Hey All, A while back I received an email, with photos, from a Northland New Zealander named Mike Cooney, who described how he and his pals learned how to surf in the late ’50s on roughhewn DIY equipment. Pretty common story during the early post-Gidget surf boom. The difference here is that Cooney and his pals, cut off as they were from all surf media, took a flyer on what a good board should lo...
Hey All, My environmentalist game is middling, and looking to step it up we decided last year to price out a home solar rig (steep but not ridiculous), and trade our Mazda 6 for something electric (tested a Chevy Bolt, which felt like driving a huge slot-car; I liked it, Jodi not so much). Meanwhile, we also had to get the exterior of our house painted—and that’s where our green plans blew apart ...
Hey All, As a kid, both of my parents were neutral on my surf fixation. I kept my grades up, they let me get in the water as much as I wanted, kicked down a few bucks when I needed a new stick, drove me to the contest if nobody else was available. It bothered me not a bit that they didn’t show the kind of interest in surfing that today’s groms expect almost by birthright. Much later, in fact, I c...
Hey All, People used to speak of 1970 US Champ Brad McCaul in the same breath as Wayne Lynch and Rolf Aurness, which, yes, they were all fizzy young goofyfooters born in 1952, but roll the tape (here’s Brad, here’s Rolf, here’s Wayne) and by my unscientific measurement you’d put at least one breath between Brad and Rolf, and five full Bhramari Pranayamas between Brad and Wayne. Anyway, what caug...
Hey All, My work productivity, and maybe yours too, was way down last week during the final two days of the Tahiti Pro. A WCT contest in great surf will always command my attention. When the surf is both great and death-defying, like it was at Teahupo‘o, I hold on to my laptop as I go about my day the way my son used to hold onto his stuffy, and do not miss a single moment. I want the ups and the...
Hey All, I posted this clip of Marvin Foster a few days back and said something about how Foster is a “Quentin Tarantino movie waiting to happen.” Have you seen Tarantino’s latest, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? If so, are you feeling maybe a little pulled in two directions? I agree with Richard Brody that Once Upon a Time has its macho head stuffed way up its own ass. Yet I melted for the perfor...
Hey All, Not long ago I spoke with Derek Rielly at BeachGrit about surfing’s last taboo topic—and I don’t mean Duke Kahanamoku’s deep cover work on behalf of the Freemasons. (A semi-well-known surf photographer explained it all to me in detail in my Facebook DMs last year—never mind that Duke was too busy with the John Dillinger “murder” coverup to have time for the Masons. Connect the dots, I to...
Hey All, I downloaded Final Cut Pro in 2011, just after it was updated, with tremendous online clamor and controversy, from 7 to X, and began making EOS video clips. So far I’ve banged out, in total, just north of 1,000 clips. Because I started with zero experience and learned as I went, and thus made every possible mechanical and stylistic error there is to make, about 700 of those 1,000 videos ...
Hey All, I wanted to catch up on on a few things before we begin sampling the latest EOS offerings. First, Brad Melekian and I haven’t actually had a conversation, but we’ve managed to exchange a phone message or two, and I can report back that his Andy Irons book is still very much a living project. Looks like Brad has gone full Robert Caro. The original publishing date should have seen his stil...
Hey All, “Surf in a Box,” the second-to-last History of Surfing chapter, went up on Tuesday. This is the wavepool section, and I’ve been very much not looking forward to this one, because a) it needed a lot of work, and b) like you guys, by this point I’m a little sick of talking about wavepools. Had to be done, though. Now remember, this section was drafted over ten years ago, before the wavepoo...