THE C.R. STECYK III INTERVIEW

C.R. Stecyk III is a myth. An architect of Dogtown. Street art pioneer. His photographs, his writing, his glyphs. They didn't just capture surf and skate culture in the '60s and '70s, they defined the lens through which that culture understood itself.

Decades later, that same work has continued to land in museum collections, galleries, and publications across the globe. Which keeps C.R. pretty busy. But what many people don't know is that Stecyk is here most days, at FLORENCE, keeping an eye on things. As he does. Just hanging out, responding to the world around him.

"I've been absolutely fascinated by his work since I was probably seven — seeing all his fluro work. I still have all those posters hanging up in my room," says FLORENCE graphic designer, Ashton Hurley, who handed Stecyk a can of spray paint in the parking lot one morning and wheels started turning

The natural next step was the C.R. Stecyk III Collection. A collaboration that marries Stecyk's iconic history, handwritten glyphs, and a modern representation of where culture stands today with the burgee.

Video, Interview & Photos by Bryce Lowe-White

So, how long have you been around, C.R.?

I dropped out of the slot in Santa Monica, California. My mother did all the work and I took the credit, you know. Downhill, high tide, low tide.

My parents met during World War II. My mother's family had pioneers that were on the first survey of Yellowstone, the first large practical cattle ranch, the first post office in Montana, the first barge on the Yellowstone River — all that kind of thing. She saw my father wearing a little aloha shirt in the Midwest. He was in the Army, just back from photographing Hiroshima. She said, "Hey, what? Are you going to some luau?" And then days later, he decided to get all his friends together and have one. They filled an apartment house full of sand and invited all the women over from the Navy, of which she was one.

So I just take credit for everything they did. They would drop me at the beach and Pete Peterson was the lifeguard there — a four-time Pacific Coast champion in the '30s. He'd already been to the islands, so I met George Downing and people like that through Pete. They knew my dad and my mom. I just hung out.

When you think about what you ended up doing with your life, what's the starting point?

I lucked out. My dad had lived at Crystal Pier, which was a pier that's no longer existent, between Santa Monica Pier and Ocean Park Pier, where POP later was. And I got to work at Dave Sweet's shop. He had invented the polyurethane foam surfboard, which is a significant thing — still the most common surfboard on earth to this day. He did all the work. I never did anything. I've never had a job, but I've worked in surfboard factories my entire life.

Do you consider art your career?

Art's one of those three-letter words that are the problem — art. People have put stuff of mine in collections and it might be in what they call an art museum, but come back in a couple hundred years and we'll see what people think art is. Nobody knows. It changes. People get mad about it. They go, "That's not art. How dare you." And I go, well, everybody makes mistakes. I'm here. I'll just say I'm sorry. Send my regrets.

So your life experience has defined you, not what you made along the way?

Yeah. Maybe my ancestors had identified that you catch more fish in the ocean if you go to the deep water. That was all figured out for me. I just got dropped in the deep water. Peterson was the best surfer anybody had ever seen, at least that's what all the guys from his generation will tell you. My dentist was Don James — he was a significant photo documentarian. My father had a darkroom. My mother was a ceramicist. So I was around activities where that all made sense.

You've crossed paths with the Florence family for a long time. What's an early memory you have?

I remember Alexandra in particular. I spent a lot of time on the North Shore. There weren't a lot of women there, particularly ones that surfed. She had three kids and they were sleeping in the back of a car. She would make them go to school, learn all those things. They had great manners because she's a good mother. But if the swell was good, she'd put them in the water.

I was a habitual truant. I was terrible about going to school because I just wanted to look at the ocean all day. My father decided there was a guy named Mickey Dora — a notorious surfer, a very good surfer — and my dad said, "Well, how about if we just let Mickey decide when you have to go to school?" I thought, this is great, I'll never have to go to school. It was the worst decision I ever made, because I could only get out if the waves were really good. For waves to be good enough for Mickey, they had to be perfect. So I got to surf perfect days and not go to school, but I still had to maintain the grades to stay eligible.

That's kind of how Alexandra raised the three kids. Because all three of those brothers are outstanding individuals. They're not the same. They're not rubber-stamped. I think that's proper parenting. She reminds me of my own mother. Very strong personalities. If you were screwing up in their house, they'd kick you out in the yard. Alex had strong standards. And you can see it in John's kid already — good manners, good attitude, focused. That comes from having focused parents.

Is it true you left a Leica camera at their house that John picked up?

I've left cameras everywhere. I've made a mess every place I've been in my life. John is welcome to use any of my equipment at any time — neither one of us would hesitate to use the other's stuff.

My father was a photographer in World War II, an officer in the Quartermaster Corps, which meant he handled equipment. I grew up seeing pictures of captured German camera gear. The Signal Corps guys would make films with the German equipment to see how it worked, and the Germans captured American equipment and did likewise. German optics were always very good, and I'd been around them my whole life. To us, Leicas were just German cameras. They didn't mean anything special. They were a tool. We had a darkroom at home. We had German enlargers. It was all just stuff that was around.

My father had shot Hiroshima. I cut my teeth on fused glass paperweights from Hiroshima City Hall. It's kind of an odd thing, but that's where photography lived in our house — not as art, not even as craft. Just as a tool, the same as any other piece of equipment.

When John was recovering from an injury in California years ago we built a darkroom with JP Olson — we had Leica enlargers, cameras, all of it — so I guess you could call that overlap. I've never not had that stuff around.

What about John as a photographer?

He's a good shooter. He'll never say he's a good shooter. It's like Erik (Knutson) will never say he's a good cinematographer. Very calm behind the lens, you know.

Talk about photography in your early days. Were you doing it as a job, or just hanging out?

We had a darkroom. So I knew the processes and I began wanting to document the way surfboards worked when they were going through the water. We were trying to build surfboards. I was working for Dave Sweet off and on. He pioneered materials like PU foam and its use in surfboards and I was curious how the modifications we were looking at actually performed in the water. You needed to shoot it.

So I'd take my dad's cameras and break one, break another one, break another one. Finally one day he goes, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm trying to shoot the water coming off the tail of the board." He goes, "What you really need is a housing. But you've got to quit breaking my cameras." That was the teachable moment — I needed to go out and get a job. My interpretation of a job was going to Santa Monica Beach and picking up Coke bottles at two cents apiece. And years later, you'd end up with a long lens and you could shoot the water coming off the tail and see how people were planing. We sort of ended up in the surfboard business with a number of different people and through no credit to me, I was just hanging out the whole time. I just picked the right spot to hang out.

I think I probably interfered with the Dogtown guys. Warren Bolster was resurrecting Skateboarder Magazine and Tony Alva had a "Who's Hot" piece coming up. Warren got hurt and couldn't shoot. Tony goes, "Come on dude, can't you shoot the pictures?" So I made an attempt. We went down the road and forgot about it. Never thought I'd be sitting in an interview talking about it decades later.

Just point and shoot.

How did this collection with Florence come about?

I was particularly impressed when John walked away from it all to start a little small startup. How could you not want to be involved in that? I thought it was really healthy.

And, you know, whether we change the equation or not or advance narrative is ironic. We're just trying to get a little bit different vibe in there.

What about the artwork — the glyphs, the spray paint, your lettering?

It's just the handwriting I grew up with. If I don't think about it, it'll get someplace interesting. If I start thinking about it, then you're not doing it anymore — you're thinking about doing something. As soon as you start saying something's hard or something's functional, you're going to have an argument with somebody. It's like asking who rode the biggest wave. Everybody has an opinion. And the funny thing is, the people who've ridden very large waves are generally not the ones who talk about riding.

What's your favorite tool?

Just being in the right state of mind. You'll invent the tools. It's fun to go out in the desert and not have anything there at all. You just respond. Eventually you're going to respond to the fact that it's 110 in the shade. I was in Death Valley the other day and I think it was 110 on the thermometer, which meant the refractive and absorptive heat index was much hotter. But then when you get motivated to do something, it's kind of neat — you just pick stuff up off the ground. It doesn't matter.

I think just being in a state where you're excited enough about something, where you're having enough of an experience that you're responding to it — I don't think it matters what the tools are. I don't think it matters what the end result is.

How do you measure an artist?

Come back in 500 years. Come back in a thousand years. If they're still talking about what you did, maybe it was art. Or maybe you were just confused.

What remains a constant across all the generations you've seen in surf and skate culture?

I think people responding to the ocean. The ocean is probably the largest dynamic life source on Earth. If we protect the environment, we're going to have a place to live. If there's somebody who came along that they were so arrogant that they eventually poisoned the ocean and the land responded and everybody went extinct. Maybe somebody should have thought about that.

What do you think has kept our culture alive over all the generations that have come and gone?

Everybody has seen somebody, on a giant day, do some amazing thing on a wave. And people still argue about it. I don't know who it was. You don't know what wave you got. You're just responding.

It doesn't matter if you're where the cameras are. Some people set up right in front of the camera and get really good shots. That's a skill set of some sort. Other people put their wife and their best friend and their infant son on a boat and go out in the middle of nowhere and just go surfing. Would they be better off if they were in the circus performing tricks with the clowns? I don't know.

How do you not take life too seriously?

I think the best thing is just to do things that you're driven to do. Where you have to do them. There's no particular recompense. Making a profit is something everybody, I suppose, has to deal with or can deal with, but you got to have a passion first if you're going to do anything that's going to interest you. Why would you keep doing something if it wasn't interesting to you?

Any advice for future generations?

Leave it better than you found it. It's like the wilderness. Wilderness 101.