words & pictures: The Bistro and Grover

In 2002 I started studying teaching and quickly made a good friend in the course who i spent most of my time with at uni. His name was Cameron and he worked fitting trucks with new tyres outside of uni. He knew of my love for old surfboards although he didn't know much about surfboards himself at the time.

One day he arrived at uni telling me he had picked up a couple of old boards for me. Naturally I was stoked. I wanted to know all about them but he could only say that one was missing a fin and the other was really long with a fin like a shark tooth. He said he found them at a truck depot or something on the Central Coast when he went there to fit new tyres on some trucks. There was a ramp or something going into the shed and they were both under the ramp. He asked if he could have them and the guy said they could.

Apparently they had been used as signs or something at some stage as one had "Pipeline Bistro" written on it and the other "Kahuna".

Cameron lived about 50mins drive from me so I trekked out there one night to pick up the boards and he, his wife Amy and I enjoyed a meal of Apricot Chicken whilst there.

After dinner we went out to the shed and I was blown away. One of the boards was an old longboard from the early to mid 60's which has had the nose modified on a little (maybe a snap that had been fixed) and an old fin that has had the back cut out a little (hence the "shark tooth" shape). The other board was an old 7'8" Grove transitional surfboard from about late '68 early '69. It had a yellow deck with orangy-red rails and bottom and was in fantastic condition apart from the missing fin.

I was stoked and couldn't thank Cameron enough. Shortly after I had a fin-box put into the Grove and started riding it regularly when the waves were small. The Pipeline Bistro, or Bistro for short, was fun to ride but hummed from the fin really loudly on waves and sometimes you could even feel the vibrations through the board.
The Bistro was often pronounced Beast-row mainly due to my friend Russell (mentioned in an earlier post) and his American accent.