Watch: Dangerous Surfboards That Weren’t Ridden Quite Enough

I first encountered Bloody Knuckles at a makeshift screening booth at the back of Fairly Normal’s sleek flagship store in Lisbon. Admittedly, I only sat through about 40 seconds of it before walking away and plunging my arm into an ice bucket with free beer. 

Dressed in pointy cowboy boots, leather pants, a narrow baby blue leather tie over a pressed white shirt, a Gestapo leather trench coat, fingerless black lace gloves, and black sunglasses, Lucas Lecacheur from Perfect Designs (great name, btw) was impossible to miss amid the crowd of freeloading loiterers that spilled onto the sidewalk. He looked less intimidating in person, not what you’d expect from someone whose looks appear to be a crossover between a secret service officer and a vampire with a flawless complexion. 

Somehow the night ended up at a friend of a friend’s for pizza and red wine. Lucas sat across the table from me and removed his sunglasses to grab a slice, but not his gloves. Polite and soft-spoken, he never really strayed away from the carefully fabricated public persona. 

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Hoping he’d break character with each new pour of red, it wasn’t until our host brought out his collection of rare blades — including a genuine Mossad knife, a WWI bayonet, and a very long tribal sword from somewhere I shouldn’t even try to spell out — that his eyes briefly widened along with his smile. Holding the sword, he put his shades back on, pouted a little, and posed. Content is content.

Perhaps there’s a connection to be made between personal assault weapons and some of the boards crafted by Perfect Designs.

In their new short, Bloody Knuckles, Lucas and his former accomplice, Fernando, put their own creations through the crisp, inviting beach breaks of Southwest France, and they seem to work exactly the way they look.

And what does all this have to do with surfing, you may ask? Just about as much as Bloody Knuckles, and there’s nothing wrong with that.