MEET DREW AND AARON AUSTIN OF NYC’S NEWEST SURFBOARD FABRICATION: KINGS GLASSING
Images by Aaron Austin and Paige Arneson
When I first moved to New York City, I noticed someone walking down the sidewalk carrying a surfboard, and out of all the havoc I saw on the street that day, the image of that board stuck out in my head.
I couldn’t wrap my mind around anybody surfing in the city, and while I had heard of Rockaway, I thought it was just a place for bartenders to get drunk on a Monday.
I didn’t expect, roughly ten months later, to meet Drew and Aaron Austin; brothers who grew up on the island of Maui, Hawaii, who are now shaping and glassing surfboards out of a tiny Bushwick studio. I quickly received a crash course on NYC surf culture, and through Drew’s constant laughter, I was educated on the pocket of hardened surfers who take the train out to Rockaway Beach, their fingers crossed for a good set.
Aaron started Kings Glassing in 2021 with Drew joining shortly after, and while it’s been a journey of trial and error, New York now has a reliable board fabrication duo. They are pumping out boards in the hope of catching traction within an industry that has never quite had a home in New York. Their boards are geared toward the fickle waves of the East Coast with graphics that reflect the environment around them, and while the East Coast is behind in the board-building rat race, King’s is helping to even the scale.
Eager to learn more about the process I stopped by their studio, and after I got used to the smell of fiberglass and resin, I learned all about Aaron's definition of gas station core, Drews's journey learning how to shape boards, and the meaning of the term, ‘haole’.
What was it like growing up in Maui?
Aaron(A): It's the best lifestyle for a kid because you're active and outdoors 365 days a year. It's community-based there and family is super important. What helped me in Hawaii was I was good at basketball. I was one of few Haole kids, meaning someone not of the land or not of the same breath. I was in the minority in a place with a history that causes locals to be hesitant with outsiders, but I never had any issues with local kids. Sports have their own language and culture so I was able to fit in, participate and contribute in a way that was respectful and also respected.
Drew(D): Everyone kind of hung out in groups and they would call our area Haole Hill. Our dad made us play sports and one time my soccer coach told me that I was lucky because when he was growing up they had "beat a Haole up day" every week [laughs]. He was like 45 years old, so a 20-year difference. If you were going to school in the 80s or early 90s in Hawaii you were definitely getting the shit beat out of you, but I hardly ever got called Haole.
Did you guys pick up surf etiquette through the lens of Native Hawaiian surfers?
D: I watched Haole dudes paddle in on Hawaiian dudes and they’d beat the shit out of them in the mid-2000s. You'd watch these guys paddle into the beach and beat them to a pulp, so we grew up around that and that’s how I learned to not do that. I do have some horrible memories of Aaron trying to teach me how to surf. He took me out on a huge day at a notorious spot in Hawaii when I was like eight years old and I remember getting held under and going over the falls. I think it's a right of passage for someone who's already had it done to them to do it to someone else. Aaron grew up adjacent to pro surfers, like some of the best in the world, as a little 12-year-old Haole kid. I think he got his ass whooped so he was going to whoop my ass in return.
A: You learn from the Uncles at the breaks you're at. Rockaway Beach will never have a true local like Hawaii does. There it's an Uncle or Auntie who goes out for their afternoon or morning session every day, like that is their wave and it was probably their parent's wave too. You'll see this especially on the South Shore of O'ahu. Some of the jetty’s on Rockaway have guys who surf it every swell but it's so inconsistent that they aren't out there every day. It's New York, people travel a lot and are gone for months at a time, you know? Auntie and Uncle aren't going to Bali for two months. They don't need to. It's a different level of respect that you have for someone that's there every day.
“Rockaway’s funny, when the waves are good the crowd starts to thin out. It’s the opposite of everywhere else in the world.”
What makes the East Coast break out at Rockaway Beach stand out compared to other places?
D: How shitty it is [laughs]. It's such a bad wave, but it's terrible 360 days and then five days a year it turns into a machine with some of the most beautiful waves you've ever seen. It's pretty incredible, but it’s a give and take. You're surfing a shitty wave but you're living in New York City, and there are really good waves that come through every once in a while, so that's a nice treat.
A: One year in October I surfed incredible waves for 10 days straight. I live for the fall on the East Coast, and from September to November I don’t travel. Summer is nice to go to the beach and enjoy it but it's a lake out thre. The Rockaway community is chill, and now that the boardwalks built up there’s stuff to do and food around. It’s a good vibe out there.
Are there any giveaways that someone is brand new to surfing?
D: A brand new $3,000 board and the person doesn’t even know how to carry it. Straight up you’ll see a brand new log flying through the lineup with no lease and everybody's screaming. The heaviest board in the water coming straight for your head. Rockaway has one of the kookiest scenes I've ever been in, but it's also the most diverse scene in the world. There are a ton of people of color surfing, which is unlike anywhere else in the world and that's really cool. It's the kookiest and the coolest, and it's kooky for all the same reasons as everywhere else. Here you have every single tech bro in the city of eight million people in the water with you.
A: There are a lot of surf schools at Rockaway, and you can tell a beginner is not comfortable being close to a jetty. It's scary. I've seen people completely freak out because they got pushed too close to the jetty and I've had to help them out. They’ll have panic attacks, not from the size of the surf, but because of these giant boulders in the water. Rockaway’s funny, when the waves are good the crowd starts to thin out. It's the opposite of everywhere else in the world. When the waves are manageable, shoulder and below, it's the most crowded. When it gets overhead or double overhead it starts clearing out and you're left with the guys that have been surfing their entire lives.
What's one thing you've taken from living in NYC that a surfer new to the city should know?
A: Surfers here are gritty because the waves don't get good that often and we have to really work hard. We take the subway, trek in the snow, and dial in the surf forecast, the buoys, and the wind. In Hawaii, you can finish work and go surf. Here you have to skip work to go surf the good stuff, so surfers here are very committed and are making that effort to surf consistently. To me, the local isn't the guy who lives out in Rockaway, it's the guy that lives in Manhattan but surfs five days a week. They should be a little more respected than the weekend warrior or the summertime surfer.
D: Don't step on anybody's toes. It's a big city but it's a small community, so you have to show up with respect and love. New York's more of a collective, a group, a community. Fostering that and keeping it around is super important.
Where does the name King's Glassing come from?
A: My buddy Keola Simpson gave it to me. I was pitching the idea to him and he was like “Name it Kings.” I wanted to name it something to do with royalty. I was thinking Goddess or something because the boards are elevated. It kind of says the quality in the name, and then he pitched it to me and I thought it made sense. Once I heard the name I knew it was it.
D: Kings County, Brooklyn. That's the main thing for me. King's is as New York as you can get.
When you started Kings did you have any experience working on boards?
A: I had no experience in a formal glass shop factory. I had been glassing with my buddy in Connecticut John O'Reilly who also had no experience in a formal glass shop factory. There weren't any opportunities for me to go work at a glass shop, so I had to create one myself. I reached out to some people locally to no response. I knew I needed a space to do what I wanted to do and I wasn't going to go to California and spend years away from my wife or friends in New York. This is where I live. I was committed to starting it here.
D: I was adjacent to a lot of shapers and board builders when I lived in California, but the door was always closed on me. I tried to walk into a glass shop to be at the bottom of the totem pole and they said no. The guy who ran this super established glass shop was 75 years old and he’d ask "Do you have any experience?" which I didn’t. He wasn't willing to teach and that was basically my only opportunity there. This was when Aaron was starting the business. I was already kind of on my way to New York so I said "fuck it, I'm going to go and do this," and I started sanding boards at Kings. Aaron taught me how to do it but we both didn't really know. We were just winging it, so everything has been self-taught out of necessity. There's nobody to teach us.
D: The dude called me from the glass shop in California later on saying “Hey, actually if you want to start working here you can.” I was like “No, fuck you guys. I'm already in New York and my brother started a glass shop.” It was crazy at the moment to turn down this legacy glass shop to try and do it on our own. I still feel like I'm not super accepted by the means of California standards, and I have friends who would maybe stick their noses up at it because it is off the beaten path. People have done it out here but nobody has done it in the same way, so I definitely have friends who don't know about it. In a way I'm still trying to prove myself to the surf world and industry, but fuck everybody, the pipe master this year is from New York.
“ In a way I’m still trying to prove myself to the surf world and industry, but fuck everybody, the pipe master this year is from New York. ”
How do you keep progressing your skills?
D: I was just chatting with this professional shaper that came by the shop. He's in the high hundreds, almost thousands of boards shaped, and I told him how many boards I've shaped this year and he said "Oh, you've shaped more boards than me." The best way to get better is repetition. You do a rail band over and over again and you build that muscle memory. Your eye gets finer and finer. You start to see lines. People get good at shaping by shaping thousands of boards. Nobody's board is good after three. They’re all shitty.
D: I've gotten good and bad feedback on our boards for sure. We took the first three boards I ever made out to Jersey on this fucked up day with crazy tides and winds and the boards still worked. People say you can surf a table, like anything works, so I kind of took on the mentality of fuck it, you can do whatever you want with these things. The main problem out here is getting boards under good people's feet. In California or Hawaii you're able to get a board to a ripper pretty easily, but there are no semi-pro surfers in New York, and if there are it’s very few, so that's a challenging thing for sure.
Is there anything that makes shaping for New Yorkers unique?
D: People know what they want in here, kinda like how somebody knows their Deli order when they go in. They come to me with something exact. Maybe it’s something they've ridden before, but something they know they want in their quiver. Also, people have money out here so they have every single board they want. They'll drop $2,500 on a board like it's nothing.
A: In Hawaii, it's a little different. You just ride whatever you have, but in New York, there's a big surfboard culture. People are interested in surfboards, and it makes sense because our waves are so fickle. You need to have your quiver completely dialled if you want to be surfing year-round. You need a board with more volume in the winter because you're wearing a lot more rubber. You also need a summer log and a step up in the fall for when the waves get really good. That's what I learned about surfing in New York, like I completely dialled in my quiver. I rode two boards in Hawaii. I rode my shortboard and my longboard. That's all I had for years. I have probably 30 boards now.
When you label a surfboard “East Coast Step Up” what does that mean?
A: That's a model that Drew has been working on specifically for the waves we've been surfing. I think that's really important for shapers. They should be shaping for the local waves. It’s a board you can take to Puerto Rico or Hawaii, but Drew is dialling in that board for the waves we are surfing the majority of the time. It’s a step-up board that you can get in on waves with earlier. They are quads that allow you to grip the waves through these steep drops, and they have a little more rocker for the steep faces.
D: [laughs] I wish I could shape that board, but I've been struggling so much with getting it dialled. It's like building a Ferrari, but trying to do it with only your hands. That's what I'd equate it to. You're making the highest performing machine you can. New York and Jersey have a crazy wave when it's good. It's critical and the level is high, so you need a board that can master all these things.
Aaron, why do you think there are so many shapers out there but not a ton of glassers?
A: Shaping can be pretty addicting. You're refining a model, testing it, and it's a lot easier to shape a board in terms of cleaning up and the space you can do it in. All you need is the foam blank, a planer, and some other tools. With glassing, you need the resin, the cloth, and all the colors. There's a lot more to it. Also, shapers have always gotten all the credit for board building. A complete novice to surfboard building probably thinks the surfboard shaper glassed the board too.
How much math and precision is involved in creating boards?
A: I use a ruler for sure, but it's not too calculated. I like it to look like it's been done by a human and not printed on a piece of fiberglass. People want surfboards to be perfect but they aren't going to be. Even a surfboard shaped by a CNC (computer numerical control) machine is being scrubbed by a human, so there are mistakes and human errors in that computer-made board. You don't have to ride a completely perfect board. Really, you can ride anything.
D: People are always like, "Oh, there are so many numbers," but there aren't that many numbers. You can make it as complicated or as simple as possible. If you can divide by two you're typically pretty good.
Tell me about the demand you guys have now and what you had originally?
A: People see us making the boards locally, so hopefully people will start reaching out to us as the local guys to order customs. Now that we're here people’s ideas for a new board can happen a lot faster than they were before. It's a lot of work to drive to New Jersey or Long Island to get boards glassed. Even within the city, it's a lot of work. You have to load up a car with these super fragile boards and drive across the city after work or on the weekends to drop them off. We just hope to make it a little more accessible.
D: We're as busy as we can be. We're in an awkward stage where we didn't predict to be this busy, so now we're in this growing pains phase where we need to expand and get out of here but we also don't know if we're going to continue being this busy. We don't know what the precedent we're setting is because we're the only people doing it. We don't know if it's here to stay or what, so it's a little scary journeying into that, but we're busy right now.
Are there any aspects of working with your brother that are difficult?
A: I'm eleven years older than Drew, so we didn't spend a lot of time together growing up. It's a big age gap, but now Drew's a business partner and I had to learn how to treat him like a business partner. We're working really well together, but there are always those projects that come along where we have different ideas. It's mostly about communication and talking because everyone builds up different ideas in their head of what things should look like. I'm very very grateful for this time I'm having with my brother. It’s not like we're making up for lost time, but it's definitely unexpected time through this business. We've gone on surf trips together before, and we've spent quality time of course, but building something together is pretty special [fake cries].
D: It's incredible. He's my best friend, and now we're in a 400-square-foot studio working together every single day. We're sweating and hot and in terrible conditions and we're still as happy as can be with it. We’re stoked to be doing it together. It feels like there's not that many people that get an opportunity like this.
Is there anything you've learned about each other in your time working together?
D: Country music [laughs]. I hated country music and he played it in the studio for the first year we had the shop. I wanted to blow my brains out at first but now I love it. Do you want to know what I was listening to before I came over here? Country music.
A: I didn't know Drew is such a hard worker. I knew he had a passion for surfboards because of the community he was hanging out with in California, but since he has a degree in computer science I kind of just saw him doing that. He reminded me of a story where he had this project in school where you shadow someone in a career and he picked Peter Labrador in Maui who was a ripper and surfboard shaper. Drew chose to shadow him and follow what he did, but then my parents put him in a different school so he never got to do that project and he was super upset about it. He had that interest in surfboards at a really young age, and now I see his work ethic and passion for shaping surfboards.
Where does the aesthetic of your boards come from?
D: I remember Aaron and I, since we have a background in creative shit, had mood boards for everything. I had a mood board full of Andy Irons, and it was pretty clear the trajectory that we wanted to go down with the flames, barbed wire, spider webs, and tribal. It’s the most core thing we can think of in surfing and it was the peak of surfing. Since then nothing even comes close to it, so we're trying to do that justice. I don't know if we're even close, but it’s Andy Irons forever for me.
A: The area where our shop is is very industrial with lots of deliveries and pickups, so it's what I call gas station core. I love all the big moving trucks and hand-painted pinstripes as well. The flames I did as a one-off, and it dominoed. All these things were built into the aesthetic of surfing already. Guys like Peter Schroff, who’s a big inspiration, were doing it in the 80s. I like trying to modernize it a little, not completely retro.
What are some other things you look at for inspiration?
A: I think graffiti since I'm using spray cans. I don’t use airbrush because of the space I'm in and the quality of the paints. A lot of guys are using paint cans now instead of airbrush, so I’m always looking at graffiti and the colors they use.
D: A lot of my inspiration comes from Aaron. I get really pumped on how hard he works and it makes me want to work even harder. Really it's just dudes who hustle hard. That's a big thing for me, like who's working the hardest and who is doing the most to the best of their ability. There's this kid John Simon who I know from Santa Barbara who's a machine. He'll shape eight boards in a day. He's a monster, and he's younger than me. He's one of the only young people that I know who is shaping boards proficiently.
Aaron, it seems like you went into glassing viewing it as an art form, do you think it lost any magic when it turned into a business?
A: No, I wanted to wake up every day and go to a shop to work on something. With surfboard building you're building something, giving it to someone, and it's maybe the best day of the year for that person. The stoke they have when they get that board is crazy rewarding. I also love the blue collar aspect of it. The word boutique is shit, but I'd rather have the shop be more boutique than a big factory making a bunch of CNC boards. I want to be mixing the colors, doing the resin abstracts, and spraying the flames.
If you could go back to the beginning of the journey with Kings would you change anything about what you did?
A: Doing more research about raw materials. We don't have a surfboard supply shop like everyone in California, and I have to buy everything and do the research. I probably spent too much money on things I didn't need and the resin we were using, but there aren't a lot of people I can ask. There’s no blog post where I can find that information. Now people ask me where I get stuff, and I'm not gatekeeping. I'll tell them where I get my tape or whatever because I know how hard it is
D: We still haven't figured out being on the fourth floor. That's a huge hiccup [laughs]. Space is your number one enemy in New York, and it's pretty wild to feel that every single day. I bump into the walls every single time I'm shaping and stuff is constantly falling off the walls. Everything is so jimmy rigged and fucked up in the shop, but it's cool. It's what makes it our shop. It’s a big pain in the ass most of the time, but I've come to love it.
What does it mean to have Pilgrim, arguably the biggest staple of New York surfing, embracing you?
A: When I started Kings I was not looking for any help from Pilgrim. I wanted to build something completely my own that wasn't dependent on sales from them, but Chris [Gentile] at Pilgrim is stocking some of the best designed and made boards in the world. I realized if I'm going to do this and help Chris build boards in the East and help Pilgrim stock boards, I have to be doing some of the best glassing in the world. When we started putting boards in Pilgrim I was like "We have to get to that level."
D: It's huge. It's world recognition. I knew Chris would put boards in there from some of the guys that use our space, but to have his support has been huge for us. I never thought world-class surfboards were somewhere we were gonna be. Obviously, we strive to do our best but to be in consideration is cool. Having a figure like Pilgrim and Chris supporting us gives us a lot of confidence, but we are still learning and getting better at the same time.
What's the draw for other shapers and glassers to come to your studio?
A: New York's a cool place to be and everyone wants to come hang out for a week or two. It's the slices of pizza, concerts, and whatever these guys want to do while they're here. We're going to have an open door policy as Kings grows, and if we're doing way more boards then why not let one of the best glassers come work with us? Pilgrim also creates the draw. Chris has built one of the best surf shops in the world, speaking aesthetically and what they are carrying, and they’re like ten years old, so it's these relationships that he has built up over the lifetime of Pilgrim that are going to bring people to New York.
D: There's just so much to New York. I love how different everybody is and how nobody cares. I bus tables on the weekend and it's cool getting to work alongside kids who are coming straight from basement raves still high out of their minds. Nowhere else is that happening. So many surfboard builders are in their dark shaping bay not talking to anybody. We’re able to go out in the world, into the city, and see a bunch of different things all the time. That's the sickest part of New York, and it’s a huge draw.
Where do you see Kings in 10 years?
A: My big big goal at Kings is to have employees in the future and create a board building community. I want to be able to pay a livable wage to that kid out in Rockaway that's super passionate and wants to pursue this, or I want them to be able to start their own surfboard label and make boards easier through Kings.
Check out Kings Glassing HERE
Check out Drew Austin Shapes HERE