{"id":55020,"date":"2014-05-01T09:12:06","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T16:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=55020"},"modified":"2022-06-07T17:50:17","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T00:50:17","slug":"gerry-lopez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/gerry-lopez\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerry Lopez"},"content":{"rendered":"

GERRY LOPEZ <\/strong><\/p>\n

INTERVIEW & INTRODUCTION BY\u00a0STEVE OLSON<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHOTO BY JEFF DIVINE<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the out door…\u00a0Casual is about right… Pushing, where others\u00a0might have kicked out…\u00a0Looking for what\u2019s NOW…\u00a0finding it, but does one really?\u00a0It\u2019s always happening NOW.\u00a0At least that\u2019s what I figured out…\u00a0A Master all his own, and then some…\u00a0From the water, into another form…\u00a0Gerry Lopez is Gerry Lopez…\u00a0There\u2019s not another one like him,\u00a0or you, as a matter of fact…\u00a0Dig it… it\u2019s really all good…<\/em><\/p>\n

Hello, Gerry. Are you driving right now?<\/strong>
\nYeah. We were down at our event in Doheny, the Battle of the Paddle, the biggest stand-up paddle event going right now. It was our sixth one and every one just gets bigger and bigger, so it\u2019s kind of a scene, but it\u2019s all good.<\/p>\n

Are they racing each other paddling or riding waves or both?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s both. It\u2019s actually a race in and out through the waves.<\/p>\n

Have you been paddling for a long time?<\/strong>
\nSUP hasn\u2019t been a long running sport, but I\u2019ve been doing it since the beginning, which has been about ten years or so, maybe less? The years just fly by…. I kind of forget how long it\u2019s been.<\/p>\n

Do you prefer standup paddling now to regular surfing?<\/strong>
\nNo. I love it all. It\u2019s easier and sometimes more convenient on a stand-up board than it is on a surfboard, but I\u2019ll get it any way I can.<\/p>\n

I can dig it. Where were you born?<\/strong>
\nHonolulu.<\/p>\n

When did you start surfing?<\/strong>
\nI started surfing when I was ten years old.<\/p>\n

Did you dig the ocean and feel it and just decide you were going to be surfing?<\/strong>
\nPretty much everybody did. The ocean was everybody\u2019s playground in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

How was it growing up in Hawaii as a kid?<\/strong>
\nIt was as good as it could be. Hawaii in the 1950\u2019s and \u201860s was the best of times to be a kid growing up.<\/p>\n

Did you play sports and stuff before you picked up surfing?<\/strong>
\nYeah, I was into baseball, little league and pony league. Even when I started surfing, I was still playing a lot of baseball. By the end, I always played catcher.<\/p>\n

Oh really? You get some action behind the plate, that\u2019s for sure.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Yeah, that\u2019s where the most action is.<\/p>\n

Were you any good?<\/strong>
\nWell, we won the little league championship one year, so that was something. That was in 1960 or so.<\/p>\n

Nice. Did you surf town in the beginning?<\/strong>
\nYeah, that\u2019s where I grew up, in town.<\/p>\n

How did you transition out to the North Shore?<\/strong>
\nOnce we started really getting into surfing, obviously, I wanted to go out during the wintertime and try the North Shore. It started in the small waves to begin with and, eventually, we worked our way up to bigger surf. We were pretty young.<\/p>\n

How old were you when you started surfing the North Shore?<\/strong>
\nI think the first time I surfed Pipeline I was maybe 13 or 14. We had been surfing small Chuns and Haleiwa before that for a couple of years. I was probably 12 or 13. We weren\u2019t very good, but we had a lot of enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

Were you surfing Ala Moana and all the spots in town before going out there?<\/strong>
\nYeah. We were mostly in Waikiki. We lived on the east side of Honolulu, so we surfed out there a lot.<\/p>\n

Were you guys riding longboards at Haleiwa or was it in the transition time?<\/strong>
\nThis was when it was all longboards, that\u2019s what everyone rode.<\/p>\n

Was that heavy, as a little kid, going out there, for you?<\/strong>
\nNo, because we were going out in small surf. If it was big, we stayed on the beach and watched.<\/p>\n

What guys were you watching that were out there charging Pipe?<\/strong>
\nNobody was really charging Pipe yet. At Sunset it was George Downing, Buzzy Trent, Peter Cole, Greg Noll, Jose Angel, Paul Strauch and those guys.<\/p>\n

Were Butch Van Arsdale and Jock Sutherland out there?<\/strong>
\nYeah. Butch was the lifeguard on the North Shore … the only lifeguard for a while then Eddie Aikau was the 2nd one. Jock was the same age as us. He was surfing it, but he was pretty young too. It wasn\u2019t until towards the end of high school that we really started hitting it all the time. The North Shore was good in the wintertime and we\u2019d surf town in the summertime. Even though town is generally thought of as small surf, at times, it could get pretty big too. There was some pretty challenging stuff there as well.<\/p>\n

\n

“THE BOARD I HAD IN \u201870 AND \u201871 WAS ONE OF THE BEST BOARDS\u00a0I HAD. IT LASTED ME TWO WINTERS. IT WAS THE ONLY ONE\u00a0I WOULD USE AT PIPELINE. THAT WAS THE BOARD THAT\u00a0I CALLED THE CORAL CRUISER. THAT WENT ON TO BE THE\u00a0PROTOTYPE FOR ALL THE PIPELINE GUNS OF THE \u201870S.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When did you start to figure out Pipeline?<\/strong>
\nIt wasn\u2019t until the boards went short in \u201868 and \u201869. That\u2019s when I started campaigning the place and trying to be there for every swell. I was probably 20 years old by then.<\/p>\n

I was there in \u201871 with my brother and I saw you out and you had the place wired, or it seemed that way to me.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Oh yeah?<\/p>\n

You were just stuffing barrels like it was shore break, and it was pretty gnarly out there. That\u2019s what I meant by wired.<\/strong>
\nWell, all through the last years of the \u201860s and all the way through the \u201870s, I was pretty much charging it as hard as I could, every time there were any waves there.<\/p>\n

How did you develop your style?<\/strong>
\nIt just developed from the boards I was riding and the spots we were surfing.<\/p>\n

You just seemed to have this Zen and be one with it. I guess that\u2019s one way to describe it.<\/strong>
\nWell, you had no choice. It was either find some harmony with it or take some heavy gas. Obviously, everyone did that, myself included, but you learn how to figure out the best way to do it, the most efficient way to do it, or you give up. I guess I was one of those guys that just kept breaking all my boards in half, then building a new one until I came up with a board that really would work well there. If you were there in \u201871, that was the board I had. The board I had in \u201870 and \u201871 was one of the best boards I had. It lasted me two winters. It was the only one I would use at Pipeline. That was the board that I called the Coral Cruiser. That went on to be the prototype for all the Pipeline guns of the \u201870s.<\/p>\n

You shaped all your boards then?<\/strong>
\nYeah.<\/p>\n

Did you glass them as well?<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] Yeah, I did.<\/p>\n

You did everything.<\/strong>
\nWe did everything.<\/p>\n

Did you come up with Lightning Bolt?<\/strong>
\nI did. Jack Shipley and I started that in 1970. The Hobie Surfboard Shop was going out of business and we knew the guy and he said, \u201cDo you guys want to buy the lease and all the fixtures in the shop?\u201d He practically just gave it to us. We said, \u201cYeah. Let\u2019s try it and start a shop of our own.\u201d So we came up with that name.<\/p>\n

How did you come up with that name?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t know why we thought that would be a good name, but at first it wasn\u2019t because people would call up looking for the surf shop and we\u2019d say, \u201cLightning Bolt\u201d and they\u2019d hang up before we got to say the Surfboards part.<\/p>\n

They were jumping on it.<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] We kept at it and got a reputation for building pretty good surfboards. Pretty soon, we got pretty well known. Actually, maybe we even went on to become the most well-known surfboard brand of that period.<\/p>\n

Did you expect that?<\/strong>
\nNo. We just needed a job. Working for ourselves was better than working for somebody else.<\/p>\n

How was it at the beginning of doing the shop?<\/strong>
\nWell, we knew what we were doing because we had been doing it for a bunch of years already, so we just kept doing what we knew how to do. Rent was cheap and as long as we sold some boards, we did okay. I was still living at my parents\u2019 house, and overhead was pretty minimal. You didn\u2019t need much.<\/p>\n

What did your parents think of you rushing Pipeline and that whole surfer lifestyle back then?<\/strong>
\nThey kept asking me what I was going to do when I grew up. At one point, my dad goes, \u201cWell, I guess this is what you\u2019re going to do, huh?\u201d I said, \u201cWell, it seems to be working.\u201d He was like, \u201cI guess you have more of a job than all your friends, so what the heck.\u201d They were both educated people. My mom was a teacher and my dad worked for the newspaper. He was one of the editors. I guess they had hoped I would do something more with my life. Surfing, at that time, was certainly not regarded in the same light as it is today. It certainly wasn\u2019t considered a career. It was actually more of a disease than anything else. It all started to change right then, although slowly at first, but it was in the transition of becoming more acceptable. Once the shop started having more success, we went on to do the clothing thing, which was in \u201875. Then my parents said, \u201cOh, now I guess this is okay.\u201d I dropped out of college the last semester of my senior year to pursue the shaping and surfing thing, mostly because it was a really good spring season to surf, but we also had the shop going and we were into it.<\/p>\n

What were you majoring in when you were in college?<\/strong>
\nArchitecture.<\/p>\n

So you were into design as well. Did you come up with the Lightning Bolt logo?<\/strong>
\nYeah, I did.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably one of the strongest logos ever, in my opinion.<\/strong>
\nSurfing was definitely a small world back then, but in that world, at that time, it was pretty big.<\/p>\n

How was it jumping from just building surfboards into the whole clothing world for you guys?<\/strong>
\nWell, it was a shock, but we actually had more instant success doing that than we did with the surfboards. Right off the bat the thing took off, so it was fun.<\/p>\n

Who were your competitors back then, Hang Ten and Golden Breed or other surf companies?<\/strong>
\nThose guys had already choked up, so we didn\u2019t really have any real competition, there was Sundek and they weren\u2019t really a surf brand like we were. Even though they were selling swimwear, we were selling anything we could put the lightning bolt on and people would buy it. It was a great thing. Those were great times because it was uphill the whole way.<\/p>\n

How did you start picking cats to ride for Lightning Bolt, like Rory [Russell] and [Jeff] Crawford?<\/strong>
\nThey were just all the best surfers. They actually wanted to ride for us. Everybody wanted to ride for us, so we pretty much took them all, especially in Hawaii. I think that\u2019s why the clothing thing did so well because you could look at a Surfer Magazine and any feature of surfing in Hawaii would show pretty much everyone riding a Lightning Bolt board. It was all the top guys, whether they were from Hawaii or California or Australia or wherever. They all wanted to ride our boards and that made it even more popular.<\/p>\n

You put in all this work, so when did it feel like it started paying off a little bit?<\/strong>
\nWell, financially, it never really paid off, but it was a whole lot of fun. [Laughs] Finally, in 1980, I ended up selling out my interests. Jack Shipley and I had started the Lightning Bolt Surf Shop, just the two of us. With the clothing thing, we ended up getting involved with a whole bunch of other guys. We still had the surf shop, which was a separate business, but the clothing thing involved a bunch of other partners and once that started getting really successful, they started fighting with each other over the money. We never had any money, so we were on the side watching these guys battle it out and having to choose sides. It seemed to take away from whole reason that Jack and I started the thing and why we were doing it. I ended up selling my interest in the clothing thing and the surf shop as well because I just wanted to go surfing in Indonesia. I was already living on Maui and I was moving on. I just went surfing, which is what I\u2019d been doing the whole time.<\/p>\n

\n

“WE ARE MORE SERIOUS ABOUT OUR SURFING THAN OUR IMAGE.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How did you guys figure out that Indonesia would have these amazing waves? Was that from looking at maps or what?<\/strong>
\nNo. We used to go to Australia quite a bit because we had a guy down in Australia making our Lighting Bolt boards. The pro contest started up down there, so we started doing that. Going from Australia to Bali is like going from the West Coast to Hawaii. It\u2019s pretty close. We went the first time and it was like, \u201cHoly cow! This is great!\u201d Then we just kept going back.<\/p>\n

Your first trips were to the mainland of Bali or did you guys go out to G-land?<\/strong>
\nIn 1974, we went to Bali and that was the best surf we\u2019d ever seen anywhere in our whole lives and no one was there. A couple of years later, we started going to G-land, and we\u2019d go back and forth between G-land and Bali. The whole time, it was getting more popular in Bali, so we ended up staying more in G-land and spending as much time as we could down there.<\/p>\n

And there was no one out?<\/strong>
\nIt was not a lot of people.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s pretty epic. Did you guys ever venture to Tahiti to surf back in the day?<\/strong>
\nYeah. In the early \u201880s, before Teahupoo and all that stuff, we went to Moorea, Raiatea, and Huahine and surfed the spots there.<\/p>\n

Have you surfed Teahupoo since? That\u2019s a heavy wave.<\/strong>
\nNo, we only went to Tahiti that one time.<\/p>\n

Did you have to surf in the Huntington U.S. Surfing Championships back when you had to wear those orange helmets?<\/strong>
\nI did, and those helmets were huge.<\/p>\n

I was a little kid watching and those helmets looked so heavy.<\/strong>
\nThey were heavy and worse when they filled up with water. That\u2019s when it was all happening, man. Huntington Beach, David Nuuihwa\u2026 It was really cool.<\/p>\n

Did you enjoy contest surfing?<\/strong>
\nYeah. At first, it was a normal part of surfing. There weren\u2019t that many contests, but surfing is pretty competitive and the contest was more of a get-together. Everybody would come, so it was a gathering, and then you\u2019d have the contest. Usually, the best part about it was that you got to surf whatever surf spot they held the contest at with just a couple of guys in the water, and we all liked that. Of course, if you won, that would be great. If you didn\u2019t, that was okay too. It didn\u2019t really matter. They weren\u2019t that big a deal. Of course, when they started to go professional and having prize money, that was even more incentive, but I wasn\u2019t a great contest surfer. I didn\u2019t have as much success as a lot of the other guys. It was just something we all did.<\/p>\n

How many times did you win the Pipe Masters?<\/strong>
\nI think it was a couple of times.<\/p>\n

When you were surfing in the Pipe Masters did you feel pressure to do good to keep pushing your products or was it like that for you guys?<\/strong>
\nNo. We were lucky and stoked we had a job because most of the guys surfing down at the beach didn\u2019t. It wasn\u2019t that much of a job building surfboards, but it was kind of a job.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a job. If you\u2019re doing something and turning it for a profit of some sort, it\u2019s a job, whether the people agree or not.<\/strong>
\nYeah, it\u2019s the parents mostly who you\u2019re trying to live up to.<\/p>\n

My parents were pretty cool about it but they were like, \u201cWhat are you going to do with your life?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m doing it and it\u2019s not that bad.\u201d<\/strong>
\nMy parents were the same and, finally, they just went, \u201cOh.\u201d It became a moment of realization for them. They looked at me and saw that I was happy and I wasn\u2019t doing that bad and I could pay my own rent so they just accepted it.<\/p>\n

I have a kid and I know that for the love of your kid, you just want them to be cool or whatever.<\/strong>
\nYeah. You just want them to be happy.<\/p>\n

So when you first started surfing you were just like, \u201cOkay, this is what I love the most.\u201d<\/strong>
\nThat really didn\u2019t happen until after high school. I enjoyed it, but it was more recreation than anything serious. It wasn\u2019t until I went to college in Whittier, in 1966, and it was at the end of the first big boom in surfing and the whole\u00a0Gidget, Beach Boys thing. I had an association with a surfboard company in Newport Beach called Ramsey Jay Surfboards. It was a small little company. They\u2019re not even around anymore. Being from Hawaii, I showed up there one day. I was more into school than I was surfing, but we went to the beach because it wasn\u2019t that far. We drove down Valley View straight to the beach, to Huntington and saw those guys at the shop and they were so stoked that they gave me a board to ride. They told everybody, \u201cYeah, this is our guy from Hawaii, our team rider.\u201d I was like, \u201cWow!\u201d<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Just because you were from Hawaii.<\/strong>
\nWell, I had gotten a board from them before, so I had a relationship with them, but showing up like that, they gave me a board to ride and there was a lot of love. It was cool. Of course, in \u201866, there was a lot of love going around anyway.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] It was a crazy time and you were one of the cats living it. I\u2019m just living vicariously hearing you talk about it.<\/strong>
\nWhen I was in college, I wasn\u2019t a surfer, really, in my mind. I was a student. I was serious about that. After that visit to Ramsey Jay and seeing what the scene was, I got into it and said, \u201cThis is cool.\u201d We took a trip down to Ensenada with a guy that lived in Whittier that was into surfing and that changed everything for me.<\/p>\n

Oh really? It was the trip to Ensenada?<\/strong>
\nThat was when I figured out that this was what I wanted to do. I want to be a surfer.<\/p>\n

It seems as the whole surf thing was seen as just beach bums hanging out on the beach, but it seemed like a pretty good life choice when I was a kid.<\/strong>
\nThat was the whole thing with my parents going, \u201cWhat about school?\u201d I go, \u201cWhat about it?\u201d I still went to school, but I was going surfing more and more. Then I transferred back to the University of Hawaii, after my first year at Whittier.<\/p>\n

So you split college right before you were about to graduate?<\/strong>
\nYeah, but that wasn\u2019t until 1970 when I started Lightning Bolt. This was just when shortboards were starting and all that. That didn\u2019t happen until late \u201867 and early \u201868. It was all happening right then, like you said.<\/p>\n

It seemed like a crazy time to be a surfer with the subculture of free love and the hippie thing and everything else that went with it. It seemed like everybody was pretty wide open.<\/strong>
\nIt was, and surfing was too. It was a great time for surfing. It really was. There was the whole transition from longboards to shortboards and how we were able to ride the waves, especially at places like the Pipeline.<\/p>\n

That was all changing too.<\/strong>
\nTotally. That\u2019s when tube riding started happening. Before that it was luck more than skill.<\/p>\n

How did you master riding the barrel?<\/strong>
\nI just kept working at it. We knew what we wanted to do and we just kept trying to make it happen.<\/p>\n

There had to be a time where you were like, \u201cOkay, now I understand what I have to do to be able to slide into the barrel and then pull out.\u201d<\/strong>
\nWell, yeah. [Laughs] You learn that, but you never stop learning it. You just get slightly better at it as time goes on and you get to do it more.<\/p>\n

C\u2019mon, you were one of the first dudes to have it wired, as they say.<\/strong>
\nWell, you know, I mean, we had good boards.<\/p>\n

So you give it all to the boards.<\/strong>
\nWell, it wouldn\u2019t have happened any other way.<\/p>\n

It just seems like some cats had it more wired than other cats back then, and you seemed to have it wired the most. Maybe I\u2019m just giving you some props.<\/strong>
\nWell, I mean, you know, there\u2019s not really any other way to ride the Pipeline very well because it\u2019s pretty goddamn hollow so you have to ride through the barrel. Before, the boards didn\u2019t allow you to do that very well. When they did, and when I had figured out that first board, then I was like, \u201cWow, this is cool. I can dig this.\u201d Then the whole Lightning Bolt thing was happening and I had a pretty good job.<\/p>\n

Everything just seemed to come together, right?<\/strong>
\nYeah. It was good times.<\/p>\n

Do you think that college made you understand a little bit more?<\/strong>
\nAbout what?<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Design. Business. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t want to use the word serious or professional, but did it make you more focused and disciplined to pull it off than cats that didn\u2019t have that?<\/strong>
\nNo, I don\u2019t think so. I had just come from a period in society where everybody went to school. Do you remember Larry Bertlemann?<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/strong>
\nHe was the first guy at the beach that didn\u2019t go to school. The truant officer would come and ask us, \u2018Hey, have you seen Bertlemann?\u201d We\u2019d go, \u201cNo.\u201d We all looked out for each other, so we covered for him, even though we had seen him. The truant officer would leave and then Bertlemann would come out of hiding. We were like, \u201cDude, they really wanted you. You better go to school.\u201d Well he didn\u2019t but he did end up to be one of the best surfers of that time. Before that, everybody went to school. It was a whole different mentality. It was through those times in the late \u201860s and early \u201870s when everything started changing everywhere, in school and in society and in the surf. It was a good time. Life was good.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Were you involved with that Rainbow Bridge movie?<\/strong>
\nI was.<\/p>\n

There was a lot of stuff happening when you were growing up as a kid.<\/strong>
\nYeah, the \u201860s were happening, really happening.<\/p>\n

How happening?<\/strong>
\n[Laughs] It was all happening, man.<\/p>\n

What about your involvement with Big Wednesday when that was going down with Jan-Michael [Vincent] and all those guys?<\/strong>
\nThat was fun.<\/p>\n

How did that come about for you?<\/strong>
\nI just got a phone call one day from John Milius, out of the blue. He asked if I wanted to be in the movie and I said, \u201cSure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Were you a stunt double?<\/strong>
\nNo, I actually played myself in the movie.<\/p>\n

So you filmed down in El Salvador and Mexico?<\/strong>
\nWe shot some second unit stuff down in El Salvador but they never got what they wanted. They filmed most of the movie around Los Angeles. We spent a few weeks up at the Bixby Ranch, north of the Hollister Ranch. Then they decided that they were going to go over to Hawaii and shoot the final surf scene in Hawaii. That was around December.<\/p>\n

How was it to deal with the Hollywood thing?<\/strong>
\nIt was great. I think everyone would like to have a chance to go to Hollywood and have that experience and I did. I had a good time.<\/p>\n

You also did Conan the Barbarian, right? You were Conan\u2019s sidekick?<\/strong>
\nYeah, I was the second lead in Conan, behind Arnold.<\/p>\n

Did you enjoy acting?<\/strong>
\nI enjoyed it while I was doing it, but I didn\u2019t think I wanted to make a career out of it.<\/p>\n

Why not?<\/strong>
\nI didn\u2019t particularly care for that lifestyle. I liked the surfing lifestyle a little better.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] I don\u2019t blame you. When you guys were shooting Conan, where did you shoot that? Was that in Hollywood or on location?<\/strong>
\nThat was in Spain. We were six months in Spain, four months in Madrid and a couple of months down in the South of Spain on the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

How did they get to you? Was it through Big Wednesday?<\/strong>
\nYeah. It was John Milius who did Conan. All the films I did were with John.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s cool. He used to surf, no?<\/strong>
\nYeah, he grew up in Malibu.<\/p>\n

How did you get into snowboarding?<\/strong>
\nMy wife suggested it one time and we went and we both loved it. Generally, before snowboarding, she used to ski. In the wintertime, she used to try to get me to go skiing with her, but the wintertime is when the big surf came and I was afraid I might miss something, so I never went skiing. Snowboarding came at a time in my life when the opportunity presented itself, and it ended up and still is more like surfing than any of the other offshoots-from-surfing sports like skateboarding or windsurfing. It was a natural thing. Once I started doing it, I really got into it. Here I am, 20 years later, in Oregon, still loving it.<\/p>\n

Where do you snowboard up in Oregon?<\/strong>
\nMt. Bachelor.<\/p>\n

Do you feel surfing and snowboarding in powder are basically parallel?<\/strong>
\nYeah. There\u2019s no tube rides but you can leap off a cliff or get a big jump. Unless you ride powder snow, it\u2019s hard to relate, but in the soft snow it is parallel to the surfing feeling.<\/p>\n

Dropping in on the giant face of a wave and dropping in on the giant face of a mountain going as fast as you can go, it seems like such a match to both of those worlds. It\u2019s within that world of water, frozen or the ocean. It\u2019s amazing.<\/strong>
\nYeah, it is.<\/p>\n

What year did you first hook up with snowboarding?<\/strong>
\nI started snowboarding in 1989. My wife\u2019s folks lived in Redding and we were trying to go to Shasta, but they didn\u2019t have any snow that year, so we drove up to Ashland. That was our first time into Oregon, and we had a great time. We were living in Maui, so you had to take a snowboard trip if you wanted to go ride, so we did that a bunch of times. We took a trip up to Bend and rode Mt. Bachelor in the \u201892\/\u201993 winter, and we liked it so much that we bought a place up there and started spending more time there and we\u2019re still there.<\/p>\n

Do you surf up there?<\/strong>
\nAs much as I can. I\u2019m surfing here more now than I did at first. At first, the only thing I wanted to do up here was snowboard.<\/p>\n

Was it a hard transition to figuring out edges when you were snowboarding?<\/strong>
\nNo, everybody picked up on it pretty quick. The quickest was one of my team riders, Eric Totah who had it nailed within about an hour. He was just going off in an hour. It happens pretty quickly when you come from surfing to snowboarding. If you can learn in powder, you\u2019re going to learn really quickly if you\u2019re a surfer.<\/p>\n

Have you ever snowboarded on the big island?<\/strong>
\nNo, I haven\u2019t. I rode my motorcycle through the snow up there a few times. It\u2019s a hit and miss deal with the snow on Mauna Kea. I just never was there at the right time.<\/p>\n

When you got into snowboarding, did you immediately go to the world of heli-skiing and all of that?<\/strong>
\nWell, I had a couple of opportunities and I got to do it a few times, so that was cool. For me, because I\u2019d never spent any time in the snow world, just going to the mountain was cool. You go up there and it\u2019s not like a surf spot where everyone is all in the same spot. You get up the mountain and you get off the lift and you go one way and within a few minutes you\u2019re all by yourself.<\/p>\n

Which is insane.<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s great. There\u2019s a lot of space. I think that\u2019s what appealed to me so much about Oregon. There\u2019s all this open space.<\/p>\n

Do you ride parallel or surf stance?<\/strong>
\nSurf stance. I\u2019m not a duck stance kind of guy.<\/p>\n

I just think snowboarding is one of the coolest things that man ever invented.<\/strong>
\nIt is pretty cool.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s insane. I\u2019m into snowboarding myself.<\/strong>
\nNow the skis have gotten better, but for a long time, it was so much better on a snowboard in powder than it was on skis. Now that\u2019s changed. The snowboards actually influenced the ski designs quite a bit; so now skiing is really cool again too.<\/p>\n

Do you ski?<\/strong>
\nNo. I Nordic ski a little bit, but I\u2019m a kook. I just do cross country for the work out.<\/p>\n

Are you into yoga and that whole scene?<\/strong>
\nTotally.<\/p>\n

How did you ever get into yoga?<\/strong>
\nIt was the \u201860s, man. I was a hippie. I just saw it and got interested in it. Now it\u2019s become a large part of my life. I\u2019ve also discovered that it comes into people\u2019s lives right when it\u2019s supposed to. I guess it was supposed to come into my life when I was 20 years old, so that\u2019s when it happened.<\/p>\n

\n

“AT SOME POINT, YOU UNDERSTAND THAT IT\u2019S MORE ABOUT THE PROCESS\u00a0THEN REALLY TRYING TO GET TO THAT DESTINATION OR TO THAT GOAL.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Did it help you with surfing and every other aspect of your life?<\/strong>
\nYeah. It did. It helps with everything.<\/p>\n

You figured out how to tube ride and you figured out how to do yoga, so you were setting trends early on.<\/strong>
\nWell, I was just trying to do my thing and what I was doing happened to work.<\/p>\n

What is a normal day like for you now up in Oregon, if you\u2019re not snowboarding?<\/strong>
\nI get up in the morning and mostly spend the first half of the day doing yoga.<\/p>\n

How many hours?<\/strong>
\nAnywhere between two and four.<\/p>\n

Is there a certain type of yoga that you practice?<\/strong>
\nNow they have all these different names for yoga, but it\u2019s all, basically, the same thing. It\u2019s become very specialized these days.<\/p>\n

How do you determine if you\u2019re going to go surfing in Oregon, besides when the waves are good?<\/strong>
\nI just wait for some good surf, because we live in central Oregon, so it\u2019s about 180 miles to the ocean.<\/p>\n

Where do you surf up there?<\/strong>
\nWe usually go to a place called Pacific City.<\/p>\n

Is that anywhere near Lincoln City?<\/strong>
\nI think it\u2019s about 30 miles north.<\/p>\n

I surfed Lincoln City and it was so good. It was crazy. It was like sheet glass and it\u2019s usually Victory at Sea kind of stormy, but this day was great. It was one of the best waves that I\u2019ve gotten in a long time. I was flipped out. I was sleeping on the beach and I woke up and there were perfect glass peaks boiling everywhere.<\/strong>
\nWow. Perfect.<\/p>\n

Yeah. So what are the companies that you do now?<\/strong>
\nI work with Patagonia. I\u2019m an ambassador there. I work with Rainbow Sandals and also with Maui Jim. I just started working for Naish International. That\u2019s Robby\u2019s company where I will be shaping boards for surf, SUP, sailing and kiting.<\/p>\n

What does it mean that you\u2019re an ambassador?<\/strong>
\nWell, I represent the company and get involved in events and promotions and I\u2019m involved with the design of some of the gear and clothing and stuff like that. Patagonia has a big surfboard division. Fletcher Chouinard, Yvon\u2019s son, runs that, so I\u2019m involved a little bit with that as well.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re pretty eco friendly, no?<\/strong>
\nThat\u2019s the whole nature of everything that they do and has been since the beginning. You see a lot of other companies today that are trying to use that kind of thing to help with their image, but Patagonia is really the real deal as far as that goes. They\u2019ve been like that from the start. It\u2019s a good match for me because I\u2019m an old hippie. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

What do you mean you\u2019re an old hippie exactly? I\u2019m so curious about how the \u201860s were for you.<\/strong>
\nThey were big. That\u2019s when surfboards went from longboards to shortboards and that\u2019s when I got turned on to yoga. It was a pretty mind-expanding period of time and it really set me on the path that I\u2019m on today.<\/p>\n

It seems like a lot of people are trying to find that same path now.<\/strong>
\nWell, it\u2019s not that hard to find. Maybe it\u2019s harder to accept, but it\u2019s not that hard to find.<\/p>\n

So you go from the \u201860s into the \u201870s\u2026 As a kid, it had a huge effect on me, when I would see Nuuihwa pulling up to Huntington in a Rolls Royce with a fur coat on and giant platforms and he had a board caddy. It was just wild. I was like, \u2018Wow. That\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/strong>
\nHe was a surf star.<\/p>\n

Yeah, but you were a surf star too, right?<\/strong>
\nNo, not like that. I was more of a hippie. Then everything changed and that whole surf stardom thing wasn\u2019t like it had been when David was King. Also, it didn\u2019t matter that much to other people or to me. We were more serious about our surfing than our image.<\/p>\n

When did it start hitting for you and you became Lopez?<\/strong>
\nWell, I don\u2019t think it ever did.<\/p>\n

Oh, it did. [Laughs] It did to us. We were like, \u201cThis guy is so casual in the barrel.\u201d It seemed like a lot of people emulated how you were doing it.<\/strong>
\nYeah, but by then I was on to something else. I was more into the things that I was doing and that I was going to do. Does that make sense? If you are in the present moment, then everything you already did is in the past and unless you learned something from what happened, it has no effect on the present. When we worry about the past or the future too much, we end up sad, depressed or anxious, so don\u2019t worry, be happy.<\/p>\n

Absolutely. From the outside looking in, I\u2019m just curious how you perceived it.<\/strong>
\nI guess I never really thought it was that big a deal, which was probably a good way to look at it because you can certainly get caught up in that thing. I never wanted a Rolls Royce. I\u2019d rather have a Volkswagen or a pick-up truck.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Right. So you were humble and you just did what you did.<\/strong>
\nYeah, you know, you\u2019re just doing it. You\u2019re just going and doing one thing and then all of sudden something else comes along and the surfboards get better and you discover new surf spots and you keep constantly going from one thing to the next. You never really are trying to hold on to anything that you did. You\u2019re trying to focus more on what you\u2019re trying to do.<\/p>\n

When you started to see your pictures in the magazine, it affects everyone differently, so I\u2019m curious how that affected you. In the picture of you at Ala Moana on the cover of Surfer, you were in a pretty crucial part of the lip.<\/strong>
\nYeah, that was kind of a cool picture. That was a big surprise when I saw that one. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

I was like, \u201cThis dude is doing a turn under the lip.\u201d It just looked cool.<\/strong>
\nActually, I ate shit right after that, but it made a nice picture.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] I love that. Why were you so casual when you were inside the barrel?<\/strong>
\nWell, there wasn\u2019t really anything else to do in there.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yeah, but how could you relax in situations of such intensity?<\/strong>
\nWell, you had more chance of making it if you kept your cool.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Right.<\/strong>
\nIf you got all excited and started thrashing around in there, you probably would have blown it. The thing with the Pipeline is that when we first started surfing there, you\u2019re paddling out and you\u2019re looking at the wave and looking into the tube as you\u2019re paddling out and you\u2019re watching it break and the wave is so steep and it breaks so fast and the thing is so hollow that you think that there is no way that a surfboard is going to ride in that kind of wave. That was the whole idea, to try and figure out how to do that. We spent a lot of time trying to figure that out and then you\u2019d figure out a part of it and have some success and then that success would lead to more success. You never figured it all out, but you figured out a lot of the things that you didn\u2019t know when you started, so it made it fun and it made it safer because when you weren\u2019t making those waves, you were really getting tossed around by them. That was dangerous, so you wanted to make them and that was the goal. It was a process. At some point, you understand that it\u2019s more about the process then really trying to get to that destination or to that goal. Once that realization came to you, everything got a lot easier. Everything was more okay. The wipeouts weren\u2019t as disappointing because there was something to be learned from them. The frustrations weren\u2019t as bad and the disappointments weren\u2019t as great and things started to get better. Then you learn further from that process. Most of the times you were getting your butt kicked at the Pipeline, it really had more to do with life back on the beach. You took those lessons to the rest of your life and found some kind of grounding or at least a little bit of peace and that allowed you to get through life a little more easily. You know, a lot of people struggle, day-to-day, trying to get through life. I\u2019m like, \u201cWow. What\u2019s the battle about?\u201d You just do it. You stay focused. You keep breathing. Concentrate on your breathing and everything else falls into place. Those things we talked about like the Hollywood thing, those are just things. You have dreams or big expectations about it and then you have the good fortune to experience them and they\u2019re great, but they\u2019re not really that great.<\/p>\n

\n

“I NEVER WANTED A ROLLS ROYCE. I\u2019D RATHER HAVE A\u00a0VOLKSWAGEN OR A PICK-UP TRUCK.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s not everything, right?<\/strong>
\nYeah.<\/p>\n

How did you figure out how to duck out of the back of a wave when you\u2019re in a situation instead of getting thrown back into the whitewash and the impact zone?<\/strong>
\nWell, most things in surfing, for most people, certainly for me, come from seeing someone else do it or come close to doing it first. That\u2019s generally how it works. You see something and you try to copy it and then along the way you figure it out. There are a few surfers through history that have been truly creative. To be truly creative, you have to start with nothing. For a lot of the things, that I did, I had something to start with. I saw somebody else doing stuff like that and I just copied them. When you start with something, that\u2019s not creativity. That\u2019s change. Take somebody like Wayne Lynch. You remember him?<\/p>\n

Of course, the goofy footer.<\/strong>
\nHe was a truly creative surfer. We\u2019ve become really good friends over the years and he\u2019s working for Patagonia as well so we get to spend some time together. I asked him, \u201cYou know all those moves that you had back in the \u201860s, when you\u2019d get high up on the lip, and pull it off?\u201d It was like that photo that you mentioned at Ala Moana. He was doing stuff like that, but he was pulling it off. I asked him, \u201cWhere did you come up with those moves?\u201d He told me that he used to go into this dream state when he was lying in bed and he was able to visualize himself doing these things. Then he\u2019d try them out in the surf the next day. That\u2019s true creativity. That\u2019s very rare. There are not many guys that are able to do that. Kelly Slater is, obviously, a very creative surfer. He does stuff before anybody else. Most surfers just see something and they copy it and then they figure out how to do it and then they get the credit for inventing it. [Laughs] The real story, generally speaking, is that it comes from somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Who were some of the guys that you enjoyed watching surf when you were coming up?<\/strong>
\nThe biggest inspiration to me was a big surfer in the \u201850s and \u201860s from Hawaii named Paul Strauch. He was about five years ahead of me in school, but we went to the same high school. He was generally recognized by the surfers of my generation in Hawaii as the style master. He was the guy that we all wanted to look like when we surfed the wave. I learned a lot from him, not only about surfing. The way he was on the beach was just the way he surfed. He was just this really elegant, graceful guy, and it carried over into everything that he did, whether it was in the water or not. That was just the way he was. He lives down in San Clemente now, but he surfs San Onofre all the time. I can watch him ride a wave today and he still has that same elegance. There were a lot of great surfers in that time period. David Nuuihwa was fantastic. Donald Takayama, Phil Edwards, Miki Dora, Joey Cabell\u2026they were all great surfers and they all had a great influence on me. There are surfers of every generation that I admire and like to watch ride a wave. I love watching Kelly Slater surf and I love watching Rob Machado surf. Craig Anderson from Australia is a terrific surfer. It\u2019s really any of these guys. They\u2019re all so good.<\/p>\n

What do you think of their attack at Pipeline now?<\/strong>
\nThey\u2019re better than ever. It\u2019s bordering on unbelievable. Jamie O\u2019Brien and John John Florence and these guys have taken it to a level that is so superior to what\u2019s ever been done before. Obviously, they\u2019re still perfecting their whole act and they\u2019re just getting better. They really are. They\u2019re not just flash-in-the-pan guys. They\u2019re really dedicated and they\u2019re really serious about what they do and they work hard at it. Anytime you get to see them surf, it\u2019s like a miracle.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a wave that I saw of John John where he gets barreled on the outside at 2nd Reef and then he comes in to the inside and gets barreled again.<\/strong>
\nI remember that one. He was high up in the tube, and then he came into the inside and really doubled up. For such a young guy, he really has a lot of finesse in his style and a lot of really subtle things that he does that are amazing. They\u2019re unbelievable really. He doesn\u2019t seem to be caught up in the whole surf stardom thing. He\u2019s pretty focused on his surfing and perfecting his craft.<\/p>\n

I just remember when I would go to the surf theater in Huntington and I would see Saltwater Wine or Super Session or any of those movies. It was so intense, being a little kid and watching these sets rolling through Second Reef. All of a sudden, you see cats like yourself or the Big Monday thing. I could feel the intensity. I always wondered how insane and intense it was to be out there in the line up at that time.<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s pretty intense. Any time the surf is big, it is. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

Right. It seemed like you guys weren\u2019t even intimidated by a 12-foot wave with a huge face. You were taking off deeper than most of these cats and then you were casually standing up in the barrel and being blown out by the spit. It blew my mind. I was like, \u201cWow. I want to pull that off one day.\u201d<\/strong>
\nThe photographers did a great job of capturing those images. For us guys that were doing it, we were into the moment. We weren\u2019t doing it to get our pictures taken. We were doing it because we really dug doing it. That was our whole purpose. That was my life right then. Those moments were special, but they were just passing moments. You get to do those things and maybe somebody saw you and maybe nobody did. You got to feel those moments, as brief as they were, and then life went on. You learned at some point that you couldn\u2019t really hold onto those moments. You could touch them when you had the opportunities, but you were more of a conduit as the moments passed through you. The lesson to be learned there was to live those moments to the fullest because that was all they were. After that, there were the next moments.<\/p>\n

In living those moments, they pass by and become part of the past, but they were also setting a precedent for what was to be done in the future and what\u2019s possible and then the next wave of cats took from what you guys did.<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t think we ever thought like that or had anything even close to those ideas when we were doing them.<\/p>\n

In the essence of looking back, it did do that, even though you were living in the moment. It must be a nice thing to reflect on, I would think.<\/strong>
\nYeah, it is. My son, who is 24, looks at something and is interested in it and I get to tell him how it was and that\u2019s cool. It\u2019s what\u2019s here and now that\u2019s really important. All those things that we did and all those moments led us to here. It was good.<\/p>\n

[Laughs] Living in the now is really the only true existence of being it seems.<\/strong>
\nYeah. So many people, ourselves included, spend a great deal of our lives living in recollection or anticipation. What that does is make us have a much less clear picture of what\u2019s here and now, which is really what we should be focused on.<\/p>\n

As you live your life, do you get closer to living in the now?<\/strong>
\nObviously, that\u2019s the goal. That\u2019s what I try to do.<\/p>\n

I get it. Does your kid surf?<\/strong>
\nYeah, but he grew up a snowboarder. He grew up here in Oregon, so that\u2019s his thing. Surfing is something that he\u2019s starting to discover now. I think it\u2019s worked really well for him the way his life has gone. He got to choose. Snowboarding was here and he\u2019s really good at it. His work is snowboarding. Surfing, in my opinion, should be first and foremost a recreation. You take it from there if that\u2019s the path of your choosing. That\u2019s how it should begin and that\u2019s how it should end. That\u2019s how my life has been. For me, surfing started as recreation and then it became a pretty serious thing, almost to a professional level, and then that phased out and I\u2019m back to being an amateur again, which is perfect. That\u2019s how I want to be and that\u2019s how everyone should be with surfing. It you take it to that professional level, it\u2019s not something you want to stay at forever. In a way, it\u2019s like Hollywood. It\u2019s not life. It\u2019s not the be-all and end-all. It\u2019s something that you pass through it and, hopefully, have a good time doing it. Hopefully, it doesn\u2019t suck you in and chew you up like it does to so many people.<\/p>\n

As a parent now, being a dad to your kid, do you take the lessons that you learned and try to share those?<\/strong>
\nThe learning process never stops. It\u2019s an ongoing education. You try to do the best you can. You make mistakes along the way, but hopefully you learn from those mistakes and then you just push on and keep paddling. The biggest lesson that surfing teaches you is that it\u2019s mostly paddling. You don\u2019t look at it and think, \u201cWow, this is a lot of work. What do I get from this? What\u2019s my reward?\u201d I get to ride a wave for 10 seconds or 20 seconds and that\u2019s it and then I paddle for an hour to get another ride like that. Life is like that. It\u2019s really a lot of work and you have to put up with a lot of shit, but you get these brief rides that make it all worthwhile. Being a father is one of those things that make it all worthwhile because it\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n

Yeah. I have a 27-year-old and I find it really amazing. I was a skateboarder back in the \u201870s and early \u201880s and I did okay with it and then my kid came along and one day he said to me, \u201cHey dad, I\u2019m a skateboarder.\u201d I was like, \u201cYeah? That\u2019s weird.\u201d It was just all of a sudden. Now he\u2019s on his own path and it\u2019s cool to see the influence that dads have on their kids a little bit. I just find it so interesting and cool in a really good way.<\/strong>
\nIn the best cases, most sons look up to their dads. I know I always did when my dad was alive. After he was gone, I realized that I should have listened and paid more attention and acknowledged him a lot more than I did, but that\u2019s life. Those are hard lessons. You do have regrets about opportunities and waves that you missed, but there\u2019s always another one coming, whether it\u2019s a wave or an opportunity. Being in the present moment, gives you a better chance of having that moment and living those moments when they come.<\/p>\n

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, ORDER ISSUE #72 BY CLICKING HERE\u2026<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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GERRY LOPEZ INTERVIEW & INTRODUCTION BY\u00a0STEVE OLSON PHOTO BY JEFF DIVINE In the out door…\u00a0Casual is about right… Pushing, where others\u00a0might have kicked out…\u00a0Looking for what\u2019s NOW…\u00a0finding it, but does one really?\u00a0It\u2019s always happening NOW.\u00a0At least that\u2019s what I figured out…\u00a0A Master all his own, and then some…\u00a0From the water, into another form…\u00a0Gerry Lopez is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4027,4028,4042],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-interviews","category-surf-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/GERRYLOPEZ-1-2.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55020"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89498,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55020\/revisions\/89498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}