Lifestylin': Steve Swan

Rogue Nation’s President is holding court in the back corner of the bar at Rogue Ales Public House in Newport, Oregon. A beat-down Rogue hat covering his bald spot. It’s not quite noon. “You want a beer?” he asks. “Well are you having one?” I respond, before noticing that there’s already an empty glass sitting next to a stack of beer industry mags, pamphlets and a notepad he has close at hand. “Are you kidding me?” he answers. “ Am I having a beer? Of course.”

Drinking beer is as integral to Steve Swan’s life as shaping surfboards. He heads up Rogue Ale's PR branch and his longboards dot the lineup along the Oregon Coast. His philosophy is simple, “One flag. One country. One fin.” And, “It’s all about the beer.”

If you don’t like it, he could care less.  A lifetime of doing his own thing gives him that kind of confidence. If you want to sit down and listen to his stories, pull up a chair. 

Steve Swan: Rogue Nation President and Oregon Longboard Shaper from NW Surf and Snow on Vimeo. 

[Ed Note: Check out some great pics of Swan from Tyler Roemer.]

Hotbatch

In the summer of 1958, Swan decided he wanted to surf. “I needed a surfboard to go surf. I made two wood boards--they were balsa boards,” he says. “During that summer I found out the boards weren’t that good to begin with, and I got introduced to other people on the beach. Later that summer, one board we took, and we had what we called a surf party--what we did was we stuck it in the trash can and burnt the board. Drinking beer on the beach, illegal as hell, I was what 16 or 17 years old?”

He sold the other board to his cousin. Without a board, and lacking shaping expertise, Swan took a job with Gordon & Smith. “I started working for them, technically, in ‘59, ‘60, but dead earnest in ‘61. They were the world’s largest manufacturer of surfboards there for a while. I was part of that. By myself I could glass 20 boards a day and shape five boards at night,” he says.

While working for G&S, he picked up his nickname Hotbatch by nearly burning the shop down.  “The resin we used to use was thicker... It’s like syrup when you pour it. Now I’ve got like 20 boards to do that day. Well I get there at 6 o’clock in the morning . I got to pour this slop out of the bucket which takes forever. So then we come up with this little can of stuff called DMA--Dimethylaniline whatever it is I don’t know. It’s probably toxic as hell. They probably outlawed it by now I’m sure,” he says.

“You just take and put a drop into a gallon of resin. I’m gonna do some fins, tack some fins on a board. I never got the stuff mixed when it went off. Well it went off so fast and so quick I had to put the bucket down because it got hot... So when the bucket goes on the ground, the owner of the shop, Larry Gordon, was there this thing blows up and this little atom cloud comes out of this bucket. And Gordon freaked out on me and started screaming at me, ‘You ain’t using this stuff: You’re not using this stuff.’ Of course he gets the fire extinguisher and puts the stuff out. That’s how I got my name Hotbatch.”

Swan put in a few more years shaping for G&S before realizing that there was a lot more money to be made in construction. He put down the hand-plane, picked up a hammer and started building homes. He shaped a nice life for himself in his hometown of San Diego, got married and had some kids. But he never stopped surfing.

Memories of South Bird

His perfect wave is right there in La Jolla: South Bird. “I still dream about that place every day, it’s just a great, great place,” he says. Swan started surfing at a little beach break called Law Street. “But when I got pretty proficient [it was out to South Bird]. It’s a peak break that breaks out in the ocean--big place. God, a gorgeous place. And we used to have that place all to ourselves all day long. Get hungry, dying of thirst or food. Go in and eat and come right back out again. Great place. South swell. Huge.” Swan says, remembering. “South Bird on a 10-foot-plus day, it doesn’t get any better than that. Huge peaks, you drop in. Speed. Take your pick. Go left or right--you have your choice.”

It’s been a few years since he’s actually surfed now; his last session was at Cape Kiwanda in Pacific City, OR. Health problems take their toll, but there’s not a day he doesn’t think about it. “I love to go watch surfers, watch the beach and think about how you would drop in and which way you would turn,” he says. “You visualize this stuff. I’ve been in the ocean so many times I know all of the movements and bobs and what waves do and all that stuff.”

A craftsman’s hands

There’s really only one rule of shaping as far as he’s concerned, well two. He won’t make a board under 9 feet and don’t even think of putting more than one fin it. “I’m old school, there’s no other way around this, I’m too old to change,” he says. “We got one flag, one country, one fin. Anything beyond that, the hell with ya.”Even during the busy construction years in Southern California, he’d make a few boards on the back porch. In the early '90s, something snapped, he’s still not sure if it was the So-Cal crowds or what, and he moved the family to Pacific City, Oregon. That’s where his shaping took off again. 

Back in those days, there were a few guys surfing Cape Kiwanda, but Oregon surfing was definitely underground. Swan got his Oregon contractor’s license and started building houses again. “I was out of the surfboard business at that point, because I disconnected everything, everything I ever knew,” he says, “But then my daughter decided she wanted to make surfboards. Here we go again.”

About the same time he started shaping again, a few more surfers began trickling into Pacific City and Bob Ledbetter opened South County Surf Shop. “Things kind of exploded,” Swan says. “I mean it just went crazy. I was making--the first year--I was making over 100 boards a year up there. It just went nuts.”

Swan kept shaping and building homes in Pacific City for another 12 years before slowing things down and moving an hour south to Newport, Oregon.

Even in his semi-retirement, the garage at his house in Newport is converted to a shaping room. Blanks line the wall and foam dust coats the shelves. Swan’s drinking a glass of Brutal IPA from his private stash--he buys Rogue beer by the truckload when the brewery has a garage sale to get rid of extra stock, and keeps it at home, so that he always has his elixir of choice on hand.

He runs his hand down a foam blank and you can hear the rasp from his callouses. When shaping a board: “You got to have a sense of feel,” he says. “My eyes are not that good anymore --I’ve had problems with them--but my hands are good. Any shaper you see shaping a board is always running his hands over it to feel this side and feel that side. It’s a hand and sight thing and to me it’s more of a hand thing than a sight thing. That’s because I’ve done it for so damn long, even though my eyes are bad, I still know what the hell I’m doing as long as I can feel it.”

“To me it’s easy. It’s almost genetic, but I’ve been doing it since 1958.” He takes another drink of beer.

It’s all about the beer

It was the beer that brought him to Newport in the first place.  “Rogue Brewery. The beer. That’s where it all started, right there. It’s still about the beer. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere,” he says. Most days you can find him at the Public House, Brutal in hand. Swan’s relationship with Rogue started years back.

“I wanted to put on a surf contest and they were one of our sponsors and that’s where it all began,” he says. “Once they created the contest [The Gathering], we’re up to 8 years now.. during all that stuff I did a lot of work for Rogue itself--construction. Plus they bought a lot of surfboards from me.” The Rogue Brewery sits on the south shore of Yaquina Bay and the Public House is right across from it on the north side in old town. At both, Swan’s surfboards hang on the wall and some of the wood tables were built by Swan to look like old-school singlefins.

Rogue's support of the surf community and independent managerial style dovetail perfectly with Swan. “They’re extremely independent people, which is what I am.” Several years of Swan doing his thing--shaping boards, putting on The Gathering, and drinking Rogue brews--culminated in his appointment as Rogue Nation President.

“Becoming president of Rogue Nation is an evolutionary process, quite frankly. It’s not complicated, it’s just a lot of time,” Swan says. “I got a tough job--I drink a lot of beer everyday.” In reality that’s not all he does.

Right now, Swan and Rogue are trying to get the Nation accepted into the UN. As part of PR efforts, the Nation appoints diplomats who can swear in new citizens and spread the Rogue message. It’s all in fun, but the corporate offices are actively pursuing UN membership and Swan is a willing player.

“We take seriously the Rogue Nation,” he says, taking a sip of Brutal. “Our corporate headquarters, they want to make a nation, for real.... We’ve got attorneys on it, they cannot ignore us, we’re going to make application to the UN and we’re going to be a legitimate country one of these days... All we need is a square foot nation. Once we got that nation, then we are legitimate at that point.”

As president of the Rogue Nation, Swan fosters Rogue Nation patriotism, keeps Rogue in the press, and puts on community fundraising events sponsored by the brewery. “The best description I got for being in the position I’m in: I’m allowed to run amok in their company, quite frankly. That’s what it boils down to, which I appreciate. They allow me to do all this and it’s a big corporation. Life is good,” Swan says, and takes another swig.

--Jens