Derek Rielly of BeachGrit emailed last week to tell me about a big-budget Aussie-based drama series called 

, which goes into production next year and will track a semi-fictitious group of surf industry players who (according to 

), "from their tiny garages and surf coast shopfronts . . . create billion-dollar empires." When Derek and I talked about the show (read 

), I gently but pedantically noted that the surf industry did not begin in the '70s, as 

 has it, but in the '50s. Furthermore, I added, giving the chin whiskers a good long pull, the drama that stoked the fires back when "surf industry" meant surfboards—rather than Pyongyang-made surfwear—was more way more hot-breath and daggers-out than anything we've seen over the past 50 years.

My geezers out there already know where this is going. Straight to the surf industry Big Bang—Dale Velzy vs Dewey Weber.

A quick recap: Velzy opened the original surf shop (Manhattan Beach, 1949), and more or less midwifed performance surfing as we know it today with the invention of a fat-assed board he called the Pig (1955). He meanwhile shimmed up his board racks with Past-Due notices and would rather have dental surgery than catch up on the bookkeeping.

Weber, ten years younger and still a letterman-sweater-wearing high school wrestling champ, was Velzy's #1 test pilot. At 17, Dewey had a bright-red Pig and trunks to match, and a thatch of hair peroxided to a blowtorch shade of white. At Manhattan Pier and Malibu, Weber used his ridiculous fast-twitch skills to create an aquatic bebop that became hot-dogging.

Velzy was Weber's shaper and mentor. He was also his employer. By the late '50s, Velzy, battling Hobie Alter to be the sport's top boardmaker, had a small chain of outlets in Southern California. Without hesitation, he installed Weber as manager of his new storefront in Hermosa Beach.

Which brings us to 1960, and the incredible two-part explosion in which, 1) Velzy Surfboards was suddenly and swiftly choked out by the IRS, and 2) Weber Surfboards came to life immediately thereafter, in what had been Velzy's Venice Beach showroom.

Velzy and Weber never spoke again. And the question has bounced around for nearly 60 years now . . . what really happened?

Dewey never talked about the split, not in public, not in private. Velzy talked about it often, but rarely on the record. We have two good secondary sources though, and let's begin with Velzy's version, as found in Paul Holmes' 2006 biography 

. This passage has been shortened a bit from the original.

It was not long after Velzy made Weber his Hermosa Beach shop manager that their relationship became strained. Velzy’s sister, Virginia, who helped out at the retail outlet and did the banking, told Dale that money from the daily deposits sometimes appeared to be missing, and she thought Weber might be skimming it. But Velzy, with his lack of attention to bookkeeping details, couldn’t come up with proof and gave Weber the benefit of the doubt. Then things started to get weird at the Venice shop too. “According to my sister and some others of my employees,” explains Velzy, “he was buying blanks from different people, having boards made with my label on them, [then] selling them through the shop and putting the money in his pocket. I couldn’t pin anything on him at first, but then I caught him red-handed.”

Velzy told Weber he was going to have to fire him. Weber’s reaction was to call the landlord of the Venice shop and persuade him that Velzy was about to go bust, and that he, Weber, would be the right person to take over the lease. Whether the Little Man on Wheels [Weber] was prescient or had access to inside information remains unclear. The fact remains that shortly after their confrontation, when the authorities cracked down on Velzy, Weber took over the Venice location. By then, rumor has it, a significant number of surfboard blanks and other raw materials, plus a few key templates, had been spirited away from the place, which kept them out of the hands of the court-appointed auctioneers and set Weber up for the first round of production under his own label. Over the next few years Weber Surfboards, beginning at the Venice shop then moving to much larger facilities on Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa, became one of the most successful surfboard labels of the era.

In "Tales of the Hawk," Craig Stecyk's 1994 

 article, Velzy, without naming Weber, gets more specific. "I always liked the guy, because he was a great surfer. I was paying him $200 a week to manage the shop, which was a lot of money at the time. I asked him to level with me [about skimming money, stealing materials, and selling boards off the books] and all I got was double-talk. I ended up lifting the chickenshit to the ceiling by his neck and telling him, 'Look, you little bastard, you didn't have to lie. If you'd been straight with me I could have made you partner.' He was crying and lying as the other guys in there broke it up. I never spoke to him again, and he never had the guts to apologize. (Surfer-shaper Donald Takayama was present that day and said Weber "was crying on the outside, but laughing on the inside—he had a garage full of Velzy's blanks.")

Little Man on Wheels: Surfing Legend Dewey Weber

, by Gerald Derloshon. This has also been trimmed down a bit from the original.

If you are in Dale’s camp, Dewey is regarded as a backstabbing, underhanded, lying, thieving cheat who took advantage of his mentor, friend, and patron when his friend was down.

If you are in Dewey's camp, Dale is regarded as an out-of-control businessman whose disregard for authority, shoddy bookkeeping, and overall loose management style led to his company and its multiple locations being shut down by the IRS for tax evasion.

The truth about what happened between Velzy and Weber lies somewhere in between. Known for sure is that the IRS did shut Velzy down and Dewey, who worked for Velzy, was just 22 years old and as competitive as a person could be. The big shock would have been if Dewey 

 open a surf shop and cash in on his own fame when Velzy was ordered to cease and desist, forcing Dewey and all other Velzy employees out of their jobs. Fueling the debate were accusations that a number of Velzy-owned blanks, tubs of resin, rolls of fiberglass and shaping tools ended up in Weber’s hands. Dale was highly vocal in his rage and disgust toward his former protege.

Weber obtained a $1,500 loan from his father Earl, paid the rent on Velzy’s store on Pacific Avenue in Venice and, just like that, Weber Surfboards was born.

Weber never spoke of the feud publicly and left it to others to come to terms with the Velzy-Weber falling out. He never told his side of the story or tried to defend his actions. And the two never reconciled their differences. One Weber employee said years after the breakup, Dale secretly shaped boards on Sundays for Dewey because Dale needed the cash, but that claim was not substantiated by others. It is included here to demonstrate how much rumor and speculation hovers over what continues today as one of surfing’s most contested feuds, surfing’s version of the Hatfields and McCoys.

Dewey’s wife, Caroline, understands that it is not possible to separate the reality from the fiction, but she said, “I do know how Dewey got the building on Pacific Avenue. I once met the landlord of that particular property and he told me the story. Velzy was behind in his rent and although the landlord liked him well enough, he couldn’t carry him any longer. He came to the store to let the manager, Dewey, know he was going to have to evict them. He found Dewey to be a likable and enterprising young man. Dewey at the time was still enrolled in college, [and] had just received a letter of acknowledgment from Cal Poly SLO for an athletic scholarship for the fall semester. He hadn’t thought much about Velzy going out of business. Working for Dale was a part-time gig. So, when the landlord approached him about renting the building, he was unprepared and a little stunned. He couldn’t rent the building unless he got serious about making surfboards, and he couldn’t go to school and have the shop, too. So it wasn’t like he was lying in wait to snatch Velzy’s business. It was a surprise [when Velzy went under], and after discussing it with his parents and getting a loan from his Dad, Dewey decided to rent the building.”

There's not much more factual evidence out there, or at least not that I'm aware of. But I'll offer a couple of thoughts. First, while I can easily get caught up in the who-did-the-dirty-on-who part of the story (for the record, I think Dewey indeed ripped off his old friend; the scale of the crime is more up for grabs), I'm inclined at this point to back off and take both men in their incredible mold-breaking fullness. Velzy is our greatest swashbuckler. He embodies the grinning two-bit hustle that is surfing. Dale would pass you the flask with one hand and turn your pocket inside out with the other—which sounds bad, especially given what I've just said about Weber, except even people who got bit by Dale liked him. Sure, you're $40 (or $400) poorer for his efforts, but you're now part of the show, and pass the flask back this way, thank you.

Dewey Weber is the headwater of surfing ambition and flash. He was commanding. Velzy, of the two, is the bigger and more memorable character, but Weber had the greater will. It was his look and style—the red and white color palette, the hot-rodding footwork; and later, the Weber Surfboards team jackets, ad campaigns, signature board models—that became the industry standard. (Hobie Alter needs to be included in the conversation here, but for the moment I'll just say that Weber had Hobie's number in terms of flair and design sense.)

 producers, a moment of your time, please. You're too deep into the '70s surfwear angle to change course now, I know. But let's think spinoff. Or prequel. And here it is, boys, on a silver platter: the Velzy-Weber story is 

 and I'm smelling the lead spot on HBO's 2023 lineup and a dozen Emmy nominations, minimum.

The green light is flashing above my DM . . . slide in and let's talk!

[Photos: LeRoy Grannis, Ron Stoner, John Severson]

WEBER VS VELZY: IS THAT A KNIFE IN YOUR TEAM JACKET OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY TO SEE ME?

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