The ______board Revolution

These are not the best days to be a Middle Eastern dictator. Nor are they great for polar bears or allergy sufferers. Mortgage owners, too, have cause for concern.
However, these are unbelievably exciting times to be a surfer or a custom surfboard shaper. The last five years of surf culture has seen the rules of the game change so much that there are no longer any rules. Last century, surfers laughed when the odd twin keel fish made its way into the local lineup. Now I can’t even wax up my Mini-Simmons in the parking lot without a handful of passersby deliberating design nuance: single or double-foiled fins? Concave all the way out the tail, or flat behind the fins? Would a shallow swallow tail give it more release?
The Shortboard Revolution of mid 1960s saw surfers hacking down their longboards six inches at a time. Shorter and shorter they got—ideas ping-ponging between California and Australia as traditionally designs were reinvented monthly.
Monthly. Can you imagine that? It’s a sloth’s pace compared to what’s going on today. It takes a month to fill a laboratory dish with bacteria. It takes two weeks to buy a gun (and feels a lot longer) in California. It takes minutes for a stoked surfer to see something online that captures their imagination, copy it, send it to their custom shaper with a few tweaks and a question (“what do you think of this but as a quad with a more pulled-in nose?”), and decide on a color.
The Shortboard Revolution was, as indicated by its name, unidirectional: shorter.
Today’s surfing revitalization is three dimensional: longer, fatter, shorter, thinner, more fins, fewer fins, concaves, convexes…etc.
It works with mindboggling speed: A backyard shaper in Portugal redistributes foam in an interesting way and posts it on his blog. Online surf communities initiate substantive discussion before the board even finishes curing. A California shaper gets inspired, fires off a few testpieces, and sends a crew to Baja to film and post up some video. The Big Guys see it and push a new model into production, but by then it’s too late. The dude in Portugal has moved on, deciding that the board would work better stringerless with carbon rails. The California shaper, too, decides to widen the tail, change the fin configuration, and push the widepoint back.
The target has shifted. The conversation has changed.
Suddenly, we’re talking about a teenage girl in New Zealand who hacks foam out of her parent’s mattress, glues an innertube to it, and shreds the reforms. The conversation continues, it expands, it contracts, it pulses like a jellyfish. It moves, literally, at the speed of light.
The result? Everyone is relieved: grizzled old shredsters are no longer talked into underfoamed, overfinned, banana-rockered potato chips with the float of a kickboard and the shelf life of swiss chard. Gremmies aren’t hounding after the latest ‘CT hero model guaranteed to blast them over the lip in 2ft beachbreak windswell, and the rest of us are encouraged, gently, to experiment.
Interestingly, it’s been a collaboration between the old and new guards that has brought us here. Elder statesmen like Kenvin and Ekstrom have enlisted the energy and talents of stoked groms. Everyone wins. The kids have their minds significantly blown over the pleasures of trim and glide, and the older guys get to reap the benefits of more user-friendly boards without the stigma.
Case in point: Big John had a vision for a specific board for a specific wave that requires a specific (read: dealbreakingly long) paddle to access. The wave is powerful and known to throw big, legit barrels on the right swell. He wanted paddle power. He also wanted it to be able to handle juice and steep walls. Not a longboard, not a gun.
Also: pulled nose and tail, e-wings.
Also: a bonzer setup. With bamboo fins.
Also: enough foam to float a guy as long as my car.
Also: banana/mango yellow tint with a tapered black resin pinline.
Try finding one of these on the racks.
It's not that a board like this didn't exist ten or twenty years ago--it did. The difference now is that the kids in the back row, the ones grinding their popcorn into the carpet while texting their girlfriends and downloading seven movies simultaneously, are now the ones standing up, aiming their camera phones at the world, and saying, "that's rad."
And it is.

Love's Labour's Gained

National holidays always give me pause. First of all, it's unsettling to have garbage pickup on Tuesday instead of Monday.
Second, holidays have a tendency to nag us with the message to think of others instead of ourselves. Who needs it?
Finally, a day off pretty much guarantees horrendous surf conditions.
But each of these dark clouds have their silver linings and Labor Day, unlike other holidays that wrack me with guilt as I pour lukewarm Tecates down my gizzard like they were the elixir of life itself, is designed for selfishness. What's not to love? Labor Day celebrates us, the American worker, just as we are.
It's an interesting choice to give us the day off to celebrate work, but whatever--we're supposed to drink cheap beer and let the littler ones run around with the bigger ones until their shapes are hard to distinguish in the waning light of evening. We're supposed to slap at mosquitoes or marvel at fireflies or vaguely wonder where our sweatshirts or spouses or dogs are as we stand around a bbq grill or sit around a fire pit or, if we're really lucky, stare into the gently pulsing embers as a beach bonfire fades into the fog.
All this because of American labor and all it stands for.
And up here North of the Bridge, it still stands for something. This 6'4 Lil' Pill, e-winged, cedar stringered, built for speed, inspired by the Campbell Brothers, and finned with bamboo was designed, shaped, glassed, finned, sanded, and polished by two people.
Four hands.
A singular desire to build something good.
It is also colored with resin in Laphroaig-bottle green.
My neighborhood sports a genuine old school steakhouse with a mind-boggling, wallet-draining single malt scotch menu. Surfboard building business has been conducted there through the years, and single malts have been sampled, extoled, heralded, cursed the next morning. The language of Scotland's chief export occasionally makes its way onto order cards: highland butterscotch opaque; Speyside honey tint; Lagavulin 16yr old yellow.
After a recent evening lush with liquid peat, smoke, and brine, the words Laphroaig-bottle green were jotted down. Leslie called soon thereafter.
"What the hell does that mean?" She demanded by way of introduction.
I directed her toward the Google.
"Got it," she said. "You could have just written pine, but--"and this was one of those moments that made the weekly hours-long drive to her glassing studio all the more worth it, "I'm glad you didn't."
Hope you had a great day.

Stock Boards For Sale - This week's "Alternative" Offering

Not many know this but we also have a retail showroom here at lineup where you can pick up a new stick or a shirt

This week, we have 2 new retro bonzer types in the five fin variety..This is one of my favorite "alternatives" to a modern short board..

6'3 x 19 3/4 x 2 1/2"Retro Bonzer" with all the bells an whistles.. Pink opaque resin pigment, glassed on side runners with the whole thing glossed and polished.. - SOLD

6'8 x 20 3/8 x 2 5/8 "Retro Bonzer" with 5 fin box and clear speed finish. Simple but built to handle the business of riding waves... FAST -$560

If you are interested in either of these boards or any of the others we may have available, send us an email or stop by the shop for a closer look!

Try Nixon from Texas with his new Bonzer

Troy with his new 7ft Bonzer in Paulownia and Rewood. Nice job.

Pit Boss: know when to hold 'em

Much like its namesake in the casino, the Pit Boss keeps things in check when the dealing gets rough.

This one's loaded: five fins, red cedar stringer, and handsome coke-bottle resin tint with matching resin pinline by Leslie Anderson.
Stands a proud 6'10".

Clive Owen, who attempts to pull a fast one on his pit boss in the excellent Croupier, stands seven-and-a-half inches shorter.

Russell Crowe, a Roman style pit boss in the gladiator ring, is a mere 5'11". A board this size would not keep things in check when the dealing got rough.
At least not up here, even if you were wearing leather danglies from your waistbelt.

Bamboo glasson fins by the talented craftsman Marlin at the 101FinCo.

This Pit Boss got a tour of my house after I received several expressive emails from a surfy French buddy informing me that wood floor photos of surfboards had become cliche in the SurfBlogoShpere. Who knew?

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

80s television hit series The Facts of Life's (featuring a then unknown George Clooney, pictured with full cast below) theme song urged us to take The Good, to take The Bad. "Take them both," the peppy jingle advocated, because, when combined, these two opposing forces form 'The Facts of Life.'

(whose hair is feathered better--Clooney, or Tootie?)
I was too soft-brained during this SitCom's run to appreciate how the abject nihilism and tenacious good-cheer embedded in its opening lyrics reflected our 80s nation: engaged in a dark, secretive Cold War, yet hypnotized by bright colors, reckless fashion choices, and dancing, dancing, dancing!
It's been a week of opposing forces up here, too. First (The Bad), my beloved MacBook was stolen. However, six days later (The Good), the teenage architect of this heinous crime was brought to justice, my laptop returned lighter by a few thousand personal files and photos, but heavier by some disquieting porn and game downloads.
Speaking of lighter (The Bad), this week also saw gastrointestinal gnarliness strike, leaving nothing in the house unscathed. It was like Invasion!From Planet C if the invaders were parasites and 'C' stood for 'colon.' Not pretty. However, (The Good) saltines were ingested, ginger ale was sipped, and most of us are feeling better.
Surf-wise, (The Bad) there was wind, and there was wind. However (The Good), a few pulses of south swell fought their way to our shores, providing a few peelers for those in the know.
The week continued, offering up some classic oppositions. It was hot (Bad for baby) so we blew up the pool (Good for baby). Gas prices rose (Bad), so we didn't drive (Good).
School ended (Good), so...well, that one has no downside.

(6'10" round-tail bonzer-inspired egg with 101 Fin Co bamboos for stoked bro up north)
In the midst of all this Facts of Life, a few plugs of foam were transformed into sparkling surfboards, resin and fiberglass were added, hardened, got sanded, got polished, got waxed, got surfed. A trip to the Fattyshack restored the stoke and belief in human generosity. Some beautiful fins arrived from 101 Fin Co.

(rootbeer tint Fatty special quad ripstick)
It's the stuff inbetween the Facts of Life, when I'm not struggling with a setback or a solution, where I find some sort of grace.
Neither good nor bad, but there you have it.

Two Boards, Nine Fins

Is it possible to get skunked when the Bodega Bay Buoy reads 11.5 feet at 17 seconds and there's no wind to speak of?
It is when you live in Sonoma County!
Soupy, warbly, chest high close-out slop at a local beachbreak. Had to make a tough call between the EPS quad fish and the Campbell Brothers Bonzer inspired High Five (named for its ability to hold a high line and its plentitude of fins). Ended up with the five finner. Why? Well, at times I think my love for the quad fish is too great--an exclusive relationship bordering on the psychotic. It's good to get some distance every once in a while.
Turned out the High Five was the right call--fast and fun in some god-awful surf.

Powder blue full board tint with some fine double pinlines. Looks like prom, circa 1978.

Much like prom, I didn't score, came home early, and screwed around on the computer for a while.