THE FREAK FLAG BEAN BAG
There’s almost nothing better than watching some of the best surfers in the world rip the boards you built. We had that pleasure last week when Mason and the Ho family dropped their “Magic Bean Bag” edit featuring our Lib x …lost exclusive Freak Flag Bean Bag. Skip to da vid!
The story of the FFBB from Lib Tech Co-founder Pete Saari:
“Working with Matt Biolos is always fun and interesting. A few years back Matt sent us up some weird seventies colored, flat, round double enders called Bean Bags. Mine was a green 5’6”. We were stoked to get the surprise boards but, the shape was as funky as the name and logo. Cannon Cummins our local grom got right on his and was catching waves like crazy and flying down the line everywhere. I didn’t actually ride the thing for about a year… when I did I fell in love with it instantly. It was amazingly fast… speed is absolutely everything in our soft summer waves and some of the fickle spots that we ride that are almost always smaller than you’d hoped. It became my ‘secret weapon’ longboard substitute at hike in spots where the log can be way too heavy or sketchy to carry. When you hike in you never know what you are going to get wave wise and I ended up riding the Bean Bag in all kinds of conditions, big and small. The small wave speed was amazingly fun but, on bigger days with some juice in the swell all the energy coming out of the wide tail was a bit wild and challenging to keep under control.
After riding it for about six months I asked Matt if he could make a Bean Bag with a narrower tail to make it just a bit more versatile and quick rail to rail without losing that magical speed and playfulness. Matt got excited and mentioned something about a guy in Florida with the same input and we didn’t hear from him for a bit. A few months later Matt presents the “Freak Flag Bean Bag” winged version with a super cool logo package and some tripped out psychedelic resin tint art work for our design and production crew to sort out how to incorporate into the build. The initial logo had a skull on one side and a weed leaf on the other… we loved it, but our sales squad got scared and asked for something a bit less radical, so we settled on some nice groovy peace signs. The winged version was everything we hoped it would be… still fast and fun, but now it actually had some of Matt’s world tour performance mojo in it and you can take all that speed and do amazing things with it in a nice wide variety of conditions. Most of our crew has FFBBs in their quivers at all times these days… this little freak stick can turn an average day into something special!
Move forward to this spring and Matt sends a 5 2” Lib Tech Freak Flag Bean Bag over to Hawaii as an “Easter Egg” for surf legend and the still frothing charger Mike Ho. Mike gets on it and has some fun sessions we hear about and see hints of…
Then, Mason who seems to ride and rip just about every condition on every board imaginable inevitably get his hands on it and has some amazing fun sessions. Mason tells Matt he absolutely loves it and that he has five minutes of footage and a full edit in the works…”
“Brah, I honesty can’t even comprehend how fun this board really is. I am baffled. I works like nothing I’ve ever owned. You can rip it, do little tricks on it. Cruise it and ride it like a longboard. Im blow away how good it really works” ~Mason Ho
Check the full @riordanpringle featuring @cocodabarrelkilla and fam maxing the fun and performance meter the Magic Bean Bag… aka the Lib x Lost Freak Flag Bean Bag.
“Make sure you stick around for the hang five challenge, and Pops, Mason and Coco dualing it out for precious tip time.” ~Matt Biolos
A radical small wave design based on maximum surface area for lift, stability and unbridled speed in tiny surf. Inspired by the original “double ender” Bean Bag, Lib Tech’s “Freak Flag Bean Bag” features a refined, winged outline for tighter turns, added bite and faster transitions rail to rail. Tip-to-tail vee bottom, for forgiveness and on rail surfing in the smallest of waves. It also features a flat (low center of gravity) and stable deck, with forgiving rails. This board is meant to be surfed very short. Unlike most extremely wide and short boards, it has the ability to be surfed aggressively from the tail, and up onto a rail, without sliding out… “Get off the Couch, toss your LazyBoy and fly your Freak Flag!”
