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The pulse of progress beats rapidly. A hot crew of youngsters, keeping a keen eye on each other, are continuously raising the bar and redefining what is possible. But, they owe their prowess not to their peers, but to one man in particular. One who had a look at the status quo and his contemporaries, and just went and did things his way.

Larry Bertlemann, one of the original shortboard pioneers, does not believe in limitations. His credo, and motto for his shaping company is: Anything is possible. A phrase he has lived most of his life by. The Hawaiian, known as the Rubberman for obvious reasons, turned a broken longboard with a glassed on fin into his first shortboard and from then on blew boundaries away with a new style that no-one had seen before, but everyone has known since. Like he said: possibility.

Up until the early 70’s, surfing had mostly been about style, with Gerry Lopez’s Zen-likeness being the apex. Bertlemann decided that the upright stance and sweeping turns were blasé and set about crouching low and putting as much rail into his cutting turns as possible. His martial arts background provided a foundation in shifting balance and ‘weighting and un-weighting’ through the turn. Paired with visionary shaper, Ben Aipa, surfing would never be the same again. He was chilling on the other side of the door when a few unruly Antipodeans bust it down. Not content with ripping it in the water, he took his style to the concrete on skateboards as well.

Although he did well in competitions until the late 1970’s and enjoyed a record number of cover shots until his last in 1984, he dropped out of the limelight soon after, but managed to keep some of his sponsors – notably United and Southwest airlines. This kept him mobile and in good surf. But, after decades of putting his body through teenage behaviour, two degenerated disks partially paralysed the right side of body. This limited his new shaping venture as well as sadly putting an end to the old ‘rubberman’ style. Grounded by fate, life took a further turn for the worse and after heading down the wrong path he was incarcerated on robbery and fire-arm charges in 2001.

Now a free man again and reformed, he’s regained most of his movement, shapes boards with his own beautiful artwork and gets in the water as often as possible.

Yet, perhaps his most defining influence was on skateboarding. He paved the way for the transfer of moves and styles between the sports. He was heavily influential of the infamous Z-Boys of Zephyr Surfboards and Dogtown fame. For the comatose, they were a Santa Monica surf/skate crew which would themselves go on to redefine skateboarding and elevate it to its position in board sport culture today. A ‘bert’ is still the term used for a hand-drag or plant in skating.

It’s tempting to compare him to current surfers and a few spring to mind. But, the trailblazer would be insulted. A firm believer in individuality he encourages people to be themselves above all else.

To answer the question posed in the title, Larry is on the Gold Coast right now, busy helping promote a movie Sons of Beaches 1972 – a flick about the Aussie surf team who showed up at the San Diego World Titles of that year and started to shake things up for the establishment. He also has just received the accolade of an ASP life membership. Well done, Larry. The Bomb tried to contact him without success, but would like to congratulate Larry on this well-deserved recognition.

In answering one the questions the Bomb would have posed to him, Larry said in his acceptance: “Where surfing is today is where I dreamed it should be in the 70’s”. It would be great to know if the man with imagination and creativity could dream where it will be in the next forty years time.