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SHAPER'S ALLEY: NORTHERN NEW JERSEY
By: Matt Pruett

Update: Click here for the photo and video slideshow

"This place was dead!" says Charles Mencel, who's celebrating his label's tenth anniversary this year. "Four years ago, there was nothing. First, you must understand: There's South Jersey and North Jersey, and within North Jersey there's Ocean County and Monmouth County, a pretty decent division in itself. Most of these [profiled] shapers come from Monmouth -- between Sandy Hook and Manasquan Inlet -- that's really the hotbed now."

But it wasn't always so. During the 1970s, nothing was more emblematic of New Jersey surf culture than Grog's Seaside Pro, developed by Northeast pro surfing predecessor Greg "Grog" Mesanko -- or Grog's Surf Palace, the shop he ran for 28 years while amassing a wealth of international boardbuilding contacts. "Before I started building professionally, I always wanted to get my boards into Grog's shop," remembers Marty Bennett, who's been in the business for 43 years. "At the time, his was one of the most well-known shops on the East Coast, and he wouldn't take 'em. They weren't good enough, but it was his reasons that pushed me to the next level."

For Bennett, that meant paying dues in Florida's top glass houses before working at the Schaper factory on Oahu and ultimately returning home to build his brand. It became a common theme for North Jersey shapers through the millennium: you had to leave to learn.

Further north, Richard Luthringer spent much of the '60s gromming around at Casino Pier with Grog and Doug "Toad" Nagel. "The Tracker Trio" as they were known, took frequent trips to Florida to escape the brutal winters (wetsuits sucked back then), which resulted in an encounter with Surfboards East shaper Gene Cottrell, who inspired Luthringer to bring the craft north. He named the start-up "Toad Surfboards," after his friend who died from cancer at 18. Luthringer eventually sold the business, but not before influencing Mesanko's nephew Randy Appleby, who worked at Grog's in the '80s as a stock boy before going the ripper route: sponsors, contests, etc. Moving to California, Randy was soon shaping his label out of a Huntington Beach garage before receiving more tutelage in Hawaii from the likes of Eric Arakawa; after which, Appleby returned to set up his Tom's River factory in 1999. "All the material manufacturers were here in the Northeast," remembers Appleby. "I met with different manufacturers, but it just wasn't financially doable at the time, so I started hitting up local friends who had surf shops: Right Coast's Mike Columbo, Barooo, Mark Colino at No Flat Earth..."

Things were no different in Monmouth: the shops ran the culture. Bob Ribel was churning out boards in Belmar while Tom Eadon, who started Cosmic Bull Surfboards with Bill LaFleur, also built private-label boards for a number of outlets, including Derf McTighe's Island Style.

"Tom Eadon's probably been shaping in our area the longest of anybody," asserts Mencel. "But originally, Carl 'Tinker' West was the guy. He was with Challenger Eastern -- the famous surfboard company that ran through New Jersey, Long Island and Rhode Island and pulled in ghost shapers from California, like Jim Phillips. That was the first real boom our area saw, when tons of people began to take a shop-style, production approach to surfboard manufacturing."

The "boom" was ephemeral at best. From that point on, California labels dominated the scene, although Fly Surfboards' Paul Baymore satisfied a diversely talented homegrown clientele as the prominent local shaper.
"In terms of Monmouth, Paul was really the only guy through the '90s," adds Mencel. "Then he moved to South Jersey and there was nobody. Guys would come from California or Florida and do one-offs but there were no local boardbuilders. Inlet Outlet had a death grip on the area, and they were highly affiliated with Michael Baron, so his shapes pretty much ruled the '80s and '90s. That really atrophied the area. There was no blank distribution house -- WRV was 16 hours away and Brian Wynn wasn't back yet -- so it was almost impossible to start a surfboard company here; you had to do everything yourself. The only person to step in after Paul's departure was Chris Chaize, a true craftsman from Asbury Park, in 2001. Chris was the only guy for many years."
Then, a revolution happened: The Internet, knowledge, access, materials and, subsequently, Greenlight Surf Supply.
"Greenlight came in and really compartmentalized shaping as a hobby," continues Mencel, "a website that made it so easy, a one-stop shop selling board-making kits. I'd be lying to say I didn't get a couple instruments from them, but the proliferation of younger shapers here was a byproduct of that place and... poof! We're a surfboard hub now."
John Oppito reads off a few of the suspects: "Brian Gagliana still shapes a bit but most of his time and energy goes into running Greenlight and their SUP store. Brian, Marty Bennett and I are in the process of finishing the build-out of our Manasquan shop, 'The East Coast Surfboard Factory.' And [Greenlight protégé] Kevin Rider has been building boards with Brandon Winn at UnderToe Glassing."

Similarly, Eugene Wahl Jr. passed the craft down to Tom Mahady who, in turn, taught Rick DeJianne, and other names arise from there: JD San Jose, Alex Velit, Chris Kirk...

"The beauty of this area is we all do it because we love it and it's too small an area to play any politics," finishes Mencel. "You surf with the same people you're in competition with, and purvey the same vendors. Like, today I'll go to Greenlight and pick up a blank I couldn't get in my last batch, and I'll see John Oppito. Or I'll go in with some of these guys on a shipment. There's no way to cannibalize each other -- the price-point's so expensive, it's almost impractical to build surfboards here. There aren't sponsors knocking at the door or dozens of orders. But the more boards I shape, the more work the glasser and sander gets, and the more blanks I order. The more materials Greenlight brings in, the more boards we get to shape... it's an evolution of constant progress development we never thought would happen. But between surf camps tripling in size and there being so many good surfers and so many great waves in such a domesticated place with so many families -- surfing has grown exponentially in North Jersey in the last five years. So it would be absurd if there were only three shapers to go around."