Board Shorts
SURF 64 PRODUCTIONS 2007
Running Time 52 minutes (36 minutes bonus footage)…

The only thing more annoying than listening to some cocky teenager pontificating about what’s valid and what isn’t in today’s surf spectrum, is a pretentious, ukulele-strumming baby boomer rubbing it in our face about how much better things were back in the day before thrusters, the internet, and the DEA, and how we clearly don’t understand what it means to be a ’real’ surfer. Obnoxiousness….ZZZZZZ.

Thank God Will Lucas doesn't play that card. Instead, this 100% soul Melbourne Beach, Fl, filmmaker taps only the most classic characters belonging to some of the oldest and richest surfing regions on the coast—including Ocean City, MD, Cape Fear, NC, and Florida’s Space Coast– to bring us BOARD SHORTS, the third in a series of tell tale East Coast documentaries tracing our unique development as a subculture during the'60s and '70s. Utilizing a cornucopia of archival 8 mm footage, still photographs, video interviews, and newspaper clippings all melded together by Lucas' astute narration-Board Shorts lets first-person accounts with East Coast Surfing legends Hall of Fame members like 'Balsa' Bill Yerkes and Yancy Spencer III, along with pioneers like Mike Spencer, Carl Hatch, Gary Ferguson, and many others paint the picture of what must have been the greatest-certainly the most rebellious-times to ever be a surfer on this coast. Divided into chapters and juxtaposing events like the Vietnam draft with the psychedelic takeover, Draconian beach ordinances with Southern hospitality, Board Shorts offers a look into a rich, blessed past, and parts of it are worthy of nothing less than having their own spots on The History Channel.

While a bit redundant at times, this film is certainly suitable for any surf connoisseur's DVD collection. People featured here present their case honestly and without a hint of snobbery or conceit, as one of them sums up: 'even with all these changes, the spirit of surfing has not faded.’

"By Matt Pruett