Blood Feud: Schroff vs. Hayden!

Oh but let's just please go out for drinks instead!

A good blood feud sizzles. The aggrieved parties stand across a ballroom from each other, Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned one extra button, ready to dance (Surfer vs. The Intertia) or across an ocean smashing their thumbs into social media accounts/freestyle rapping (Jay Alvarrez vs. Ethan Carlson).

This here ain’t one of those and I will use this bully pulpit to try and end it, bringing peace to our surf world once again. But first, let me catch you up. Peter Schroff is an iconic southern California surfboard shaper/artist from the 1980s. I have never met the man but remember another iconic Peter, Taras this time, showing me Schroff Surfboard advertisements in old issues of Surfing magazine. They soared! Black and white, edgy, funny, amazing. The logos were better than I had ever seen in surf.  I couldn’t believe, in fact, that I had never seen before and I also couldn’t believe that no one was re-creating that look today.

Schroff had disappeared, I was told, and doing other things outside of surf. But then in 2010 he came back and his boards still look like works of absolute art and his graphic design is very very on point.

Hayden Cox is a very handsome young man and sits atop a nouveau surf empire. Hypto-Krypto, baby. Craig Anderson rides his boards and they are not just boards but technological patented things. Hayden also has a fine eye for design.

Just look at his new shop here!

Now. Schroff claims Hayden uses one of his logos for his new wetsuit line and Schroff is very very very angry, filling his entire Instagram account with daggers/hashtags aimed at the young man.

He criticizes Hayden for the artistic theft, sometimes poking fun (like drawing the Apple logo and the Nike swoosh and saying that he came up with new ideas for the line) sometimes angry, sometimes honest, telling one of his followers, “We cud give a flying horse shit if someone used it in another field than the surf industry, sweetheart, in fact Photo Impact studios used it in the 80s and we had no issues. All HS have to do is stop using, apologize & carry on. We only slam folks that ask for it, we got better things to do.” Before jumping on a “made in China” screed.

Hayden, for his part, has taken the dignified path, refusing to respond.

And, gentlemen, if I may…

Crusty, low level, hashtag rage is unbecoming dear Peter! It belies a bitterness that we have all seen on our grandparents and thought, “Yuck! Never me!” But somehow most old people slip into it like comfort shoes. I’m not saying you are bitter I’m saying you look bitter and sometimes looking bitter is worse.

Quietly pretending there is no issue is unnecessary dear Hayden! Your wetsuit logo, which, let’s concede, is more a graphic than a logo for it is a limited-run of suits not necessarily created to make buckets of money, does appear similar to Schroff’s design even though you could be (and are!) forgiven for thinking horizontal lines are probably not patented.

Look at the sunglass label Sabre. They too like lines!

But please, please don’t just change it and carry on. Use this opportunity to do a collab maybe with Peter. Dig further into his archive, make something together! I’m telling you, there is gold in them hills!

Let’s all three of us go out and get some drinks! The first three rounds are on me! Let’s laugh and toast a brave new future! Let’s all let it go, let it go! We can’t hold it back anymore!

Oh! And here’s stripes from 1915! A very early Schroff piece?

P.S. You are both welcome to use our Bitchy Crab.