Steven Garceau, the inventor of the BordzUp system, says his design for the rack and holding system came from necessity. With a house plagued by active riders, he had decks all over the house. With a background in manufacturing, Garceau wanted to think up a simple, clean design that would hold boards with minimal space and reliably so. The design he came up with is simplicity in the works. Debuting at ASR in September the BordzUp GRS has already been elected as Finalist for the 13th Annual ISPO BrandNew Awards. I got in touch with Steve after ASR. We shared some words and he sent out their GSR1000 snowboard/longboard model for testing. How do you test a board rack? You put lots of boards on it and see if it

As it comes out of the box, the rack doesn’t seem like much: some sliding things, some rubber things and a swivel arm system attached to a aluminum rail. It takes gravity to make this rack really shine. Mounting was easy -- two screws and I was done. It was simple getting the rack straight. I didn’t even need a leveler, just drilled it into a stud and kinda slid the arms up and down. Spacers on the back make the rack seem to lift from the wall. No “assembling”: I just put it on the wall and I was looking at it. Without a deck in it, it still appears clean and simple. Not obtrusive at all the arms just fold down and its waiting arms just rest. As if waiting for a deck.

I started off by mounting one of my nicer decks to see how it could look, aesthetically. I pushed the deck between the arms, let go and it just held it. Now stop me if I sound easily amused, but really-- a rack this simple and attractive? Until now I hadn’t seen one. The rubber mounts hardly detracted from the pristine deck it was holding. 44” and 9” across and the rack held it solid. I pushed it up a bit more and the rack held tight. Simple to reposition and the deck strain seemed to be wholly taken by the rubber stoppers. No touching the wall or rails the deck from afar just seemed suspended.

Next, I mounted the smallest deck I had in my quiver at the time. Measuring at 24”, the deck still made contact with all the stoppers and held tight. Small deck and still no falling worries! As long as all contact points met the deck edge, the GRS system did its job. I literally went through every deck in my quiver from smallest to biggest, seeing how it held them. Simple entry: just lift/lower and the arms grab. To remove, just lift and they release. One-handed loading and removing is possible with most decks. The thickest deck on the rack was still held tight by the stoppers but, honestly, I was probably overloading it. Next I threw in my snowboard. The rack held tight with no damage to the edges -- just perfect. No worries of knocking it over and cleaving my foot in half.

So, taking a bunch of decks in and out of a rack doesn’t really constitute testing and, as a product tester here at the ‘fish, I pride myself at breaking, defiling and damaging anything I am luck enough to get in my grubby mitts. So, I used it as my daily deck holder for a month. I thought maybe it would get annoying. I thought maybe it would slip while loading or unloading. It never did any of those. Just a quiet reserved board rack that did its job reliably. As a day-to-day rack holder, it held up to a month of intense usage.

Then, I used it as a show rack for the largest board in my quiver at the time, a Kahuna Creations “The Duke” -- a hardwood deck with a beautiful finish and real heft. Weighing in at ten and a half monkeys, the deck is about 57” and a little under an inch thick. You do the math; it’s a solid, heavy plank. Would the deck stay in the rack? Would the rack stay on the wall? I mounted it. As always, it took less effort than eating pie and just as pleasing. Then I sat there for about two minutes and realized it wasn’t going to rip out of the wall as I watched. Sadly, it never did. One of the rubber stoppers creeped a bit, but resetting the deck and pressing the rail in solved that issue. No more creeping and it never did fall down. I had some neighbors over who had seen this specific deck before they saw it on the rack. They commented “that looks nice is that a new deck?” I replied, slyly feeling a bit like an obsessed longboard homemaker, “no, but it’s a new rack!” So there, the rack had fulfilled all its duties. It held decks, detracted little from the visual appeal of the deck and was durable.

With a moderate price for such a stylish rack system, it’s definitely a solution for someone with few decks. The model comes in a dual-arm system that can accommodate two decks on one rack. They also sell the racks in bulk, with quite a discount. So, if you have the money and you like your decks enough, this might be a good solution for you if you have the wall space to handle it. The thing that may keep most people from buying a board rack is the ease with which they can be built at home. Some wood, some tools, and you could do the same –or could you? The GSR system is a design all its own, so in that respect it truly is worth the price. You just aren’t going to reproduce this in a few hours!

Final verdict is that it did its job. A humble and oft-neglected device managed to do just what it was supposed to. It handled the biggest deck I had at hand, even though I was possibly overloading it, and still held solid. It held my nicest deck without damaging it & did it all with simplicity and solid reliability.