Come celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ultimate shredder classic!
Where do the years hide? I hardly have a conception of what happened yesterday, consider myself ageless and probably immortal and yet, inexplicably, time doesn’t stand still.
Can you believe it’s been twenty years since the release of 5’5″ x 19 1/4″ and the subsequent arrival of the wide-forward-point-pulled-in-tail quasi fish? When Andy and Wardo and Cory Lopez more than proved the value of such a thing?
I got my first version in 1999 when I lived in France and it was a very happy accident.
A friend had told me about the fine day-time discos just across the border in Spain and suggested we roll a visit to Pukas surfboards into a drink and a dance or perhaps even two.
At Pukas, I saw an odd looking thing from the American company Lost. It had a Drew Brophy Pipeline spray on its deck and was different to anything I’d seen before: wide up front, very seventies matched with a tight little swallow. I rode it with three fins but couldn’t get it even one note above bass. A better surfer suggested it’d hit falsetto if I switched to two big side fins. I did and I was jubilant. I mean, wow. It blew my life out.
I still have that board.
This year, as a sort of anniversary gift (to us and his company’s bottom line) Biolos has updated the second version of the Round Nose Fish, and released the Round Nose Fish Redux. It mixes a lot of the mid-nineties version with the updated RNF released ten years later. The rocker, bottom contours and forward outline come from the original. The tail ain’t as tight as the original but ain’t as wide as the second version.
Do they still work? Yeah, I think so, and not just ’cause Biolos just threw a RND Redux ad at me.
Here’s a fresh batch of Ian Crane waves on it a week ago. You tell me. Fun or no?
And here’s Biolos and his biz partner Mike Reola talking into What Youth‘s tape recorder.
I have an RNF I picked up on Craigslist about 7 years ago. One of the most enjoyable boards I have ever ridden. I have surfed the shit out of it and the board is still holding up like a champ. Best construction on a board I have ever seen. Puts my CIs to shame that get beat to shit after 6 months. Magic fin set up is the MR twin side fins and a nubster center fin. The board sometimes feels frictionless, like I am literally hovering over the water as I go down the line. Its a crazy feeling.
Wardo can rip on any type of board. He destroys slabs and makes them look effortless. This board was sorta the pre runner to the shorter wider re-revolution which destroyed the bullshit super chippy elf slippers morons were riding for almost a decade. Still today, people are riding shorter, wider, fatter models ( board models ) and they are much happier and surfing better on them. The uber chip elf shoes are dead, thank you 5×5 191/4…..
he also destroys his wife! but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t the best thing to happen to surfing from the mid 90’s- late 2000’s in and out of the water. Surfing needs more people like Wardo now more than ever bare the wife beating
bruce is still doing drugs and banging sluts.. so we have that going that for us.
5’5 x 19 1/4″ blew my mind. Pat O’Connell messing up, Kasey Curtis ripping, Sublime x Wardo, Lil Brucey on a chop nose, Curren with a mohawk, Andy & Corey at Waimea Shorebreak, on and on and on.
Fuuuuuuuuck I’m old.
I’ve always wanted one – should I bother ordering the OG version? Or just get the new new?
Order all three! We’ll arrange pal-of-BeachGrit discount!
Awwww Chazzy, you flatter! But three freshies is a lotta diaper money regardless of discounts. Like I said, I’m old!
Can I please have a discount too?
Everyone gets discount!
this tempts me. i do need a new small-wave fun thing.
I have the original and redux on DVD. That shit blows my mind. Redux was the first that I had ever seen Mason Ho surf and I have been a fan ever since. I like the way that the lost movies show the whole wave and many of the waves in a session instead of tight edits. The music is another highlight featuring stuff that I bought when it came out when I was a teenager like Fugazi, Bad Brains, Minor Threat etc.
watched a nice Bad Brains doc last night about their 2007 reunion tour. HR has lost his shit, unfortunately. Ian MacKaye looked great though.
Drugs vs no drugs. Who’d guess?