If you've been hanging around Save Khaki United for a while, you probably already feel like you know Blaine Cook. He's been in front of our camera more times than we can count — woods in upstate New York, poolside in LA, that denim story from last fall. Somewhere along the way, "the model we work with" turned into "let's see what Blaine's working on." That's just how it goes when you keep showing up for someone. Over the years, we heard about the boards he salvages from the beach and brings back to life, and about a pre-loved sailboat he found sitting abandoned at the dock. This time we didn't ask him to come to us. We went to him.
Housed inside a shipping container, it's small and modest, but outfitted with everything he needs — bottles of resin, hand-built lighting rigged to examine the curvature of a board, all of it DIY in spirit. This is where he brings them home — boards that would've stayed lost otherwise, sun-bleached and sand-scarred. They leave looking almost new, and better.
Most of what's leaning against that wall started out as litter. They're soft-top longboards, the kind surf schools run through the wringer until they're too damaged to keep using — and then they're just thrown out.
"Nobody comes back for these,” he told us. “They get left in the sand, the tide takes them, and that’s it — trash to everybody else. I like remaking something that’s already been abandoned.” Blaine pulls these longboards out of the pile and cuts them down into belly boards — a shape that dates back to the early 1960s, when city “blackball” rules banned standard-length longboards at certain crowded SoCal beaches during set hours. Surfers hacksawed their blanks down to skirt the restriction, and the smaller, prone-ride boards that came out of it stuck around long after the rule did.
Late in the afternoon, Blaine walked us down to the water to show us the other project — a sailboat that had sat forgotten before he took it on. A complete refit, starting with the structural components — fabricating a new rudder and mast step from scratch — all the way through to new running rigging and a fresh paint job, inside and out.
Grateful for the afternoon, the stories, and — like always — for Blaine. Here's to the next one, wherever it finds us.
Still Images | Dan McMahon @imageheavy
Location | Far Rockaway, New York
Belly Board reference: https://surfmuseumhawaii.com/2024/10/19/what-is-a-belly-board/
