 Johnny
Rice hewed his first board out
of balsa
“repurposed” from
an old Navy raft in 1949. The
first attempt was, by his own
admission, awful. His shaping
education took on a more
formal dimension when Dale
Velzy offered to make him his
student. In the Seventies,
Johnny, a traveler by nature,
possibly a nod to his Plains
Indian roots, opened a
surfshop in Brazil, building
boards for the area’s
punchy beachbreaks. The 21st
century finds Johnny living in
Santa Cruz, California, and
turning out wildly popular
shapes tuned to the Central
Coast’s long
pointbreaks. |
