I don't really care what people advertise, sponser, enact.... I'll still drag my log out - rub a little wax one it - and catch some waves. I think once you hit 40 or so you don't care what the latest is because its all about draining your pockets. I think thats why Longboard Mag failed - because most longboarders are a little older and are not effected by advertising hype. Hey, I may be wrong but thats my take.
gotta say that i completely disagree w/ you. the only validity that the modern thruster-based shortboard (i'm not talking your white diamond/dumpster diver/rocket type of boards) has is directly tied to the world tour. in fact, in terms of STYLE, it has affected surfing for the worse. its not user-friendly, it only works in quality surf, & tends to inspire an insipid, lackluster type of surfing in most folks. you know the type: the flail, flap, & spazz their way across the wave, never actually engaging the rail in the wave face. they put no power into their turns. they embody everything ugly about modern surfing.Originally Posted by zach619
as far as design, design has already benefited greatly from the retro revival. if you ride anything like a fishcuit, biscuit, rocket, white diamond, etc...they're all based around the concept that foam=good. most of them are modified versions of the the lis fish & the 60's egg...arguably the 2 biggest design ideas revived in the late 90's/early 2000's. even kelly slater's wizard sleeve, at it's core, is just an egg. sure, the rails are different, the bottom contour is different, & the fin set up has changed, but the template & basic design idea is based firmly in the egg. so if nothing else was gained from the retro revival, the cross-pollination of designs has greatly benefited what was once a very stale thing.
i, however, don't think that that is all that was gained by the movement. in a way, the fish revival "saved" me from riding a longboard full time. i will admit that attempting to ride a conventional shortboard in average east coast surf frustrated me & is directly responsible for my interest in design & design theory. it has also led me to abandon entirely the thruster. i find other fins set ups work at least as well, if not better, in various conditions. the 5 fin bonzer is my go-to set up & has been since mid-2006. i still ride others - i have a quad fish, single fin egg, a twin w/ trailer, & a single fin log. but all my go-to or travel boards are bonzers. 9 boards, 5 of which are bonzers. prior to embracing the bonzer, i was riding a twin keel fish & a single fin egg. the last really good thruster i had was a ci black beauty in 2005. but it was only good in quality surf. & i like bonzers better in all kinds of surf. i mostly keep the other boards around b/c i get bored easily & like to try different feelings. removable fins becoming mainstream has really been a huge thing for me, b/c i can change the feel & ride of a board just by swapping the fins...i don't have to buy a new board or grind the fins off & glass a new set on.
i agree that competitive surfers will need to be more aerial oriented in the future, but like every sport, the gap between pros & average, everyday participants will only become larger. look at marathon running. the olympic champion & the guy who wins your local race can't even pretend to be on the same level. i see surfing going more in that direction. i view professional contest surfing as really only a sideshow/bastard off-shoot of what surfing really is.
oh, & the best feeling in surfing in my opinion is coming out of a deep barrel at mach 9, running out onto the shoulder & cranking an absolutely HUGE cutback! the kind where everyone who sees it goes& you're all
when you're paddling back out.
Yep,Thats what im talking about.
Longboarder failed cause the owner took the money and ran . He basicly drank his buisness away from what I heard. Alot of people paid for 2 years and got ripped off .
If you want a longoboard mag Check out Slide Its a fairly new Longoboard mag out of New Zealand. only down fault its 4 issues a year right now.
They have a website www.slidemagazine.com
NJSurfer: I feel what you are saying. I have had this conversation with quite a few people over the past few years. Mainly because about 5-6 years ago, every 14 year old kid was trying to sell me a $750 retro fish when I went in… My room mate always raved about these old twinnies and these old 70s style SD fishes, so finally on a trip down to mex, I rode one of these fishes… And I did it for a few days, and it was just crap to me… Granted, I was surfing head high point breaks in clean conditions, so all I could keep thinking was, damn this is slow, damn how do I even bury a rail on this thing, much less bust the tail out… Again, out of frustration, I never ride those kinds of boards any more. The only thing CLOSE to this, is a board that I love. My shaper made me an Epoxy, 5’10 basically a new age fish, with THRUSTER fins, and let me tell you. The thing shredded. You can do airs on it, get tons of speed on the face and still lay down a big hack… It gave me everything I get from a traditional short board thruster, with the thickness and glide of a fish… That I like, but it all leads me back to love 3 fins… I hated every single fin I’ve tried. I put three fins on my Longbaord in the summer, so cause that’s what I like. So, correct me if I am wrong, but unless you get some crazy hybrid shortboard with quad fins maybe, the retro boards CANNOT perform the things I need it to do. If a board makes it so you can’t release your fins. You can’t get any air. You can’t bury your rail and do a sharp turn… its basically just a vehicle that makes initially catching a wave easier. It’s a beginner board to me. All of those things are… yeah, they get you up on a wave, and glide easier, but the style looks like garbage to me… Guys squatting down through turns, just looking like they are really surfing in the 70s… So, I don’t know, maybe I just have bad luck with those boards… But I have NEVER had a good session in good conditions on a board like that. Period. That’s just me though.
But I do understand where you are coming from. I took my 5’11 potatochip to OC MD last summer and took it out in knee to waist high surf all week. There were times when I almost got out of the water and just karate chopped my own board in half… I needed like a 10’er that day… But like I said, I understand logging it or riding old as$ boards when its ankle high, but once you even get past waist high, you will never catch me on anything but a thruster…. High performance surfing is impossible on old out dated vehicles.
i want to hear your opinions on the future surfing topic of WETSUITS
do you think its possible that in a decade that well be surfing snow blizzard swells
in our power heated 2 mills.
or that our present day 3/2 will be replaced by some sort of thin spandex.
its MORE then possible!
what do you think ?
Yeah, wetsuits are going to be insane in 10 years. People are already out in blizzard surf all winter. Half the guys on thi site did this year quite a bit... So with that being said, yeah wetsuits have a WAAAAYS to go, and they are already awesome, so that kind of excites me about the future, especially since it looks like i will be back in the mid-atlantic in the future, that makes me a little less sad about winter. The thought of paddling out in 37 degree water and not dying would be a pretty good start. Yeah, i think the future holds super warm, super thin suits..... somehow. someway.
I have to disagree. It doesnt matter what kinda of board ya have ,If you skills are honed and your a good all around surfer you should be able to ride just about anything and make it work.
Joel Tudor has won contests on 30 year old boards. Beating people who are riding the best , most expesive boards on the market
I think the tecnology of surfboard making is at the best it could ever be right now. The amazing thing that are being done to Shortboard and well as longboards is really extordinary.
Far as wetsuits go I think they are gonna get to the point to they feel like a second skin or the to the point where you are like surfing in a plasitc bubble as if you were in the Jetson mobile
Like I said, these are just my own personal preferences. I agree with what you are saying. I have surfed with Joel before. He was on a newer LB, but he and Robb Machado are classic examples of guys who just KILL anything they ride. Watching Robb ride a single fin at cardiff is a thing of beuty. But Robb has also explored every inch of the globe, surfing high performance thursters the whole way. Only in a basic surfing retirement, does he excite his imagination with riding different stuff. Like I said, I will ride anything. And I will have a blast doing it.... but wat personally happens to ME, is when I am at a spot, riding a weird or old board, its pretty fun, but there is always that once wave, or that one lip or section that you dont really get to hit the way you want, then I am paddling back out like, I KNEW I should have paddled out with the shortboard. Same thing happens when I long board in the summer. Its knee to waist and im out there cruising, then a set comes that is like chest to head high and im like DAMN!!! I knew i shoulda brought the thurster =) But like I said, that is just me, and that is just my style. The waves I have been surfing lately are pretty high quality, so I caint complain. But when the waves flatten out and there is a lot more time spent at the beach, I may paddle out on a picnic bench and try and surf it =)...
I guess what im saying is this: Its Head high to 1 foot over head, super glassy with light offshores... Its 8am, its mid tide.... You see barrels off your local jetty and clean conditions.... What board do you go get? What board do you grab because the conditions are the most ideal for you. If it was me, I would have my 6'0 round tail shortboard with a three fin thurster set up... What ever board you would pick, thats you. Thats your style... I understand getting creative when its boring, but when you want to go get barrels and do turns, what are you gonna ride? I told you what I would.
now keep in mind i'm not trying to convince you of anything here, but...i think 2 things happened w/ you in mex: 1) the fish you tried was either too big (they need to be ridden small....way small. there's a TON of foam hidden in those things) or poorly shaped. i had a 5'10" pavel twin keel that absolutely killed it...but it was the right size for me. i could throw the thing straight up into the lip & had no problem at all burying the rail on turns.
2) the conditions were not right for the board. traditional fish really work best, i've found, in that waist-chest/shoulder high range. they are NOT, repeat, NOT mush buster boards. they are not the anti-longboard that so many people seem to think that they are. they also, i fully admit, SUCK when the waves get over head-high w/ any steepness to the faces. head-high, kinda mushy point break? bring your fish. think sunset cliffs. head high rincon? bring whatever your daily driver is.
like i said, these boards need to be ridden at a size appropriate for your ability. i think what happened, & what gave the movement it's bad name, is that guys started using them as crutches...they weren't looking for a new feeling, they were looking for a way to catch more waves or to look "cool". i don't have the single fin i started out w/....as i progressed, it became too big for me, so i sold it. even the new one is so beefy, i only really ride it in the dead of winter b/c it floats me so well w/ all that rubber we have to wear. as soon as the water starts warming up some, it'll be de-finned & stuck in the back of the line. i will also be the first to admit that keel fin fish tend to track very heavily backside...once you get it going down the line, it takes a LOT of force to change direction. one of the main reasons i switched to a quad fish. as appropriately sized fish, tho, is faster than a cheetah on speed.
as for no type of board performing the way a contemporary thruster does, have you ever seen footage of taylor knox or mick fanning riding their bonzers? i would say that knox's surfing is BETTER on a 5 fin than on a thruster. there's not enough footage of mick to say, but he still kills it on the 5 fin at least as well as he does on a thruster.
as i said in my last post, i am a bonzer fiend. i find them faster down the line than thrusters, & not only hold their speed thru turns, but actually accelerate out of them. esp. cutbacks. i think they barrel ride better as well, b/c not only do you have the larger center fin, but the side fins are heavily canted, about 15-20°, so they're biting into the wave face at a higher angle, sucking the tail of the board to the face, eliminating that squirrelly "slip n' slide" effect you sometimes get when you're really deep.
i've been riding bonzers pretty much exclusively for about 4 years now & they're all i take when i travel. i really should get some pics of that board up, i think you might be surprised. have you ever ridden a bonzer, zach?
& to answer your question, in the face of those conditions (8am, mid-tide, 6-8ft, light offshores, i'm grabbing this board:
5'10"x21"x2 5/8"
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