Against All Odds, This Was Noa Deane's Favorite Electric Acid Board
"They call me pimp." - Peter Schroff
Peter Schroff is a lot of things.
A disciple of Dale Velzy. An unrelentingly unapologetic proponent of free expression. A student of Wayne Lynch's hip-heavy outlines and Cheyne Horan's left-field theories. A celebrated 80's Echo Beach boom-era genius installation artist and designer. A proponent and craftsman of as far left of center designs as he can imagine, both in shape and aesthetic.
The perpetual thorn in the side of Kelly Slater and his overseas Firewire enterprise, Peter Schroff is much more than a chainsaw-wielding performance artist, and while we'll get to telling that long and curious tale as best we can down the line, this is the story of his Electric Acid Surfboard Test-winning Super Series.
First impressions.
"This one's gotta be Peter Schroff. He's a maniac. I've seen him chainsawing boards to punk bands, which is pretty red hot if you ask me."
Stringerless and bordrline surreal lookin.
Noa picked Schroff's apple-bottomed quad/thruster out of the batch straight away, the psychedelic pinwheel a sore thumb amongst the delicate resin swirls (leave it to Peter...).
"I'm not even going to comment until I ride it," Noa said before his first go on the stub-nosed stringerless EPS (there's no point to points, Peter loves to say). To say the board connected straight away would be a lie. To be honest, the board might have been the most challenging for Noa to figure out, which seemed to get Noa visibly more excited about the board than some of the more predictable alternative flavors. Mason took the board for a Backdoor spin and hooked into a few beauties, catching sideways glances while gleaning a few inside double-ups from the pack, a few thumbs of Fu Wax on the tip.
When tasked at picking a winner, Noa was a little annoyed at the proposition of only getting one of them for keeps. "So I pick one, but I get to keep a bunch of the rest and we just don't tell anyone that, right?" Noa half-joked. "The Tokoro's mine, Wade already sent me the invoice and I paid for it, so they're coming with me."
In the end, Noa picked the Schroff for myriad reasons—the Tokoro gun was too sentimental (and belonged to him already, technically), the Patterson channel-bottom was too low hanging fruit and pretty much exactly what he rides normally. Honestly, the Schroff just piqued his curiosity the most.
"I felt like I was just starting to get a feel for it, honestly," Noa said of the Super Series. "Congratulations, Peter—sick board."
Peter's thoughts?
"I'm fuckin' flattered."
Click into the edit above for a look at one of surfing's most humbly colorful and opinionated personalities.
