Retro done wrong. Very wrong. Okay, let's play nice and say maybe it could have been done better.
Retro done properly. Very properly. You didn't think we were going to take the easy way and just put up a photo of
John Belushi, did you?
We're not ones to reflexively declare that "it was better in the old days" or "all the new stuff is crap". As our music selections indicate, we like old stuff, we like new stuff, and we like sometimes painfully cutting edge new stuff. When it comes to windsurfing equipment, we've been unapologetic about how we think that some older boards need to stay locked away and kept from attacking unsuspecting beginners. And, we've extolled the virtues of some classic boards which still can be a boatload (pun intended) of fun.
We are as guilty as anyone else about lusting over new stuff. New stuff is sometimes demonized as the tool of capitalism which just wants us to consume. A good part of the reality in the little cottage industry known as windsurfing is that the people who make gear just want it a bit better than it was last year. Certainly, people like Dave Ezzy take a lot of personal pride in the stuff they turn out. If they can make it better, they will. Maybe, once in a while, the changes are cosmetic but that's okay, too. After all, we occasionally get a different hairstyle ourselves just for the sake of seeing something different in the mirror.
Sometimes, after all the changes and as much fun as the changes were, we pine for the old stuff. But old stuff can be a hassle -old bikes have scratches and dents and old boards have crappy fin boxes and mast tracks in the wrong place for modern sails. Fortunately, there are merchants happy to solve our problems for us by providing new things that look and behave like the old ones. So we don't look like idiots for paying a lot of money for a board or bike that looks and behaves a whole lot like the one we dumpstered ten years ago, we call the new item "retro".When the good guys and gals produce something "retro", they actually improve things a bit using lessons learned in the last umpteen years since the previous iteration.
We've seen a few boards recently that are retro, either by happenstance or design. Our friend, Dmitris Savidis, reviews a more obvious one, the T1 Thommen eXperience 125. He gives it a thumbs up as a versatile board. It has a winger pin-tail and a quad concave bottom.