Grain more as a woodworker than a surfer. Patrick, who already lived out here and is more of a surfer was like, ‘We should go do this.’” And yet, fall in love he did. Not with his wonderful wife, Aynsley Kate, who owns the Stick + Stone store that shares a space with the Grain Surfboards NY shop nestled behind a square of green on Main Street in Amagansett. That had happened years ago. No, he fell in love with the back-to- basics simplicity of crafting a surfboard (and skateboards, for the landlubbers) with his own two hands. “The use of hand tools—a spoke shave and a hand plane, and chisels” got Brian interested enough that he switched gears and moved to Amagansett with Aynsley and their two children after a lengthy training program to be part of the team to launch Grain on the East End. “You do use some of that with furniture, but it’s just a much more enjoyable experience, because you can work with your friends and you don’t need headphones and eye protection.” It felt almost like a tribal activity, he said. No stranger to the sea, Brian had previously worked as a sailor and sailing teacher out of Newport, and did boat deliveries to and from the Caribbean. He even crewed in a transatlantic race through the heart of Hurricane Gustav in 2002. According to his bio on the Grain Surfboards website, he caught his first wave at Waikiki on his honeymoon. With Theo Papademetriou as store manager, the two now run the woodshop where they custom craft boards, and teach others to do the same. There are five-day surf and skate workshops for kids throughout the summer, and there are also three- and four-day workshops for adults, where you can learn to craft a beautiful, sustainably-harvested board with Brian and Theo. Current safety protocols are followed, and the class sizes are limited. “We decided that the experience was just so awesome that we wanted to share it with people,” he said. “There’s a great surf community here, and it’s a unique product, but it’s really about the experience of making it yourself. I could make you a board, and you would love your board, but if you built it yourself, you would love it so much more, it would mean so much more.”
Courtesy of BrakeThrough Media/lululemon.
Brian Schöpfer was not expecting to fall in love when he attended a Grain Surfboards workshop with his brother-in- law, Patrick Fleury, in Maine about five or six years back. Up until then, he had been a property manager on a farm in Rhode Island. “Whenever a tree would come down, I would source the wood from that to make custom furniture. So, I approached my experience at
To find out more about upcoming workshops or to visit the store, visit grainsurfboards.com or follow at grainsurfboards_ny. To see Brian’s other handcrafted wooden items, follow @_stickandstone_BL.
30 • AFLOAT USA Hamptons Summer 2021
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