In The Green Room with Rich Pavel
by Ken McKnight and Ryan A. Smith
posted 2004-11-28
AAS - When did you pick up on shaping the Fish? You seem to have become the generational spokesperson for the new era of the Fish.
Photo by JP St. Pierre
Rich - I just tell the truth. I don't invent it. I just share it. I'm a trusting person. My endeavor wasn't to maximize profits, more like maximize my happiness. To me the accumulation of knowledge and the acquisition of seeing how things interrelate, that's where I derive my happiness.
AAS - You have taken it to another level then.
Rich - I've had a lifetime of it. But they've turned up the heat (laughs). I think it's wonderful. You have this timeless, universal design, by way of the Lis Fish, that is being enjoyed by an entire generation that wants to connect with something that's real.
AAS - Did you learn to shape the Fish from Steve Lis?
Rich - Directly. It's amazing almost, the psychic intensity. Flat out, he is an intuitive genius. We have the Fish to thank for that. With Steve, well I was so naïve, and he was the first person to take me under their wing. To have that influence, so early on, at such an indelible and impressionable time. That's in the stars! How lucky was that?
Photo by Ryan A. Smith
AAS - Tell us a little of your surf history?
Rich - A little known fact, I was born in La Jolla, 1959, at the old Scripps Hospital, 464 Prospect, across from the rec center, women's club, and Bishops School. You can imagine, the first breaths of air had sea water in it. If they had dropped me I would have rolled down the street, into the tide pools there. That northwest wind is in my bones.
I was introduced to surfing, well, we were skateboarding first, riding bikes, and it was probably one of those things that happened naturally, playing in the arroyos near the beach.
AAS - And your crew was?
Rich - The Pleskunas family, Stan and Peter, Sean Biehl and his brother, Marty Hackelman, Daniel Worley. And we were watching guys surfing like David Willingham, Mouse Robb, Bunker Spreckels, he was a huge influence, as was Joe Lynch, Jeff Ching, and Mike Tabeling when he showed up. I think the sharing that Tabeling did was in the right context. No false pretense.
AAS - That would have been around 1970 - 1973?
Rich - The joke around here is that I'm the last genetic link to the Cosmic Children (laughs out loud!), if you want the ground zero genesis point.
AAS - Your core group was like the Sub Lejos Ducks.
Rich - Yeah, it was like my television set. My VCR, my window on the world. From La Jolla to Point Loma. What defined me was that area, on one side of the equation, and on the other side was where I was born and had access to.
AAS - So the Fish designs now versus the ones back then are radically different?
Photo by JP St. Pierre
Rich - They are and they aren't. The defining characteristics of what Stevie laid down, all of the traits are in today's Fishes as they are built, and haven't changed in that sense. Add all the refinements that have come through surfing and what Stevie is incorporating into his Fishes today. They do have a different look.
AAS - What are those refinements?
Rich - Well, there is a better blend or balance of getting the boards to penetrate and ride in the wave versus being purely a planing hull that's riding strictly on top of the wave. I think Lis deserves a lot of credit for participating in and defining that high-area, low-volume aspect of surfboards. He got that through Skip Frye. They were tight. Those two guys surf about as much as anyone I know.
