In The Green Room with Rich Pavel
by Ken McKnight and Ryan A. Smith
posted 2004-11-28
AAS - What size are we talking?
Rich - I set it up with a lot of input from some of the best design minds in surfing. One of the things it targets very specifically with a direct approach is the 6'4" and 6'5" Fish. Very contemporary, very much like what Steve Lis is doing right now. That would be the benchmark of what would come out of there.
Photo by Tom Keck
It has a lot to do with a [recent] generation of crew that is really virile and vital and are kinda defining surfing now and wanting to connect with an era that came before them.
AAS - What is your interpretation of the history of the Fish. What's your take on it?
Rich - Well that is an interesting question and it deserves a good answer. A big part of why that board is not known to the industry is because there's been a huge shield or barrier that went up, and I think the way the Fish has been defined in its most vernacular form is really, not only but strictly, because of Steve Lis and the people whose shoulders he's standing on. Not the least of which would be Tom Blake, Bob Simmons, Nick Mirandon, or however you trace that back.
Rather than get into an academic debate of the merits or virtues of the wellspring, the part about Lis being the source for the Fish, as it's defined, that's classic and doesn't lend itself to argument. Anyone who would want to challenge it is just bickering. I feel bad for Nuuhiwa when that ad got run where it held him up as the innovator of it. And that is just not accurate.
Photo by JP Si. Pierre
AAS - David would be the first guy to tell you that.
Rich - He is really beautiful about that, he doesn't pretend and never did. Here you had something that was trying to be commercialized. [David] got the backlash. It sure wasn't something Stevie was a party to. Yet, the media would almost portray it as such. Or certainly not imply otherwise. That's really unfortunate. Here you have this person's integrity and creation, in the way of the Lis Fish, really marred. And that has never been set straight. Stevie Lis was never a party to that.
AAS - The stigma of the era was akin to the dark ages in surf history, with localism, anti competition, etc.
Rich - Innovations have always had a disclosure barrier. Sometimes the only protection was not to disclose. A good example would have been Galileo or Leonardo Da Vinci publishing their writings written backward in mirrors, or Newton doing it in obscure, difficult academic-type formats. These guys were having a rough go. They weren't being accepted. So they said, "We are not going to talk about it." And I think there are a couple of [those] things at play why the Fish was not known to the industry. And they're all good reasons, and it is unfortunate that the most visible stuff that has come up...
Photo by Ken McKnight
AAS - had a negative connotation?
Rich - To someone who didn't deserve it.
AAS - After that World Contest in 1972, didn't the Fish design kinda go way underground?
Rich - A few years later MR got switched onto a whole new realm of possibilities through Reno Abellira's Fish design.
AAS - The Fish had some unique bouts of popularity throughout surfing history. The first real explosion was '72, but it was underground before that.
Rich - Bingo! Before that, Jeff Ching paddled out on a Stevie's kneeboard and rode it as a standup board, and it just switched the light on (finger snaps!). It changed everything right there on the beach. You had really the first functional, fully-integrated, modern multi-fin board that worked. That Fish is still being made today like it was originally formatted and laid down by Stevie Lis at the time. It was an incredible contribution to surfing and the way we surf, being completely redefined from a single-fin path to what it has become.
