In The Green Room with Rich Pavel
by Ken McKnight and Ryan A. Smith
posted 2004-11-28
AAS - Hasn't Skip influenced your shaping as well?
Rich - I've spent hundreds of hours, literally, in the shaping room with Skip.
Photo by Ken McKnight
AAS - Did that come directly from having Stevie mentor you?
Rich - I think , yes, because I'd just be there.
AAS - Which shaping room?
Rich - Way before '87, so it was pre-'78. I was in the water in PB, La Jolla, and Blacks. Little trips too. I'd go with Stevie maybe down to Mexico along with Peter Pleskunas. I think Skip took a shine to me just the way Stevie did. I spent all that time when Skip was at a low ebb, back behind Select Surf Shop, boards were 25 bucks for the shape. It was the best of times and (laughs) it was the worst of times.
I'd bring Skip a handful of orders and just hang out. We'd do them and, in the process, he imparted just a world of good. Those two guys [Lis and Frye] always gave me their best. It was Caster who really put the professional edge on my whole movie. I didn't even have laminates and I'm bringing Billy boards to be finished off. At that point I'd glassed maybe a couple thousand boards, not a lot, but I had done a lot of glasswork and just not my own. When I sort of segued to have my boards glassed by someone else it was really Caster who cut my teeth on getting my finished shaping down. Little tricks, and I don't know if Caster got them from Hynson or where they came from. Caster was a quality guy.
AAS - A tight group with a lot of history.
Rich -The way it worked also. Like now there is that repository of board-building knowledge thing that is intact up on The Hill, especially at Channin.
Photo by Tom Keck
AAS - Your first shaping then was what time frame?
Rich - Mid-'70s. The first blank I ever bought was at The Greenroom. I think I had to walk to go get it.
AAS - Where was the original shop?
Rich - The original Greenroom started on Kauai, and it was Ray Golden and Skip Wright. Almost concurrently, Brad Sandborn and they all said they could do one with Gus Cota and Lockwoods in California. And I think that was pretty bitchin' because, isn't that how it goes, from Hawaii to California? And I would go into The Greenroom and here would be these insane Diffenderfer's along with a lot of other really good boards. But you're talking about a pioneer guy in Diffenderfer. A role model that, to a little guy going to get his first blank, and what is contained in it is a world of possibility, and you're looking at these boards that are larger than life. And they came from Kauai. The first Greenroom [here] was on Newport Avenue, then it moved to Point Loma Avenue. That was where John Holly came in to the business part as a principal.
AAS - How did you end up with it?
Rich - From Gus Cota, Sr. It was interesting, there are certain things that just stick with you. I never thought of The Greenroom as being in OB. I saw it as a world or realm of possibility.
Photo by JP St. Pierre
AAS - Like being part of the genetic link to the Cosmic Children (laughs)!
Rich - (more laughs) Yeah! It wasn't so much a thought, it had more to do with a way of being. Like a spirit.
AAS - The first time you went to Hawaii?
Rich -- In the Mid-'70s, after I'd been shaping just a little bit. We were in garages. There were a lot of guys we knew who moved over to Kauai: Bruce Valluzzi, Bunker, Riddle, Ferris, Gerald Saunders, incredible guys. Benny builds boards out of Nawiliwili.
AAS - A lot of characters, a lot of water. Some still around, others not.
Rich - It was Stevie who told me, instructed me, and he deserves a lot of credit here. He said, "You're going to be the one who holds it together. It was like he warned me about the bad things in life; he basically explained what not to do. Like, when you're shaping have plenty of liquids, and not Budweisers. Stevie's early sojourns and interludes to Hawaii was as a practicing vegetarian, being Zen, being enlightened. It has been really unfortunate that surfing has had this drug overlay burned upon it. When I talk about the genetic link to the Cosmic Children, I should qualify that, because it has nothing to do with drugs. We talk about that era, the Summer of Love, Age of Aquarius, and all that stuff and that was on then. For me it was cosmic in the sense of the cosmos and the universe.
