Ron Shine has a true appreciation for the form of a surf board; the smooth curves and lines he posts daily to his hugely popular Instagram account are enough to warrant the name Board Porn. He was kind enough to share some thoughts with us on surfing and shaping in the social media age.
Where do you live and where are you from?
I live in Rockaway Beach, NY. I'm originally from eastern Long Island where I started surfing as a kid. The beaches from Westhampton to Montauk were my babysitters in my tween and teen years.
How would you best explain your surfing ethos or attitude towards surfing?
Surfing is my happy place. It's my constant. My goal has always been to surf as much as possible. I always try to build flexibility into my schedule to accommodate for New York's super inconsistent conditions. My wife has been telling me for years that I'm too hungry for it. She points to days when I'll try to squeeze two or three sessions in. I always tell her that given Lake Atlantic's fickle nature, you never know when we're going to see waves next.
Your quiver is so adapted; it really says what kind of surfer you are, what did it take to discover this?
For the first 20 years of my surfing, I never strayed from the "6'0" or nothing bro" ideology. Since the best surfing in the world has always been happening on the World Tour and those guys all ride 6'0" potato chips, that's what I thought I had to ride. On good waves, these boards work just fine, but on crap waves, they just don't cut it. For the past seven years or so, I've been going through my own Tom Curren phase, surfing anything and everything and using a wide variety of boards in a wide variety of conditions. What this experimentation phase has taught me is that I really cheated myself and held myself back for the first 20 years. I almost never surf anything resembling the boards I spent my formative years on. Now, it's a new addiction and I can't stop experimenting with and fine tuning new boards.
Just some of Ron's boards, left to right: 5'2" McCallum M Ford, 5'1" Token arctail mini Simmons, 5'3" Stretch Mr. Buzz, 4'4" Willey cork beater, 5'3" Vulcan Archetype, 5'3" Vulcan Archetype, 5'2" Mandala Double Rainbow, 5'1" Firewire Baked Potato, 5'2" Hanel Pill, 5'5" Tomo V4R, 5'3" Faktion round swallow, 5'4" Firewire Potatonator, 5'4" Stepanek, 5'4" Tomo Vader, 5'4" Sunova Fish, 5'5" Dead Sleds double ender, 5'6" Haydenshapes Hypto Krypto, 5'6" Lost Weekend Warrior, 5'8" Tomo V4
What are are your surfing plans for 2015?
My plans for 2015 are to surf more, travel more and hoard more boards. The travel part will be a little tough since my wife and I just added a new baby girl to the family. We did a west coast road trip last summer and are thinking to do an east coast one this summer. This time, with the baby in tow.
You post so many respectable boards from shapers, glassers and surfers alike, but who is your favorite shapes and glasser?
This is such a tough question. I see and own so many boards from such a wide variety of shapers and glassers that it's a really tough call. There are so many shapers that I correspond with whose shaping makes me shake in my seat. I think of shaping the same as I think of fine art. I have different favorites from so many different schools of shaping.
Of what I'm riding regularly, I've been really digging Vulcan for the past year. Dane Hantz has really nailed it for me twice in a row and we're on to a third shape now. A few friends who tried one of the performance hulls he made me were blown away by the speed and control. Dane's back to back victories for best high performance shortboard at The Boardroom Show are no accident or coincidence.
I think glassers are the real underappreciated artisans in the surfboard building industry whose work often goes uncredited. When people see a final product (unless we are talking about clear glassed high performance shortboards), one of the first things they notice is the glassing. I can share two boards on Instagram that are virtually identical shapes but with different glassing. The highly polished resin-tinted version will get twice as much attention as the clear version every time. What some of these glassers are doing with cloth, resin and pigment is nothing short of art.
My list of favorites has grown a mile long with each glasser bringing their own art to the table. A few that always have me in awe are Alex Villalobos who glasses for McCallum; Teena McIlveen who glasses for Dead Kooks and others; Ryan Harris, Todd Patterson and Sam Vinstein of E-Tech who are doing the most insane eco friendly glass work; Paul Lefevre of The Lucky Bastards; and Drew Baggett of Inspired Surfboards who is an absolute master of cork and carbon.
Even if it may seem impossible, what is your dream board?
My dream board changes every few minutes. I'm such an equal opportunity lover of boards. Every time I think, "Oh man, this is my next board", someone sends me shots or I stumble across shots of something else wildly different and my latest dream board changes. It's like I have board ADD. I like to think of my quiver as a steadily growing, living, breathing entity. I'm always trying to plug perceived gaps and add more refined versions of my existing boards.
Thanks to Ron for taking the time to speak with us! We're stoked to have him as a resource, surf buddy, and friend. Take it easy bros.
Where are you from and how did you end up in New York?
I’m from Vancouver Island, Canada. I surfed there a bit growing up, but come from more of a snowboarding background and found surfing a bit later in life when I was doing a lot of renegade traveling to weird places. I moved to New York in 2013 with my girl when she changed her job to work at an agency in Manhattan. It’s been great for me trying to expand the reach of our magazine and gain access to creating better and more diverse content.
How did LATER. magazine come about and what are your goals for its future?
I was working in a couple editing roles and doing a lot of freelance writing for different magazines. A good friend of mine was doing the same thing and we were both into traveling a lot and surfing. We came up with the idea to start our own thing, not really knowing what that would be. We wanted to create something that was about adventure travel and based on the surfer’s lifestyle, rather than in-flight magazine kind of travel about five-star hotels and where to find Western food in the non-Western world. We pitched the concept to a publisher in Toronto I was working with at the time and he took us on to make a print publication. All of a sudden it was a real thing and some brands invested, so we had to actually make something. We got another friend to join us as the photo editor, and the three of us had enough connections to call in all favors and generate enough content to make a debut issue without any money and then it became a tangible thing that we had made ourselves, which was pretty rad.
We’ve done six issues now and though we still haven’t paid ourselves anything, we’re doing it, you know? I can see its potential and the response has been great as more people discover it, so we’re hyped to keep making content and grow our own title. I constantly want it to be a better product. We spend so much time creating a print issue that by the time it’s released I'll nitpick all the flaws and don’t even want to look at the finished product.
The next issue will always be better. We come from freelance backgrounds and want to be an outlet for all the other freelancers who are creating cool content, but don’t have anywhere to share it.
How did you get into writing about surfing?
I wouldn’t even claim that I write about surfing. I try to find other people who have stories and we can be the platform to share them. I interview a lot of people, often pro surfers, but we often don’t even discuss surfing. I think all the external things that go with surfing are a lot more interesting and everybody has stories and opinions. Our content direction is generally about those in-the-moment experiences that happen on the road, whether they’re good or bad. Stories about disaster trips are great.
In your opinion why is NYC surfing unlike any other scene?
Well, the subway commute is pretty weird. I’m down to take the A-train to Rockaway for some morning waves because there are few places in the world where you can leave home to surf, be in the water in less than an hour, and do it via public transportation for $5 round trip. But when you’re on the A train with a surfboard, you always have to talk to people you don’t want to talk to. I’ll talk to anyone, but the subway surfer conversations always seem like a major chore. Aside from that, I think it’s a pretty good scene. I come from a place that’s really localized and vibey, but New York surfers are the same as New York people, where almost no one is from here. Everyone came from somewhere else, so you’re all kinda on the same level. People are stoked in the water. It’s cold and dirty and crowded, but the waves can be great and it’s always accessible. I think surfing here makes you hard in a good way, just like the city does.
New York City surfers seem to be very proud of their surfing and very inconsistent waves. Why do you think that is?
I haven’t been here long enough to know all the spots and read the conditions really well. On the west coast, a ground swell comes in and lasts for a couple days, where you get waves the whole time. Here, the wind and direction is key, and it can come up and disappear in a matter of minutes. I’ve seen spots in New Jersey turn from flat to world class thumping hollow beach break inside of an hour and then be gone as quick as it came. I have a lot of respect for those who know and read the conditions well, and can be on it in the right spots when the time is right. They should be proud of that knowledge. And going back to the waves… They’re no joke when it’s on. The guys who are putting vaseline on their faces and wading through snow so they can go out and charge some of the heaviest, coldest barrels in the world should be proud. They should be super proud. They’re gnarly.
We were stoked for the challenge of applying and glassing a cloth inlay; managing to keep the material stretched and smooth was a whole new skill we had to learn. It came out more slick and sexier than we could have hoped. Nicole's fabric pops off the board and begs to be touched—everyone's first reaction when they see it is to reach out and run a hand along it in the same way they might feel a dress hanging on a rack.
Nicole and the board are at the expo now, showing off her wares while the board draws a lot of attention to her space. This project has opened up some new possibilities for us, not only in technique and applicable skills, but in the value of collaboration and community within the surf world.
Whether purveyors are making boards, bikinis, or whatever, we know that each relationship is important for reasons beyond business. We wish the best to Nicole at the expo and beyond and hope to find more ways to collaborate in the future!
When our friend Billy approached us to build his nephew Coleman a board for Christmas, we were happy to oblige; it was something we'd never done and we had a spare blank that would make a perfect little nugget for the three-year-old's first ride. We decided to give it a sweet Old Glory paint job and set out on what would be an unexpectedly difficult project.
The micro-board outlined on a piece of foam we thought might already be too small to ever use. The original blank was 4'6" with the nugget coming out at 3'8".
Our shaping stands were too far apart—the smallest board we've done is five feet—so we had to make do with propping the lil' nug on a trash can to cut and shape it. It was precarious but we got the result we were looking for. This was when we first got the sense of how tiny this thing was going to be.
Glassing the board was a rough ride; we had to balance it on a small cardboard box, which we had to constantly readjust without putting pressure on the board itself. If we handled it too much while applying the glass and resin, we would get air bubbles and other imperfections. Tricky business, but we are happy with the result. Sanding afterward was a juggling act, holding the board in one hand and the full belt sander in the other. That was a real fight, but it got the job done.
The whole thing came out looking awesome and we couldn't be happier, especially after juggling the thing through every step of the process.
Now that Coleman has his board, we're even more stoked about the whole project. We know he'll use it to start a lifetime on the waves and when he grows out of this nugget, we hope we get to make him another.
Wax Rides the Chill Zone: Brooklyn Cold-Weather Surfing
From our spot in Brooklyn, the A train runs a long route to Rockaway beach that is mostly above ground; it's an amazing experience to haul our boards on and ride out in the dark, suit up, shred for a couple hours, and ride back as the sun rises. The train takes us along the Cross Bay Bridge and through Broad Channel, Queens alongside Big Egg Marsh, a nationally protected wildlife preserve. It does a lot to ease us back into the city; the trip is normally serene until the population gets a little more dense and the cars starts to fill.
We love that adventure and, as a consequence of our home break, we are often forced to make it in nasty weather. Rain, sleet, snow and nine months of the year, low temperatures and a frigid ocean. We wait to the last moment to get in our suits, often changing on the subway where it's just a little warmer. When we first paddle out, it can be a fight to control our steaming breath; it comes too fast at first and needs to be slowed to prevent full-on hyperventilation. After the muscles start moving and the excitement of the moment kicks in, anxieties subside and there's nothing left but to enjoy it. The ride home is a bit different. After a morning of catching ankle-breakers in 38°F water, a deep cold will stay with you through that whole trip. It keeps your teeth chattering and your brain slow, your hands don't work quite right and your toes stay numb. Words come out more as guttural babbling until finally, as that sun rises and the trapped warmth of the city wraps around you, you start to come back. You're tired, you're a little confused, and maybe you're convincing yourself never again or even shopping for a new 6/5 mm with hotshot boots, hood, and gloves, but at the very least you're satisfied with the day. No matter how cold the water or how uncomfortable it was to peel off your gear behind a pillar of a subway platform, how mushy the waves or gray the sky, you had it all to yourself. You owned that morning and, as much as you love meeting and learning from other surfers, being alone on light rollers in early light is something wholly unique. When you remember that day, you won't remember the pain of recovering from the cold but the short time when you weren't worried about a thing. We've been through this and recovered from it quickly, but each time learned a lesson about the line between what we can endure and what is safe. Our equipment let's us do this (relatively) safely, but it's always a risk to get out there in that clime and deal with the consequences. For us, it's always been worth it and as long as we're surfing the northeast, something that's a part of our evolution as surfers.
WAX has shaped and sold more than a hundred boards in the last couple of years, ridden countless waves, bared the cold and burned in the heat, and traveled to breaks local and abroad all to better understand our customers and the sport we love. It continues to be an adventure and as we gain momentum we've decided to share that here by profiling fellow surfers, conveying our process, and reflecting on our experiences as board riders and shapers.
In thinking on our time here, we picture all of our early mornings carrying our gear through Brooklyn; there's a funny sense of pride in walking through its streets, hauling a nine-foot surf board and knowing that after watching the sun rise during a long train ride, we'll be back to nature with waves rolling from empty sea to the shore of our adopted home. That pride comes from being part something greater with elements that surround us in unexpected places. From a cold, gray day of ankle breakers at Rockaway beach to Malibu to Kauai to Phuket to any other break in the world, that understanding that somewhere nearby is a like-minded shredder wondering if that swell he's been waiting for is rolling in today. As we've grown as surfers and shapers, our awareness of that global community and shared passion for surf has become more and more real; when WAX's co-founder Tyler visited Israel recently, that sense led him to fellow surfers, shapers, and unforgettable waves on foreign shores that felt unseasonably warm and welcoming—felt a lot like home. Over the next few weeks we'll share his experience surfing abroad, along with other items that are important to WAX and hopefully, to our readers as well. In feeling the worldwide shaka, we want to share some hard-earned knowledge if we can, but mostly are looking to learn from interacting with it. This is an experiment for us, just like the first wave we rode, blank we shaped, and custom WAX board we sold. Enjoy what we place here for you because like everything we do, we're all in. Cut in, ride this wave with us because when the sun is shining and the water is warm or it's freezing and forming icicles on our beards, we'll still ride and roll together on glass. But in whatever weather, waves or calm, we're all out for a gorgeous day in the life.
