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.
