really old Sims board
michael crotty
Hey,
A friend of mine has TWO really really old Sims snowboards. They're made
out of yellow plastic and are roughly boat shaped. No they are not
snurfers, snurfers don't have any sidecut and are hollow. They are
considerably wider than a snurfer, maybe 12" wide. Also they don't have
the little traction ridges that the snurfer's I've seen had. They have
sort of wells along each side, that form ski like rails on the bottom,
and the center is raised athe the same height of the sides of the 'boat'.
The nose doesn't have a raised center portion.
I'm not sure if this is the way they were intended to be used, but my
friend has a skateboard mounted on the raised portion of one of them. The
skateboard is definately from the '78 skating surge (I think it was a
hobie mike weed), and also has 'skyhooks' mounted on the skateboard
which were also marketed during that era. He's actually ridden one of
these in the backcountry. I asked my friend what year they were and he
wasn't too sure. Apparently Salty Peaks was really interested in
displaying one of them in their shop, but my friend wouldn't have it. The
only indication that they were really made by Sims is a Sims sticker in
the shovel of each board.
Ever seen one of these? Think they might really be sleds? Any clues about
they're year/history?
mike
michael crotty
Patrick Michel
Well your in luck punk, because I worked for Tom Sims in Santa Barbara,
Cali4nia, you know where the cool people are. Any way the srtory is like
this.... Tom Sims was working with chuck Barfoot about 1980 and they where
developing a board that would combine the feeling of surfing with
skateboarding. Actually Chuck Barfoot came up with the idea of making a
boat shaped board with channels underneath to make it easy to turn. Tom
Sims mounted a skateboard on it and attached a rubber cord from the back of
the skateboard to the nose. That was the first binding system for Sims.
Some had sky hooks. they started making these babies and selling them
through ads in Action Now magazine around 1981. He kind of ripped Chuck
Barfoot off by not paying him any money. So Chuck split from Tom and
started his own company-Barfoot Snowboards. There were many pictures in
magazines of a 70,s skateboarder named Lonnie Toft who rode for Sims on
that board. They didn,t make or sell so many. The next year was the first
time Sims started making real woodcore swallowtail boards that worked way
better and made the yellow `ski`board obsolete. Any way keep it, and don`t
change any parts around from the original and it might be worth something
to collectors in about five years or give me one cause I need something to
scoop the snow from my porch with.
Peace out you little snow monkey and hang on to that plastic banana.
If you want any more info call the Sims office in Seattle 206 951 2700
derek jonson (DJ)
Steve Kotsopoulos
michael crotty <mcc...@cc.utah.edu> wrote:
>A friend of mine has TWO really really old Sims snowboards. They're made
>out of yellow plastic and are roughly boat shaped.
I have one of them too. Me and my friends modified ours, by adding
fins to the tail section (mine are aluminum fins), and improving
the bindings by adding bicycle inner tubes, in a setup similar to a
wakeboard binding system (the skyhooks were not enough for serious thrashing).
The skate deck on top is a Sims Lonnie Toft model, on all the boards I've seen.
We rode them in the early 1980's.
--
Steve Kotsopoulos M.Eng. st...@ecf.toronto.edu
Systems Analyst Engineering Computing Facility, University of Toronto
http://www.ecf.toronto.edu/~steve/