Cute and Deadly Surfboards

Life sure ain’t groovy and full of love and hot spices when you’re a millionaire professional surfer whose image sells boardies by the container load. Like, this is business! Ozzie Wright, the nearly 30-year-old inspiration to artists and surfers worldwide, had been riding Insight sticks for 11 years when his primary sponsor Volcom sorta said, Hey, we’ve been cool for a while but now that Insight are doing clothes, we’d dig if you got off the Insight sticks. Insight boards offered extra green but Oz and Volcom are like family and he’s not going to engage in behaviour that’ll bring any tears to the faces of the people that matter to him. So, one night last year during a party, ironically enough for Insight’s short movie festival 300 Seconds, Oz asked his long-time shaper Thomas Jensen, a 20,000-board vet, if he’d go partners in a new surfboard label. He didn’t have to ask twice. Over lunch at the Coffee Club in Mona Vale (Oz had a caesar salad; Thomas drank beer), the deal was struck. And with the logistical support of surfboard manufacturer Onboard (whose factory spits out Merricks and Insights), the world now has Dope Comics surfboards. Although you can get customs, Thomas and Oz offer four stock shapes: Highway to Swell, an all-rounder; Bunny Fang, a wider, thicker standard stick; Batmoboard, Oz’s favourite shape, a wee punter complete with stinger; and Shark Attack, a slightly less radical punter. “Oz wanted the boards to be different to anything else on the market,” says Thomas, drawing so hard on an Egyptian cigarello his face swallows his cheeks. “We wanted good marketable boards.” So what do you get for your $720? Well, see, Oz is into volume in his craft so they’re thicker, the rocker’s low so you’ll fly down the line, the tails are wider, all but one have single concave for max lift and the rails are boxy, all for speed and flight. All good. If you’re into Oz’s art (and who isn’t, let’s be frank), the sticks are covered in his graphics. For an extra 40 skins, they’ll whack on a limited-run graphic or if you’re really waist-deep in green, for two thou’ Oz’ll engulf your ride in original art. And don’t expect to see too many Dope Comics ads in the mags. This is a low-budget program, marketingwise, stories like this about as exposed as they’ll get. But so serious is Oz to see the label succeed, he even went on a sales run up to the Gold Coast. Imagine the stars in the eyes of the surfshop owners when the original Wizard of Death came into their store spruiking his wares! Like, Of course we’ll buy your fucking surfboards, man!