About: {Excerpt from O’neill, A Conversation with Chris Christenson]
Chris Christenson has blazed his own unique trail in the surf industry since shaping and selling boards out of his college dorm room over twenty years ago. Since then, he’s garnered respect and notoriety as one of the premier shapers in the world, creating a style and aesthetic that blends modern progression with a timeless look and ethos. Chris is somewhat of a renaissance man, pursuing a number of passions both directly and indirectly involved with surfing. We took a trip down to his shop and had a few questions to ask..
You seem like a guy who has his hands in a lot of pots. Shaping boards, building cars, motorcycles, and backcountry snowboarding... Where does it all come from?
Well, my dad introduced me to cars and racing culture from the 50’s and 60’s when I was a kid. It’s always been something I was interested in. With surfing and stuff too, that era was extremely creative. People back then inspire me because they didn’t have access to the blueprints that are available now with social media and the internet. If you built cars, did art or made music, it was a fully solo pursuit.
And this bleeds over into your board design?
Yeah, I really like that period of equipment. I approach my own designs as if the 60’s never stopped. Where would it be now if the people in middle generations didn’t go off and make wrong turns? When I try to think of new designs, the last thing I do is go into a surf shop and look at other surfboards. I go up to my shaping room in the mountains. A lot of my best ideas will come from up there when I’m out of the element. Just put some headphones on, grab my sketchbook and start drawing outlines. A friend of mine is a musician and when he writes music, he doesn’t listen to anything. He shuts down for sixty days and just hides out. That’s rad, and its how to find a unique perspective.
So growing up, how did you find surfing? Did your dad surf? Or was it something you found on your own?
My dad surfed when he was young but not with me. I just found it on my own, going to the beach a lot as a kid. My neighbor growing up was from Hawaii and shaped surfboards. He had this full setup in his garage: airbrushing, glassing, and shaping. As a kid on training wheels I would ride over and watch him in his garage, just sit out on the driveway and not say a word. When I was twelve or so he let me borrow his tools and that was it. Done.
That’s cool you took an interest that young. From a kid’s perspective, it seems like normally you would want to be in the water as much as possible, not necessarily shaping your own boards.
I always liked working with my hands. And my grandpa was a carpenter. I would go to the beach Monday through Thursday and on Friday he would pick me up from school and drive me to his cabin. He was a tinkerer so we were always working on something, whether it was building a new deck, putting on a new roof, or tearing out the tile in the shower. I just always had a tool in my hand.
Were you just shaping and selling boards to kids at school?
Well, I was making boards for myself at first. My good friend Phil Goodrich was going to school there and was one of the best surfers around. Him and this guy Greg Drude, Dan Kennedy, and Ricky Irons. There were a ton of good surfers that went to Point Loma, but Phil and Greg were my favorites and I started making boards for them. Everyone in school was influenced by those dudes cuz’ they grew up surfing with a lot of people in the area. Once those guys got my boards they ended up liking them, which made more people hit me up. I was living in the dorms and going to my parents' house every weekend to shape. I had this little setup and would make two or three for the week, glass them and everything. I wouldn’t even get the sand jobs finished so I’d take them back to school. I used to run an extension cord out of my dorm room window. I had two sawhorses and I’d bring my sander and sand boards outside my dorm room. Just make a huge mess. (Laughs)
Who was inspiring to you as a shaper back then?
Well, Skip Frye for sure. I got exposed to him and Dick Brewer’s designs from a factory I used to work in. Being in Point Loma exposed me to different genres of surfing that I would have never experienced living in Orange County. It was getting really stale. A lot of good surfers, but I wasn’t experiencing as much compared to when I moved down to Point Loma. I lived there from ‘91 to ‘98 and then I lived in La Jolla for three years. I’ve lived in Cardiff since then and now I spend half of my year in the Sierras. It was good that I moved around. I don’t know if my brand would have evolved as much as it did, you know?
What year did the skull logo happen?
That came in like 2008 or 2009. Around the time when Greg Long won the Eddie.
