“I’m NOT Going To Rip On This Thing!” — Dane Reynolds

“I’m not going to rip on this thing!” Dane Reynolds whinged, after handling the “mellow outlined mini-glider with some Santa Barbara secret tricks up its sleeve” that Ryan Lovelace so lovingly calls the Thick Lizzy.

See, Dane don’t log. Never has, probably never will.

“They’re not meant be maneuverable! You’re meant to set your line and look stylish, and anytime I stand up on a wave, I just want to thrash.”

It was that penchant for thrash that had moved Dane to prefaced the entire EAST project with one disclaimer: no longboards. 

But of course this whole project wouldn’t be as fun without a few curveballs. 

So when Ryan Lovelace suggested he make one of his new souped-up mid-lengths, complete with Bonzer sidebites and Ryan’s signature True Ames center fin, we thought, Well, this should be interesting. 

Meet Ryan Lovelace’s 7’4 Thick Lizzy!

Photography

AVG

Dane lovingly coined the mid-length the Moysa Mini. If you know, you know.

Photography

AVG

Bonzer sidebites and a semi-flex single fin from True Ames and Lovelace himself.

Photography

AVG

“You’re never going to get anything that turns the surf world on its head the way the thruster did,” Ryan Lovelace admits. For the last decade and a half, Lovelace has carved out one hell of a reputation, hand-building boards steeped in the Santa Barbara experimental tradition, but with a heavy emphasis on today’s alternative avant garde.

Over the last few years, Lovelace has busied himself studying the handiwork of Rennie Water and George Greenough, as well as of Gerry Lopez and Rich Pavel, while building boards with Dan Malloy (tweaking his iconic Rabbits Foot finless concepts), and with Trevor Gordon on asymmetricals, twin fins, and his iconic V-Bowls, a dumpy-hipped displacement hull that’s instantly recognizable in lineups from Pitus to First Point. 

Looking the board over, Dane lofted a fair question: What’s really the difference between this, and, like, a high-performance longboard or a kind of kooky funshape? 

While the pretentious academic answer would be, well, Skip Frye’s fingerprints allover the outline, Greenough’s influence on the bottom shape, and a host of subtle adjustments gleaned from five decades of near-Black Market underground mid-length exploration… ours was a shrugged shoulder, and something to the effect of, Oh, just fucking try it.

Highline to hack in three…

Photography

AVG

Two…

Photography

AVG

One…

Photography

AVG

Grrrrrrr… Fighting it the whole way.

Photography

AVG

Now, Dane’s anything if open-minded, but his surfing’s uncompromising nature poses issues for boards requiring a somewhat specific approach. And while you’ll surely enjoy Dane’s cheater-fives and occasionally clumsy footwork, you gotta give the guy a hand for having giving the thing an honest spin, given the whole other trip he’s been on for the last decade. 

“I can appreciate the way people surf on them. That’s fucking sick. It’s just not my trip…

“I just don’t know where to turn on these things. I don’t want to move around on my board, I want to plant my feet, and that’s where I turning from… [With these midlengths], you’re going down the line and you want to get further down the line, and I think, I think I have to walk to the nose. So I walk to the nose, and I instantly feel… like an asshole.”

Photography

AVG

Asshole.

Photography

AVG.

Scroll south for a look at Dane’s lines on the Lovelace Thick Lizzy, shot by Alan Van Gysen, with a couple gems from Sam Moody (and, of course, head iTunes to see The Electric Acid Test full-length.

Photography

AVG.

Photography

Sam Moody.

Photography

AVG.

Photography

AVG.

Photography

AVG

Dane Reynolds and the afternoon mid-length blues (and yellows and reds and blacks).

Photography

AVG