“I usually just call it a “double oop” because people can’t figure out how many spins it is. But honestly, I spin 450 degrees, so it’s between a 360 or a 540, but I call it an alley-oop 5. In halfpipe snowboarding, it would be called alley-oop 360.” -Albee Layer
Albee Layer sat down with Surfer.com to do an interview solely about a single trick….thats how groundbreaking his 540 Alley-Oop landed in Maui has been to the surf world.
Part of the magic came from Albee’s unique board design that worked more like a snowboard. Reminds me of the twin tip ski revolution spawned by a similar inspiration. He described it this way to interviewer Todd Prodanovich:
“I tried to make a surfboard more like a snowboard. We just made the thing symmetrical from nose to tail. Like, they’re indistinguishable except for there’s more rocker in the nose. And we put grab rails, these little indentations, around all the sides. But it’s trippy because you can almost put the fins on either side of the board after it’s shaped, which was our goal to have that kind of symmetry. We call it the “Interstate 69,” because it’s the same on both sides.”