Hey All, Massive size and scale are baked into the Encyclopedia of Surfing. I speak often about how EOS’ eternally unfinished and forever-scrolling surf-history canvas is an exciting rather than daunting task, how the journey is the destination, about process over product, etc etc and you get the idea. Matt Barr and I talked about this recently on Matt’s excellent Looking Sideways podcast (click ...
Hey All, At the end of 1992, when Derek Hynd wrote his annual Top 44 assessment of the just-completed ASP season, here’s what he said about #30 finisher Derek Ho: “He survived, [and] undoubtedly is set to hit top form early this year.” At the bottom of Ho’s paragraph, same as for all the other Top 44 surfers, Hynd dropped his famously curt "World Title" prediction for the year ahead: “Reasonable ...
Hey All, I have no doctor’s note to prove it, but at the south end of my duodenal bulb, hard against the superior flexure, is a nubbin of scar tissue marking the place where an ulcer sprouted and flourished over a six-month period in 1986 when I dated Michael Tomson’s not-quite-ex-girlfriend. Just an extended summer romance. Nothing at the outset, flirty and harmless, haha, nobody even knew! Then...
Hey All, Panic moments are sprinkled across my timeline like Carolina Reaper pepper flakes—Highway One spinout, big Ocean Beach, the Northridge earthquake, cuckoldry exposed, Ocean Beach again, preschool treehouse fail, and really big Ocean Beach. Each episode blindsided me. By nature, I do not seek thrills. Yet looking back now, all snuggled up into a risk-managed late-middle-age, I am proud and...
Hey All, Company policy here at Encyclopedia of Surfing states that we almost never promote on behalf of other entities, profit or nonprofit. Dance on the edge of corporate financial ruin long enough, and you learn to put your hand out rarely and selectively, and yes that is a subtle heads-up for the Fall 2020 EOS Fundraiser. But today I make an exception. Today I ask you, Bob Hurley, or you, Fe...
Hey All, The Patterson brothers of Hawaii—Bobby, Raymond, and Ronald—learned to surf in Waikiki during the 1940s and moved to California, one after the other, in the mid-’50s. None of them lived to see age 61, and each had their share of bumps and hardships. But the Patterson legend is as warm and upbeat as Ron Stoner’s is bleak and melancholy. Read their EOS page here. Better yet, click here for...
Hey All, If I were running EOS the way the incomparable Ms. Gunsolus is running my son’s virus-age online 4th-grade class, you would each be assigned to watch this new video of Nat Young, read this Proust-length “Animal Tracks” profile of Young by Drew Kampion, then buy and install an 85" flat-screen TV in preparation for our EOS Team Zoom call which would likely go something like this except we’...
Hey All, Spent the morning running my fingers through the Sunday Joint shake, flicking stems and seeds out the window into the cool Pacific Northwest spring breeze, and—yes indeed, we got enough here to spark one up. Chris Baker of San Francisco recently called my attention to a river wave in Bude, North Cornwall. If you like your novelty surf mixed with Old World charm, hurly-burly storm weathe...
Hey All, I’m elbow-deep in EOS housecleaning this week, which, let’s be honest, means fixing shit I didn’t do right the first time. Like posting all these Joints on the actual EOS site, as opposed to just lodging them in your inbox each Sunday. The Joint itself, for that matter, was invented in order to fix a mistake: I began sending these in September 2017, but there should have been a weekly ne...
Hey All, The name itself, as is always the case with British aristocracy, is both ridiculous and impressive: Edward George William Omar Coventry, Viscount Deerhurst, future 12th Earl of Coventry. “Lord Ted” to his surfer pals. “Sugar Teddy” to a generation of Femme Nu strippers. (I made that last one up, except the part about Ted having a thing for strippers.) If you were a fine-print-loving worl...