For most of us, surfing is a passion. For Bruce Fowler, surfing has been a lifelong passion, a career, a lifestyle that has provided for other surfer’s passions and therapy for himself.
Bruce grew up surfing the beaches of Goleta. He has a book full of memories of surfing perfect Haskells summer wind swells and sleeping on the beach by a campfire. He remembers when Cappy Petterson and his brother Kurt first showed up at Haskells, after moving here from Palos Verdes.
Cappy was a hot little grom with a 5′ twinfin and rumour had it he’d won every contest he ever entered. Fowler and the Talley boys were the guys that started calling the inside break at Naples “Seals”. He used to stash a board and a sleeping bag in a trash bag up the ravine and just stay up there and surf for a few days at a time.
Fowler started surfing at sandbar in 1959. His first board was a hand me down from his big brother’s friend, Roland Bergin. Roland was driving home from surfing at the Haskells pier, when sundowners blew his10’2″ Greg Noll off the roof. Roland lived in one of the row houses up by Naples, because his dad worked for the oil company.
The board twirleybirded in the strong winds for a long ways and landed in a ravine they used as a dump site. A couple of feet were broken off the nose, it had about 40 dings, and the fin was nowhere to be found. This was Bruce’s first board, a major reshape. When he was done with it, it was an 8’3″ with a wood skeg his brother made in wood shop at La Colina.
Bruce’s first real shaping room, was built in 1972. By this time, he was a full blown shaper. Over the years, he’s shaped for Clyde Beatty, O’neil, Puu when he owned Morning Star, Owl, (he ran Surf”n’Wear for almost ten years), Northshore in Hawaii, Oregon, Viking, his own label, the Surfing Underground, and many others.