The Sunday Joint

SUNDAY JOINT, 12-10-2023: “I OPENED UP MY FAVORITE NEWSLETTER AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY FUNDRAISER!”

A Letter from Matt Warshaw, Executive Director of Encyclopedia of Surfing Surfers, surf culture aficionados, fellow travelers—the 2023 EOS fundraiser is ON and if you want to skip to the business end of this message, click here to donate. Last week we pushed the big red launch button on EOS 2.0, and bringing that new and massively upgraded version of the site to life pretty much sucked all our t...

SUNDAY NON-JOINT, 12-3-2023: "THINGS ARE IN MOTION THAT CANNOT BE UNDONE!"

Hey All, It is befitting, I suppose, if we are being charitable, that I've just this moment hit Save on the Joint that I spent all afternoon working on, announcing that the new and rebuilt EOS is finally live. I've lost count of the number of times I've said this thing is here, only to watch it move another two or three weeks into the future, again and again. Instead, you get a cheap video test ...

MONDAY JOINT, 12-4-2023: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SURFING 3.0, FORMERLY 2.0, IS VERY PROBABLY LIVE!

Hey All, Last night, with a steady finger and cool gaze and a whispered "Now am I become Surf, the Destroyer of Free Time," I pushed the giant red launch button on EOS 3.0—which I've been calling EOS 2.0 for the past year and half, forgetting that we not only launched 2.0 in 2019 but ballyhooed the shit out of it—and set Encyclopedia of Surfing blasting through the series of tubes that is the int...

SUNDAY JOINT, 11-26-2023: WARMING UP TO THE ICEMAN

Hey All, Damien Hardman is my second favorite Iceman, ahead of Val Kilmer but miles behind George Gervin, and I apologize to anyone here who is not an NBA nostalgist but I cannot say Gervin’s name without proselytizing on his behalf, starting with the fact that he was the smoothest, most stylish and fluid player of his or any other generation, the Tom Curren of NBA shooting guards, right down to ...

SUNDAY JOINT, 11-19-2023: ALOHA AND THANK YOU, STEVE MASSFELLER AND MIKE MOIR

Hey All, There is a good chance that somewhere deep inside an ancient metal filing cabinet, in a plastic file tucked inside a M*A*S*H-age Pendaflex hang folder, is a 35mm color transparency of Florida surfer Steve “Beaver” Massfeller taken by Orange County photographer Mike Moir. Both men were incredibly good at what they did. Both were at the height of their powers in the late ’70s and early ’80...

SUNDAY JOINT, 11-12-2023: ALOHA AND THANK YOU, MARK MARTINSON – “HE WAS IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO LIKE!”

Hey All, The bottom turn used to be the maypole of surfing maneuvers, the nucleus, the move around which all other moves depended on and circled around and took orders from, but also, in the right hands, a spectacular thing in and of itself, and while Jeff Hakman was and remains my own personal bottom turn Shiva, the first surfer to actually imprint on my barely-salted nine-year-old mind as a hea...

SUNDAY JOINT, 11-5-2023: ALOHA AND THANK YOU, KIMO HOLLINGER

Hey All, Kimo Hollinger, whose early gift for big-wave surfing was eclipsed by an even greater gift for short first-person essays that were funny and heartbreaking, casual and self-deprecating and wise, often in the same sentence, died last week at age 84. There is a steady, deceptive 2/4 simplicity to Hollinger’s work. Short sentences, mostly. Some commas here and there but otherwise very little...

SUNDAY JOINT, 10-29-2023: THE UNKNOWABLE TOM BLAKE

Hey All, Occasionally I will pass my keyboard-calloused hands across the near and far fields of surf history, eyes closed, senses open, from Mamala the Shark Woman to the Swell of ’39 to T-Street, checking the sport’s auras and chakras and whatnot. All part of the job. And without fail, while performing this survey, things go dark when I pause and hover over Tom Blake. I marvel at Blake’s range ...

SUNDAY JOINT, 10-22-2023: KODAK MAGIC, OR HOW LEROY GRANNIS MADE A STAR OUT OF HERMOSA BEACH

Hey All, “22 Street” was the bare bones title of a feature piece in the June 1963 issue of SURFER. Eight full pages on a negligible little piece of Hermosa Beach, holding down the middle of an issue that’s just 60 pages front to back. If you don’t know Hermosa, you are baffled. If you do know Hermosa—you are more baffled. South Bay old-timers will bang their canes on the floor and tell you Hermos...

SUNDAY JOINT, 10-15-2023: BULA BULA AND DID YOU SEE MY LAST WAVE?

Hey All, In two days I fly to LA, and from there to Namotu, Fiji, where I will absolutely avoid nearby Cloudbreak—I’m 63, the inside section at Cloudbreak is called Shish Kebobs, enough said—and instead I’ll prowl the lineup at a resort-fronting break known, appealingly, as Swimming Pools where, if my pop-up doesn’t fail me, I will do graceful slow-motion turns and trim for the channel with back ...