noosatoday.com.au - Dick Metz’s Endless Summer
When I went to live in Laguna Beach, California, 20 years ago, to me Dick Metz was chiefly famous for owning The Spigot, an excellent liquor and wine store at the bottom of my street.
We soon developed a nodding acquaintance whenever he happened to be at the store, or more likely sitting on the bench out front and talking story with other salt-encrusted locals. I guessed he had a surfing background but didn’t know the half of it until I went along to the recently-opened Surf Heritage and Culture Centre in San Clemente one night for a surfing talk show and Dick was on the panel. I discovered that not only had he co-founded the Surf Heritage Foundation in 1999 and that many of the most historic surfboards exhibited at SHACC were from his private collection, but that he had more or less invented the surf retail and travel industries in the US and Hawaii, at one point owning 22 shops in California, Florida and Hawaii, including the Hobie chain, and had pioneered surfing at several of the iconic surf breaks of the world. He was described – never by Dick himself – as “the most important man in surfing you’ve never heard of”, and “the Forrest Gump of surfing, always on the edges of history, mostly evading mention or fame”.