Zack Flores saw the potential in this old surfboard and he really, REALLY brought it out. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as the old saying goes, and trash can be turned into treasure with the right skill set. Zack Flores has the right skill set. In his latest YouTube offering, the shaper/surfer plucks a trashed surfboard from the garbage, takes it home, and breathes new life into it.
“This is bad,” he said, eyeing one disastrous rail. “Very very bad. This is a Jim Phillips surfboard — he’s the guy that taught me everything I know about shaping — and I’m going to do my best to restore this thing to surfing condition.”
Not just anyone could do this, though. Anyone could try, and anyone could certainly make it better, but Flores is uniquely qualified for the job. He’s a shaper of some acclaim, a guy who rides his own surfboards, and is interested in feeling new feelings. A guy who likes to tinker and take things apart and put them back together. A guy who likes to know why a particular surfboard acts a particular way.
Surfboards are pretty wasteful things, especially once you get halfway decent. Sure, you can have a surfboard for years, decades, even, but you will break a surfboard at some point if you surf enough. You’ll pop fins out, crease them, and snap them in half. You will hate yourself for doing it, especially if that board was THE board, but there will always be another board to snap. The problem with that, though, is that there are millions of us just chucking shit away every day when it could be reused and recycled. Upcycled, as the cool kids call it.
Aside from the environmentally friendlier aspect, for a guy like Flores, taking a dumpy old board and making it into something awesome is just a damn good time.
