A Busy and Exciting Month at Hawaiian South Shore

It has been a pretty exciting month here at Hawaiian South Shore, with a bunch of new arrivals, some celebrity visitors, and lots of stoked customers!

The month started off with a big shipment of new Firewire models, including the most anticipated El Tomo and Sci-Fi 2.0. The staff here was super excited to get our hands on these boards, and so were the store regulars, who quickly came in to check out the new models.

Right around when the boards were delivered, Chris Grow from Firewire happened to be stopping through Oahu. He came straight from the airport to the store to check out the inventory, and then we ended up doing an official launch on the Slater Designs Instagram page.

It has been fun developing a relationship with Chris Grow over the past few months. I got to know him at the Surf Ranch when I was there late last year, but apparently he knew about Hawaiian South Shore long before we met. He had been following our surf industry news videos that we used to do with Kaipo Guerrero, and those videos were actually one of his inspirations for his popular Shred Show on YouTube. When we first met at the Surf Ranch, Chris was super
stoked and told me all about how rad our videos were, and how they helped shape his show. It’s pretty cool to meet and collaborate with someone who I have
become a fan of, and to find out that he is also a fan of us!

While Chris was on the island, I ended up having dinner with him and Firewire Shaper Dan Mann, who also happened to be here on Oahu. We went to Tsukuneya on University Avenue, which is a great place for some ono grinds. They are both super friendly and down to earth, even though they have done some pretty big things over the years. Chris was a big-time land developer before he joined Firewire, and it turns out that Dan Mann used to ghostshape for JS and helped oversee their US factory, back in the old days when our shop was first carrying JS boards. We chatted about the quality controls used by JS then and now, and also about how Simon Anderson used to get his boards done in the same factory.

I remember that on the 30th anniversary of the creation of the thruster, Simon came into Hawaiian South Shore and we did a meet-and-greet event to celebrate. Great memories! Around the same time, Harley Ingleby also landed on Oahu. Harley is a multiple-time world champion longboarder and the man behind the Harley Ingleby line of boards that we carry here at Hawaiian South Shore. He just got married and is here on his honeymoon with his new wife and baby girl. They stayed in town for a few days, then headed to the North Shore, where they are currently posted up and scoring epic waves with light wind!

While Harley was here, he was gracious enough to stop into the shop to talk story and record a few videos for us. He talked about Thunderbolt Tech and why he decided to partner with them, as well as his various different board models. All of those interviews will be available on our website for you to check out.

I also got to have a surf with Harley, which was super fun. We surfed Kewalos and it was pretty small, but we had a chance to talk story and try out a bunch of different boards. Harley brought a twin fin that he has been working on and that he will hopefully add to his lineup of production boards. Right now there are only two of them in existence, but I got to try one and it was super fun! He also showed me a pin-tail, six-channel board that he is working on, as well as a few other shapes that he is considering adding to the Harley Ingleby quiver.

I can’t wait to see those boards on our rack and under the feet of our customers!

While Harley was here, Yu Sumitomo also happened to have a stopover on Oahu. Yu San is the man behind the Thunderbolt Technology. He was on his way from California to Japan and found a cheaper ticket that stopped through Oahu. Since he was here, we decided to go to dinner at Duke's. Local pro surfer Ezra Rodriguez ended up coming along too, as well as Kai Sallas, who also has a line of boards through Thunderbolt Tech. Sitting and chatting with the whole crew was super exciting because they essentially represent the cutting-edge of surfboard design and technology at the moment.