Ryan Lovelace Surfcraft

What is your name? Your age? Where are you from?

Ryan Lovelace. 37. Born and raised Seattle, Washington. Been in Santa Barbara for almost 20 years.

How long have you been shaping surfboards?

18 years? I think 18 and change.

People probably know this already, but what was the first board that you shaped?

A 6’4” twin fish that was basically a 6’5”R skid with a swallowtail, call it good. 6’5”ASR. Yeah, it was a 6’5”C though because it was Clark foam.

What kind of surfboards do you specialize in?

If I had to classify, I’m probably the most specialized in midlengths, and then experimental - all shortboards and finless. I would tend to classify my shortboards more as experimental. More experimental than alt? No, because there's some normal ones. Normal-ish. But I think specialized-wise, midlengths are what I do.

Do you have any shaping mentors?

I wish. No. No, I don't wish, but no, I was self taught. And by the time anybody really kind of let me in at all, I already had my dance down. Any instruction I got was always at best passive aggressive, if not aggressive, aggressive - like insults from shapers, and it was maybe like three that I even know of within the first five years of my shaping. So, there was nothing.

Well, that said, what other shapers inspire you?

Honestly, the young guys. I mean, there's a handful of older crew guys, like Jerry Lopez, for sure. And different shapers for different reasons - like Mick Mackie for his passion and how real he's kept it and how out there he gets, and [he’s] unafraid to chase his thing. And Jerry and Rich Pavel for their finish shaping. But then, John Simon, guys like that, that are just chasing things down and trying different stuff and still doing it really high quality. That's more inspirational to me than most shapers, I think. I tend to just follow people that are so fired up, they can't stop. It's less about what someone does or how they do it, versus their motivation and passion for it - I think that’s what gets me stoked on people.

Yeah, I mean, it’s more conversation than this interview thing, but in this day and age, like Parmenter always says, we know what works and what doesn’t… For the most part, there's parameters - we know that not longer than this is good, not shorter than this is good. But then you get a guy like John Simon, or Burch or those guys that are doing different things within the parameters that already exists and it’s cool.

Yeah, it's encouraging, at the very least, and just exciting. I remember when I started shaping some older guys would come through and they'd be like, “it's really cool to see what you're doing”. I kinda didn't understand, but now I understand because you could definitely get in a rut, like you're shaping and you're creating and designing - not a rut, but you get stuck in a lane, right? I'm sure I'm capable of it, and I'm sure it will happen. Sure, I will make another midlength that is rather different from what I do. But even now, you see the FM is so heavily rooted in the Thick Lizzy - I haven't reinvented my own wheel in a number of years. I tend to have cycles, like three to four year cycles where I come up with something new. I'm about at that cycle now, but I don't know how often you can actually really hit the refresh button on your own stuff. So to see somebody else coming at it from their own new angle is like, oh yeah, f*%k, cool, okay, good for them, they’re on it and they're doing that thing, that's so fun. That is such a special time, when you're designing life. It's just cool to see other guys accessing that.

I think that's been a strong suit for you, though - the fact that you came up with these specific designs, and refined them through. The V-bowls was probably what really put you on the map, right? And that was really successful, and then you moved from that to the Lizzy, and the Lizzy was really successful. And then the FM…

I mean, I'd rather have four or five very successful singular models or designs done than one new one a year that's hot but then blows out - that's not satisfying.

I think it's also hard from a business perspective to do that. 

Totally. I was trying to explain to people that the model name is a concept. To me, it's like a basic, essential formula. All of the details can change and it's still that model. There's FMs that looks so different from other FMs, but to me, it's all the same model. I’m not talking about because it has a swallowtail and a wing and a 16 inch nose, that it's a disc flyer 18c - it's an entire spectrum. So a V-bowls can be a million different boards, and they’re the same board to me, because it's the same core idea. If you're accessing different points of surfing with different lengths and sizes, and rails and the like, it's all still the same model to me. I think that confuses a lot of people. Or at least it's not as clear cut as more business-y, [bigger] brands do, you know? But I find that interesting with Lovemachine right now… I have to explain why there's eight different FM's and they all look different, and you're like, wait, what? Why isn't it just the same scale? It's like that’s not what we're doing here. A blessing and a curse, I guess.

What surfers inspire you?

Well, clearly William Allioti, mostly because it's a really cool challenge to design for him and what he's trying to do and see what works and what doesn’t. And I can feed back what I learned through shaping for him and apply it to everything I'm doing. Ari Brown, I find very fun to watch, finless, Bryce Young, Ryan Burch - those guys are like a ringer, they're guaranteed.

That leads to my next question that you kind of answered, but do you keep that inspiration in mind when you're designing new boards or shaping new stuff? 

No, I think for me, I don't really get inspired by too many surfers very much. It's more about needs and wants that direct what I'm doing. There’s rarely something that I see somebody do and I'm like, oh, I want to shape so someone could do that… I don't really have that. I've never been good at creating wants and desires for myself, so I don't really have like, oh, I want my guys to do that. It just kind of goes where it needs to go, I let it flow. I put a lot of trust into not having a direction with my shaping because it just seems to work. 

I know you've been traveling, but lately it hasn't been anywhere other than here?

Well, I used to be all over the place. And a lot of people trip out that I kind of stopped, but once we started going to Hawaii for half the year it just kind of killed any travel bug that I had. So pretty much here, Hawaii, and California, and that's about it. At least for the last five years - COVID was a part of that, but I think it just switched. I had a routine every summer of traveling and it was just the thing. And then once we got married and then COVID hit pretty soon after it, just pouf - nevermind, just stopped doing that.

Would you say that you're just fulfilled with the places you’re at now?

I mean, there's obviously very f&*king cool waves. I'd love to go back to Morocco, I'd like to do X, Y and Z, but being half and half in different places it always seems like there's a timer on your days. I don't feel like I have three weeks to go spend somewhere. I'm like no, I only have this set window of time to be in this place that I want to be, so it's either I have this set window of time in Hawaii to surf my brains out and make some cool shit and go fish and just enjoy my time. Or I have a set amount of time in Santa Barbara to shape my brains out and get the shop in shape. And so I always have these constraints on my time and I don't really feel like I have free time to go and shape somewhere else. I feel like that probably will change now that I'm caught up on my list, because a lot of that was self imposed stress. With the list, I’d be like, I don't have time, I need to do right by my customers and get their stuff going fast because the wait was just too long. So I think there's a lot of guilt that stopped me from doing stuff. So we'll see what happens in the next couple of years if we pick it back up, but I’m really happy being in Hawaii. I'm good with that. I surf the waves I want to surf. I surf how I want to surf, I get to do all the things I want to do, and it's really the people. The only thing they don't really have there is a ton of surfboard blanks.

What are you currently riding surfboard wise?

I've got an 8’1” FM that's like the core of my quiver still - it's been like four years on that one board. I have a 7’8" FM that's really fun, it’s a Lovemachine one. I have a 9’6” FM, it's the other end of that spectrum, and then the 9’6” Big Pin. I've been riding a lot of Lovemachine boards because I don’t always have time to shape myself stuff, but I'll pick one off the rack and that's my new board for the summer, whatever. I may make myself a new 7’10” or 8’0” FM this year, but I'm really happy on the 8’1”. It’s still in really good shape too - the thing is indestructible.

What's your favorite wave in the world?

No comment. Yeah, I won’t say.  

A secret wave somewhere that you can't talk about about…

It’s not too much of a secret, but it definitely doesn't need to be less of one. 

What what are you into, other than surfing? 

Fishing definitely, fishing is my hobby. Outside of that, I really like making and working on boats - that’s a big one… Primarily out of want instead of need, when I have to do it I really don't like it, but when I want to do it, it’s very fun. That’s about my whole life right there… I like making things if I need it. I guess that's the thing. If I need something, I'm gonna make it. I'm open to all kinds of things as long as it's making stuff.

What's one song that’s stuck in your rotation of your playlist - cuz I know you go through some serious rotation of the same stuff?

“You Might Die Trying”, Dave Matthews Band. Live though. Not the album version.

Can we pick another song?

Not until you listen to it all the way through, with an open mind.

Since you're in New Jersey, of course, what's your favorite slice of pizza?

I don't even know if I know the names. I like that Talula’s spot.

Which one though - what do you like on it?

I really don't know. I’m open. The one at Wegman’s was pretty good. For like a dense, a bigger slice - so it’s like a meal, slice. It’s more West Coast style. Right? Exactly, it’s not pizza. Yeah, which is fine. You can put my answer is Pizza Plus [Fried Chicken].