Dave Johnson
Progressive Surfboards
Why is this punk kid smiling?
Maybe because he knew he would spend his whole life doing what he loved.
No, not playing in the mud.
Surfing and shaping surfboards!
That’s Dave Johnson on the left and his brother Dan.
This is the first board Dave ever shaped. He was 14 years old. The blank was a Dextra reject.
Dextra was a company in Costa Mesa that made pop outs and Dave would go hit them up for
rejects that had air bubbles in them. This was a 6’6″ V bottom with turned down rails.
The genesis of Progressive Surfboards.
Left to right: Woody Shultz, Brett Schulman, co-founder of Progressive Surfboards, Dave, little
bro Spence, Phil Marshal, future team rider, and brother Dan Johnson, getting the gas can for
his own business endeavor, mowing lawns. These were the first Clark foam blanks Dave ever
got his hands on. He and Brett rented a planer for this day and they were in business. You can
tell they’re serious in this picture, they didn’t even have time to look up from shaping!
Across the street, in Brett’s garage, was their glassing factory.
Dave was about 18 at this time.
Senior prom at Newport Harbor High with his first gal, Patsy.
Dave’s looking a little like Spicoli…
Dave was looking at a poster of Terry Fitzgerald surfing Sunset Beach and admiring his
blond afro when his girlfriend Patsy said, ” I could make your hair look like that”.
So he let her.
Afterwards, they went into town and some girls were hooting at Dave in the parking lot,
much to the dismay of Patsy. She never did his hair like this again…
A junior at UCSB, Dave hanging with his buddy Jack ” The Hulk” Harlan in 1974.
Sitting on the stairs of their apartment at 6640 Del Playa.
Progressive Surfboards 1975 ad that appeared in Surfer magazine. They ran this when
they first opened their retail store on Trigo in Isla Vista.
Team riders featured were Dave’s brother Dan, and a fellow by the name of Cappy,
that most Goleta folks know.
The Progressive factory next to the airport.
In 1975, Dave and his business partner Bill King each borrowed $5000 from their parents and with
that 10 K they opened the shop in I.V. and this factory at the airport. The retail shop only lasted a
couple of years, mainly due to a lack of merchandise. They were operating on a tight budget.
Dave worked out of this factory from 1975 until 1990, when it burned down.
1978. Surf contest at Sands.
Progressive would occasionally throw surf contests just for fun and promotion of their shop.
Some of the team riders, like Eric Hanscomb and David Puu, would be itching to surf a contest
once in a while, so they decided, “Hey, let’s just have our own contests!”.
Kicking back in the sand dunes, having a post contest brewski.
Dave recalls one contest they called the Sloshabout that involved a keg and
some required drinking between heats. One of the finalists rode the winning wave butt naked
with a bottle of tequila in his hand.
The guy with the beard is Brad Larkins, not sure about the others….
Just about every year, a Brooks Institute student will call Dave up and ask to take photos
for an assignment they have. These shots are from one of these sessions in 1978, inside
Dave’s shop by the airport. A nice capture of the tools and the design of the day.
New shapes, freshly colored with resin.
The mixing table.
Early eighties, Santa Clara rivermouth.
Thrusters were around, but Dave still was still riding a twin fin.
Todos Santos, Mexico, 1987.
Johnson remembers that just as he was about to paddle out, another surfer told him he had
just seen a seal jump out of the water with a big bite out of it.
3 photo sequence. Little Drakes draining. Dave in deep.
The last photo got damaged in the fire.
Johnson flying through nice, clean Sands.
This was what Dave calls one of his “Hall of Fame” boards.
He doesn’t keep boards, but he wishes he would’ve kept this one.
6’4″ stringerless, roundpin winger with deep concaves under the wings.
He recalls one of the best sessions of his life on this board at El Cap on a huge day.
Progressive team rider David Puu shredding at Sands.
Looks like a contest jersey.
Possibly one of the shop contests.
A nice water shot of Dave enjoying a rare June west swell at Sands.
Dave tells a great story of when he broke his right ankle surf ing here.
He was doing a Hawaiian Pullout when he got pitched over the falls and slammed hard onto the floor.
Dave landed on his feet in a cannonball position, but his ankle gave and he heard the crack
underwater. He hobbled back to his car that was parked up by the horse corrals and was driving
himself to the emergency room when he realized that if he went straight to the hospital, they would
cut his wetsuit off! Since he couldn’t afford a doctor bill and a new wetsuit, he went home first, took
some aspirin, and managed the painful task of pulling his wetsuit off, over a broken ankle.
Only a surfer knows the feeling.
A lifelong friend of Dave’s, Phil Marshall, enjoying a North Shore nugget.
Another Brooks shoot, featuring a lovely sunset at Sands.
Among other things….
Dave at Santa Clara rivermouth, right off the south jetty.
Dave remembers a nice right that used to be there in the winters on a built up sandbar.
Another thing about this photo is the leash on his front foot. Dave started wearing his leash on
his left leg after he broke his right ankle surfing Sands. The ankle felt a little fragile, even after
it healed, so he decided to try putting the leash on the left ankle. It worked well and he still
wears it on the front foot to this day! He says he never trips on it anymore and it also makes
sense from a perspective of drag: less leash dragging behind you.
(Editors note: We also have now been converted to the front foot method. It works.)
Another Brooks student photo shot. Dave judges the years on a lot of these photos by the
boards. He says this was shot during the nineties due to the “heavy metal” wavelengths logo
and the M2 strip down the middle.
Another fire damaged photo. This is Dave’s bro, Dan Johnson, at El Cap.
Looks kinda cool with the damaged effect.
Just another great wave at the Ranch.
Progressive team rider Mark Schmidt at Huntington Beach.
A kneeboarder on a healthy wave. Dave wasn’t able to say for sure who it is, but the first
guess is obvious. Anybody out there know who this is?
Johnson enjoying a beautiful West Goleta wave, 1981.
Benny Stone, Rincon rivermouth.
Benny and his dad had a Radon named “Mean Green” that they loved to take to go fishing out at
the islands. One afternoon in the Spring, the wind kicked up hard and the boat got lost at sea.
Mean Green was recovered a couple of days later, but Benny and his dad were never found.
Dave at Jalama, photo taken by Scott Gibson.
Dave’s got a big smile in this shot for a good reason.
A linoleum company wanted to feature surfboards in their advertising campaign
so they hired him to make 12 of them! You don’t get an order for a dozen boards very often.
Dave had a whole photo album of these assorted photos of employees clowning around
and happy customers holding there brand new sticks. All with the beautiful backdrop of Goleta
in the 1980’s and classic surf shapes on display.
But the amazing thing is that Johnson remembers damn near every single persons name and
the board. That shows how much he enjoys his work.
Shop employee Stan Frantz looks on as an unidentified customer picks up his board.
Business partner Bill King with shop employees John Fariello and Mike Valley, goofing.
Check out the leash dings on the tail of Bill’s board!
Scott McDowell with a sweet airbrush job.
Notice Raytheon in the background on a lot of these?
ommy “The Kid” Chamberlain.
Look at the tail on that board!
Another Progressive team rider,
Casey Dwight.
We still see these guys surfing together to this day!
Travis Bower and Greg Nelson, forever stoked.
An artsy quiver shot, with a sweet Datsun in the background.
Another face you can still find surfing the beaches of Goleta today, Pat Donahoe, rockin’ a
Joe Namath jersey. Looks like Pat cruised his 10 speed over to pick up his new board.
This is Ron Shayne, an English Lit professor at UCSB.
Ron was a groovy dude, heavily into poetry, chicks and Jim Morrison. Dave remembers
him being a real smooth cat.
Alan Dresbach Westwood.
A lovely shot of Jim Birthrong, and his one eyed friend.
Jim was a wandering hippie artist that hung out with Carl Woodcock and others. These dudes were a
little older than Dave and his crew and Dave says they looked up to these guys as “lifestyle mentors”.
Dave traded a longboard for a painting Jim did, and it still hangs in his house to this day!
Check out Dave, with a fine turtleneck and a board with a deluxe Jack Meyer airbrush job.
Jack asked Dave what he wanted on this board and Dave told him, “Everything!” and he got it.
Dave says this board took him into one his best ever tuberides ever at a remote Goleta spot.
Dave with a helluva Stinger, complete with Jack Meyer art.
Here’s a shape that’s made a comeback.
This Dave’s bro Dan with his United Airlines board. He was trying to get sponsored by
United so he could get free plane fare!
Bill Garret with his single fin yellow.
Bill later rolled his Volkswagen over this board in an accident on his way to Jalama.
Brent Jewell and unidentified.
O.P. shorts and striped knee socks. Yep, we remember.
Rincon Parkway, 1983. El Nino flexing it’s muscles.
In 1990, disaster struck Progressive Surfboards.
He was so busy at the time, Dave had a night crew working around the clock. At 2 AM he got the call.
A fluorescent light fixture’s ballast had caught fire, ignited the ceiling, then the wall,
but all the fans in the shop were sucking the smoke out so no one smelled anything,
until it was out of control.
Years of memories were lost, as well as thousands of dollars in surfboards.
Dave salvaged what he could. He still has a lot of these photos .
Two weeks earlier, they had been sitting in front of the shop watching the Painted Cave fire.
Dave sports a shaped blank that melted in the fire. In the aftermath of such a devastating
disaster, Johnson and company were clowning and laughing at the mess.
In Dave’s words, “What else can you do?”.
He had the minimum amount of insurance, and he lost his shorts.
It took him three years to recover financially from the fire, but he never thought twice about it.
In his words, ” If nothing else, I’m resilient!”.
Bob Haakenson let Dave set up in his shop temporarily, sharing space with
Randy Cone and Paul Kuhn. Eventually he moved to the former True Ames shop.
A huge day at Jalama with Eric Akiskalian and Shaun Tomson.
This was the only day Dave remembers that he failed to get out at Jalama. He didn’t regret it
though because it was just massive close outs. The weather radio was reporting 12 at 17
at dawn and it kept growing throughout the day.
Dave at Jalama on a different good sized day.
So if doing what you love is what life is all about, Dave Johnson has it dialed in.
He loves to stoke people out with new boards, and he stokes himself out in the water.
Next time you see him, ask him to sing one of his original songs, that will stoke you out!
Thanks for sharing all the memories Dave and keep crankin’ em out.
Here’s a link to the Progressive Surfboards website.
Order a board!
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