"Embracing the essence of mid-century modernism."
With a leopard grin, green flare flaring from his slitted eyes and a tiny five-five in socks body that vibrates with excitement and joy, ain’t no mistaking the master shaper Bobby McTavish.
You heard of him?
McTavish, along with pals George Greenough and Nat Young, was instrumental in the shortboard revolution which washed ashore in 1967, slashing two feet off the boards thereby gifting surfers the ability to hit and hang around the lip.
McTavish’s story is a good one: he was a state-of-the-art shredder who quit competition despite giving hell to the heroes of the time, Midget Farrelly, Nat Young and so on, helped create the modern shortboard, turned Jehovah’s Witness, had five kids, invented, way ahead of their time, these epoxy moulded replicas of pro surfers’ boards (called Pro Circuit Boards), went back to longboards, sold the label, made a little cash and made, crucially, some fine real estate investments.
Like this joint at Suffolk Park he’s gonna unload for north of three-and-a-half mill.
Pool, butler’s pantry, views to Cape Byron, “opulent bedrooms, lavishly appointed bathrooms, extravagant master suite”, exclusive, enviable etc.
“Embracing the essence of mid-century modernism,” reads the sales pitch.
It don’t scream mid-century modern so much to me as builder flicked through a few Richard Neutra books, skipped the finer details, and figured he could just do something cubist around a pool and the dumb-asses would call it Bahaus and start referencing Palm Springs.
Prices for houses in Suffolk Park, once Byron’s poorer cuz, have shifted almost seventy percent in two years. To put that into perspective, in 2019, 2020, a million bucks would’ve got you a place like this.
Ironically, McTavish, who’s now seventy-eight, was of that early seventies Country Soul era, surfers splitting the cities and heading to Byron Bay for “full contact rural immersion.”
Cops weren’t into it, but that was half the fun.