Lee Wilson On The ‘Demonic’ Double Grab, Robohorse, And His New Anti-Surf Brand EFWUN
“You don’t spend your whole life in the ocean, so why insist on making everything you wear ocean-oriented?”
Lee Wilson doesn’t mind playing the bad guy. He leans into it. At Stab High Japan, the 39-year-old gifted artist and freesurfer almost started a mutiny in his crusade against the “undignified” and “poisonous” double-grab — scoring Luke Swanson’s lofty backflip with a measly 5.0 and penalizing several others for the sin of having two points of contact.
It is absolutely a hill he will die on — the below Beetlejuice meme reflects the pride in his prejudice.
“Double grabs need to stop already. Do your homework. Do you see anybody double grab in snowboarding or skating? Hell the fuck no, bro. It’s a disease, dude. It’s demonic. Half the surfing world hates me for it, but I don’t care. The culture is being misled. The majority of the world sees this shit and froths so hard, and I’m like, you’ve been tricked.”
To illustrate his point, he directed us to a Stab Highway clip of Judd Henkes doing a double-grab flip, strapped in, aided by a waterhorse — which, in Lee’s eyes, is the ultimate unholy trifecta of a culture that celebrates bad habits. “No disrespect to Judd though. He’s incredible.”
A sore spot? Certainly. But significantly less of a sore spot than the pain resulting from snapping his femur—the strongest bone in the human body — which relegated Lee to the role of armchair critic at Surf Stadium Shizunami, alongside a stacked panel of judges that included Wade Goodall, Kolohe Andino, Dion Agius, Nate Fletcher, and Mar Ohno.
“I snapped my femur doing an air on a shorebreak, and then a week after surgery, I refractured it falling over,” Lee says, still at 85%, unable to fully pivot. “If I want to go up and do a blowtail reverse, I can’t go vertical enough to blow the tail out. But I can do a roundhouse. I can do floaters. Just turns, man. Back to basics. Back to trad surfing, which is what a lot of people need, I believe.”
As a side note: Wilson recently signed a small deal with Christenson Surfboards, meaning he’ll be on the twin-fin program (mostly) — fitting, since duos are shitty at going vertical anyway.
In his forced downtime, Lee channeled his creative energy elsewhere. The results? Robohorse, his latest film, and EFWUN, his brand — both fueled by the same drive that kept him sane during rehab.
Lee describes Robohorse as a film that “couldn’t have been made by a surf company.” Which, in today’s landscape of over-produced, algorithm-friendly content, is the entire point. The film, featuring Lazer Fins co-founders Rolo Montes and Robbie Merrell, Thrash Craft CEO and Stab High contestant Brad Flora, Lily May and Wil Reid, is interwoven with Lee’s own illustrations — his aesthetic thumbprint all over it.
The surfing is aspirational, but not too aspirational.
“We’re actually super average at surfing, but I believe we’re average because we’re the guys who are meant to do the other jobs,” says Lee. “We can’t put together two 8.5’s in a WSL heat, but we can make some trunks that will make you look good while you do that. Not everyone is Gabriel Medina and Griffin Colapinto: super-athletes. We’re like semi-super. Not even super, actually. Just semi.”
Then there’s EFWUN (pronounced F1, because speed and precision). Lee’s brand, but not a surf brand.
“We don’t believe in surf brands. You don’t spend your whole life in the ocean, so why insist on making everything ocean-oriented?”
The aesthetic? No neon boardshorts. No graphic tees screaming “SURF.” Instead, clothes designed for the reality of a surfer’s life — garments you can wear anywhere, objects you actually use.
Yes, that includes ashtrays.
“We want to make bronze ashtrays, dude,” he laughs. “Not because I push smoking, but because it’s a part of the culture. And I know a guy who makes bronze goods. It’s just about creating things that people in my lifestyle actually need to live. 3000 years from now it’ll still be good as new. Perhaps a pirate will pick it up in the bottom of the sea and call it treasure.”
But more than anything, EFWUN is about self-sufficiency.
“I’ve been dropped so many times by brands. I bent over backwards for them. So I figured, why not build something of my own? If I make my own and start now, hopefully, one day, it’ll support me, my family, and maybe even other families. And something that actually comes from Indonesia. Not like RVCA, Rip Curl, Quiksilver — they’re not even from here, but they literally have their offices under the same roof. Go through their catalogues and all their shit looks the same…. They’re not even stealing from over the fence — there isn’t even a fence to separate them!”
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