Propositions for Prepositions

I call this composition, Off to the Glasser!
Or maybe, On To the Glasser!

Or just, To the Glasser!
Either way, hope Tony's got some green pigment in stock.

Down to the glasser!

Le Bronson

Who introduces a new classic longboard model while the NW swells are still pumping long-period juice onto our rocky shores?
I do, bitches!
This is The Bronson. In France, you would call it Le Bronson.

Know what feels good? trimming.
The Bronson is designed to be an all-round, crazy fun, trim machine. The nose is pulled in so that it finds the pocket, then lodges itself firmly into it. The tail is wide, the bottom is rolled, and there's an edge behind the fin for release.

Will it noseride?
 Like its namesake, The Bronson is no one-trick pony. But yes, it will noseride.
The rest of the time you can find it locked in trim after taking the drop, fading back toward the curl, wrapping around, and finding the sweet, sweet, sweet spot on the wave.

This one is for Northcoast ripper Brendan. He likes surfing cold, dark, meaty waves. He looks like Paul Bunyan and could totally kick my ass, but he's a super nice guy. It has a tailblock.

Bronson. Nuff Said.

Of Curtis, the Lady, the Flu

Good Lord, the flu sucks. We’ve been passing it around my house these last few weeks like a skinny J on prom night.

Or maybe like musical chairs, only instead of prize for winning ‘it,’ you get diarrhea.

Guess how many kids shat the bed in my house during the last three weeks?

Answer: none. That could have been a parenting dealbreaker.

But waves continue to tickle our delicate shores, and humans continue wanting to ride on them, so surfboards must be made!

Here’s the first one I got to carve our after a week in bed. It’s a 7’4 Lady for Curtis, who called and left the following message:

“I need a midlength for _ _ _ _ _ I _ _   _ _ _.”

That was pretty much it. Curtis isn’t one for conversation, so I took a stab at 7’4.

The Lady is a trim machine: round on the bottom, round on the top, round on the corners.

Single with a flex fin, or 2+1 with a flex fin. Slingshots off the bottom!

I'm going back to bed now.

New England Dispatch: Winter Edition

Good lord, I've gotten soft. I grew up surfing New England winters with a cardboard-stiff third-hand wetsuit and no booties. I've hacked my way up numerous frozen waterfalls in the Rockies, picked ice chunks the size of playing cards out of my beard at 18,000ft in Mexico, got blown off Mt. Adams in February by an 80mph gust of wind that froze my jacket thermometer at -20.
What I'm saying is this: cold and I have spent some time together, and it's been pretty rad.
But now it isn't.
Which is why I'm huddled next to a space heater at my in-laws in Connecticut. Bitching.
But 'hardship' makes us thankful, and here's what I'm thankful for as we stare down the line of another new year.
Surfboards. All of them, really, no matter who shaped them. This one's for local shredster Jon, and is off to the glasser this week.

6'8. Egg. 4+1

Electric Blankets. I used to think electricity and sleeping didn't really mix. Not anymore.

This is what happens when you Google Image 'Electric  Blanket'

Barbie Dream House. I shit you not. We didn't encourage our girls to join the Barbie Army, but avoiding it is as impossible as avoiding pictures of that one Kardashian's ass . For the last five days they've been going to town on the Barbie Dream House like it's their job. 40+hrs, only two fights (both elevator related). Them's good numbers.

Isle of Skye 8yr old blended scotch whisky. A little bit of something for every scotch lover in a single bottle. Don't 'upgrade' to the 12yr--less peat, more money.

Coming home to this:

Happy New Year!

Plug

Kelly is a Renaissance man—surfer, artist, designer, entrepreneur, musician, dude with a mustache. He’s also a builder with of epic vision. How do we know it’s epic? because it’s in the name: Epic Design Build.

The EDB bros are scientists of building efficiency. They also like riding bikes, shredding Northcoast waves, and drinking beers at the Toad.

Kelly is at the forefront of a movement to transform Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square from a place of occasional dining and hobo watching to a model of the contemporary urban ideal: small local businesses, artists, intellectuals, musicians, surfboard shapers with an alarming amount of gray finding its way into their beard this winter, purveyors of local-made (and brewed!) goods intermingling with community-minded homeowners and their offspring. Sounds nice, eh?

So what does a man-of-our-times order when he wants to shred?

6’ Sparkplug.

Like the name implies, the Sparkplug is the necessary ingredient for heavy duty shredding. Plenty of foam for Northcoast paddling with a rocker to match our steep beachbreak offerings.

Quad for extra spark.

Because he's also a gigantic design nerd, Kelly created his own custom Sparkplug lam just in case, in the middle of a sess, he forgets why his board shreds so hard.

California born, start to finish.

Broadsword Nouveau

What better way to celebrate the hard work and gritty determinism of the early American settlers than to set aside the third Thursday in November for gluttony, sloth, and immoderate consumption?
None!

Across the pond, however, our French neighbors reserve the third Thursday in November for impulsiveness and general abuses of the liver.
Vive la foie!
You see, just six weeks ago in France, deliciously thick-skinned Gamay grapes were minding their own businesses in the Loire Valley, contentedly fattening up on their vines while watching the world zip past them in a blur of unfiltered cigarettes and colored denim.
Then they were picked.
"Fear not!" their thinner-skinned varietals called to them as they were loaded onto palettes in whirls of unfiltered cigarettes and colored denim. "You will have plenty of time in ze bottle to adjust to ze new life!"
"How long?" cried the Gamay grapes, bunching together tightly. "How long?"
Turns out, not long at all. Anxious, curious, really thirsty, the French harvest, press, ferment, bottle, and drink their Beaujolais Nouveau in six weeks.
Why?
Because seven weeks is too long to wait for a bottle of wine.

And what better to do when you're in France and it's the third Thursday in November than uncork a freshly pressed wine and have at it?
And what better way to celebrate the third Thursday in November if you're Pierre in Northen California than to uncork this Franco-American midlength: Broadsword, Beaujolais tint, fresh out of production and ready for consumption.

And what better to do if you happen to be at San Onofre between Wednesday and Saturday afternoon than stop by and say hi? We'll be the large group of pasty Northern Californians chasing our wee ones around between log sessions, sipping lukewarm Tecates, stoked out of our minds to take off the booties and share some waves with friends.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Local H

What do you do when a really big dude wants you to shape him a big board?
You shape him a big board, damnit.

 Howard, who stands at least three feet taller than me and would make Thor feel like a schoolboy in shortpants, gets a 9’9.
Why 9’9?
Because he wanted something between 9'8 and 9'10. I'm no math teacher, but 9'9 seemed right in there.

Howard is a bicoastal shred and ocean enthusiast, a hell of a kayak fisherman and--I hate to blow his cover--as nice a guy as you could ever meet. So, if you see him tearing it up on the central coast, just go ahead and push him off his board and have a turn on it.

You might want to bring a couple friends to help push, though. Even then it would probably look like a kindergarten class trying to uproot a sequoia.

Production shot of Almar Glassing and Tony's resin-fume hideaway. Those stands have seen more tints than a Jersey Shore tanning booth!