Born in the ’80s, the '89 Herb is a piece of surf history that still holds up as one of the most dialed-in high-performance longboards ever shaped.
The design started when I was shaping for Christian Fletcher and Herbie Fletcher tossed me the idea of building some boards for him and some of his friends. He loaned me a McElroy-shaped Herbie Thriller model, I rode it (my first time longboarding), and immediately knew there was something special there. With Herbie’s templates and vision, I refined the design and started shaping a run of boards that blended flow, speed, and performance like nothing else at the time.
Not long after, Joel Tudor and I crossed paths. We’d swap boards in the lineup—he’d ride my Herb model, I’d ride his Takayama and a friendship formed around that shared stoke. Fast forward a few decades: at a tradeshow, Joel spotted some of my late-’80s inspired longboards and said, “I want one of those.” A few months later, I shaped him his first '89 Herb—the exact same model I’ve kept alive by building myself one every few years for over 35 years.
The magic of the '89 Herb is balance. It captures the best of both worlds: the glide and trim of a ’60s log, blended with the foiled rails and sharper bottom contours of the mid-’80s shortboards—without the over-rockered, knife-thin approach of the ’90s. The result is a longboard that paddles easy, trims fast, and carves when you put it on rail.
It’s not just a board—it’s a bridge between eras. A design with roots in surf history, refined for timeless performance.
👉 Ride the board that helped shape modern longboarding. Ride the '89 Herb.