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DRIFT Welcomes the Surf Art of Kristina Young from Peace of Wood

8/6/2020

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When we came across Kristina Young's gorgeous surf-inspired art, we immediately felt compelled to share her work with you. Lucky for us, she, too, was stoked to work with DRIFT on a selection of tees, tanks and sweatshirts adorned with her designs that celebrate the carefree surf lifestyle and especially women surfers. At DRIFT we feel it's important to know the human story behind our art, whether we wear it, ride it, or hang it on the wall- so read on!
Kristina-Young
"My goal as a surfer is to share as much stoke with as many people in the water as possible, to never lose sight of what it’s really about, to constantly push myself at every level, and to surf to rest of my life with so much gratitude."
Kristina and her husband Marshall own a shop, Peace of Wood, in Ocean City, New Jersey, where their art is on display through various mediums (wood, textiles, canvas), and is showcased alongside the works of various other local creatives. Her original designs adorn pieces of woodwork co-created by Marshall. She reproduces variations of some of those designs in clothing and prints. For Kristina, both art and surfing entered her life only a few years ago, but both have forever transformed her for the better. Now she's set on sharing the stoke with as many people as possible.

​Have you always thought of yourself as an artist?

I never started painting until I started surfing. I really never considered myself an artist, I just knew painting and creating felt so natural! The creativity and inspiration grew organically as my relationship with the ocean grew. 

​As an artist, I think my biggest challenge has always been believing in myself and putting myself out there in such a vulnerable way. It’s a process and I’m far from the end, but I’ve grown so much on this journey. When you start to believe in yourself, and share with the universe your true gifts, it’s amazing what can happen! I feel I’m in that chapter and really learning to embrace it.
Kristina-young-painting
Kristina working at her favorite place, the ocean. "My art has always been a release, a safe place, a sanctuary."

How did you begin making surf art?

The ocean changed my life and my path. I never started painting until I started surfing six years ago. The ocean inspired me in ways I never thought possible. It led me down my path as an artist and as an entrepreneur. I am forever grateful for all the ocean has given me. The ocean is where everything began.

What inspires your designs?

My art has always been a release, a safe place, a sanctuary. A place of peace in my mind as well as my surroundings. It is moved by the ocean, learning how to surf, and my love and respect for this beautiful earth. 

Painting grounds me, and brings me back to the core of what truly makes me happy. It is inspired by a life of simplicity and truly following your heart and your passions.

​My art has to be, and always will be, about stopping, breathing, and being in the here and now. I also just want people to genuinely smile when they see it! My main goal has always been to spread peace and joy through my creations. 

What role does surfing play in your life?

My relationship with the ocean grew so much deeper much later in life. I grew up with a huge fear of the deep ocean. I honestly wouldn’t go in past my knees! Such a huge fear of the unknown, it crippled me. 
My husband, growing up on the coast and a surfer, knew that I needed to overcome that fear. He knew there was so much out there for me to conquer. Six years ago, I paddled out for the first time, caught my first wave, and my life was forever changed that day. It truly changes my entire path.

I am incredibly grateful for my relationship with the ocean and how much she has taught me.  The ocean forced me to grow, forced me to conquer my fears. And in the long run, the ocean forced me to be in the moment, because that’s what she asks of all of us, when we are consumed by her. 

I am definitely still learning (forever learning!), but for me, surfing is about so much more than catching the best wave. Just paddling out, I’ve overcome so much. I’ve shared so many special moments out there with the people I love. There is so much peace out there if you truly tap in. I have so much gratitude for being able to share those moments in the water. 

I am completely in love with long boarding. I’d say my style is surfing big boards in small waves! I love the feeling of gliding across the face of the wave and the timeless style. Surfing for me is a time to slow down, reflect, and be in the moment. I think that’s why I’m so drawn to long boarding.
​

My goal as a surfer is to share as much stoke with as many people in the water as possible, to never lose sight of what it’s really about, to constantly push myself at every level, and to surf to rest of my life with so much gratitude. Sometimes I wish surfing came to me earlier in life, but I’m not sure I’d appreciate every moment as much as I do now. 

Shop the DRIFT x Kristina Young Collab

Come into the shop today to check out Kristina's wearable art- we've got a variety of tees for men, women, and girls. 
A couple of the tees we've got in the shop (DRIFT logos are on the opposite side).
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Brother Surf Crafts: Making Surfboards a Family Affair

11/7/2019

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DRIFT wants you to know the story behind your surfboards. Lately we’ve been collaborating with Brother Surf Crafts. Dave and Tom Bracht are a sibling team hailing from Ocean View, Delaware, a small coastal town with a tight-knit surf community. They want to be the go-to shapers for surfers who want a board that is 100% shaped and glassed by hand. 
Brother Surf Crafts
Dave (left) and Tom (right), the team behind Brother Surf Crafts. Pictured with their signature Pro-Fish surfboard.
Dave and Tom Bracht of Brother Surf Crafts began making surfboards only a few years ago. But thanks to a combination of expert mentoring, talent, and dedication to the craft, this family team is now shaping and glassing full-time, and have developed nine distinct board shapes to fit a wide range of surf conditions and abilities. Many of their boards are now on the rack at DRIFT.

​This October, amidst a solid fall swell, Tom and Dave passed through Rhode Island to drop off a few boards—including a custom Pro-Fish for Rob (similar to this one). After a day’s worth of surfing overhead waves and strong offshore winds at Matunuck, we all made the trek up to Pawtucket for dinner. Over dumplings and noodles at what might be *the best* Chinese spot around, Dave and Tom gave us the story of how they started shaping and glassing boards, who’s influenced their work, and where they want to go next with their craft.

The Origins of Brother Surf Crafts

Dave and Tom are lifelong surfers, but neither intended to actually create surfboards for a living. In fact, it was a cruel twist of fate that initially led Tom down this path, with Dave soon to follow. As Tom tells it:

I fell. I used to skateboard a lot. Like pools and stuff. And I fell and broke my hip. To the point that like, I didn’t know if I’d surf, skate, skim, walk… It was bad. And it happened right before summer. And uh, I needed something to keep me feeling like I was like in the water, even though there’s no chance. And we had a blank on our front porch…

Dave had bought Tom that surfboard blank- a plain white block of foam. He knew that his brother would be out of the water for a while (he was out for more than six months) and would need something to keep his mind occupied. The only problem? Tom didn’t know anything about how to shape a surfboard. But he was intrigued and had time to learn, so he sought out help from someone with experience. As luck would have it, such a person lived right in their small surf community: veteran shaper Brent Clark. In all, he’s got more than 40 years of surfboard shaping under his belt, including years shaping for Gordon & Smith Surfboards, and Innerlight in Florida. Tom explains:

 
I took the blank, went over and was like Would you teach me?And surprisingly, he said Yes! And Brent, what he would do is, he would tell me a step. I’d do the step, then I’d come ask him again, So, alright, what’s the next thing?And he’d be like, alright do this. And then I’d do it and... I just bugged him every so often. But he was so nice, ‘cuz he had this workshop at his house, and he would just leave it unlocked and you could go over and use his shaping bay, use his tools, like, whenever you wanted. And then after my first board he was like, This is something that you need to keep doing.  

It wasn't only Clark who took notice. Dave was actually incredulous that Tom could’ve shaped such a nice board on his first try. Says Dave: “So, Tom shaped it and I was expecting it to be like pretty bad. And he… brought it to [the surf shop] where I was working and I was like Nah... you didn’t shape this.” Tom asserted he shaped the board. Dave recalls, “It was actually good. And I was like, Dude, I actually think you have a talent.”
The shaping bay of Brother Surf Crafts
Tom in the shaping bay working on his very first surfboard.

​Glassing was another challenge. Tom took his first board to a nearby glasser, but the wait and the cost were both prohibitive. Meanwhile, both his brother and Clark were encouraging him to keep shaping. With a humble pride in his voice, Tom recalls that Clark in particular was pushing him to develop his talent. “He was telling people…You gotta meet this guy Tom, he’s better than me after three boards.” Tom kept honing his skills. But as Dave explains, “When you make a board, you wanna ride it, to learn.” That is, it’s not just about the fun of surfing your own board, but seeing how the board actually rides, so you can improve the next one. Access to quick and cost-efficient glassing became imperative. The solution? Dave took up glassing, and the two have been working as a team ever since.  

Learning to glass like a pro was not easy. “I’d done it once before and the fumes were so bad,” Dave recalls. Rookie mistake—he wasn’t wearing a mask. “I had a headache for like a week.” The first boards Dave ever glassed, he admits, were rough. “We still have one and I wanna burn that thing so I don’t have to look at it. It’s so hideous.” Dave glassed literally hundreds of boards before he felt confident in his skills. Today, he’s developed not only his skillset but also an aesthetic that is classic and refined.

​In concert with Tom, Dave created a color palette for each stock board they shape. For their Pro-Fish, for instance, they like to stick to a deep, warm color palette (as seen in the header photo and here, here, and here). For mid-lengths, Dave prefers subdued pastels (see here). The theme running through all Dave’s glasswork is uniform: minimalist and sophisticated. “We try and do stuff that’s just simple, classy, won’t go out of style ten years from now.”
Brother Surf Crafts Custom Mid Length Surfboard
Rob with a 6'11'' custom mid-length from Brother Surf Crafts


​Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

If the brothers’ boards are top notch today, it’s in no small part due to expert mentoring, not only from Brent Clark but also from other industry greats. Both Tom Dave have built relationships with experienced board builders who have influenced their shaping, glassing and overall process. One of them is Lynn Shell from the Outer Banks, who has hand shaped more than 30,000 surfboards for HIC, WRV, Superbrand, and his own line, Shell Shapes & Designs. Shell, whom Dave and Tom consider a close family friend, offered to take Tom under his wing and teach him his way of shaping. Tom remembers, “I spent like a weekend working with him. It was like, everything was so much better. My accuracy was so [much better]. I could make two boards exactly the same. And so, I credit a lot to him.”
Brother Surf Crafts with Lynn Shell
Tom was mentored by veteran shaper Lynn Shell: "We built what is now our Cavern Model, a board designed for barrels and step up waves."
​Tom and Dave also credit Joey and Tianna Mattos of Maker Surfboards with teaching them tricks of the trade. Joey shapes and his wife, Tianna, glasses the boards they build out in Maui. They’re a “sick team,” says Tom. Dave agrees: “The same passion that we had, is what they had”. Since connecting a few years ago, Tom or Dave have been on the phone with Joey on a near daily basis, exchanging ideas and learning from one other. He’s “been like a long-lost brother” to us, says Tom fondly. Over the years, Joey and Tianna have shared little tips here and there, things that might seem like not so big a deal, but, in Dave’s words, have been “a total game changer”. Simple things that the best shapers and glassers do, that make all the difference. And of course, those are secrets the brothers hold close to the chest.

Boards Made by Hand, Start to Finish

A key factor that sets Brother boards apart from a lot of what’s out there is that they are made by hand from start to finish. They make all their own board templates, starting off with chalk drawings in front of their house. “There’s these little kids that live down the street, and we have more sidewalk chalk drawings than they do,” jokes Dave. From there, Tom starts with a raw blank, cuts it out by hand, shapes it with a planer, and punches the fins. No machines here. From that point, Dave does the glassing and then either of them might do the sanding, plus some ‘secret’ final steps. Being brothers keeps them extra accountable for the resulting product: they’re hard on each other and don’t mince words. Dave has no problem telling Tom if a board was poorly shaped. And Tom remarks that for years he was “…pulling my hair out because I was really hard on Dave.” ​
Tom Bracht of Brother Surf Crafts shaping a surfboard
The first step to developing a new surfboard, chalk templates. Says Dave: "There's these little kids that live down the street, and we have more sidewalk chalk drawings than they do!"
Of all the boards they make, which ones really stand out? Though they’re up on trends, Tom and Dave simply look to produce original boards that are fun to ride. Tom acknowledges, “…the fish and alternative stuff is definitely in style right now. But for us… we’ve ridden fish, but we never liked fish.” Dave adds, “I actually hated fish.” (Truth: Dave and Tom are shortboard devotees). Yet today, the Pro-Fish is now their most popular selling board, arguably not just because fish shapes are trending, but also because Tom and Dave developed their fish shape into something that they and their local army of board testers would really want to ride. Same thing with the “Mind Expander” mid-length: they didn’t want to make a funboard or a mini longboard. “We wanted to make something that… you could actually turn,” Dave explains.
Picture
Gerry Lopez asked to take home one of their mid-lengths at Surf Expo. "That moment was crazy, really unexpected and just gave us confidence that we were on to something", says Tom.
Fish shapes and mid-lengths may be popular, but the brothers try not to compare themselves to others. “My thing is,” says Tom, “it goes back to, just focus on yourself. Don’t worry about anyone else. Just do your own thing, and you’re gonna be great.” Those words could ring true for just about any creative or entrepreneurial venture. But perhaps they’re easier to follow when you have a genuine passion for your craft. Says Tom, “we never thought ‘we’re gonna make this a business’.” It just evolved over time. Today their goal is to provide surfers “the nicest boards that we possibly can,” always 100% made by hand. 

​

Interested in a board from Brother Surf Crafts? A few of their boards are available online, but if you’re local, definitely come by the shop and see them for yourself. For more info: www.brothersurfcrafts.com
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Faktion Surfboards:   "I am a one man show"

7/12/2019

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Faktion Surfboards, Long Island, NY
Mark "Petro" Petrocelli working in the Faktion shaping bay
Today DRIFT is talking with Mark “Petro” Petrocelli from Faktion Surfboards in Oakdale, a small town on Long Island, New York. Petro grew up surfing on Long Island and moved to Florida after high school. That’s when he first got involved with surfboard construction. Today, he shapes and glasses every board under his own ‘Faktion’ label from start to finish. We’d been eyeing his boards for a while and finally made the trek down to Long Island to pick up a couple sick ones- a fish for Rob and a beautiful 9’4’’ log for the shop. One of the advantages to getting a surfboard from a local shaper is that you can put a real human story with the surfboard you’re riding. These are boards that aren’t made by machines but by experienced hands. We plan on getting lots more boards from Petro in the future, and even have a plan for him to come do a shop visit in a couple months. So here’s a little of the story behind Faktion.

DRIFT: How did you get into shaping surfboards?

Petro: I have been shaping about 13 years, but I have been building boards for about 20+ years. I lived in Florida and started airbrushing boards for Cannibal Surfboards In the late 90s. We were always slammed building boards in the summer months to take up to the Northeast. Sometimes people wouldn't show up for work and we had to keep things moving so I would learn their job. In the early 2000's I started shaping myself a couple of fish. This was around the time Lost movie 5'5 x19 1/4 came out and pretty much changed the path of the needle nose revolution. A few years later I moved back to New York and worked for a couple of local shapers here. It was 2006 when I started the Faktion label and it’s been a pretty amazing journey to where I am today. I am a one man show and do everything from start to finish myself.

DRIFT: We love how you put that, “I’m a one man show.” Here’s another question for you. A creator such as yourself usually has some influences.  Are there any shapers you particularly admire?

Petro: I like so many different shapers it really depends on the type of boards they shape. Some I like for their performance shorts, or it could be their fish or logs. A couple that stick in my head would be [Matt] Biolos of Lost of course, and Rick Hamon- he used to shape for Rusty and I would get the sickest shortboards from him.  

DRIFT: It sounds like you’re fond of shorter boards. Among the various boards that you normally shape, do you have a favorite style? 

Petro: I think I enjoy a performance thruster fish shape the best ‘cuz thats what I mostly ride and I feel is the most ideal shape for our conditions in the Northeast. 

DRIFT: So you must have shaped thousands of boards by this point so the next question might be tough- What’s your favorite board you have ever created? 

Mark: I don’t know if i really have a favorite one. I put 100% into all my boards and try to make them stand out from the rest. Pretty much I like anything that involves color.

DRIFT: We get it! For sure we’ll get some colorful boards from you next round. What about materials? Which kind do you typically work with?

Mark: I only work with poly. For me it’s all about performance and I feel that they will out perform anything out there. I know there are so many new materials out there now but a lot of the materials are strong but create stiff boards. 

DRIFT: Ok, one last question. You make so many boards for others, but when you are going to go surfing, what’s your favorite type of wave and board to ride?

Petro:  I surf everything, all waves, all boards. I enjoy it all. When I go to the beach I usually have about four boards in my truck so I’m ready to have fun no matter what the ocean delivers.
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The Story Behind the Photo

6/23/2019

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If you're reading this you might have noticed Drift has a new look! After months of work, we just launched our new website, which we hope will give you a better idea of what Drift is all about and what you can expect to find when you come into the shop. We're aiming to post most of our new surfboards on the site and in the coming weeks we'll also be adding other items to our online shop, to make it easier for you get your hands on your favorite Drift gear. 
Point Judith Lighthouse, Narragansett, Rhode Island
Point Judith Lighthouse, Narragansett, RI. Photo by Andrew Fisher.
We're especially excited to feature the surf photography of Andrew Fisher. Originally from southern New Jersey, Andrew moved to Rhode Island for pharmacy school in 2004 and never looked back. A lifelong surfer, he began carrying a camera on his surf trips around the world and quickly became addicted to creating images. He's now been shooting surf photography for 14 years. 

Andrew's stunning aerial of the iconic Point Judith lighthouse during a swell felt like the perfect image to capture the feel of Drift.  If you've met Drift founder Rob Jones, you likely already know that PJ is his favorite wave in the world- which is saying a lot, given how many surf trips he's taken! Though many things can impact your life's path, the wave at the lighthouse is one of a few factors that led Rob to lay down roots here in southern Rhode Island many years ago. We hope you enjoy this and other photos from Andrew, and if you'd like to get prints, definitely reach out to him!
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