Some Answers To Questions You May Have About EAST

Click here to watch Episode One of EAST with Mikey Feb — thanks to Kona Big Wave and Vans.

What we’ve lost in objectivity in this year’s EAST, we’ve tried to make up for in awkwardness. 

Burning a board is easy when you don’t know who made it, or how they tried, in vain, to give you a new squirt of excitement. 

But when you handpick your quiver, have lengthy conversations with all the shapers (some of whom even invite you into their homes and feed you) and then you have to break their hearts, well that’s when you get awkwardness. 

Turtles upon turtles upon turtles of it.

And that’s exactly what Mikey February is going to have to do in this year’s EAST. 

Break 16 hearts, awkwardly.

As part of our highly-curated approach this time around, we’ve lumped the shapers into three general buckets: 

Masters — legendary names such as Mark Richards, Bob McTavish, Malcolm Campbell and **********. 

Successors — established names such as Alex Knost, Jon Pyzel, and Simon Jones.

Up starts — Tom Morat, Kobe Hughes, Barrett Miller, and Derick Disney. 

A cross-section of surfing’s past, present and future, if you will, wrapped up in a cute lil’ space-time burrito. 

Which is a nice segue into another unique feature of this year’s EAST — Afrofuturism. 

‘What the hell is that?’ you may well be asking. 

Fans of Spearhead Unlimited, Mikey’s brand, will have already been well acquainted. 

The short answer is: Afrofuturism is what happens when Black history and science fiction hook up and make art babies.

But the longer, more correct response is to define it as: an aesthetic, a philosophy, and a cultural remix that asks: What if the future included Black people — not as background extras, but as the architects of galaxies? 

Think Sun Ra, the jazz musician who claimed he was from Saturn and dressed like a pharaoh on a spaceship. Or George Clinton, who turned funk into a full-blown sci-fi religion — landing the Mothership Connection, preaching that “the funk not only moves, it removes.” Then Octavia Butler, building whole universes where race, power, and survival collide. Janelle Monáe, turning herself into an android to sing about love and freedom in binary code. And, of course, Black Panther’s Wakanda — the ultimate “what if Africa never got colonized?” scenario — a technological utopia that flips every Western stereotype on its head.

At its core, Afrofuturism is both a time machine and a middle finger. One that simultaneously looks backward to heal historical trauma, and forward to imagine Black excellence unbound, and sideways at the mainstream to say: “Your future looks boring. Ours has better outfits and cooler soundtracks.”

And it’s infused throughout all of the artistic direction of this year’s EAST, from graphics, to soundtrack, narration, surfboard sprays, merchandise and beyond. 

If Stab in the Dark caters to the more globalized, fast-paced, mass-produced surfboard-industrial complex, EAST is celebrating the cottage industry of custom orders and handshapes. 

Many, if not most, of the featured shapers in this year’s EAST shaping lineup produce a handful of surfboards per week. A far cry from the Mayhems, JSes, DHDs, Sharp Eyes and Channel Islands of the world, which might list 50 people on their payroll and churn out hundreds of boards a week through their network of factories. 

But the best way to really expose these differences is simply to obtain a surfboard from a SITD shaper vs an EAST shaper. 

In the former instance, you will likely be directed to a user-friendly website with a Shopify plug-in, with a long inventory of fresh stock and volume calculations for each size, as well as a list of stockists nearby, where you can get one off the rack. 

Then try ordering a board off Derrick Disney — who was wandering around New York without a phone for several weeks prior to EAST Fest, and was only contactable via his girlfriend’s Insta — and you start to see the bigger picture. 

As always, EAST is still about watching good surfing on interesting boards. 

But there’s more color this year, more squiggly insignias written on the bottom of boards, and more awkward pauses. 

We’re very excited to share the rest of it with you. 

Watch ep 1 here. Episode 2 drops this Thursday, November 6, at 5 pm PST.