Mike Purpus is a true legend and besides being a great surfer he is an awesome storyteller! Hit that play button and enjoy all his character on Tales of the Tide. 👍
In the early 70's Rick James was my go to shaper. Basically right where Avenda del Pico hit the Coast Hwy. The guy could crank out a stellar stick as fast as anyone with 10 digits
Rick James shop in San Clemente…. Across from 7-11.. great shaper… very cool guy. That where I met Midget/ pier rat extraordinaire. Any one recall… “NATURAL DESIGN “, a guy named Wes….. Midget helped him shape… Brad B, did the glass. The 70’s at the pier were golden years… great lefts off the pier is where I mastered my back hand…. Golden memories
What a story! When I was a kid my best friend and I would ride our bikes to Greg Noll's to hang out, too. But we never saw the thumb. Mike Purpus was also one of our local surf idols. Best of days back then.
Joe Quigg did Miki Dora's first real Malibu board for himself in about 1949, and was surfing it at Malibu for a couple of years, and then one day in the early 1950's, Gard Chapin, Miki's step dad came up to Joe and said, hey Joe, you are ripping on that board, can I buy it from you? I want to buy it for my step son's Christmas present. He's got so much talent and this is what he really needs. So Joe says, oh yeah, no problem, I'll just make another one. So Joe sold it to Gard Chapin right on the beach at Malibu, and that became the board that launched Miki's career in the early fifties. Then Joe moved to Hawaii in 1953 to live and make boards for all the hottest surfers over there. And in 1957 Hobie called Joe and said, hey Joe, we've just figured out how to make boards out of polyurethane foam, and I have hundreds of orders. I need good shapers. Come over and you can have all of the shape jobs you want. So Joe moved back in 1957 and started shaping boards like crazy and also got his own shop in Newport Beach on 31st street. And in that first two years from '57 on, Miki hunted him down and said hey Joe, I want you to make me some boards, so Joe made Miki Dora several new Joe Quigg boards that were the hottest thing going and, wound up being the most copied boards of the early 60's. Eventually all the board company's of the era were clamouring to copy Joe's boards and sponsor Miki, and Greg Noll ended up winning out, either Da Cat model's, originally exact copies of the Joe Quigg boards. Except they didn't work as good, because Greg Noll didn't know how to shape like Joe Quigg. But that didn't stop the production and promotion of the Day Cat campaign. So this story here is new to me but makes perfect sense, based on Greg Noll's business practices.
I found this on Reddit "Ricky James was an excellent shaper who worked for me for several years before he started his own board shop," Noll began. "One day, in our old shop on Pacific Coast Highway, Ricky was sawing center strips for boards and talking to one of his buddies at the same time. I was about fifteen feet away and I told him, 'Ricky, goddammit, pay attention to what you're doing.' He says, 'I am, I am.' He's telling stories to this guy and the saw is whining yeoooow, yeoooow as it cuts off center strips. "Suddenly I hear the saw stop and Ricky yells, 'Oh, God!' I rush over, and there's his thumb on the floor. He had sawed it off almost at the base. I grab a paper towel, scoop up the thumb and take Ricky to the hospital. All the time we're driving, I'm talking to him, trying to keep him from going into shock. "'Do you think they can sew it back on?' he asks me. "'Oh, yeah, they got modern-day medicine, no sweat, Rick. Just settle down, everything is going to be just fine. They'll sew it back on. You may have a little scar but everything is going to be O.K.' "I'm driving and he's sitting on the passenger side and the thumb is between us, on the seat. While we're talking, Ricky keeps looking down at it as though the thumb is a third person in the car. "As soon as we get to the hospital, they take Ricky into Emergency. I've got the thumb and Ricky is clasping the stub and the doctor walks in. Ricky says, 'I'm so glad you're here. Are you going to be able to sew my thumb back on, Doc?' "The doctor had the worst bedside manner of any doctor I've ever met. He says, 'No, it wouldn't do any good. We could sew it back on, but it would just turn black and fall off in a few days. There's no use in even trying.' "Now Ricky is really going into shock over the whole situation and he says, "Doc, please. I don't know what my girlfriend will think of me. I don't care if it works or anything. Just sew it back on so it looks good. I don't care if it works.' "The doctor talked to him for a while. Of course, they didn't sew the thumb back on. I saw that a nurse had the thumb and was going to dispose of it. I said, 'Do you mind if I take that with me?' She thought it was kind of an odd request, but she gave it to me. I didn't tell Ricky. "After they got Ricky bandaged up I took him home, gave him a couple of beers and left him there to relax. Then I went back to the shop and mixed up a nice, slow batch of resin in a Dixie cup. Dropped the thumb in it. Let it set up, then took off the Dixie cup. It was absolutely perfect. Looked like a paperweight with a thumb suspended in it." "Ricky was off work for a while, so we used the thumb as a sort of novelty item. In the inner shop, we stuck it in the showcase where we had fins, wax, skateboard accessories and... a thumb. People browsing in the shop would look in the showcase and say, 'Hey, take a look at this fake thumb.' Then they'd take a closer look and say, 'Jesus Christ, this isn't a fake. Look, you can see dirt under the fingernail.' "The thumb got to be such a conversation piece that guys started coming in from all over the place just to see it. I came into the shop one Saturday and there must have been eight or ten guys shoulder-deep in the showcase, trying to get a glimpse of the thumb. "Meanwhile, Ricky gets wind that his thumb is on display. I hear he's mad, so I put away the thumb for safekeeping. He comes in asking for his thumb. We had a giant argument about whose thumb it was. I said, 'I found it.' Ricky said, 'I don't care. You're not supposed to put a guy's thumb on display.' "We used to freak out people, especially girls, with the thumb. We'd say to a girl, 'Hold out your hand. I want to show you something.' And we'd put the thumb in the Dixie cup in her hand, remove the Dixie cup and watch a hundred expressions go across her face. She wouldn't know whether to drop it or throw it or what. "Ricky and I argued about The Thumb for nearly two years. I still have it. It's buried in a box somewhere." www.reddit.com/r/surfing/comments/4bdy49/comment/d18hhw9/?context=3
