'96 or '97 A.I. Pro... Exacta
'96 or '97 A.I. Pro... Exacta
Bringing back the youthful recklessness of the nihilistic ’90s, with authentic and exacting detail. Mid-’90s emaciated Mayhems became lightning in a bottle under the feet of exciting, explosive young surfers like Chris Ward and Cory Lopez.
Two teenage miscreants, intent on making a mark in the surfing world, rode admittedly rough and rudimentary, but definitely radical, hand-shaped blades.
In videos and magazines, from California to Hawaii and beyond, they ripped anything they rode and admittedly made some mediocre Mayhems look better than they really were… inadvertently giving young surfers around the country a reckless, radical, relatable, misfit alternative to the rapidly homogenizing, mainstream Momentum Generation spearheading the awareness of …Lost Surfboards.
Another teenage terror, the late great Andy Irons, saw the noise being made and wanted to be a part of it.
We began building Andy and kid brother Bruce batches of boards in the summer of 1996. That winter, ’96/’97, Cory and Andy staked their claim at a small Hawaiian beach house at Log Cabins and proceeded to rip the place apart. In between the well-documented 5’5” x 19 1/4” fish sessions, the boys were ravaging the relative closeout out front, on radical, minimalistic, needle-nose, rockered-out, flip-tip Mayhems, with aplomb.
Multiple magazine ads, editorial shots, posters, and video sections were recorded. Andy even garnered a SURFER cover, which captured Cory carefully watching Andy from behind.
The boards were still a bit rough—hand-shaped by a kid in his mid-20s, still developing techniques and understanding of design.
We were not yet crushing the contest scene… that’s for sure. But with powerful surf out front providing plenty of push, they made those rudimentary Mayhems look like magic.
As the boys began to tour and attempt to tackle the world, Cory was our full-ride guy, with a complete quiver of …Lost/Mayhems. A couple built for Andy made it into his bag and off to Australia as well. One 6’0” 18 5/8” 2 5/16” minimalist slipper in particular, with glassed-on Aercore fins and purple POSCA paint pen art by Sean Spoto.
More posters, ads, and editorials followed—but not contest results. The board made it back to the USA and somehow into the hands of young SURFING Magazine editor Skip Snead, who held onto it for 25 years.
Fast forward to summer of 2023. Skip graciously returns the board to us in exchange for a multiple-years supply of fresh boards.
Young Griffin Colapinto comes to the shop and feels the board out: “Man, it feels amazing. I'd love to give this thing a whirl.” Ok… one session—but not without being documented! Down to Lowers we go.
Griff has one memorable session on the board—flowing and linking effortlessly, ripping with power and precision, easily generating speed and flow. More than 25 years later, the board looked great under his feet.
Our entire San Clemente team immediately asks to take a swing as well. But no. That’s it. Party’s over. It’s put away and that’s that.
But… stashed in a safe place was yet another 1990’s era A.I. Mayhem we had salvaged. Very similar in all design aspects, including needle nose, hyper-extended rocker, and glassed-on fins. Wanting to get Yago involved, we grant him one documented session on said board at similar-sized Lowers. On the lefts, he puts on an effortless show of flawless surfing. One session. That’s it.
We combined these clips with others of the local team riding multiple vintage …Lost team boards, built from the late ’80s–mid 2010s. Featured in the edit USED, we screened it live at a few parties to great applause, but as of Fall 2025, never released the footage publicly.
With overwhelming consistency, surfers who saw the clips of the AI board wanted to ride it—or at least have one based off it. It's taken two years, but we finally got busy and did all the work to painstakingly and accurately re-create the board with exacting detail.
Scanning the original board to the most minute measurements, then cut and shaped using blanks with the same blond timber stringers, glassed-on UltraLight Hex-core fins, and period-specific large-radius leash plugs. The dims are written in fractions and the Posca pen art is realistically re-created as well. Each board is fine-tuned and signed by hand.
Design-wise, the board is narrower, longer, thinner, and has a significant needle-nose “flip-tip” rocker with a noticeable hip and pulled-in squash tail that’s more minimal and radical-looking than anything being made today.
But a closer look reveals striking similarities to today’s boards: vee-deck to soft, round forgiving rails; single concave bottom to double concave through the fins and a slight blend of vee out the tail. The centerline and rail-line rockers are modest and smooth throughout the center, which is the secret ingredient for carrying speed.
If you cut 1 1/2” off the nose and 1/2” off the tail, then re-templated, you would end up with a board that is damn close to today’s standards.
For these reasons, we decided to create a size scale so surfers of various sizes can enjoy. We strongly recommend riding this board about 2” longer than you would a typical modern performance shortboard. We've included the volume in the charts to help find the right size, but expect to ride this board at a measurably lower volume than typical.
We all had to do that back in the ’90s… and it wasn’t always easy, but we survived!
'96 or '97 A.I. Pro... Exacta
An authentically recreated piece of …Lost Surfboards history.