Words By
STEVE O’BRIEN
@ob_toon
RYAN GORDON SHAW
5 JUNE 1981 – 19 MARCH 2026
Ryan Shaw surfed like a wildcat sprung from a cage.
Shoulders hunched in a deep crouch, he’d spring off the bottom and attack the wave like a lighter to a cigarette, destroying lips across the South Bay for four decades.
There wasn’t any specific break he called his “local.” His grandfather’s backyard was PV Cove, and as a teen he surfed Torrance Beach, Burnout, and Haggerty’s in the winter. He loved checking Breakwall with his dog, Lou. For a period in his 30s, he hung around Manhattan Pier often. South El Porto parking lot days weren’t out of the question either.
The great obsession of his life was surfing, and wherever the best waves were breaking that day, he’d hit the water like an outlaw just granted a full pardon.
I met Ryan through longtime Hermosa Beach shaper Dan Cobley of DANC Surfboards in high school. He said, “You two need to surf together,” and I remember it feeling like a challenge to duel.
We agreed to meet after school and skate to Burnout — Ryan’s suggestion. There wasn’t much conversation on the way down. It was windy, and the skateboards growled loudly across the asphalt.
When we got to the water, he said, “Looks fun,” and jumped in before I even had my suit on.
There was no one else around that afternoon. Chest-high windswell peeled into the drainpipe on a high tide. For the first hour, I don’t think we spoke a word to each other. We traded waves and showed off what we had as young surfers, silently goading the other to go bigger with each new set.
By the end of the session, a mutual respect had formed — and on the skate home in the dark, so had a friendship that would last the next 30 years.
If there were a popularity contest held across the South Bay, Ryan would’ve made the finals. I don’t know a single person who did not like the man.
It was as though Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream grew up beachside in the ‘90s punk scene.
With a twinkle in his eye and a vandal’s grin, he’d perform a sort of vaudevillian micro-drama when regaling friends with wild adventures of ruckus that, if it were anyone else, would seem too insane to be true.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
Never malicious, however, Ryan enjoyed being charmingly mischievous, and his eyes would prod you to see if you were in on the joke with him. When he saw that you were, he’d guffaw at the top of his lungs like a pirate too long at sea.
I could tell just by the way someone talked that they’d been hanging around Mr. Shaw recently. His charisma was that infectious.
He took this goofy pantomime all his own and brought it into the surf with him — a one-man, good-natured play that everyone loved to watch.
In the summer of 2025, Ryan and I came full circle in our surfing life. We rented a house in Mexico in front of a secluded spot. The waves were six to eight feet with perfect conditions for seven straight days.
We surfed alone each morning, pushing each other to see what we were capable of at the peak of our abilities in near-impeccable waves.
If the first time we surfed together was a duel, this was a celebration of three decades spent honing our skill.
Watching Ryan come off the bottom backside of a cranking overhead right and carve precise hacks in the most critical part of the pocket seven times in a row was enough to make Mark Occhilupo blush.
We surfed ourselves exhausted each day and talked story back at the house each night — the house we’d rented from our old friend, Dan Cobley.
Ryan Shaw passed away suddenly at home on March 19. He was 44 years old.
The South Bay is short one big ol’ wildcat heart today.
You will be missed, my friend.