Here is a nice write up on Dick Metz from the Encyclopedia of Surfing.
Well-traveled surfer, retail magnate, and surf culture preservationist from Laguna Beach, California; cofounder of the Surfing Heritage Foundation. Metz was born (1929) and raised in Laguna Beach, to restaurant-owning parents, and started riding San Onofre with local surf kingpins Peanuts Larson and Hevs McClelland at age seven. The easy-going and aimless Metz earned a bachelor’s degree from Santa Barbara State College in 1953, was drafted for a seven-month stint in the army, briefly enrolled in graduate school in Hawaii, then returned to Laguna Beach in 1954 where he tended bar, ran his father’s liquor store, and repaired surfboards.
In 1958, restless and unencumbered, Metz set off on a three-year around-the-world journey with stops in Tahiti, Australia, Southeast Asia, India, and South Africa. In Cape Town, he befriended a young John Whitmore—later called the father of South African surfing—and connected him with California surfboard builder Hobie Alter, helping to seed Cape Town’s nascent surf scene with high quality equipment. Upon returning to California, Metz captivated longtime friend and filmmaker Bruce Brown with stories from his travels. A few years later, while in South Africa shooting The Endless Summer, Brown looked up some of the contacts Metz had made on his globetrotting voyage.
In 1962, Alter tapped Metz to run his new surf shop in Honolulu; the store was an immediate success, and Metz found a career in retail. Over the next few years, he cofounded the successful beachwear shop Surfline Hawaii with Dave Rochlen, opened Hobie retail outlets on both the West and East coasts of the mainland, and started ice cream parlors and liquor stores with McClelland.
Along the way, Metz collected hundreds of vintage surfboards, many of which had been owned by big-name Hobie team riders in the ‘60s. In the early 2000s, in part to preserve his board collection, Metz teamed with Newport Beach’s Spencer Croul to found the Surfing Heritage Foundation, a San Clemente, California-based nonprofit museum and surf history research center.
Visit www.boardroomfilms.com for the complete movie.