unRIDDLING GEEnius - Part 1
- jebshred
- Jul 14
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 3
PART 1 - The Backstory
When I was a kid there weren't many dudes as cool as Gee Rainbow. He road dirt bikes, sported a badass mullet, and he made his own surfboards. I only knew who he was because he manufactured shop-branded boards for BC Surf-N-Sport in Ft. Lauderdale, FL back in the early 80's... and that was the shop where I bought my first surfboards, purchased with money from mowing lawns. The shop let me put a 5'6 Twin fin by "Escape Surfboards" on layaway back in 1984. I mailed them pre-addressed envelopes with 15-20 bucks at-a-time, until a few months later it was paid off in full. That thing was so choice. Aside from a sweet airbrush that looked liked the bottom was exploding, it was doing something kinda new with the fins. It had a fin box for a center fin to go along with the two glassed-on side fins. I felt cool having a three-fin board at that time while most of the old guys in Hollywood were still riding single fins. This wasn't my first surfboard, so I knew what I wanted, and I CHOSE Gee's board among a hundred+ boards on the BC new board rack. I had no idea then, we'd become such good friends later in life.
That 5'6 thruster was fat and flat in the deck, with a flipped up nose. I've no idea what contours it had on the bottom, I just remember it caught waves really easy, and it went really fast. It was similar to my second surfboard, a used hand-me-down, borrowed from my friend Cory for like a year. It was also a 5'6 fat and flat speedster, made by an Australian manufacturer Hot-Buttered Surfboards. It was a "Rainbow" model with a beat-up swallow tail and a single fin on the bottom. I learned to shortboard on that Rainbow model and I think that's what caught my eye that day I went board shopping at BC Surf Shop. I saw the Gee Rainbow and my 7th grade mind made a connection that wasn't there. Hot-Buttered Rainbow model, Escape surfboards by Gee Rainbow, not to mention Rainbow Surfboards was also a popular east coast brand at the time. But when I held Gee's board under my arm for the first time, it just felt right. I was sold.
I think I slept that first night with my new board next to my bed and the leash on. I was obsessed. The deck had this amazing Journey exploding planet surfer logo on the nose. The logo design was stolen directly from Journey's Escape album. Gee just switched out the space ship for a silhouette of Shaun Thompson making a turn at J-Bay. But I loved that 5'6 Escape so much, I rode it exclusively for 3 years until it broke in half getting crushed in overhead shorepound at the Vero Beach Pier while on vacation with my friend George and his mom. I think we actually conned her into taking us there from Ft. Lauderdale so we could spend the night and get up early to surf hurricane swell.
Fast-forward to the mid-90's, I found myself hanging out at Gee's shop in Melbourne Beach a lot while I was finishing up my bachelor's degree at UCF. It wasn't too far from campus and the waves were super fun all the time. Then in 2000 I moved into the grandma suite next to the garage, in Gee's house, and he became my landlord. During that time he made me a lot of surfboards. Life was slow. We surfed a lot. There wasn't anything but dial-up internet, we didn't own cell phones, and we just decided we didn't want to pay for cable so we didn't even have television being out in the sticks of Mel Beach. I began experimenting with different surboard shapes. Gee was never short on innovation and looking back, he was doing things with rails and rockers way before everybody else. I was very lucky to live there and have that experience.
In 2003 Gee made me a 9'2 longboard. A 9'2 pin tail hybrid optimized for performance, but still capable of nose riding. I still have that longboard today, it's the oldest board in my quiver, and I still ride it often... because it's the BEST longboard ever made. It just is. This board does everything better than any other longboard I've owned or ridden. In fact, it's not even close. Gee's longboard is a magic board. And if I can figure out how to recreate that magic, the shape doesn't have to die. Because my old log is way past retirement age.
So that's where this quest begins... trying to recreate what Gee did from scratch. With no templates from Gee. Just a lot of conversation about what he remembers when making this board way back when, and what he thinks is going on that makes it so special. In his late 60's Gee just isn't set up to shape boards anymore, at any scale, so we knew we were going to have some obstacles making a new prototype. But I'm happy to say we found a way. And that folks, is fodder for Part II.
Below are some shots I found riding Gee's old board, along with some videos. I don't have a ton of footage riding this board, but since I've had it so long there are more than a few clips! The best thing about this shape is its amazing momentum. It just goes. Small waves. Big waves. In the sun. In the snow. It doesn't matter the conditions. It's best and most unique trait is it shreds the small waves with a small fin like no other longboard on the market. This longboard "fits" into Florida waves where takeoffs are slopey, but finishes are vertical. It has control and agility like a shortboard, and in conditions that it shouldn't. Why is that? What makes this board special? Check back for the next installment in the series. Hope you're surfing where you are!
