Catching up with former shop employee Adam Lang and his impressive quiver
For avid surfers in the Nation’s Oldest City, a stint at the Surf Station is something of a rite of passage. Flagler College gradate Adam Lang was no exception to this rule. Lang started working for the Surf Station a little over 20 years ago in 2003, where he worked on and off for nearly seven years. When he wasn’t working in the shop, he was busy slinging tacos with our dear friend and neighbors at Nalu’s Tacos.
While St. Augustine wasn’t Lang’s forever home, surfing has remained a lifelong passion. His impressive quiver reflects decades of dedication to the sport, so naturally we had a few questions about his collection.
Where did you settle after leaving St. Augustine?
I moved to Hawaii in April of 2011. I finally had enough of listening to Jerry talk about how much he missed it, so I went, and never came back. I currently live on the North Shore of Kauai in the town of Kilauea. Specifically, I live in the Ahupua’a of Kalihiwai, above Kauapea beach.
How has life changed since the big move? How has your surfing life changed?
My life has changed a lot. People who know me from back in the day, mostly knew me as a party animal. I was kind of a menace. I worked for Jerry and I was a bartender at the Dunes Cracker. I got sober with the help, love, and support of Jerry Morgan and the Surf Station legend, Terry Nailz.
My surfing has reached levels that I used to think weren’t possible for a surfer of my lesser skill level. Having powerful, consistent, near perfect surf year round has opened doors to my style and abilities. I started surfing what East coasters like myself would call big waves about 4 years ago….Hawaiians call it fun-sized….sheesh. This past winter I tried to surf every swell that got up to 8-10′ HAW. Beyond that size, I’m not interested as it feels like life or death for me. For reference, 8-10′ HAW is about double to triple overhead, sometimes even 25′ faces. For these swells, I ride either my 9-6 Billy Hamilton single fin gun or my Dave Parmenter 10-0 single fin gun.
Tell us a bit about how you got started building your quiver.
I’ve always been really into whatever hobbies or jobs I take on. I have a slight obsession with curating beautiful collections, be it tools, surfboards, workout gear. I have always been the type of person to try as many new things as possible, so owning a lot of boards has always made sense to me. I believe that variety is a big part of getting better at anything you try in life. If you play guitar, try different guitars. If you surf, ride different boards. If riding bikes is your thing….and so on and so forth.
A lot of people would ask the obvious question: why so many boards? What made you want to expand your collection into the 30+ range?
In reference to your last question, I believe variety is a key to success when it comes to getting good at something. Owning 36 boards was honestly never the plan. I have a 7/11 quiver philosophy but I can’t ever get down to that many boards. On top of this, my wife surfs too, so owning more boards makes sense to me too as she rides a lot of my boards too. The 7/11 idea goes: 1-simmons, 2-fish, 3-shortboard, 4-mid, 5-gun, 6-log, 7-glider. Numbers 8-11 are there for rotation, experimentation, etc. Like right now, I own 6 boards in the 5-6 – 5-10 range. I’m in a phase of finding my ultimate fish right now. Once I have the best one, I’ll sell off the rest. I went through the same phases over the years with logs, gliders, shortboards, and mids. But now that I’m close to 40, my body is changing and I need to find boards more suitable to my age and athleticism. It’s like a never ending adventure for me.
I saw that you commented that most of your boards are custom. What are some of the benefits of buying custom vs. off the rack?
Yeah , almost every board I own was shaped for me. I own a few second hand boards shaped for others, and I own a few off the rack boards. To me the obvious benefit is getting the perfect board for who you are, how you surf, and the waves you’re surfing. I just don’t think that the hot board of the year from a big manufacturer is a one size fits all kind of thing. Downsides for customs are wait time, cost, and the price of getting it wrong and the board just sucks, which happens. I own a custom woodshop where my team and I make every piece of furniture, cabinets, and doors by hand for our clients. I’m all about close connections and custom work, so for me, custom boards make sense. They have more mana, life energy. The stoke of the shaper is in that board and it’s palpable. I call off the rack boards, or computer shaped boards, dead boards. Just implying no one really thought about them as they relate to your surfing experience. They’re just a piece of foam cut by a machine in a foreign country and glassed generically for a global population to consume year after year.
If you had to cut your quiver down to just 3 boards, what would they be and why?
Why would you ask me such a mean question? Hmmmm……I’d own a fish, a mid, and a gun. A fish gets me into all the small days with ease and still allows me to turn and move around the face. But fishes also handle barrels really well. The mid would be for both really small days, and days when Hanalei is 4-6′ HAW. They can paddle fast enough to get in early, modern mids RIP, and they glide over wonky sections to get you to the next wall…yet they’re small enough to still whip around. Living in HI, you need a gun. So having a gun gets me into the big days when the crowd drops off and the stakes, and rewards, are higher. Specifically, I’d keep my 5-8 Josh Keough Fish, my 6-8 Anahola special tri fin mid shaped by a close friend, and my 10-0 Dave Parmenter Gun.
