Can The Bird Scooters Of Surfboards Actually Work?

Summer is right around the corner in the Northern Hemisphere, and so is everything that comes with it.

If you’re on Oahu’s North Shore it’s time to dust of the fishing gear or make the hell trek into Town. If, like me, you’re on Kauai… everything will stay pretty much the same. It’ll get a bit warmer. If you live on the East Coast of the United States you can look forward to the eventual hurricane swell. And if you live in Southern California… oh boy!

Mobs of dorks littering on the beach! June gloom! Coastal parking that’s so rare you can’t leave your house on the weekends and the fucking parking tickets that come hand in hand! Long flat spells, black ball flags, the odd lined-up South swell, and beginners galore!

Various brands of softtops, SUPs that gather dust throughout the cold months, and real estate agents in the grips of mid-life crises are on their way to flood the lineups. If you’re anything like this former Southern California resident you’ll find yourself wondering, once again, “Why the fuck do I look forward to Summer?”

The answer is, of course, “Because you’re an idiot with the memory span of a goldfish.”

“That’s unfair, Rory,” you might say. “I like Summer. Sure, it’s crowded and the waves suck. But that’s business as usual. At least the water will warm up, I can ditch the full suit for a few months, and, anyway, I’m used to it. It’s not like things can get any worse.”

Au contraire. Foils are a thing now. So, you know, have fun with that.

And, if you live in the San Diego area, get ready for a business model that’s sure to take the world by storm.

Ohio native, Jason Inbody, has come up with a plan that will soon have local surfers gnashing their teeth, rending their clothes, and cursing a god which does not exist. It’s basically Bird scooters for surfing, and who doesn’t love those things?

Featuring only the finest selection of low-cost, vent plug equipped, EPS garbage, Fin Aquatic Rentals plans to have unattended trailers of rental boards littering the streets of SD within the coming months.

It’s a lesson in brilliance. Undercutting local shops, angering locals by filling the lineups with even more kooks than usual, then leaving your product unattended. What could go wrong? It’s not as though people will just bash the shit out of them out of spite. Surfers would never do something so mean spirited. We’re an ocean brotherhood, dude. Only a surfer knows the feeling!

At $14 for a two hour session Fin Aquatic Rentals is a deal no hodad will be able to resist. They can pay via phone, bash the thing to shit with their kookery, then pop it back on the trailer and go on with their day.

The low cost, coupled with the near constant repair the boards will require, does lead one to wonder, how will this turn a profit?

Have no fear, Inbody has a plan. Maybe.

Or maybe not. As a lovely post to Reddit recently indicated, it seems that Fin Aquatic Rental may have put the cart before the horse. The boards have been purchased, the app is ready for download, but pesky questions, such as “What material to use to fill surfboard hole?” remain up in the air.

Some may say, “That doesn’t make sense. Why would you go about cutting holes in shit without considering the next step? Shouldn’t one learn the basics of board repair before investing in a business that’s sure to require it?”

But this is the twenty first century. The gig economy! It’s about building apps, finding investors, and ditching your company before everything goes belly-up.

Maybe I’m being unkind and unfair. Maybe Inbody has found the world’s only quick, cheap, and reliable ding repair guy. Maybe he has a massive container packed with so many boards he can just swap them out and heave the losers in a landfill. Maybe I’m being a closed-minded naysayer who’ll never amount to nothing due to a combined lack of foresight and wherewithal.

Maybe. But probably not.