Andy Neumann

Adapting to the Rhythm of the Wave

An acclaimed architect and legendary surfer, Andy Neumann is also my long-time neighbor and friend. I interviewed him over the course of two visits in March of 2020 at his Hollister Ranch home.  

CW: We always start by asking for your full name, and date and place of birth.

AN: Ferdinand Richard Neumann. I was born on December 12, 1946, in Tanjung Pandan, Indonesia, on the island of Belitung. 

CW: How is it that your parents were in Indonesia at that time?

AN: My great-grandparents were born around 1850 in Vranov nad Topľou, a little town of about 2,000 people in Slovakia. They were East European Jews. I jokingly like to think it was like Fiddler on the Roof. Around 1875 they moved to Budapest. I’m purely speculating, but I picture them showing up from this little village with their kids and they find themselves in this large city of Budapest. It was hard to make it work, and they moved on to Vienna. So, my grandfather was born either in Vienna or Budapest. Around 1900 he and his two brothers took off for Indonesia. I’m imagining it was kind of like the Gold Rush, the lure of opportunity. Two of my great-uncles got into the spice business. One did very well. My grandfather was more into real estate. Indonesia was a Dutch colony, and my grandfather met and married a Dutch woman there. My father was born in Jakarta, on the island of Java. His name was Ferdinand Oscar Neumann.

His parents decided he should go to high school in Holland to get a better education. So they sent him to the city of Utrecht where he attended high school, and he boarded with the principal. Utrecht is in the center of Holland, and it’s the main railroad hub. In Utrecht, while in high school, he met my mother, Beppie DeHaas. Her father was the city architect of Utrecht. After high school, he went on to attend Delft University, where he studied mechanical engineering. My mother went to The Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. They got married after he graduated, in the mid-1930s. It was hard to find work, so they decided to go back to Indonesia.  He was hired as a mechanical engineer by the Billiton Company in Belitung, an island north of Java, between Sumatra and Boreno. (And this is ironic--at some point an Australian company, BHP, bought it, and it was the Belitung company that was trying to put LNG at the Ranch. It’s followed me all around the world.)

And so, that’s how I came to be born in Indonesia.

CW: To begin there and end up where you are now! Amazing.

AN: My two older sisters, Marijke and Elsbeth, were born in Belitung prior to World War II, when the Japanese invaded Indonesia. ( My sister Elsbeth is still alive; she lives in Beverly Hills, and her son Billy lives in Montecito.) My father enlisted in the Dutch army and my mother tells the story of him going to blow up a bridge before the Japanese got there, but the Japanese had already crossed the bridge, so it was too late. My mother and my sisters (who were at this point four and two) were put in a concentration camp. My father was in a separate men’s camp.

My mother has written a journal about her life, or more accurately, her nine lives, plural. That period of being in the concentration camps, about three years, was one of my mother’s nine lives.

They were moved several times. My father had been assigned to Java, so they weren’t on Belitung. They were in Bandung, up the mountains from Jakarta, about an hour’s drive, and my grandmother had a small tea plantation up there. When the Japanese invaded, imagine the bureaucracy required to manage 14,000 islands?! So the Japanese take over, and first thing they do is put a fence around a neighborhood and declare it as a camp. At first it wasn’t so bad, but over time they would move in more families. More and more people, so they consolidated them, and by the end of the war it was pure barracks. It was pretty tough. There’s one real tear-jerking scene [in my mother’s journal] where Maijke had dysentery, and she was withering away. In desperation, my mother got permission to send her to a nunnery for her health. So Marijke gets on the back of a jeep and goes off with Japanese soldiers. My mother thought she might never see her daughter again.

My mother has written about all this quite beautifully, and I’m a bad son for not getting it put into book form. She talks about the ways they outsmarted the Japanese and managed to survive. But there’s never any discussion about my father. The men were treated much worse. My father probably saw and endured some horrible things.

But in terms of heroes, keeping her daughters alive through the World War, afterwards sewing clothes, ‘cause they didn’t have any clothes, my mother was so damned resourceful and tough, always keeping the family together. Whatever we went through in the years to come, I always knew she was in my corner, and that gave me strength when I had doubts or felt insecure.

Anyway, the war ends, and the Indonesians were just brutal with any foreigners that were there. So, ironically, a lot of Dutch people stayed in the concentration camp. My family went back to Belitung, one of the largest tin producers in the world. My father was a mechanical engineer, so he would keep dredges running. The Indonesians there liked the Dutch, so it was a safe place to be. My father went there first on his own, and soon thereafter my mother joined him with the girls.

And so, they started over after the war. Then, despite my mother’s malnutrition, she got pregnant. (She was very worried that the baby wouldn’t get enough nutrition, but the doctor assured her that the baby gets all it needs, and if there’s any left, that’s for you––that’s how nature works.)

So, I get born. I am born a blue baby in the jungle on a little island in Indonesia. You would think this baby didn’t have a chance. I’ve been so very fortunate.

After the war, a lot of people went back to Holland, but we stayed on until I was four years old. Going back to Holland was a heartbreaking experience for my father. By then, all the best jobs were taken, and he was unable to find work. We lived in temporary places, and eventually my father got a job working for an old friend who owned a factory, manufacturing windows and other products.  We got a row house near the Hague in Wassenaar, and that’s where we were living when my father died of a heart attack at the age 41. I was seven years old. He smoked a lot, and I think his experiences in the camps shortened his life, but he was also disappointed and brokenhearted. In photos he looks distant. He looks troubled.

CW: Can you see him in your mind? Do you have a clear memory of him?

Ferdinand Oscar Neumann

AN: Not really. I don’t have many memories. I suspect I just blocked them out. What I feel is the absence of him. I have a big emptiness, where my father died. I didn’t spend a lot of time with him, and I can’t remember much, and part of it I’m blocking out. That’s a huge loss.

I remember I didn’t get to go to the funeral, but afterwards we had a family get-together, and this older family friend came up to me and said, “Now you have to be the father for the family.”

The point is that I don’t have memories of my dad getting mad at me, or any negative stories…just the opposite, people always talked so highly of him. In a way, there’s a big void, but clearly, I had a great role model. Supposedly all the workers took a vacation day to go to his funeral. Yes, I had a big loss. I wish I would have had a father. But in a way, I had the best father.

So I guess in terms of who inspires me, I’d first have to say my father.

Coming to America

AN: I was eight years old when we moved to Santa Barbara, California.

CW: So, your native language is Dutch.

AN: Yes, but I speak like an eight-year-old! They put me on the school bus to Montecito Union, and I could not speak a word of English. They held me back in third grade, and then I skipped fourth grade and went into fifth grade. When you’re young, it’s easy to pick up a language, and obviously we spoke Dutch, but my parents made a point of speaking English at home. My mother had remarried an old friend from Holland who owned the Golf Motel on Coast Village Road (where Starbucks is now.) This is where I first lived when we came to Santa Barbara.

Andy ice skating in Wassenaar, Holland…in the boots he would soon be wearing on his first day at Montecito Union!

At the end of sixth grade, I had a teacher, John Craig, who made fun of me. I did a drawing, and he sarcastically made fun of it in front of the class, and this was a pivotal moment. What is this? It’s terrible. Something like that. I don’t remember exactly what he said. But the message I got was that it was terrible, and he embarrassed me in front of the class. And so I looked around and I decided in sixth grade that you’re either born an artist or you’re not, and obviously Stevie Barnes who drew all these cool cars, he was born with it, and I was not. And I kind of shut the door on art. It wasn’t until my junior year at UCLA that I started taking art classes and got excited.

CW: That’s the power of a teacher, for good or worse.

AN: One little comment, though: I think a teacher should know better.

CW: I agree. But as a former teacher, I think it’s also easy to underestimate how much power you have.

AN: And that’s an important thing. I’m digressing a bit, but I’ve been thinking about your questions. Not that I’m a big Robert Bly fan, but I remember listening to him and he talked about how men in tribes in Africa, it wasn’t the fathers that would initiate the sons into the village, but the uncle, or someone else. He talks a lot about being a mentor. He said there is something very tangible about a young boy being in an older man’s presence. Just by being in the presence, according to Bly, something tangible gets transferred. You don’t even have to be a philosopher or a wise man, just having a young person hang out with you, just being in your presence is a big part of mentorship. So, that got me thinking about mentorship.

You asked me earlier if I am optimistic about the future. I am, because of young people I meet. And I realized a few years back that a mentor doesn’t have to be older than you. You can have a young mentor. Connor and Parker Coffin can be my mentors. I’m seventy-three, but they can be my mentors. They’re so gracious, respectful, and enthusiastic about life. But you don’t have to be a surf star to be my mentor either. It was a liberating thought to realize we don’t always have to look up. We can have mentors who are younger than ourselves. And that’s especially important as we get older, because it gets thinner at the top as people start dying, but there are younger people we can learn from and be inspired by.

So…I’m not very optimistic, for various reasons, but to the degree I am, it has to do with younger people. I get very inspired. I hear criticism about Millennials or whatever, and I don’t even know what that means, but time and time again, when I meet these young people, they’re just inspiring.  

Craig Angell said something I thought was interesting. He retired from being a Montessori School teacher and said, “I figure I have about ten years left to do something significant with my life.” I thought that was beautiful.

But then I thought, “Well, I’m not doing anything significant with my life.” I’m retired, I’m surfing a lot, I won’t return certain calls, I haven’t written up my mom’s journal…what am I doing that’s significant? The answer is mentoring. I think just being available to young people and hanging out with them can be significant. It’s a two-way street, a win-win. And I do that. 

I remember Paul Tuttle [American designer known for his furniture] said several times that one of his secrets was hanging out with young people. He always surrounded himself with younger people.

Just being accessible to younger people inspires me, and I think it’s a reciprocal thing. A lot of young people call on me and reach out to me for advice, which is tricky, because I don’t know the answers, but we talk.

CW: I think you’re an excellent role model, and your grandsons are very fortunate.

Getting Started In Surfing

Photo by George Greenough (1966 or 1967)

CW: How did you first discover surfing? You once told me that you took to it immediately.

AN: The last day of school at Montecito Union, John Craig takes us to Sand Point, which is in Sandy Land Cove in Carp, for a beach day. So there’s a balsa wood Velzey there, and we all take turns riding this Velzey.  That was 1958. That was my introduction to surfing.

My sister Elsbeth had gotten married. Her husband was into water skiing, so I was into water skiing for a while, and I won a couple of trophies, and I was pretty good for an eleven-year-old. So that was fun. But then he sold his boat. My other sister, Marijke, was dating Fred Hepp. Fred had the concession on West Beach, just west of the pier, and they had these old plywood paddleboards. They had a plug in them. Periodically you pull the plug, and you drain the water, so it’s hollow. I’d ride my bike down there, and he’d let me take a paddle board for free, and I’d paddle across the harbor to the sand bar, and I’d surf these paddle boards. No fins. That was really how I started.

CW: You must have been very athletic. You must have had a very good physical sense.

AN: I was. I wasn’t great at a bunch of sports, but I loved participating. I went out for all sports. It was different then than today, because now you have pushy parents and teams and you’re training for the NFL when you’re eight years old. I was lonely a lot, and I was left alone a lot, but I had a lot of friends.

On Growing Up In Montecito

AN: Growing up in Montecito…we had shortcuts across all these estates. Probably right across what is now Oprah’s estate, that was owned by Mark Bacon’s grandmother. We had all these trails across the estates. We’d ride our bikes, and hike, and there was a real sense of freedom.

I remember the tennis court at what is now Knowlwood Tennis Club. My friend Harrison Garvin and I would just go there and play tennis. One tennis court. The Knowl family lived there, and I’m sure they looked out the window and thought, isn’t that cute, those boys are playing tennis, and no one ever said anything. They just left us alone. It was a different place then.

Every Saturday morning we’d meet at Montecito Union. They had these three terraced fields. If it was football season, we’d choose up teams and play football. Later we’d go over to Miramar. Or, let’s go hike. We’d hike up Hot Springs Trail, Cold Springs Trail…

It was just all the kids of Montecito Union. We didn’t have uniforms, we didn’t have parents driving us all over town, we didn’t have coaches. We just chose up and decided what we were gonna do that day. It was a wonderful time and place to grow up.

Montecito was a very different place then. It was a lot more middle class. It wasn’t very crowded. There were some wealthy people too, but it wasn’t super-expensive. It was a great place to grow up.

And Back To Surfing

AN: Getting back to surfing. One day, Fred Hepp took me to Rincon. And he had a Velzey Jacobs, another balsa board. I figure this was around 1958. He pushed me into the waves on his balsa board––so I’ve been surfing Rincon for over sixty years. That’s pretty cool. And it’s my favorite spot. Big Drake’s, Sacate, is my second, but it’s hard to beat Rincon.

Then I got a surfboard for Christmas or my birthday, and I went down to Miramar. The first day, my mother dropped me off, I waited for a little while, I paddled out, and it was giant, and there was no one on the beach. I paddled out and was soon outside these giant waves and I didn’t know how to get back on the beach. Finally, I got my nerve up and I waited for a big set to go by, and then and I paddled hard to get to shore. So my first go-out on my new board wasn’t a big success.

Normally when you’re starting, someone pushes you, and you go straight towards the beach, and the whitewater breaks behind you and it pushes you and you’re riding the whitewater. But the first time on my new board at Miramar, when I turned, and I got on the face of the wave, and the water kind of lifted me, and I got this feeling of gliding, and it was just like a magic carpet ride.

I just thought of that again when I went to the Surf Ranch last Sunday. It felt like that.  It’s surreal. This manmade wave in the San Joaquin Valley, but that’s another story.

So then we just started surfing. We might still meet at Montecito Union, but our focus started shifting towards Miramar. After us came Tommy Curren and Conner Coffin, and there was Steve Bigler, who I think placed 4th in the World Surf Contest in 1966, so Miramar is not a great surf spot, but it’s been a pretty good incubator. Conner and his brother Parker, and also Lakey Peterson, who finished second or third in the world rankings in the last few years…

So then we started surfing Miramar and Hammonds, a step up the beach, that tends to be bigger and more powerful. A better wave.

I had a little trailer behind my bicycle. After about a year we moved from the Golf Motel to Montecito Oaks, which is near Olive Mill and North Jamison, parallel to the freeway on mountain side. There’s tract with twenty-five homes. It was a brand new tract when we moved in there. I’d ride to the beach with my 2x4 trailer, and I remember on Sunday mornings, everyone was dressed up to go to church. I tried to weave through these people who parked their cars and were walking across the street to go to church. I didn’t want to make eye contact. I felt like a sinner ‘cause I was going to the beach instead of church.

So that was the start of surfing. I had a really good friend. Harrison Garvin. Anything I could do he could do better. Baseball. He’d hit a home run. Basketball, he’d swish it. Football he’d be the quarterback and throw perfect passes. We ended up together on the swim team at Santa Barbara High School. What really bummed me out, we’d play darts or badminton or any of these stupid games, and even then he’d kick my butt. He was a really good surfer. Luckily for me, he started getting migraines from the glare of the ocean. so he stopped surfing, and I kept surfing, so finally there was a sport I could do better than Harrison! He was also the salutatorian, the second smartest kid in Santa Barbara Junior High. He’s brilliant. He lives in New Zealand. I just got an email from him this morning.

CW: You have such long-lasting friendships. That’s pretty special.

AN: Then, we had a club through the Montecito YMCA, which used to be the Montecito Home Club. It’s kind of interesting. Wealthy people would go to the Valley Club or Country Club. Many had servants, chauffeurs, maids and gardeners. It was originally a place the wealthy people bought for their employees to hang out…all those chauffeurs and maids and gardeners… a house on corner of East Valley and San Ysidro that they called the Home Club. At some point the YMCA bought it and it became Montecito Y. In junior high we’d go to the Home Club and then the Montecito Y. Dr. Bittleston (who was sort of like a surrogate father) and John "Ike" Eichert (of Ike’s surfboards)  formed a junior high club: the High Y-Ans. 

Dave and John Eichert in front of Ike’s Surf Shop

My best friend was John’s brother Dave Eichert, and since John made beautiful surfboards, Dave said, let’s join the Santa Barbara Surf Club. I didn’t want to join the Surf Club because it was Yater and his contemporaries…why would he want me in his club? I was eleven years old. I was embarrassed to ask. I said, no way! But Dave continued to pressure me, and we were best friends. He said, “John will take us up to the Ranch.” So finally, I agreed to join.

In those days, you would go to All American Sporting Goods, and join the Sportsman Association, for a junior membership, I forget what it was. Like $5 to join Sportsman, $6 to join the Surf Club, and you’re a member for a year, and you can come up to the Hollister Ranch any time you want. Of course, I didn’t drive. So it was Dave who talked me into it.

Anyway, now I was in the Santa Barbara Surf Club, and Dr. Bittleston would take us up until I got my driver’s license in 1962, and then I could come up by myself.

So one time we came up and Stu Fredericks, Pete Miller, Dr. B, and his two sons were at Big Drakes, and I was sitting out the farthest, and I heard someone say something. I turned around and there was no one close to me:

I was brokenhearted because when we finally got to high school, Dave stopped surfing. He was an amazing motorcycle rider and was going to be sponsored so he just quit. He was my best buddy and he quit. So our lives drifted apart.

Anyway, in my senior year, I get a call from my counselor. Holy shit, what did I do? He sits me down, and he says, “Listen I got this letter from the U.S. Surfing association. They’re offering a $500 surfing scholarship for any accredited college you want to go to.”

I was senior class president, and I was on the swim team, and I did activities. My grades were okay, not great, but adequate. I filled out the application and sent it in. I was one of the ten finalists. We’d like to meet you at Salt Creek. Near Dana Point. We’d like to meet you and watch you surf, but this is not a contest. We just want to make sure you’re a competent surfer.

I don’t remember how I met Mark Martinson…who had just won the Huntington contest. But Kent Bittleston and I spent the night with him in Long Beach, and then we drove down to Salt Creek.

There’s Hoppy Schwartz, Leroy Granis, Hobie Alter, and a couple of others. Sort of the rat pack of surfing at the time, all these big names. We get out of the car, “Hey Mark!” I think I won the scholarship right then and there. Hanging out with Mark Martinson gave me instant cred. In 1964, Berkeley was charging $125 per semester, so it paid for two years at Cal.

This friend of mine, Marshall Rose, was the student body president at Santa Barbara High. His family owned Lou Rose, a high end women’s fashion shop in Santa Barbara.  I was still small; I was 4’11” and weighed 96 pounds in tenth grade. Anyway, on my first day, we went to assembly for orientation, and I’m sitting there, and out walks Marshall Rose, a super-big guy. He gets me into the Key Club. Then he went off to Berkeley. I asked his advice on what college I should go to. Berkeley, of course. What fraternity? Beta Theta Pi of course. So I’ve had the good fortune of following in Marshall’s footsteps. A great mentor and a wonderful man.

My surf buddies thought I was crazy. You’re a surfer, you have unlimited access to Hollister Ranch and you’re going up to Berkeley?

During my junior year of high school, the Malibu Surf Club decided to have an invitational surf event. They invited ten clubs. There was a guy named Jim Hansen who lived in Hope Ranch, they had a little high school surf club. John Peck was one of the top Hawaiian surfers. His mother had just moved to Hope Ranch.  Jim Hansen dropped Peck’s name, and that is how we got invited. It was a big deal.

So then we sort of commandeered the Hope Ranch surf club. Fifty years later, I mentioned it to Andy Chapman, and he was still pissed off about it.

And since I was Boys’ League president in junior high and senior class president in high school and knew Roberts’ rules of orders, they decided I would be president. Bunch of wild high school kids to keep order. Dr. Bittleston and Jeff White were sponsors. That was heady stuff.

I hitchhiked down from Berkeley in 1965. Some weird guy picked me up around San José. I felt uncomfortable. Suddenly, I spotted this VW Bus with surfboards heading south and I waved him over. It was Pete Kobzev, from Long Beach, and he was headed to the Malibu Contest. Amazing luck! The contest was a big deal, and miraculously, I made the finals. Dewey Weber, Micky Dora, Johnny Fain. Butch Linden. I got last in the finals. But that was huge. It was written up in Surfer Magazine.

The following year, I’m up at Berkeley, and I don’t get to surf much. I was out of the loop. I transferred to UCLA my junior year. In junior year you had to declare a major, and nothing was catching. My mother had remarried a Dutchman, another old friend, when suddenly he became ill and passed away. She was living alone in a large house in LA, and I was ready for a change. I figured I’d go to UCLA, be with my mom, and gracefully ease out of fraternity. I lived with my mom for a year. (UCLA is where I met my friend Bob Dornin.)

In the summer of ‘66 I was a life guard for Leo Carillo State Beach and I entered all these surf contests. I ended up sixth in the U.S. Surfing Association, which was pretty good. The Malibu contest comes up again, I make the finals, and got second place that year, losing to my old nemesis, Steve Bigler.

I’m so lucky. I’m more stoked on surfing now than I’ve ever been. I don’t think that’s common.

The Hollister Ranch

CW: I’m interested in your early visits to the Hollister Ranch.

I think my first experience was coming up with my sister and her husband and staying at Saunders Knoll, and just hanging out with the other Ranch kids. I’m guessing this was about 1959. I was about 12.

The kids at Saunders Knoll, left to right: Johnny Dole, Wicky Mauracher, Heidi Mauracher, Doyle Hollister, Mimi Mauracher, Moki Mauracher, Andy Neumann

My sister was married to Rod White, who was a friend of Clinty and Becky Hollister. They would come up here, and they’d all go hunting and get together and have big dinners. The Dole kids were there, and David and Doyle Hollister. There was a whole group of kids that just played around. So that was nice. I think I was discovering surfing at the same time–dabbling at it–but my first Ranch trips didn’t include surfing. My sister was a wonderful, warm person, so I would come up with her and Rod pretty often.

Rod White was a really good hunter, fisherman, and scuba diver. He owned Rod’s Marine Sales in the harbor. He was one of a handful of guys that worked a deal with Clinty called the Santa Barbara Sportsman’s Association. I don’t know how they limited their numbers, but they ended up being able to use LaRue’s house, also known as the Ritz, or the Hotel. They got furniture and fixed it up, like a club house. I would come up and we would stay there. I would just tag along. They were big hunters. They’d all go hunting (for dove, deer, or quail) and I’d go surfing. 

Then, around 1959 or 1960, as part of our junior high YMCA club (the High-Y-Ans), we got permission to come up to the Hollister Ranch and camp. It was one of the all-time greatest adventures of my life.

It was bigger than life. Razor’s was 25 feet. Oh, I was a little guy, so I really don’t know, but it was huge. Steve Bigler wanted to go out, and Dr. Bittleston said no way, too dangerous. But we all went up to Cojo. We camped at Cojo, and we surfed at Cojo for the weekend. 

I remember in the early days there were a handful of people who made surf movies. They would go around from town to town and typically rent out a high school auditorium and put posters up around the community. It was a big event. One of the earliest surf movies I saw was called Surf Safari by John Severson. They had a whole section about going up to the Hollister Ranch, and Bob Cooper, (who just recently passed away), and Kemp Aaberg surfing at San Augustine. It was a small, glassy day, and it was just so pristine and beautiful, and we just thought it was Shangri-La, the magic place.

So when we finally became members of the Santa Barbara Surf Club and could come up here, we’d always go straight to San Augustine. We figured that was the spot, because that was burnished in our brains from that surf movie.

The Ranch from very early on had a mythical sort of reputation in the surfing world as someplace very special that you couldn’t go to. It was off limits. It was a real treasure. And often when I write about The Ranch, I’ll capitalize it, because there are many ranches everywhere, but there is only one THE Ranch, and if you’re a surfer, you know what you’re talking about.  

Cyn: That mystique about The Ranch is well deserved, but hasn’t it also contributed to our problems now?

AN: For sure. Yeah. There were some famous photos. One was by a photographer named Ron Stoner. It’s a picture of Skip Frye paddling out at Cojo, and there’s this beautiful wave so you don’t see anyone in the water except Skip paddling out, knee paddling, which we don’t do anymore, and that’s an image everyone has front and center of The Ranch. Beautiful, glassy, perfect wave, unridden because there’s no one here, and you’re paddling out by yourself.

So it’s interesting to me that one of the most iconic photos is not even a person on a wave.

When I started surfing, there were a handful of guys, maybe ten, and they were all part of the pit crew. It was Bobby Hazard, Jerry Shalhoob, Joel Clayton, John Bradbury, Jerry and Joel, who still own a twelfth up here. They were all about five to seven years older than me. They had all started surfing, and so when we started, we looked up to these guys. And they were all part of the Santa Barbara Surf Club who used to come up here. We used to be able to drive on the beach all the way to Government, and none of us figured out four-wheel drive except for Yater, who had a four-wheel-drive pickup truck. But the rest of us had big heavy two-wheel drive clunkers. I had a ’56 Chevy with the back seat removed so I could slide in my board, and you’d have a shovel, a plank, a couple of two by tens or two by twelves, and a jack, very handy, because it seemed like every time you’d come up here, you’d get stuck. You had to jack up the car, dig out, put the boards under the wheels, go about ten feet and the board would end, and you’d sink into the sand, and you’d do it all over again until finally you’d get out. Those cars were heavy, and it seems like we always got stuck. But that was part of the routine.

Andy’s ‘56 Chevy on the beach at Rights and Lefts, and Bobby Hazard’s shack, 1967.

There were so many wonderful days. And interesting adventures too. There was the shark scare at Big Drakes. Another time I was up at Government, and I was surfing by myself. All of a sudden, I notice a splash nearby me. I look around, I figured it was a fish or something. Then another splash, then another. And I turned around and I looked at the beach, and there’s a guy on top of the cliff with a rifle. I’m sure it was Floyd Smith, but I can’t prove that. He was trying to scare me. Which he certainly did.

Another time I was up there surfing, and suddenly all these seals that were quite a bit further out than I was, started jumping and swimming towards me. Dr. Bittleston had just been attacked by what we presumed to be a sick seal at Hammonds, and the seal chased him on the beach, barked, and was chasing after him, so that was forefront in my mind. I thought, holy crap, all these seals are coming after me. So I turned around and paddled toward the shore as fast as I could. It wasn’t until about thirty years later, a light bulb went on. The seals weren’t after me. There was probably a great white after the seals.

Yvonne would be upset to know I was surfing up there all by myself, of course.

CW: How has the Ranch changed since then? Do you still see a lot of wildlife? Has it remained relatively pristine?

Yes. Obviously, the surfing and the beach are foremost in my mind, but I like the backcountry just as much, if not more. I see so much wildlife. Yesterday I watched a magnificent mountain lion strolling by my window.

I’m tempted to get one of those Go-Pro cameras that surfers have. Little wide angle cameras, very small, like a miners’ lamp. It’s not about catching the wave, but like when the pelicans glide along–– and they actually surf the wave, because when the wave is steep–– just before it breaks, there’s an air movement that goes up, and they glide along right where a surfer would be, riding the air of the wave. And you’re sitting in the water, and you see three or four pelicans coming at you down the beach, and then just before they get you, they do a turn and go around you. Trying to capture those things with a camera would be fun.

Sometimes all of a sudden a porpoise or dolphin will jump up and break through the wave in front of you. You hardly ever have any sense that they’re around, and they just burst out of the water––and they’re huge, the girth on them is giant. It startles you and freaks you out for about a second, and then, a big smile. And then you try to ride the wave for as long as you can, following this dolphin. Now that’s pure magic.

But being here in the canyon is just as, if not more, important than the beach. Who knows what will happen with the Coastal Act, but this is the real ranch too ---up the canyon. The ocean and beach are just one aspect.

My appreciation for the land itself, that goes back to when I was in architecture school…driving through Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. There was a sort of back to the earth movement in the late ‘60s, and there was a book we read…Living the Good Life…Helen and Scott Nearing, teachers in New York, they were fired because they were members of the communist party, so they moved to Vermont and built their own houses out of stone, there was this whole back-to-the-earth movement, and as an architect, I was just wanting to build a little house in the forest and be self-sustaining. When I look back, it’s like be careful what you wish for, because it might come true. At the same time, don’t give up on your dreams.

Going Into Architecture

At UCLA you had to take a music and an art class, so I took the history of modern art, and it was the best class I ever took. The guy got fired for being too radical. He brought in all these different people…it was a new way of thinking. I got so excited. Then I started taking studio classes. I told you earlier about John Craig, who I felt made fun of me and my art, and I kind of shut the door on art. But now I started to take studio classes, and I wasn’t gifted, but it is amazing how much I improved with each class. I still was average, I wasn’t very good, but I’d come a long way.

So one day I walked out of the art building into the sculpture yard at UCLA kind of singing zippity-doo-da and skipping along, feeling so good, and all of a sudden I stopped dead in my tracks, and thought, “Wait a minute. How can I earn a living as an artist?” So I decided I’d go into architecture. It was kind of a way of combining my math abilities and hopefully art and be able to make a living. In my senior year I went back to Berkeley and majored in Architecture, a five-year degree.

So I graduated from Berkeley, and I wanted to go to Harvard. They had a three-year graduate program that combined city planning and architecture, called urban design. Four of my teachers at Cal were from Harvard, and I had done really well in their classes and graduated with honors, and then I took the Graduate Record Exam, and I was amazed how well I did. I had always done well in math…but in English I was always behind, and now I could see from my scores that I had I really improved. I used to keep a little notebook that said “Neum’s Hurting Vocab” and I’d write down words I didn’t know and look them up. Anyway, I was really amazed and pleased that my English score had improved dramatically, and I’m confident I would have gotten into Harvard, but I was working nights in a restaurant, had two kids in diapers, and Ali Mauracher, the realtor who sold the Hollister Ranch to MGIC, told me that his friend, Sep Lanz, had a ranch behind the polo fields in Carpinteria, and I could rent a little two-bedroom farmhouse there for fifty dollars a month.

These were still the days of the “back-to-the-earth” movement, and we decided let’s take a break, ‘cause I was pretty tired. The rest is history, of course. I never went back to school. Instead of doing urban design, which is huge projects, I did small houses.

Besides, I was burned out. The first year, I lifeguarded at El Cap and Gaviota and Refugio, and picked avocados for $2 or $3 an hour. I was about twenty-three or twenty-four years old. I was tired of architecture and didn’t even know I wanted to do it, but I decided, before I totally quit I should at least try and get a job and see if I like it.

My first job, we were doing Sambo’s restaurants, among other things, in the office. And it was really boring work. So Bill Swartley approached me about designing a little house on Parcel 22, the first twelfths parcel. (Bill died surfing Little Drake’s in the 1990s. He was a realtor who organized the first twelfths.) This certainly got my interest; I was just dying to do something more creative! The most fun thing I got to do in architecture at that point was to lay out the parking lots for Sambo’s. The Sambo’s restaurants were all the same, but the little bit of creativity was how you laid out the parking lot.

So a group of guys…Bradbury, probably Duncan, and a few others…all became twelfth owners, and I said, I’ll design a house for free. And they said, well, if you’re gonna design it for free, we’ll give you a free twelfth. But I didn’t even dare bring it up with Yvonne, because I was making three dollars an hour in the architecture office, we had two kids, and so I turned down the free twelfth. That same twelfth just sold for like $750,000. So yeah, you are looking at the man who turned down a free twelfth. I don’t have much credibility in the surf world.

And I can go on and on about the design of this place. It was a hexagon. Kim Kimbell was an owner. So the ruling was, that a house could not be smaller than a thousand square feet, and they made a deal with Swartley that you could have the parcel at half-price, so it was $50,000 instead of $100,000. It was the most unbuildable parcel, so they gave these surfers a deal on it, as long as they built a house, and they had a year to do it.

So I went up there, and there was this big rock in the back, and there were some stones in the front, and then there were two diagonal views, one of Government, and one of Rights and Lefts, so if you started with those two rocks, and you drew the diagonal views and turned them back in, it became a hexagon, and it happened to be a thousand square feet, based on the distance of those two rocks. There was this flat sandstone that was gonna be the floor, so you’d pour cement and it would at some point this flat sandstone would emerge, and I worked out a detail where the back wall was this giant boulder and you’d cut a groove into it for the glass to fit into the rock, so you’d just have the silhouette of the rock, and that’s how it evolved into a hexagon, and the columns were gonna be concrete block, but they were designed so that later on, when they had more money, they could be faced in sandstone.

I was very excited about this. LaRue said not to worry about the setbacks, it’s in the backcountry. So I designed this whole thing, but then they said, “Wait a minute! You’re in the common area easement, you need to set it back further.”

I said, “Right now it’s down on the ground, it’s out of the wind, and it’s not very visible. To comply with the setback, I have to move it forward, it has to be up on poles, and it’s gonna be more visible. It’s to everyone’s advantage to leave it.”

And I told the members that I’d argue this if they wanted. I thought we had a good rationale for justifying a variance or modification. But they weren’t interested. All they cared about was going surfing.

About that point, Yvonne and I relocated to Aspen, so somebody else took it and moved it and put it on poles. It’s not at all what I envisioned. The overall shape sorta looks as I envisioned, but it’s not.

Anyway, we left and went to Aspen. If I had taken the twelfth, we would have had to pay for construction, our share of that, insurance…we had absolutely no money. So we left. It worked out okay. Again, the one who laughs last laughs best. All the guys who laughed at me for going to Berkeley, I don’t see many of them around here anymore.

CW: Why Aspen?

AN: I was working in an architecture office and I didn’t know much about construction. A friend of mine, Frank Louda, had gone to Aspen working on construction, and I was tired of working on Sambo’s restaurants, not getting much opportunity, so we got a U-Haul trailer, and we drove up to Aspen. We had two very young kids, and we went to Difficult Campground, of all names, on the north side of Aspen on the Roaring Fork River. So we got a campsite, and I got a bike, and I started riding around Aspen to construction sites, asking for jobs. Finally, I hooked up with Pietro Danieli, this classic Italian guy. He was a ski instructor and contractor, and so I worked construction to get some practical experience. I did that for about eight months and then went to work for some really good architects in Aspen.

It was a neat experience, and one aspect in particular was interesting. I had been so frustrated at the local office doing these Sambo’s and different things, and all of a sudden they hired two guys from Cal-Poly that were younger than I was, but they could sketch better, and they got to do all this design work, and I didn’t get to do anything. I was so frustrated. Now I am in Aspen, working construction, and these architects had just done John Denver’s house and won a couple of awards, so I said, “I’d love to work here. I’m working construction now, but if a job opens up, let me know.” And they actually called me some months later, and I went to work with them, and the partners would come to my desk and ask for my opinion on things! I was flabbergasted. They’re asking me? In my last office, I was emptying garbage cans.

I think that what happens when you’re working is that you show up with a certain amount of experience and you make a first impression. As you grow and learn, they may not perceive it, because they’re busy, and they still have this image of you as you were when you first walked in the door. But when I walked in the door in Aspen, I was more confident and more knowledgeable.

Still, it blew my mind that they constantly came up and asked for my opinion. I was so grateful and astonished. And that’s kind of a little lesson. Sometimes you’re beyond what people perceive you to be because they’ve known you before and still see you as you were.

CW: Can you talk a little about your approach to architecture?

AN: This is a funny story. I was at Berkeley, and there was seemingly a very loose attitude at the architecture school, maybe part of the ‘60s culture. It seemed like they were very reluctant to guide you in any particular direction. It seemed like we had to invent our own validity, our own philosophy. The professors appeared very reluctant to cross that line and say this is how you should do it. I got so frustrated. I’m going to college. I want to be a good architect. Tell me what good architecture is, so I can study and learn it.

Years later, I’m reading this article and I’m really getting excited because this guy has the same philosophy I do, and I’m getting more excited as I’m reading it, and then at some point I realize it was written by Joseph Esherick, who was the dean of architecture at Berkeley. And I had to laugh. Obviously, they were teaching me about architecture, even though in my mind, I was coming up with these ideas on my own.

The people who designed Sea Ranch were all professors at Berkeley. Their approach was to design with nature, and respond to the context. For example, Joseph Esherick did the aquarium in Monterey, and he designed it to look like the Cannery buildings. Now he didn’t go into his studio, meditate on what an aquarium should look like and come up with the idea that it should look like a cannery building-- he studied the context. It was old Cannery Row, and so he designed a building to complement and fit into what was there.

CW: Wouldn’t you say that’s a pretty fundamental principle, that architecture must be contextual?

AN: Well, it’s not always that way, but certainly that was part of our thinking. So, if you’re building out in nature, it’s different than if you’re building in an urban environment.

CW I assume you enjoy the former more than the latter. You seem to be known for your seaside houses.

AN: That was kind of a mixed blessing. I started off doing a beach house for an old family friend of Yvonne’s. I think I’ve worked on eighty to ninety beach houses. Some were modest remodels, not big at all. Obviously, I love the beach and the spirit of a beach house. People tend to be more relaxed and casual with a beach house, and you can have more fun with it. But they’re also very limiting. Beach houses are so narrow. We jokingly refer to it as squeeze-a-tecture. The property is worth a lot of money, so you need to get a lot of space out of it. You sort of build these boxes that optimize the volume. So, there are pros and cons.

What I really like is building out in nature and relating to the site, fitting it in. I remember getting so frustrated with my first architectural partner, because we’d go to the site once and he’d never go back, whereas I’d want to go a bunch of times, different times of day, different times of year, and really get a feel for the site.

I’ve been so incredibly lucky. The wonderful sites I’ve gotten to work on! But some of my worst work is on the Hollister Ranch, because I was always seduced by getting to do work up here, even if the client didn’t have any money, or if their expectations weren’t realistic in terms of time or budget. And those are red flags, but I’d overlook the red flags and shortcomings just to have the opportunity to design on these incredible sites.

I really enjoy doing smaller places. They’re more precious. There was an architect who supposedly told his clients, “Close your eyes. Think back on the most wonderful spaces you’ve ever been in.” Invariably, it was a small space. Whether it was a tree fort when they were kids, or the first teeny apartment a young couple had, it was always small. A nook. Then he’d say, “Imagine that place twice as big. Would it be better?” Generally, no. So that was a way of getting people to think in terms of less. Less is more.

I used to be glad I’d get a garage remodel or something, but as you get more successful…like after I did the house for Kevin Costner…there are more opportunities. I could have rented a red Ferrari, gone to cocktail parties, and lived in the fast lane, but instead I turned down a lot of work and kept it small. Sometimes it was painful and difficult, and I made some mistakes, but I think that was really a good thing to do. I wanted to stay involved in design, not just have a business.

CW: That’s the artist in you. You had to find and express your own voice.

AN: Yes, being more artistic was important to me.

Recently, just to get away, I went to a design conference that the AIA puts on every year in Monterey. And I’m driving up there with Yvonne, and thinking, “Why am I going to an architecture conference? I’m retired.”

But I’m so glad I did. I got so inspired with these architects from all over the world doing incredible work, and I realized again how much I love design and architecture. I hate the business of architecture, the money part. So now I’m doing a few freebies for friends, kids of friends, helping them, and I don’t charge. I’ve been given a couple of free surfboards. And there’s joy in that.

It’s interesting when you retire you reflect back, woulda-coulda-shoulda…and the jobs that are the most gratifying for me are some of the earlier jobs. When I’d work with a young couple…like you and Monte were…you didn’t have a lot of resources, you had a very modest house, but it made a huge difference in your lives. Right now, I’m doing a house…and it’s just crazy how much it costs, I’m not even gonna say, but it’s like the fifth house these people own, so it isn’t meaningful to them in the same way; it doesn’t make a difference in their lives.

But your house was a place for a young family to live and grow up together. Those are the more rewarding jobs, rather than the big jobs for famous people where we use marble and valuable materials. I’m more intrigued by keeping things simple and using economical materials. The essence comes through more–you’re not looking at shining marble, you’re looking at the essence of the building. It’s not covered over with all these other things.

CW: We’ve been so happy in our house. You immediately understood our needs and the site.

AN: It’s a good example--building on this rock face. Responding to it. Where to put a window?

CW: That window!

AN: I’ve been so fortunate, designing these houses, trying not to have a preconceived notion. Just responding to the site.

Andy pulling out at Rincon, his favorite surf spot, in front of a house designed for Gary Wooten and later purchased by Cindy and Kevin Costner. (Photo by Al Daniels)

CW: Are you having fun now with that Ranch house you’re working on?

AN: The Edington guest house. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. No constraints. Do this, have fun. That’s a special project, a real gift. It’s all about relating to the site. He even said, look around in nature. You don’t see any straight lines. See how that hill is curving? He’s also into Tai Chi and Qi Gong, circular movements, so the way the retaining wall embraces in a gradual arc, and the way the roof slopes up and looks at that big rock. It was all about responding to the site. It’s like El Capitan on the ranch, that rock formation that you’re looking at, the whole design is how do you take that in. It’s not a design I had in my mind; it is a response to the site. He’s giving me he has a lot of confidence in me and allowing me to explore different things.

CW: These all sound like metaphors for how one should live–– take it in and respond to the variables you are given. Not changing to make it fit into your vision, it’s give and take.

AN: It’s kind of like surfing. When you take off on the wave you don’t know what’s gonna happen, you have to adapt and sort of dance to the rhythm of the wave. You have to flow with it. And these long turns, which I like in my surfing, are showing up in this building. I say that at the risk of being corny, but I think there is some sort of connection there

CW: Don’t be afraid to be corny. A friend of mine once told me, “Everything I learned in life I learned from surfing.” Do you think there’s a seed of truth there? Or is that hyperbole?

AN: I think that’s a bit of a stretch. But you can certainly learn a lot of lessons from surfing.

For example, I recently paddled out at Malibu and some hot young surfer dropped in on me three waves in a row. He was really good. I was watching him. I was an old geezer, not a local there. The third wave, he kicked out, and I kicked out right behind him, and he paddled away towards the pier. He was very aware that I was right behind him, and he was trying to paddle away from me, because he was nervous that I was gonna give him shit, and I made a point of paddling after him. I had a longer board, so I could catch him. And when I did, I said, “God, you’re a good surfer! I’ve been watching you, and you’re so good.”

And he had been anticipating that I was gonna give him shit. At first, he was dumbfounded, but then, a big smile. And after that, he’d never take off in front of me again. It was such a fun lesson.

Yeah, there are a lot of life lessons that you can learn surfing. Not everything, but surfing is sure fun. I’m so fortunate that I can still enjoy it so much, and I feel like I’m still learning and trying to do new things. New surfboards. It’s not just hanging on. It’s still progressing somehow.

CW: It’s good to see people still learning, still having fun even at our age.

AN: Oh, my God. It’s so joyful.

CW: Do you go out in all conditions, or are you one of those “boutique” surfers?

AN: Oh, I go out in all conditions. I never once regret that I went out. It’s so stupid––the long boarder and the short boarders, they have this sort of antagonistic feeling toward each other, and never the twain shall meet. But to me, I feel blessed, because I do both. I prefer short boarding, but a lot of times the conditions call for long board. When the waves are knee high, you can’t even stand up on a short board.

So I go out and just milk the wave as much as I can. You get the board angled just properly so it reduces the drag, and you can ride it a little bit faster, a little bit farther. So there’s incredible challenge to surfing even this dinky little wave. You become mesmerized, and when you’re done, you feel so good! But if you went up to the beach and said, I’m not going out, it’s terrible, not worth it, you’d have missed that. You adapt to the situation.

I love surfing Rincon, which is very competitive, and often you have to surf aggressively, but up here, you just get into the flow of things. I’ve turned down a lot of work on the Ranch because this is where I come to get away.

CW: What do you feel defines success?

AN: I don’t know. Certainly, architecture has been a wonderful career for me. Remember my friend Harrison I talked about? Everything I could do he could do better? He luckily stopped surfing, and he’s a jack of all trades, but I stuck with architecture, and there’s a lesson in that. Stick with it, whether it’s your marriage, your career, your sport. That’s worked well for me. Having a family and raising our children is easily my greatest achievement. And architecture is wonderful because you’re always in a process of exploring, discovering and evolving. It’s not like I’m cranking out the same design over and over. It’s always evolving. It’s the creativity of building, but it’s also helping, about helping someone to craft a life.

The other part was running an office. To me, the people we have working for us are part of the legacy. I always wanted to be a teacher, but I’d like to think that within the office, I taught. Sometimes you’d get a good job and you’d hire the best qualified person you could at that moment, but that person might not be right. On the other hand, you make room for the special person. You don’t necessarily just hire the most experienced person. We also learned that if you hire someone with a lot of experience, they’re stuck in their ways and stubborn, and growing our own was the best. Typically, we’d hire people out of college and try to make an environment that nourished them, satisfied them financially and intellectually, create pleasant place to work where they could grow and learn and make a decent living so they wouldn’t have to move on.

Sometimes I’d have to take work despite red flags: the budget is not realistic, time frame not realistic, they’re not very nice people. But I’d have to let someone go if I didn’t get some work, so I’d take the job and we’d do the best we could. When you have a small business you have to think about employees, health insurance…it kind of plugs you into life and responsibility. I think it’s unfortunate that we’re losing that in our country. It used to be little “Mom and Pop” businesses, and they were more grounded. And that was a big part of my office--the people.

Another practice we upheld was that whenever we took on a job we would do the best we could. Sure, you’d have a certain budget, and you’d use up all the hours, but we didn’t stop drawing because we used up all the hours. We only stopped drawing when we felt we were done. Then, we would rack that up to experience. That’s an investment in the future. We didn’t do so well money-wise on that job, but next time we’ll know better.

One principle that stands out for me is to focus on quality. If you really do things well, the rest will fall into place. That was always our mantra. Focus on quality and do the best you can. Don’t worry about the money. Obviously, you had to worry about money if you were going to make pay roll and things, but that wasn’t the motivation. Money can’t be the big driving force. All the other important stuff falls apart if money is what matters to you most.

Andy and his wife Yvonne

CW: But how could your life be better than it is? It’s like Ray Kunze said, “Your life is your art.” You’ve crafted a masterpiece.

AN: Last time I saw Ray Kunze, I drove up to the gate in my rusted-out Toyota Landcruiser, and he gave me a bad time. He said, “You’re such a cheapskate. Why don’t you get yourself a nice car? You can afford better than this.” He was harping on this, all good-natured, of course, and I drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. You never know––and that’s a lesson too.

Another thing I value about my work has been the wonderful relationships I’ve developed, the opportunities to work with people. That’s been very gratifying. 

CW: It seems to me you possess a high degree of interpersonal intelligence. You’re just good with people; you navigate well in a social context. 

AN: It’s interesting. I haven’t dwelled on this much, but I think being an immigrant might be part of that. First moving from Indonesia to Holland when I was four, and then from Holland to here when I was eight, my antennae were always up. I was always trying to say the right thing or do the right thing, to fit in. You feel like an outsider, and so in some ways you become more attuned. A foreigner has to adapt, so you’re always trying to figure out what it is to adapt. To become an American.

But that was a cool thing too in light of what is going on today. I was eight years old. I wasn’t going to the United States. I was going to America! America was bigger than life. I wasn’t sophisticated enough to say that America was an idea, but that’s what it was. It was more than going to a place. It was a magical opportunity. A magical land. I knew that at eight years old, that’s what America was.

CW: That is so profound and so relevant to what our nation is going through now. The immigrant perception of America as a golden land of opportunity is changing in such heartbreaking ways.  You look like the all American, California surfer legend. Most people would have no idea how different your origin story is.

AN: In a sense, I did well. Right? I became the all-American guy. I’m trying to figure out what it was to become an American. I was so focused on that. But I think I did okay. Yeah?

CW: You definitely did okay, Andy.