david town, ricky muniz and the flothru d-fin skeg pig fin

below are some flothru fins and some Phin fins for sale

below chronicles some of the history in these fins re-emergence. these pictures of david town's fins are in reverse order of development... makes for thought. what follows is: how these fins came back into the spot light. and a few words on their perceived function on a 10' marc andreini shaped surf board. also, a few words on their upcoming availability for fin boxes. surfapig.com is the first site to offer these fins for sale.

back in 1996 i went into santa barbara's beach house surf shop and saw one of marc's boards hanging up with this style fin.

after i released INVASION! from planet C marc came into my life. i was so humbled, as i had seen his boards while experiencing decades of santa barbara and san francisco surf. it turns out marc is an enthusiast of cheeky humor and "not taking surfing seriously".  a glorious union. prior to my involvement with bing surfboards, i had ordered a board from marc. the original board i ordered wasn't the one this fin came on. the second one was. ... enter BLACKSTOKE II. thank you marc andreini for enriching my life. thank you roger (of beach house) for having the OWL hanging from the ceiling. so stoked my mind works the way it does. i saw this fin, remembered who was associated with the label , waited for the appropriate time... BAM!!!

david town is a maker.

david's scetch in honor of marc's design.

my experience on this fin design is directly associated with surfboard that is somewhat of a "malibu chip" design. or not. not sure how to call it. what it is... is the "blackstoke II", psyched on its performance. the board, combined with the fin, is pure butter. it is a known fact that butter makes EVERYTHING better. except arteries.


i digress... it is my perception, from my experiences, that this fin contributes to a board's performance in the following ways: it functions as a "normal" fin while in trim. it functions as a "normal" fin going into and out of turns. the flothru fin holds my 200 + pound frame on the nose with confidence. one thing i have noticed is : a feeling when implementing an exaggerated stall bottom turn. while experiencing this, the flothru stalls easily. my feral pig takes a serious commitment to achieve what the flothru blackstokeII achieves effortlessly.  conversely, one could say my bing feral pig has more drive. yet, i can't say my blackstoke II lacks drive.

david town and ricky muniz are making these fins currently. to some, it might seem strange that two different people are making these fins. i don't think so. after i got blackstoke II from marc back in april of 2012, david inquired about the fin. he made one. this was summer of 2012, as i recall. time passes. i ride this board on and off for 2 years. enter summer 2014. ricky got a hold of it, and it inspired him. he goes back to puerto rico. he hand crafted and glassed on one of these fins to an AMAZING board. around the time ricky is making his board, i am writing an article. writing the article inspires me to tighten up this webpage and change things up a bit. i ask david to make the flothru fin for sale on surfapig, and i ask him to make my "Phi-n" (more on this later) that i designed. now as time goes, two amazing craftsmen are making these fins. david and ricky's fin must be different. as i believe neither of them "copied" marc's. marc's fin is a muse for these fins. i am honored to know both of these gentlemen. i am psyched to offer these fins on my site. i am super psyched to be running one in my bing feral pig. i can't wait to switch between my "Phi-n" a flotrhu in the same session!!!


the photos below were poached from ricky's i.g. feed. they show his fin and board in his waters. NICE!!!!

i'll post up here and on instagram when the flothru and the Phi-n are available for sale.

blue panel blasting!!!

chris of P.O.A. films shot this back in june.i was so enamored with this blue panel board then. i was feeling the design of it. everything about an old no-name board that carried a significant amount of momentum appealed to me. shortly after this video was shot, i got back on my trusted old friend , mr. feral pig. i recall getting back on my feral pig and having my mind blown. it's amazing how old is new and new is old at times. super stoked on this footage. thanks chris!!

hello thursday. hello tatsuo takei

i blasted this monday, still un-molested thursday. shocking.

early this week, i realized i'd have today off from work. i checked the weather, checked the surf... felt like the universe was coming together in some magical way. i half expected to see a unicorn walk out from the bushes prior to me paddling out.

snapped the pic below while i was almost tearing my wetsuit trying to get it on as quick as possible.

came in from my sesh to take a few pics for a sec.

my thinking unicorns were going to come out of the bushes had everyting to do with 1) being a father of a 4 year old daughter... 2) realizing my great friend Tatsuo Takei was about to show up and shoot this session. for the un-initiated, tatsuo is a MEAN shredder. a proper traditionalist of the old school. i first met tatsuo 18 years ago when he took a photo of matt plummer and i at the queen. two decades.
tatsuo spends time here and in japan. he is working on some AMAZING projects. 4 projects that i know of that are NEXT level shit. and he is a sage of patience. an amazing human. he apprenticed under mr. grannis and uses the same equipment mr. grannis did for shooting photos.

tatsuo has me involved in one of his projects. i am psyched. honored.

kordory and the surfers journal did a little piece on tatsuo. here it is below.

i love october.

hello monday. today's session was glorious. wide open faces. one could really gain an understanding for their board today. super stoked. needed this session. scored some PERFECT ones. so STOKED.

love after noon sessions.

seriously.

bout to get this made. art wizard jason_c_arnold is finishing this patch up. PSYCHED.

yater

back in '96 i moved to santa barbara. i only lived there 5 years. in that time, i surfed a ton of epic waves, and met a grip of people that shaped my life forever. plummer, klemman, the potter brothers, jeremy and seth of the beach house, hilbers, brom, cooper, and hatzikien (among others). plummer intoduced me to seth that introduced me to brom that introduced me to the crew of legendary surfers that inhabited the "funk zone". i was surfing the point and hanging at the beach house when i wasn't reading and writing theoretical maths. eventually clyde beatty wanted an inexperienced newbee to huff resin in his glass shop. i enthusiastically requested and environment that wold rot the effort i had been putting into my mind, and perhaps slowly rot my cells. i started working at clyde's. hot coating and routing fin boxes. that was so great. i would study math and surf all day, help build boards at night. during that time, i was hanging with brom a ton. we build his "surfenginez" website. that was rad. i was surfing the shit out of brom's 5'11's and gene and tyler's logs. i was stoked to get to know mr. rich in the capacity i was. also i helped skip landscape his yard. that was an honor. most of all, i got so see ferndod quite a bit. those days were amazing. dan and i would show up early in the morning and see ferner lurking in the bushes checking the point, we'd end up beside him coughing after smoke had gone into our lungs. the best part of those sessions was seeing mr. white out in the water. i'd paddle up to him and say: "mr. white"... he'd return a : "mr. black". shit was all time. while spending time at beatty's factory, i saved it from burning down after gramuel dam and john botched a roofing job. john had cooked the roof too hot and thought shit was good to go. he split over to lauren's rig to grab a template. i showed up to see if gramuel wanted to shred later. i saw no one up there, and a roof burning. my luck of looking for gramuel saved the day. shit was crazy. now looking back, some of the craziest stuff was the fact that renny and lauren were the backbone of it all. renny built that stuff. the roots of renny go so far back. i've never even rode a board renny shaped that felt good to my surfing style. i've owned one (the floating drifting seacucmber) , and rode a few of my friend's. regardless, in that time...renny and i didn't become friends. he asked me a few questions once. when i was around him, i didn't feel like he was some big time guy. it was like he was just an average man. he lives honestly and cares about his thing. if he would have been a flower grower, he'd have approached it the same way. he is a genuine person.  i am honored and humbled to have the life experiences i do. seeing these pictures of renny speak to me.

good morning thursday.

caught a few fun ones yesterday.

@barnacle_ahoy 's fresh @deadkooks 9'9"

me brethren casanova sorted this epic sled from eden. 9'9" 224 pig. casanova and eden's colab. SICK.

rabbit's fin

i first met rabbit and junko a few years ago. they came to california for a surf trip. rabbit had a hurt ankle but he walked all the way down to sliders with junko and met up with me. it was a clean un-crowded day. we had breakfast together and have stayed in touch. rabbit is my japan surfapig correspondent!!! my good friend chris of poafilms is over in japan right now. before chris left for japan, i asked him if he'd hand deliver the fin to rabbit. he honored my request. it's so rad to know rabbit is just as enthusiastic about pigs as i am. i was very happy to give this fin to him. it comes off a Lance Carson board i had shaped back in 1999 or 2000. the story goes back further though. back in 1996 i was walking on the beach at deveraux looking for sea glass in the tide pools. i found a Lance Carson rake style fin all covered with barnacles and tangled in sea grass and kelp. i took the fin home, sanded it and replaced the busted metal pin. i used that fin in a few of my logs that had boxes. it turned a couple of them into magic boards. in particular it made this one log Matt Moore had shaped me into an amazing board. eventually the magic oozing from that newly found old washed up Carson fin made me feel like i needed a Lance Carson board. So finally in 1999 or 2000 i got my Carson. Rabbit's newly acquired fin was glassed into it. Lance's cabinet making buddy built the fin for Lance. I surfed that board with this fin glassed in it for about 8 years . The board was great. I recall many of fond sessions on it, from it's maiden voyage at sandspit, to epic days at rincon, malibu and Chinese harbor out on the islands. eventually i wanted to see what that magic fin i found would do to my carson. it felt like i was breaking some fundamental law of the universe... cutting rabbit's fin off my carson. but i have always lived like a crazy person at times. the fin is cut off, the box is dropped in, the board isn't made any more magical. kind of like ..."huh?" i ended up trading the carson board with the rake fin in it for a wing nosed jim philips pig. such is the way of SAMSARA. super stoked my buddy chris delivered this token of friendship to my good buddies rabbit and junko!

below junko is surfing

below rabbit is surfing

below is me on that Matt Moore log with the magic Carson fin in it. Tatsuo Takei shot this of me at rincon, back in '98 or there about.

here we go

i can see fall in the way the sun shines in the morning. i smelt fall the other day. i love the fall.

Phi-n, Flothru, Pig Fins, D-fin, Mike Black, Surfers Journal, Shape by Number.

Below are the fins David Town and I are collaborating on. The Phi-n and The Flothru. The Phi-n is a template I designed using a fibonacci sequence. I built a golden rectangle up to the 8th number (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...). Then I drew an arc. I went in 8 units and up 8 units from the arc. This became the center of my next arc. The Phi-n has a tremendous amount of drive. It has a low height to base ratio. The Phi-n has a tight turning radius compared to The Flothru. We use the Kunamo bearing system in the Phi-n. This bearing system makes installing this fin so easy. This bearing system also gives us the opportunity to have an extremely large base. The Flothu fin was originally designed by Jeff White for White Owl surfboards. In the mid to late 90's I saw this board above the counter in the Beach House in Santa barbara. It was an Owl that Marc Andreini had shaped. I would stare at the fin and wonder how it would go. Eventually I had the honor to commission a board from Marc with a flothru fin glassed on. I love that board and really enjoy the feeling of the Flothru. My affinity for my Bing Surfboards Feral Pig and my love of the feeling of the Flothru led me to knocking on Dave's door. My experiences with the flothru have been amazing. The fin feels like anyother D fin while you are in trim. It holds on the nose and is trustworthy while trimming through steep sections. I can notice the most significant effect of the design elements when transitioning directions. The Flothru pushes back in bottom turns less than my Phi-n does. The Flothru has a wider turn radius than my Phi-n. I love the Flothru in powerful waves. I love the Flothhru in small waves. I love The Phi-n in powerful waves, I love my Phi-n in small waves. It is great having the pair for fins for my pig. It feels like I have two boards!! Scroll through the fins to see all that are offered!

do you need a surf a pig patch?

follow these 6 easy steps, and you will have your needed patch:

step 1: read step one, proceed to step 1.5

step 1.5: email surfapig@gmail.com see if i still have patches. if i return your email with a "yes" , then proceed to step 2.

step 2: grab two envelopes. address one to -> mike black p.o. box 614, Silverado, CA 92676. address the other to your self. include postage on both envelopes. proceed to step 3.

step 3: fold and place the envelope addressed to you inside the envelope addressed to me (mike). do not seal the envelope. proceed to step 4.

step 4: make a choice. if you would like one patch, place a $5 bill in the envelope addressed to me that also has the envelope addressed to you in it. if you would like 3 patches, place a $10 bill in the envelope addressed to me that also contains the envelope addressed to you. seal the envelope addressed to me. proceed to step 5:

step 5: place the envelope addressed to me in the mail. wait anxiously.

notice the detail on the patch is slightly off compared to the art submitted.

want the best pig ever to be made, ever? contact bing surfboards (sales@bingsurf.com). ask for a feral pig. for real. get one with a box and throw a Flothru or a Phi-n in it!

...projects...

chah!!!

0g style, patch secure