AN D Y N E U M A N N On Andy Neumann’s 16 th birthday, his mom picked him up from school and took him straight to the DMV. He passed his driving test, dropped off his mom at home, slid the nose of his board in the trunk and headed down the highway to spend the rest of the afternoon surfing Rincon Point. “It’s truly one of the best waves in the world,” Neumann says from a sunlit office in his Carpinteria-based architecture firm, Neumann Mendro Andrulaitis Architects. Neumann moved from Holland to Santa Barbara at 8 years old. He grew up in Montecito and surfed his first wave at Rincon in the late 1950s, when he was just about 10. Fred Hepp, his sister ’s boyfriend at the time, lent Neumann a balsa wood Velzy board and took him to Rincon, introducing the boy to a lifelong passion. “There was a great sense of freedom,” Neumann says of surfing Rincon in that era. “It was sort of newly discovered. The whole sport was sort of newly discovered.” Montecito offered decent waves just down the road from Neumann’s home, but Rincon trumped every surf spot around. Before Neumann could drive, he regularly bicycled to Miramar, and if conditions looked good, he would get his older buddy John Bradbury to drive him to Rincon. Neumann recalls debating with Bradbury over whether he should chip in 25 or 50 cents for gas. Neumann’s first board was a Gordy, his next a custom Yater with four curved stringers. He took the custom board
out in all types of surf and often shared the lineup with its shaper, Renny Yater. Yater was a hero to Neumann and a role model to many young surfers. “He wouldn’t stand out until the waves were really challenging, then you really saw how good he was, how graceful,” Neumann said. As a young teen, Neumann found the presence of Rincon’s older regulars comforting. “If the waves were big and I was scared, I had the sense that they would help me out,” he says. Neumann always got his schoolwork finished, but says, “Good surfing was number one.” He remembers telling his mom that he was spending the night at a friend’s house while the friend did the same. The teens slept in a station wagon at Rincon and paddled out before dawn to catch a handful of waves before showing up salty to school. During high school, Neumann helped to found the Hope Ranch Surf Club and was a member of the Santa Barbara County Surf Club. Through these elite clubs he had access to Hollister Ranch and could enter exclusive surf contests, such as the annual Malibu Invitational. When Neumann announced that he was going to college at U.C. Berkeley, his surfing pals thought he’d lost his mind to move away from the Southern California surf. After earning a degree in architecture, Neumann returned to Carpinteria in 1971 and developed a reputation for inspired design. Now the highly acclaimed 67-year-old architect says surfing means as much to him as ever. He competes in both the Rincon Classic and Malibu Surfing Association Classic Invitational annually, and keeps a variety of boards in his car should the opportunity arise for a session at Rincon. “It’s still my favorite spot,” he says. LEFT, Andy Neumann surfing Rincon in 1964. Photo by Bob Cooper. OPPOSITE PAGE, Neumann, the architect, went to U.C. Berkeley with a surfing scholarship from the United States Surfing Association. He graduated with honors with a five-year professional degree in architecture. ATE COLLECTION ANDY NEUMANN PRIV
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