Santa Cruz loses the ‘Godfather’ of surfing
SANTA CRUZ >> Love him or hate him, when Vince Collier was in the lineup, surfers knew it.
“He was larger than life,” said Jason “Ratboy” Collins, a former pro surfer from Santa Cruz’s Westside. “If you ran into him, you probably wouldn’t forget that. If you had a bad run-in with him, you definitely wouldn’t forget that.”
The man known as “The God father of Santa Cruz” died of a heart attack last week on a surf trip in Mexico at age 57. Aside from Richard Schmidt, no other surfer exercised as much influence on the Santa Cruz surf scene.
“Hewas king. (He) and Richard Schmidt set the stage for Santa Cruz surfing,” Anthony Ruffo, another former pro surfer from the Westside, recently told Stab magazine. “They were two totally different people, but in their own ways both really made Santa Cruz surfing what it is today.”
Collier was built like a pit bull, and the only thing that matched his power and talent in the water was his equally untamed temper and protective nature. During his heyday between the late 1970s and early 1990s, many considered him a menace in the water, aman who would take whatever waves he wanted, who would threaten, and often follow through with, bodily harm to anyone who challenged him. He cultivated a villainous reputation and his tactics, from slashing tires to throwing punches, and his protectionist attitude won him few friends.
Those who were close to him, however, said Collier had a good heart and the best intentions.
“The thing about VC was hewas hardcore when he was younger — but all of Santa Cruz was like that,” Josh Pomer, whose documentary “The Westsiders” may have been one of the biggest perpetrators of Collier’s mad dog reputation, wrote in an email to the Sentinel. “He wasn’t some super mean guy like some people have been saying online. Hewas like a tough football coach who is hard on his players but loves them more than anything.
“Also, he loved Santa Cruz a lot. So, if he was not nice to outsiders it was because he didn’t like to see his surf spots trashed. If anyone dropped in on a younger surfer, VC would be the first person to kick that guy out of the water. A lot people didn’t have parents around and he took that role. As he got older he mellowed a lot.”
Collier had reportedly just finished a surf session at El Mojon beach in San Miguel del Puerto during a road trip to Puerto Escondido and was walking back to his lodging with his partner, Denisse Gallagher, when he mentioned having a strange taste in his mouth. He suffered the heart attack when she went to get him something to eat, and hit his head on a rock when he fell, according to a report by the newspaper El Imparcial.
He is survived by sisters Reeney Gallagher and Katie Harper, brother Mike Collier and daughters Molly and Leil.
Perhaps Collier’s big wave legacy stands more with the surfers he introduced to the wave. A certain amount of surf lore surrounds the story of how he, Darryl “Flea” Virostko and Ken “Skindog” Collins were on acid when he introduced them to the big wave spot for the first time. All three survived and both Collins and Virostko became longtime staples of Maverick’s contests, with Virostko winning the first three titles.
The dark side of “all the fun partying stuff” was exposed in Pomer’s 2010 documentary, “The Westsiders.” Virostko, Barron and Collins appeared in the film about drugs, violence and surfing in Santa Cruz along with Collier, the star.
“We definitely went through times where we went through some pretty heavy crowds,” Virostko said.
In a recent interview with Beach Grit, surf historian Matt Warshaw was asked where Collier stood in the pantheon of U.S. surfing.
“As a cautionary tale, you’d put him in the top four,” Warshaw said. “Vince, Ricky Rasmussen, David Eggers, Andy Irons in any order you choose.”
The film served as a mirror to many members of its cast, however. Viroskto checked into a rehab facility and eventually started his own, surf and activitybased program. Collier, a surfboard shaper by trade, seemed to have mellowed as well. He still surfed, though problems with his eyesight meant he had to ride larger boards and be more cautious. He also took up fishing.
An article in the Sentinel archives from October 1993 describes how much Collier cared about his neighborhood. When the power went out during a 49ers game, Collier hooked his TV up to his generator. But when a parent whowas hosting a birthday party for a 7- and 8-year-old knocked on his door and asked to borrow the generator to inflate a bounce house, Collier handed it right over.
Ten years earlier, Collier received a mayor’s proclamation for his selflessness. He and a friend volunteered to paddle out and rescue two surfers who were caught out at the Lane while rescue personnel, who were untrained and unauthorized to do a surf rescue, watched from the cliff. He also rescued a woman from a cliff fall in 2014.
Virostko said those are glimpses into Collier’s true nature.
“The guy would do anything for anybody,” Virostko said. “Even though he had a tough guy image, he brought that upon himself. He liked messing with people, messing with the media so that he was this villain, bad, gnarly guy nobody (messed) with.
“He was just a great human that was just a little rough around the edges.”