Bing

Bing Copeland began surfing in 1949, at age 13, at the Manhattan Beach pier with his friend Greg Noll, who was a bait boy on the end of the pier. Bing and Greg were surfing gremmies that began their friendship hanging on the railing watching the older guys surf the big heavy redwood boards. One of the older guys, Dale Velzy, was a lifeguard on the pier at the time and loaned them an 8 foot 80 lbs redwood surfboard to try out. From then on, Bing was hooked as was his friend Greg. Both of them hung around Velzy’s first shop for years helping sweep up, gluing up balsa blanks, shaping wood fins and repairing boards. Bing opened his first surf shop in the fall of 1959 with his friend Rick Stoner and became one of the major surfboard manufactures of the sixties and early seventy’s. A year after they opened, Rick decided to sell Bing his portion of the business thus came Bing Surfboards.