What You Ride Tells What’s Inside

Rockin’ Fig rides a 6-foot-5 board and drives a Jeep Cherokee. I ride a 7-2 and scoot around town in a Dodge Shelby. In the blue Pacific, surfers address what type of surfboard they ride with the same passion that vintage car owners bestow on 1936 Hudson convertibles.

And, though it’s not a California freeway, the ocean is where wave riders escape the stress of jobs, marriages and lousy bosses. What you ride, the shape, length and width of your surfboard says a lot about who you are.

No psychoanalysis. We’re simply talking personalities here.

Rockin’ Fig said there are two basic customers he and hundreds of other surf shop owners see every day, essentially those buying short boards and those buying long boards.

They’re all surfers, though, Fig said.

But there’s more to it, he added.

For example, both he and I ride short boards (though I occasionally ride a long board). But that 9-inch length difference between the two is like night and day.

Fig’s is lighter, quicker and turns like lightning.

His board is part of the ultralight genre of boards, dubbed “potato chips” because they’re so thin. His board weighs less than 5 pounds, mine is twice that. His board is less than 18 inches wide, mine is closer to 21 inches. His has narrow hips--yup, that’s what we call ‘em--and a thin nose. Mine is wider. A major difference is in thickness, which adds to flotation. While Figgy weighs in at about 135 pounds (he swears to this), I weigh 200 pounds. His board is less than 2 1/2 inches thick, mine is closer to 3 inches.

Now, let’s add trends here. A year ago, Figgy didn’t even stock long boards. Remember long boards came first. The earliest writing by white sailors in the Hawaiian Islands refers to the sport in a 1783 account by Capt. Cook’s historian, according to Tom Blake’s “Hawaiian Surfriders 1935.”

Long boards are getting more popular. Guys are finding out the short boards are getting too small and coming back to long boards.

There are numerous types of boards being shaped, Figgy said. There are short, mid-size and long boards. There are egg shapes, spoon shapes, rail grabbers and nose riders, just to name a few.

You say you want to get into the sport? Try a nerf board--manufactured from the same foam used in Boogie boards. If you get hit by the board, the soft foam doesn’t hurt as much.

Are you a ‘60s stylist like Huntington Beach’s 50-year-old Bob (The Greek) Bolen, 50? He still rides a single-fin long board.

Are you adventurous? Steve Hawk, Surfer magazine editor, liked his Twinzer, a short board with not one, not two, but four fins on the bottom. Hawk says he rides all kinds of board, long or short.

There are some rules of thumb, though, Fig said.

You gotta really be in shape to paddle a short board. As far as flotation, you’re talking about sitting in the water with a short board and the water is up to your chest. (On a long board, the water line is down around your belly button. In the old days, long boarders would knee paddle from the shore through the surf line and hardly get wet.)

Figgy, what are common questions asked by long boarders?

Ease of paddling and will it float me? Will it be able to turn? Can I still be able to do short board maneuvers?

And, what do short boarders ask?

I wonder how fast this thing will turn! There’s more attention to thickness, rocker, weight of the board, board strength, and the outline of the shape and the final thing . . . price! Because longer boards use bigger polyurethane blanks and more materials, they cost more. An average cost is from $400 to $500. Short boards are slightly less, at $350.

Don’t forget that pro surfers have a big impact on the younger generation of surfers. Pros like Kelly Slater are totally into potato chippers because they have the kind of power to generate their own speed in the water.

For example, Cardiff’s Rob Machado, newly crowned champion of the U.S. Bud Tour, rides a chip. At 5-foot-10 and 135 pounds, Machado has a competition board that is 6-feet long, 17 5/8 inches wide (with a 10 3/4-inch nose and a 13 1/8-inch tail) and only 2 inches thick, making it weigh about 3 pounds, or a little more than a bag of surf wax.

But not everyone can ride chippers. Fig said he recalled one stout middle-aged surfer who walked into his store recently.

Big Daddy walks in hunting for a long board, and he’s lookin’ like we’ve been putting back a few six-packs every week, and he’s lucky if he gets out in the water once a week. So I say to him, “You look like you want to get back out there--you know, exercise a little bit, get away from the wife, paddle out and check things out, huh?”

Whereas short boarders, it’s usually a kid who’s been surfing a few years, who wants to lay into some turns and get vertical. They want to imitate the pros and their maneuvers.

Fig, will you ever ride a long board?

Dunno. All I can say is every year it gets harder and harder because there are all these little grommets in the shore break who wanna take over.

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Forecast: We’re going from Flat City to shoulder- to head-high waves today and Friday due to a late Southern Hemisphere swell, according to Surfline/Wavetrak. Waves will be good through the weekend!