Hap Jacobs, a pioneering surfer and shaper, played a pivotal role in shaping Southern California’s surf culture during the 1950s and 1960s.

Hap Jacobs was born in Los Angeles, CA and moved to Hermosa Beach in the fourth grade. Though reluctant to part with his city friends, he grew to love the beach. Growing up on The Strand at 30th Street in Hermosa Beach, Jacobs picked up riding canvas surf mats filled with air. His first job at age 15 was at a surf rental shop called California Surfrider, located near the pier. His duties included inflating surf mats for customers in the morning, then riding them himself in the afternoon.

After graduating from Redondo Union High School in 1951, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he started riding waves with others at Makaha, Hawaii, among them big-wave rider and South Bay pioneer Greg Noll.

As the shortboard era began to take hold in the early ‘70s, Jacobs joined several other surfing notables – including Dewey Weber, Greg Noll and Bruce Brown – and left the surfboard business in favor of commercial fishing. But as the popularity of longboard surfing began its resurgence in the early ‘90s, Hap picked up his planer and started shaping again. For the next 25 years or so, he continued to produce his extraordinary longboards. Then in early April of 2019 and in his typical unassuming way, Jacobs shaped his last surfboard.

Hap Jacobs died on December 19, 2021 at the age of 91. No doubt he was one of the most widely recognized and highly respected craftsmen in the surfboard building business.