On a beautiful blue-skied weekend in April 2015, twenty-five East Coast surfers unloaded their weirdest, most unusual surf crafts into Picture Farm Gallery in Brooklyn. The boards ranged in terms of both shape and functionality—they included work-in-progress projects and tried-and-true formulas. Appropriately titled It Doesn’t Not Work and curated by Brooklyn-based surfers Tyler Breuer and Toddy Stewart, the event hoped to encourage creativity and experimentation among local surfers—even if those experiments wouldn’t always objectively be called ‘successes’. After all, innovation doesn’t happen without a few failures. Here we’ve compiled a few of our favorite boards from the show.
Perhaps Taylor summed up the spirit of the event best when he explained that the forms and proportions for his board came from “My ignorance and curiosity.”
The Pinecone Stretchpin “is 5´8˝ and I’ll use it on the biggest and hollowest days the winter has to offer in New Jersey. I loved having [the Nub] to whip around in small waves and really enjoy pushing the limits of noseriding on it. “
The Simmons was made to be shore break safe and was inspired when ‘some kook broke [Klossner’s] fins off…again!”
“The surfing of Russ Short and the surfboard design of the Campbell Brothers”
Inspired by pre-industrialized oceanic cultures and raw athleticism, Drojarski wanted to explore the relationship between control and speed. He sourced the finest materials available in the world, including a linseed oil produced by a family-run manufacturer in Germany, locally harvested beeswax and Pennsylvania-grown Paulownia. The boards are made without the use of electric tools or lights.
Dennis found inspiration for this board from both the USS Enterprise and Lieutenant Commander Spock.
Winter surfing inspired this design — Edgar wanted more foam to compensate for heavy winter wetsuit surfing.
The artist, surfer and regular contributor to WAX, wanted to create something more streamlined that would fit in the waves at Rockaway and would allow for quicker turning. What he ended up with was, in his words, “an egg and log hybrid. A Legg so to speak.”
The idea came to Shelton while on the job as an art handler, observing “industrial amounts of waste made by the fine art industrial complex. Somehow I found all [the materials] within 4 blocks… in an hour.”
“I designed my schoolie fish model to be ridden from top-to-bottom and to be constantly put on-rail.”
“Shaping and riding these alternative and sustainable surfcraft have deeply enhanced our relationship with the ocean and created unique friendships between us.”
“I have High hopes of back pressure spirals and Fibonacci contours squeezing every last drop of juice out of these nectarines in the name of fun.”
This story originally appeared in Wax Issue 7.
