Bill Stewart very neatly fits the moniker Father of the Modern Longboard. But for as lofty as that title is, it almost does the man a disservice.
There’s so much more to Stewart. He’s a shaper. He’s an innovator. He’s a designer. He’s an artist. He’s a musician. The list goes on.
“I’ve always got something going on,” Stewart explains from the comfort of his sprawling man cave in San Clemente.
For more than 50 years, Stewart has dedicated his life to surfing and surfboards. The walls and ceiling of his man cave are plastered with photos, old boards and memories from a life very well-lived. The board that Colin McPhillips rode to world title glory hangs from the rafters. There’s another oversized board he shaped as a stage prop for Jimmy Buffett.
“One time, Jimmy asked me to make him a board that could break into two pieces so he could fit it on his plane … so I convinced him to get a bigger plane,” Stewart says, laughing.
At one end of the man cave is a music stage, complete with amps, instruments, and everything one needs to rock the house.
The drum kit on the stage belongs to one Russ Kunkel. A longtime friend of Stewart’s, his work can be heard on records from a long list of rock ’n roll hall of famers, including James Taylor, Bob Dylan, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Jackson Browne (another fellow surfer).
“He keeps his drums here; it’s just easier for when we have band practice,” explains Stewart, who plays harmonica in the outfit.
On the wall behind the stage, Stewart has airbrushed a scene featuring a tropical night sky, complete with swaying palms and lightning bolts streaking across the black background.
At 71 years old, Stewart may be having more fun now than ever before—and his business is thriving because of it. A few years back, he turned over Stewart Surfboards to his daughter, Ashley, and her husband, Erik Leines.
“I was tired of running it, I was done, and I wanted to sell it,” Stewart says. “So, I started going through the process and eventually asked Ashley if she’d be interested in taking over the family business.”
That was before the pandemic. By the time 2020 rolled around, Ashley and Erik had already dialed in their online store and found themselves unexpectedly well-positioned to handle the onslaught that was to come.
With the world shut down and the government handing out stimulus checks, it was nearly impossible to keep boards in stock, but together they shined.
In 2021, Stewart was inducted into the International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame.
“I’m getting nervous; they’re giving me all these awards they give to people before they die,” he says, again with a laugh.
Founding Stewart Surfboards in 1978, he’s personally shaped more than 40,000 surfboards over the years, with another 120,000 being produced under the Stewart label. He’s most well-known for his implementation of beveled rails with blended single to double concave, and a 2+1 fin setup on his Hydro Hull design—now called the Redline 11.
“I’m really excited to keep experimenting and keep trying new things,” Stewart says. “With Ashley and Erik running the business, I’m in a position to really be creative. There’s always been a special place in my heart for twin-fins; maybe I’ll shape a few of those and see where it goes. Who knows, my best work could still be ahead of me.”
Surfboard shapers are a small, foam-dust-covered fraternity, and while Stewart is perhaps San Clemente’s most renowned shaper of longboards, on the other end of the spectrum is Matt “Mayhem” Biolos and the high-performance shortboards he builds for some of the world’s top professionals.
The fact that Stewart was voted Best Shaper in town by San Clemente Times readers and that Biolos came in second speaks volumes about how much shaping talent there is in San Clemente, as well as how diverse the styles of surfing are.
On any given day, Colin McPhillips can be spotted riding a Stewart-shaped board down at San Onofre. Meanwhile, a mile north, WSL Championship Tour combatants Kolohe Andino and Griffin Colapinto can be found on Biolos-made blades flying above the lip at Lowers.
Biolos and his business partner, Matt Reola, founded Lost Surfboards in San Clemente in 1992. Keen to upset the surfing establishment of the time, they teamed up with a crew of radical, young, progressive surfers and endeavored to make surfing fun again.
Irreverent and indifferent, it was Biolos’ Round Nose Fish design that put Lost on the map—that and a 15-year-old grom named Chris Ward. Biolos recently celebrated the 25-year anniversary of the board with a new film release entitled 5’5” x 19 1/4 … Century.
And while their specialties may be different, Stewart and Biolos are cut from the same cloth. Even when they were teenagers, they knew they wanted to build surfboards for a living, and they dedicated themselves to being best in class—Stewart with longboards, Biolos with shortboards.
There are no schools or college degrees for surfboard shaping, and getting a foot in the door can be hugely challenging, but Stewart and Biolos both put in the hard yards to get to where they’re at today. Our surf community is lucky to have them both.
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