy Tom and I thought our 1965 Landcruiser was the bomb for this trip, and really had doubts about Jim and Joe's old Volkswagen squareback. It did not take many weeks before our mighty jeep was bowing to the VW. The landcruiser was heavy, not very comfortable, and got stuck really easily in the sands and mud of Baja (we drove to Cabo on our first leg, before alot of the highway was done). And when it was stuck man was it hard to get out. The VW just went everywhere, squirming and sliding. It hardly ever got stuck, and just kinda skimmed over the rough spots. And, four people could push that puppy out of anything. We were not real bright on the offroad do's and don'ts that is for sure, but we learned. That old Landcruiser had to have the front hubs manually turned at the wheel to engage the four wheel drive. I remember crossing about a 200 yard mudflat inside of Quatro Casis (not sure of spelling), which we thought was pretty dry and and an easy go. About half way across we realized it was getting wetter by the second and she was starting to slow in the slush. We had a bit of momentum, and had it gunned, but I had the bright idea to stop and turn the hubs for the 4 wheel drive. We got out, turned the hub, and watched her sink in the mud. Christ, we were dead in the middle of this big open area with absolutely nothing to use for leverage to get her out. We spent that afternoon and the entire next day walking (a very long way) back and forth to the sides to accumulate enough rocks, sticks, and crap to get her a bit of a runway to get the momentum going to get her across. You gotta remember it was hot, a real shitty place to be, and muddy. Being covered in mud is not really that bitchen when you are traveling. If I remember right we even used our boards to jack off of (that does not sound right). Later some offroad guys said you take your tailgate off and use that. Wish I had thought of it.



And the VW watched from the other side with a big damn smile.
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This is a good one for a laugh.

I won't always talk about surf. This is one you have to try. The next time (or everytime like me) you go to a restaurant and they ask if you have reservations say "no, I feel pretty good about coming here". It is so damn fun to watch the look on that cute little 16 year old hostesses face. They never get it at first, never do.

You can find many applications for this. I was in SF the other day at the Hertz counter and the first thing the counter guy asked was "do you have reservations". I got a little creative and replied "Na, I like Hertz, you guys do a good job".

This is also a great way to drive your wife and kids crazy if you are into that like I am.
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Do you ever think back...

Do you ever think back and wonder how your life would change if just one tiny bit of fate had changed? Whenever folks ask about my career in the surf industry I can't help but think about just such a crossroad in 1967. I was in high school, and it was time to get a job. My stepfather worked in an office building next door to Woody's Smorgasborg in Redondo and knew the guys. I put in my application and went home to wait for the call. I had been building a board or two in my garage and had bought some matierials from Bing Surfboards in Hermosa Beach. I had even shown him one of my boards on my last trip down to get resin. Well, at the end of the second day Woody hadn't called, but Bing did. I almost lost it when Bing offered me a job making fins.

The point is that had Woody called first I would have said yes, and would not have reneged when Bing called later-that is the way our family is. I would never have gotten into the surf industry. I like to say there has never been a day I have not looked forward to going to work. It is just too much fun being around great people, boards and surf. Although, I do like a good burger.

I have never applied for a job in my life (except Woody's and I think my mom filled out the application for me and took it in). That first Bing job morphed into where I am sitting today, as owner and President of Becker. No one has ever asked if I had a college degree. Pinch me.

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