You Can’t Get Barreled in Florida

Mark Petrocelli shreds. He’s been traversing the South Shore beaches for the past twenty years, honing his skills at various Central mysto pointy walls and high tide ledges with occasional pit stops in Florida and Indo. He’s a quiet and at times shy dude who is easily found by trouble, like ladies breaking into his apartment and texting lingerie-clad pictures of themselves with white wine while he’s in the city eating pizza or having part of a board bitten off after dropping in on the wrong Long Beach local. Still, you won’t hear him claiming his surfing nor the boards he shapes that others shred. He’ll mention it in passing and will only elaborate if you ask.

This interview was conducted in two parts, the first in person during the winter months and second via telephone in May.

MM: When did you start surfing?
Petro: At age fifteen which was a hundred and thirty years ago. I went out to Seasonings in Amagansett bought a board off the racks paddled out at Ditch Plains and got my ass beat.

MM: What kind of board?
Petro: A 5’8 G&S twin fin squash tail with a fabric inlay on the deck that looked like the old Q-Bert video game diamonds. Tommy Colla has pictures, he got it after me. I used to go hang over at Sailor’s Haven with my parents and this guy Steve Rose and his nephews started taking me to Watch Hill. They were the guys who really got me into surfing. I grew up in Oakdale and surfed Robert Moses. If you surfed New York twenty years ago the level of surfing was not like it is here today, but there were definitely some guys that really stood out guys like Gerry Erb, Chris Harmon and Shaun Valstrand.

Then I started competing in the ESA and got sponsored by Spectrum and Trac Top. At seventeen I graduated from Sayville high school, moved to Florida and competed down there in the ESA and NSSA. Went up against some pretty hard dudes like David Glasser and did ok, got a lot of third places. When I was down there I was sponsored by Rainbow and got boards from Doug Wright. I just wanted to be able to surf all year round and not in a 5/3!

After a couple years I was driving back and forth from New York and Florida bringing Cannibals up for AJ Finan, which is what got me into the whole board scene. That was the start.

MM: When did you first meet?
Petro: AJ I met right away, when I first moved down to Florida in 1990 before he even started shaping. We lived in the same apartment complex. He started shaping a year or two after that but I didn’t jump on a board until he was shaping two years or so. I was waiting. They were a little ruff in the beginning (Laughs)

MM: Was he the first guy you shaped with?
Petro: I got into board building before shaping. I started airbrushing first and worked my way up. People wouldn’t show up to do their jobs and someone had to do it so I’d learn something new and take over a job whether it was fins, glassing, glossing or hot-coating. This is right about when I shaped my first board. It was a 5’6 rocket fish swallowtail thruster but I had AJ help me with the bottom contours. After that I shaped a 5’4 swallowtail round nose disc. I rode that thing for awhile.

MM: This around the time of 5’5” 19 1/4?
Petro: Maybe even right before then but close to that era. Then I became partners with AJ for a couple of years.

MM: As a shaper?
Petro: No, as a business partner handling all the accounts, all the orders, and driving boards up the coast for deliveries. After a few years I cut ties with him and moved up here. Started working for Bunger airbrushing around 1999/2000 and worked for them for about five years. Then I started working for [Mike] Becker doing the same thing, airbrush and fins.

MM: Had you known Becker prior to this?
Petro: No, I didn’t really know him. I was just looking for work and knew he was starting to do a lot of boards and needed a good guy so I started working for him. It was a lot better of an environment than where I was before. Mike is very easy to work with and he pretty much gave me the chance to start Faktion. He let me use his shaping room which I owe great thanks for and that was the start of it.

My whole life I never really had a passion to be a shaper until about five years ago. I was really more into the overall construction of surfboards, learning the process from beginning to end in order to produce a superior quality product. After knowing all about construction it was now time to hit the shaping room and build my own label from start to finish. It’s grown into a business because it’s what I do every day, whether it’s labor or shaping. That’s how Faktion came about.

In the beginning stages of Faktion I used to barter for all my blanks. AJ from Cannibal used to head up the coast from Florida to NY with un-sanded boards in order to make his deadlines. He would drop them off for me to sand while he was in NY and then pay me in blanks which worked out great.

MM: How did you come up with the name “Faktion?”
Petro: When New Skool was closing me and a few others were going to open a new shop called Faktion but we never did. Once I started shaping I had the name and sat at the computer one night in Photoshop and developed the logo. When I was designing the logo the biggest thing in mind was for it to be visible from up the beach. And with the fleur de lis I think you can. It stands out.

MM: Where do you shape?
Petro: I have a shaping room in Oakdale and the boards go over here to Natures Shapes for glassing. Right now Becker is in the process of opening a new state of the art factory. I have worked in some really nice ones in Florida but this place takes the cake. I’m taking it day by day and orders are increasing consistently. I want to make some money and be able to surf. That’s what it comes down to in this industry. Especially being here in New York when the waves come up you need to be able to drop everything and go. That’s the lifestyle I’m leading now and is why I do what I do. If the waves are up and I hit the surf for six hours and then come back and work when I’m ready to. Surfing my boards as research and as a way of talking to people about them.

MM: You mentioned glassing a board this morning; do you do all your own glassing?
Petro: I use to until Eddie Fawess started glassing. I’ll give up a job if someone can do it better than me and Eddie is the man, he has been glassing for forty years and is a perfectionist. He’s worked for both Bunger and Phoenix and started working full time for Natures Shapes about two years ago. I want to put out the highest quality product that I can and my boards look and with the team we have right now the boards are looking unreal. I usually sand and polish all my boards too but Jake Korenik the polisher has been doing a bunch lately. He’s really good.

MM: What have you been shaping lately?
Petro: Everything. A lot of little grom shortboards, I just made a couple of little grom boards for my team riders Blake Gregor a 15 year old shredder from Long Beach and Andrew Brooke from Bayshore. Both these guy’s have been killing it in both the ESA an NSSA.

Having kids like this riding my boards is going to make me a better shaper. Right now my feedback has been pretty much friends and myself. But now to have this whole younger generation involved its cool because I enjoy building performance shortboards because that’s pretty much what I rode my whole life. But lately I’ve getting into some other designs, yesterday I shaped a single fin speed egg, a 7’4 kustom riffing off a Takayama template. I was never really into building these bigger boards but you need something for everyone.

MM: Do you have any interest in shaping longboards?
Petro: Not really. Last summer was the first summer that I put some time into riding longboards and trying to figure them out. But I really don’t have an interest to build bigger boards like that. It might be a good business move for around here but it’s not really where I want to be right now. I’d rather have someone who’s really into longboarding and who shapes them work for Faktion. This way I can concentrate on high performance shortboards and high performance fish. Longboard shapers are hard to find in New York, but if we were in Florida I could go through a phonebook and pick out ten or fifteen shapers who with ton of talent would do it in second.

MM: Why stay in New York?
Petro: There’s no place like home and because Florida sucks for waves. You can’t get barreled there (Laughs).

MM: Who are some of your shaping influences?
Petro: Different guys for different styles of boards. For shortboards I’d have to say Rick Hamon of Rusty. I used to get a lot of boards from him after the whole Cannibal thing as well as Matt Biolas of Lost. As for retro styled boards I’d say Larry Mabile. I like his boards the best and went with his style but sleeker with a little more rocker, pulled in tails and noses. I like making those fat retro fish too though, I don’t discriminate.

Here’s my whole trip on the fish thing. I’ve been performance surfing my whole life on thrusters and have been riding quads the last four years. The whole deal of building these retro fish for me is the craftsmanship. In the past you’d really only see this style of craftsmanship on longboards, the heavy glass, resin tint, gloss and polish, pinlines etc. You didn’t see any of this on the shorter boards except within say the last five years but now it’s really flooded out.

But that’s one of the reasons I started building them. It’s still a board I’d ride myself, it’s not nine feet but it can still perform in small to medium waves. You get to put the extra craftsmanship into them and people can ride that board and appreciate it but most still don’t understand the gloss, polish and pin lines, all the bullshit that goes into it they kind of don’t understand the technical aspect or whatever…the craftsmanship.

MM: What about the “R word?”
Petro The “R word” and surfboard building—Rush. Whenever that word comes into play in building a surfboard something usually goes wrong. If you have to rush it then you should maybe not build the board and just wait until you have the time or the guy’s ready to wait for it. I’m all about building boards with quick turnarounds, in and out, but at a steady pace, at my pace. Do the job right, do it once, finish the product.

MM: On the demanding nature of kustom orders…
Petro: It’s like if an artist was asked to make a painting of the New York City skyline and then someone sat over his shoulder and said ‘You need to put a window over here.’ Nah, Nah this is not how we’re going about it. This is how I see it.

It goes both ways. I was having a conversation last night with a guy who wanted to put this crazy artwork on the board which I’m not really into it. But do I tell the guy? Do I want to maybe even lose a sale because I don’t want my boards to look a certain way which does goes through my head? Is it worth the hundred or two hundred bucks? I want my boards to look nice and clean and don’t want big skulls on them but to each, his or her own. I mean, I’ve done them for people before but lately I’ve tried to talk people out of them.

MM: Do you listen to music while shaping?
Petro: All the time. I put the IPod on which has six thousand songs and it goes on shuffle all day whether I’m shaping or sanding I have the headphones on and I tune everyone out.

MM: Tell me about the inquiring customer drop-in?
Petro: Tommy Colla was surfing City Halls last week and started talking to this guy about Faktion, told him to come down to the Fish Frye, etc. So the following week Tommy and I went surfing at City Halls and we’re sitting around, waiting forever for a good set. Mike Salami is out and a couple grommies from Unsound. Finally a sick wave comes through, I take off get two pumps and this guy on a funboard starts paddling his ass off ready to drop in and I’m standing on the wave talking to him, “Are you serious? You’re really not going to go!? Right!! Right!?” Then he pulls out at the last second and snowballs the whole wave. I paddle back out, Salami shakes his head and Tommy tells me that was the guy from last week asking about getting a board! You know what? I’d rather have had the wave than made the hundred bucks! So then three waves later he drops in on Tom! We both looked at each other and could not stop laughing. Deep down it was killing us but at our age you must turn that energy around and laugh it off.

MM: Do you ride other shapers’ boards?
Petro: No, my own only. That would be like Kelly Slater paddling out in a Body Glove wetsuit. It would be stupid not to ride your own boards especially if it’s your own business just wouldn’t make sense. It was definitely tough for me in the beginning knowing I was sacrificing my surfing riding my own boards, took many attempts in the beginning to build myself a really good shortboard that worked for me, there were a lot of head games I played. In the end I figured it out and have made numerous magic boards for myself which is very gratifying. At one point I was so frustrated I was about to just give up the whole shaping thing but I knew it would just take time, stuck it out and I’m very satisfied the way the boards are coming out today.

MM: Current working quiver?
Petro: My standard everyday board which has replaced my basic shortboard is a 5’9 double fluted-winged swallow tail rocket fish with a deep single concave and is one of my favorites. I also just made a 5’6 “Frocket” thruster. (Petro is 5’8, 145 pounds)

MM: The Frocket?
Petro: Yeah, riffing off the Lost Rocket but theirs is a little different; they have a wide point forward with deep single under the front foot. My wide point is centered like a shortboard and with a single concave but so much under the front foot. I’ve had boards with deep single under the front foot and they’re fast and you feel the lift but when it’s bumpy it throws you right off. It’s probably the most fun board I ever rode, fast like a fish but turns like a shortboard . And then I’ve been riding a 5’4 sleeker retro-style quad called the Bullet.

MM: What’s your step-up or good wave board?
Petro: A 6’2 or 6’3 round pin or round tail for around here but in Indo a 6’6.

MM: Who carries your boards?
Petro: Unsound, Air and Speed and Mollusk Brooklyn who gave me a big break. Having my boards in Mollusk, up against these beautiful retro classics from these world known shapers was pretty big for me.

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Michael Machemer is a New York surfer, writer, photographer, curator and a frequent contributor to Newyorksurf.com. Michael can be reached at eataknish@newyorksurf.com

More Information about Mark Petrocelli and his shapes can be found by visiting www.faktionsurfboards.com

All photos courtesy of Mark Petrocelli/Faktion Surfboards unless otherwise noted.