Bud Smith was obsessed with swordfish.
The self-made developer and real estate tycoon who became one of Ventura County’s wealthiest residents would go out on the ocean as often as possible in the 83-foot yacht named for his favorite drink, The Dry Martini. Pilots who were friends scouted the fast-moving swordfish that often span 8-feet long and weigh more than 300 pounds. Smith and others on the yacht harpooned them from platforms on the bow.
“He had purple fever,” said Smith’s sometimes fishing partner Marc Hermann, using the phrase spawned by the color of the fish as they emerge from the ocean. “Once you get into swordfishing, it’s in your blood.”
Smith was so enthralled he and Carlos Coella, his right-hand man and marina dockmaster, decided
a fiberglass swordfish with a real bladed bill should sit atop a high-profile building at Fisherman’s Wharf. Smith built and owned the businesses in the then bustling shopping and maritime village at Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor.
The 9-foot-long metallic blue fish was planted on a rooftop near the corner of Victoria Avenue and Channel Islands Boulevard just before Christmas 1995. Compass points were added later to give it the appearance of a weather vane.
Smith's health deteriorated not long after the fish was moved to its new home. He sold his properties in the county-managed harbor. The wharf slowly morphed into a dilapidated, nearly barren development. The swordfish remained as a sentinel of bygone times.
On Sept. 1, the fish was cut free in a demolition designed to resuscitate the wharf by transforming it into an 11-acre retail, food and entertainment venue called Karls Village. It’s a beginning and ending all tied up in the same complicated knot.
“I hope it does well. I really do,” said Ronnie Tegland, the Santa Paula resident who is Smith’s grandson. “It’s kind of bitterwsweet. It’s sad to see things pulled down.”
'It just spoke to me'
Linnea von Wissmann and Patrick Salamunovich moved 15 years ago from Santa Monica to Oxnard Shores, an eclectic beachside community with past residents such as Sonny and Cher as well as Foo Fighters frontman David Grohl.
Salamunovich is a retired prop master for TV shows and movies. Von Wissmann is retired too, as a paralegal who for many years made detailed legal documents used on the sets of shows like “L.A. Law” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Fisherman’s Wharf was already on its last legs when the couple came to Ventura County. It was nearly empty aside from the Spudnuts doughnut store, a few other stores and a Chinese restaurant.
Von Wissmann, now 70, drove by the center almost every day. She always checked out the rooftop swordfish that, to her, fit the surroundings like a fish to water. At times, it seemed almost alive.
“It just spoke to me,” she said. “I was fascinated by it.”
She sees Karls Village as a way to revitalize the area and bring more visitors here. But she worried the demolition could mean the end of the swordfish.
Officials at Karls decided to hold a charity auction for historic Fisherman Wharf landmarks, including a statue of a fisherman, Spanish cannons and, of course, the rooftop trophy catch.
People gathered for the auction on Aug. 15. Von Wissmann stood at the back, waving her bidding paddle every time someone else peered at the fish, still on its rooftop perch. Finally, she raised her bid to $2,500.
No one matched her. People slapped her on the back in congratulations. The 31-year-old fish with a broken bill and peeling paint was hers.
“I was really excited,” she said. “I knew everyone who drives down Victoria Ave is going to go, ‘Where did the fish go? It's at my house now.”
Glass eyeballs from South Dakota
When a Karls Village official presented von Wissmann with the rooftop fish several days after the auction, a construction worked drilled into the cork that covered an eyeball. Nestled in the cavity were three damp, weathered photographs.
One picture showed Coella, Smith’s friend and the dockmaster who came up with the idea of the rooftop sentinel. The other two showed Danny Crave, the then 34-year-old Oxnard shipwright commissioned to create the piece.
“Carlos asked me to build it for Bud Smith’s birthday,” Crave said, though others contend the plan came from Smith and Coella together as a tribute to their favorite sport. What Crave is certain of is what he was paid.
“$600, $15 an hour,” Crave said, noting he wished he asked for more.
Crave built the fish in a workshop on Oxnard's Fifth Street, using foam, fiberglass and a pole. Glass eyeballs came from a South Dakota taxidermist. The long flat bill came from a swordfish caught by Hermann, Smith’s frequent fishing companion. Though some claim the fish is actually a marlin, Crave built it as a swordfish.
He tucked photos into the the eye socket as an afterthought because it seemed like a thing to do.
The fish was hefted to to the top of the wharf’s Spudnuts building in December 1995. Smith, Tegland, Coella and Hermann were all there. Crave wasn’t.
“I was actually in jail,” he said, citing a DUI arrest he called a stupid and isolated mistake. "They didn't want to wait a week."
Crave has built just about everything on a boat in his career, including a bathtub and couches. The swordfish remains a favorite.
"It's always fun building something unique." he said. "You don't get an opportunity to build many things like that."
The big tipper
The wharf pulsed back then. Commercial fishermen brought their catches to the seafood market. There were gift shops, restaurants, bars and the light house that will now serve as the face of the new Karls Village.
“It was booming,” said Tegland, Bud Smith’s grandson. “There were people on the weekend. It was a different place when my grandfather was alive.”
Smith is the Ventura County legend who started out owning an Oxnard hamburger stand and built an empire that included the financial plaza towers in Oxnard, much of the Channel Island Harbor, three dozen restaurants and nine hotels.
His harbor friends knew him for his big tips, the Santa Fe cigars he chewed on all day and his propensity to clean parking lots and sidewalks of cigarette butts and other trash.
He lived at the harbor in an apartment near his Lobster Trap restaurant and his Dry Martini yacht. Tegland was born on Oct. 18, Smith’s birthday. They celebrated the occasion each year by going fishing — for swordfish.
He was an exceptionally generous man known for his philanthropy. But people who went fishing with him abided by a simple rule.
“He kept all the fish,” Tegland said with a laugh, noting that Smith would deliver the catch to his various restaurants.
Smith, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, started selling his properties not long after the swordfish installation. He died of complications of the disease in 2001.
Business in Fisherman's Wharf diminished. Restaurants and other businesses closed or moved. Two years ago, as part of a long search for revitalization, the county awarded the wharf lease to Karls Village, which operates eight villages in Germany with more planned. The sites combine shopping, food and entertainment in a model the company calls “retailtainment.”
The Oxnard venue will include a 40,000-square-foot barn that will be dressed up in themes of strawberries and maritime. The village will have an exhibition bakery, restaurants and an assortment of shops. There will be a boardwalk, playgrounds and small rides though officials emphasize the village will not be an amusement park.
Demolition is nearly complete and the village is moving toward a planned opening date of spring 2028.
Peering at the sea
The swordfish now sits in Oxnard Shores, resting against a thicket of greenery in Salamunovich and von Wissmann’s backyard. Though its paint is peeling and it had to be scrubbed after sitting with seagulls for decades, it is in good shape.
Some 31 years after he built it, Crave visited the home to inspect his work, still trying to figure out why the fish bill broke. He offered his help in refurbishing the piece.
Its destiny isn’t certain. Von Wissmann wondered about donating it to a museum. But it’s likely the fish will end up on a pole atop the couple’s home where it will overlook the ocean and resume its role as a sentinel.
“I just feel like it belongs here,” she said.
If the plan works, Tegland is certain his grandfather would be happy.
"I think he would think it’s wonderful," he said. "It's cool that people are preserving these landmarks. It’s kind of a neat little thing to look at when you turn the corner."
Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com.
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This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: This swordfish watched Oxnard wharf die, regain hope of new life
