Wax |
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Wax is to surfing as cleats are to field sports -- elementary and essential. Without it, we would be slipping and sliding like a bunch of drunken sailors trying to dance the jig in a bowling lane. Nipples everywhere are thankful that traction evolved, because if it didn’t we would still be suffering from the painfully abrasive solutions of the early days of board riding. The traction technology of old involved scattering sand across still-wet varnish to create a sandpaper-like finish on the deck of the board. If you want the feel of a 100-grit rub across the belly, try riding prone on a skateboard bare-chested. Nipple rashes? Forget about it; you wouldn’t have any nipples.
But thanks to Los Angeles surfer Alfred Gallant Jr., in 1935 wax products went from being used to remove body hair to keeping it intact. “One night I came home from the Cove,” Gallant recounted in The Surfer’s Journal, “and walked across the living room floor and my feet almost stuck on the wood. My mother had waxed the floors with liquid wax. When I left to go to the Cove the next morning, I took the bottle of wax and put it on my board.” That night his mom scolded him for using the expensive floor wax and suggested trying the cheaper bars of paraffin that she used to can fruits and jellies. He did, and the results were so good that Alfred and all his buddies immediately revarnished their boards with smooth finishes and the paraffin revolution was ignited. Well, maybe not ignited, but at least heated up enough to melt the stuff. Actually, it would be about 30 years before paraffin was melted down, experimented with, and sold specifically as a surf wax. There are reports of people performing a bit of petroleum alchemy starting in the mid-'50s and even a trademarked brand called simply “Surf Wax” in the mid-'60s. But it wasn’t until 1967, when Mike Doyle and Rusty Miller started Surf Research and made the infamous (and purple) Waxmate, that a specifically formulated surf wax really caught on. A few years later, however, a Colorado businessman bought the company, and it took a turn into the realm of ski waxes, leading Doyle and company to bail out. The void was filled in 1972 by John Dahl, an employee of Surf Research, who started his own surf-traction company in Encinitas, Calif.,called Wax Research. At the same time up in Santa Barbara, Frederick Charles Herzog III, otherwise known as Mr. Zog, launched a new enterprise with an eyebrow-raising name: Sex Wax. Both companies put a one-two punch on the rest of the surf-wax market, and odds are you have wax from one of them on your board at this very moment. While there are still quite a few wax companies out there, the majority of the wax business is now done by the big three: Sex Wax, the Australian based Mrs. Palmer's, and Sticky Bumps, which is owned by Wax Research. Nothing much changed in wax until the early '90s, when Wax Research created a new formula called Sticky Bumps. Like all wax makers, owner John Dahl is very protective of the ingredients -- all he’ll say is that they added an “inert additive." But the result was a wax that applied easier, lasted longer and seemed to be stickier, and soon after his major competitors came out with their own similarly fashioned formulas. Over the years there have been attempts at replacing wax with traction pads, clear coat sprays, glassed-on deck texture and other crazy ideas, but wax is still used by nearly every surfer on the planet just about every time they go surfing -- even those who have traction pads. That's not to mention it’s use as a communicative tools. How many classic messages have been penned in the asphalt or on walls or impostors' car windows with good ol’ paraffin and its modernized offspring? Dahl, who has made his living from wax for the last 34 years, isn’t too worried that something else is going to come along and completely replace wax any time soon. “Wax is such a big part of the surfing tradition; it’s really part of the heart and soul of surfing.” -- Casey Koteen, September 2001
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