And from unspeakable tragedy, a new love for making surfboards…
I doubt I have the words to express how much I enjoyed interviewing Britt Merrick, the forty-seven-year-old heir to the Channel Islands shaping throne, although not to its riches for that belongs to snowboard company Burton.
Britt lives in pretty Carpinteria, near his shaping muse Dane Reynolds (a lesson on how to correctly pronounce the town’s name is contained within the hour-or-so interview) and we back and forth on the topics of protestantism which lights Chas up for he, like Britt, believes in the popular narrative of the Jew Jesus appearing as a prophet and such, and the exchange includes a wonderful anecdote about Aimee Semple McPherson, a wild hard-loving preacheress who would chase sin around on stage with her motorcycle; drugs, Britt was busted for dealing LSD in high school, five dollars a tab, he thinks was the sale price, and talks about his Daddy and Mama’s conversion to Christianity in prison after they got busted hustling weed across the Mex border; how an unspeakable tragedy turned him back onto shaping, first, with Reynolds, then as CI’s gun shaper; and the wisdom borne from killing animals for food.
“Every time you eat, something has to die, ” says Britt.
Warning: interview contains clumsy ad-libbed ad, which Charlie describes as “legendarily awful”, something I agree with. Hits around the hour mark. Cover ears.
