For the last 20 years, Shane Bonifay has ridden nothing but Liquid Force, and all the while he’s continued to push the sport in his own unique way. Truthfully, Shane’s impact on LF and the sport as a whole can’t be measured, but we figured it would be cool to get some perspective from the man himself. We asked Shane to pick six of his favorite boards and give us a little info on each of them.
This was a prototype board Jimmy Redmon sent me when I was 12. Usually you can’t ride prototype boards very long because they aren’t reinforced liked a production model, but because I was so small, I was able to ride it a lot. Before that, I went to the ‘97 Nationals and really wanted to ride the prototype because I loved the shape, so LF sent me the graphics and I got a local dude at the mall to airbrush them onto the board!
Hands down, my favorite board and binding setup ever. The gold frame was placed in different spots on the board every few hundred that went through production. All of them used beautiful Joey Meddock and Josh Letchworth photos from Lake Powell. No one else was using real photos on board graphics at this point. I might be one of the few wakeboarders that put a picture of themselves on their own board … me and Shapiro, I think!
If you look at the graphic, you see the kid standing at the corner of “Pointless” and “Incomplete.” Incomplete was the first full-length video I made that year. The board was my first that I shaped and helped design just for me (rather than using an existing shape). The Subjekt was a bold board that had scary cupped fins, and the tip and tail had sharp points. Video sections with this board included Boombox and Free for All.
This was the second year Drew from …Lost surfboards did graphics for Liquid Force. At this point, I was starting to get more attention for being a pro rider rather than for just being Parks’ little brother. This was the board I started filming for 12 Honkeys with, and I was riding a lot with Danny Harf, Erik Ruck, Shawn Watson and the crew. That’s what started the idea of Pointless.
An amazing Orlando rapper and artist named Swamburger did this graphic. He was always pushing his art and music downtown, and I’d regularly buy his stuff. I finally had a chance to show his work to LF, and they agreed we needed to use it as the graphics for my board and boots. Swamburger also did the song for the Collin Harrington video Box of Fun.
I remember I wanted to get the art that was used for the graphic after I got the board, but then realized how popular Blaine Fontana was back then and couldn’t pull it off. It’s one of my favorite graphics ever though. This was around the time I was filming with Sean Kilgus for Butter Effect.
