Artist Takes a Stand on Knoll Hill
Peter Schroff brings a new vision overlooking the port
San Pedro isn’t your typical California beach town. Outside of James See’s Surfboards, and the now closed San Pedro Surf and Sport it’s not necessarily known for its surf culture except for a few surf bands. It is known worldwide for being the location of the largest industrial port complex in North America.
For centuries, San Pedro’s rugged coastline — and reputation — attracted explorers, fishermen, artists, bohemians, gangsters and war criminals, alongside other Angelenos looking for peace, quiet and sometimes a place to blend in or hide. As a consequence, at the terminus of the 110 Freeway, we encounter neighbors with unusual backstories and fantastical aims — such as surfboard craftsman Peter
Schroff.
Three years ago, Schroff bought out the last holdouts on Knoll Hill and renovated the property into his new home, a studio and a couple of vacation rentals. Those holdouts survived the port’s attempt
to raze the hill in the 1990s in an effort to expand berth’s 97-102, now occupied by China Shipping. Those holdouts stuck around in 2007 when Eastview Little League was granted temporary use of Knoll Hill for its baseball fields until a permanent location could be secured despite community advocacy for broader community use. Spoiler alert: Eastview Little League is still there, and a dog park was installed at the foot of Knoll Hill as a compromise of sorts in 2008. Now the dog park is slated to be removed to make room for a new off-ramp for the 110 Freeway. Schroff, however, intended for this space atop Knoll Hill to serve as a community gathering place overlooking the Port of
Los Angeles and the Vincent Thomas Bridge.
Schroff calls this place Superlove, a concept that will be explored later. Adjacent to the main house is an annex featuring six private surreally themed dining rooms, which he intends for this town’s creatives to run. These dining rooms include a community kitchen, two lounges, a stage, prop room, art studio, gallery, workshop and vegetable garden for guests. The home features art collections including vintage designer furniture. The architecture throughout the compound articulates a pan-Asian influence.
The community is invited to visit and Schroff plans to conduct performance, art and design workshops in this “community art complex.”
Ironically, the offshoring of surfboard manufacturing to low-wage Southeast Asian countries inspired his performance art of taking a chainsaw to surfboards manufactured in places like Thailand. Schroff staged his notorious demonstration in
2016, wearing Hello Kitty underpants as he destroyed a HaydenShapes Hypto Krypto surfboard. The absurdity of his current circumstances isn’t lost on Schroff.
“[I] ended up on a hill overlooking all the Chinese junk imported into this country, ‘the gatekeeper,’” Schroff said. “Surfboards are one of the last handmade products made in this country ... it’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.”
If people have learned one thing collectively in 2020, it’s that community can help make things better. Schroff is on a mission to connect the community, especially the youth through art, performance and creating.
Young Designer
Born in Newport Beach, Schroff took up surfing at 11 years old. He began designing his own surfboards at 14, creating his first board on his family’s kitchen table. Soon after, he began to shape surfboards at home, under the moniker “Underdog.”
Schroff spent years reinventing and perfecting the modern twin fin board. At this time the Schroff label was born alongside the genesis of high performance surfing known as Echo Beach.
“I lived in Newport for the early part of my life,” Schroff said. “It was a community. It’s where I began surfing and my ambition drove me to make surfboards — and making the best surfboards possible.
“Then, Newport turned into a vacation rental, summer beach resort dead end town.” Eventually, Schroff’s surfboard designs rose to the level of art. Then he stopped making them. Schroff returned to making surfboards after a 25-year hiatus. But upon his return, he found a surfboard culture that had been reduced to a “pop-out culture” [A term for the mass manufacturing of surfboards with the aid of machines in largely Southeast Asian countries].
Schroff spent those 25 years pursuing an arts education and arts interests in the 1980s downtown Los Angeles arts colony. He enrolled into California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita and spent time in downtown Los Angeles, visiting galleries and attending art shows for most of his life. Moving there was an obvious choice for him. After moving there, Schroff founded the design company Superlove and launched successful brand campaigns for surf industry leaders such as Quiksilver, Gotcha, O’Neil and Ocean Pacific.
Attending CalArts introduced Schroff to the concept of “art and commerce” leading him to question if the two can coexist. Since then, he’s kept one foot in art and one foot in design. After 40 years he’s still experimenting with freedom and creativity. Indeed, his Superlove creation mirrors what he created when he resided in downtown Los Angeles and Venice, respectively. While living in Los Angeles, he rented a warehouse at 4th and Alameda, in the center of the arts community where several of his “art family” lived.
“Studio 3-A blossomed, as a performance space where we held performances nightly and invited the community to perform their works,” Schroff said. “A few years later developers started to move in, develop the warehouses in our area, rent shot up from 20 to 30 cents a square foot to 85 cents, LACE [Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions] our community gallery moved out, our watering holes [Gorky’s, Cocola, etc.] moved out, The Wall & Boyd closed … the artist moved out.”
In 1987, Schroff bought a house in Venice, a threestory steel, concrete and glass modern minimal floor complex to house an expanded operation with two exotic rentals and studios.
He hosted performance workshops in a converted garage and built another studio to house a design studio where community members worked on projects for retail, restaurants, night clubs, advertisements and events. The project was featured
in the Los Angeles Times and various design publications. By 2015, much of Venice’s boardwalk facing the beach duplicated Schroff but Venice’s charm and culture was displaced by high paid tech employees and developers.