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Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

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Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

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advertising and surfing

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Aipa, Ben

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alaia board

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alcohol and surfing

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Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

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Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

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Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

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angle

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Australia

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Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

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Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

Innovative and irascible surfboard manufacturer from Santa Monica, California; the originator of the polyurethane foam surfboard blank and the first, in 1956, to bring a polyurethane board to market. Sweet was born (1928) in Seattle, Washington, moved with his family to Southern California at age 11, and began surfing at 16, at Topanga Beach. Two years later he started building balsa surfboards on the beach at Malibu, and helped develop what was soon known as the Malibu chip—the first board designed for turning and the progenitor to today's longboard.

Sweet claimed he built a Styrofoam-core board in 1945, but gave up the process for being too expensive. He hit a turning point in 1953, just a few weeks after receiving a B.S. from University of Southern California, when a friend handed him a block of just-developed Dow Chemical polyurathane foam, and Sweet began wondering how to put the material to use in surfboard construction. For three years he poured nearly all his time, energy, and money into a do-it-yourself R&D project that would eventually produce a board-shaped foam blank that was less expensive than balsa. It was a long and difficult process: a series of metal and fiberglass molds were built; hundreds of faulty blanks were produced. Sweet sold his car and went into debt to fund the project, and at one point was operating an 11-foot-long, 2000-pound, highly pressurized mold from his basement-level boardinghouse room in Hollywood.

In 1956, Sweet finally had the foam-making process figured out, and was selling foam-core boards on the beach at Malibu. The following year he opened Dave Sweet Surfboards in Santa Monica. (Months later, Roger Sweet, Dave's brother, formed Robertson-Sweet Surfboards along with actor Cliff Robertson—soon to play Kahuna in the 1959 film 

. Purveyors of inexpensive "popout" foam boards, Robertson-Sweet failed quickly.) Dave Sweet Surfboards became the hot label among Hollywood-connected surfers in the late '50s and '60s, and Sweet made boards for Clark Gable, Dick Van Dyke, Eddie Albert, Peter Lawford, and Jack Lemmon.

Also in 1957, 60 miles to the south in Laguna Canyon, boardmakers Hobie Alter and Gordon Clark began a similar trial-and-error foam-making process. Hobie Surfboards, the sport's biggest boardmaker at the time, introduced their version of the foam surfboard in 1958, and Alter carried enough weight in the surf industry that he was often given credit as the originator of the foam board. "At my peak," Sweet later recalled, "I was probably selling 800-900 boards a year. Hobie did that in a month."

In the late '60s, Sweet and the rest of the old guard manufacturers were weakened or toppled by the backyard boardmakers during the shortboard revolution, and Dave Sweet Surfboards closed in 1974. Through it all, Sweet had a reputation as brilliant, fair-minded, and prickly. "He was highly protective of his foaming process," an employee recalled in 2000, going on to describe an incident from the late '50s when a customer wandered across the factory and reached out to open the door of Sweet's foaming room. "I heard a yell then saw a bucket of liquid foam hit and shoot out the door. Dave had thrown it to keep the guy out."

In 1999, a 1966-built Dave Sweet surfboard went on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Sweet died in 2015, of kidney failure, at age 86. He was married twice and had one child.

Sweet, Dave

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

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The Sunday Joint

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint