The Sunday Joint

SUNDAY JOINT, 1-15-2023: IF YOU SURFED BACKDOOR BEFORE IT WAS “BACKDOOR” HAVE YOU ACTUALLY SURFED BACKDOOR?

Hey All, I won't bet my AARP card on it but I think Florida’s own gonzo-hunk surfer-writer Bruce Valluzzi was the person who gave Backdoor its name, at the end of a 1968 article for Petersen’s Surfing magazine: When the mortals awoke the next morning, they found a right breaking where the mighty Banzai Pipeline had been. The tubes sweep down from the north and die violently, their crystal blue t...

SUNDAY JOINT, 1-8-2023: BIG TIME, OR JUST TOO DAMN BIG

Hey All, I’m a long way removed from the action, and reports are still coming in, but my Sunday Joint hot take is that California’s big-wave beatdown last week was All-Time Top Three for size and destruction, right there in the mix with 1969 and 1983. The Santa Cruz footage from three days ago has me thinking that, when everything is tallied up, this monster will end up at #1 damage-wise. As far ...

SUNDAY JOINT, 1-1-2023: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT JUDY TRIM

Hey All, Nat Young’s SURFER Magazine report on the 1969 Australian National Titles, a five-round marathon held that year in Western Australia, mostly at Margaret River, skips completely over the women’s event and doesn’t even bother to post the final results. (For the record: Josette Lagardere won, followed by Nola Shepherd. We’ll skip the men’s.) This is actually an improvement over Nat’s take o...

THE MISSING JOINT, 12-24-2022: GLAD TIDINGS AND PASS THE EGGNOG!

Hey All, We’re going Jointless this Sunday, tomorrow, Christmas Day, but I just wanted to shoot a little something out before signing off for the week. The EOS Fundraiser has just crested $60K, and I expect some showboating latecomers out there will be dropping something into the kitty between now and the New Year, and folks, this means we can keep the lights on in 2023, and start to build the Ar...

SUNDAY JOINT, 12-18-2022: THOUGHT EXPERIMENT – RICHIE COLLINS AND GERRY LOPEZ SHARE A JOINT

Hey All, The 2022 Encyclopedia of Surfing Fundraiser is still ON, as I have shaken many but not all of the trees. It’s been a good week—we’re nudging 50K in donations and new subscriptions. But these next few days will make a big difference for EOS in 2023. Surf history archives do not build themselves, and your contribution goes directly into that massive project, as well as general EOS upkeep a...

SUNDAY JOINT, 12-11-2022: “I OPENED UP MY SUNDAY JOINT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY FUNDRAISER!”

A letter from Matt Warshaw, Executive Director of Encyclopedia of Surfing. Hello surfers and all lovers of surf culture. The 2022 Encyclopedia of Surfing fundraiser is ON (December 12–21), and if that alone is enough to trigger the philanthropic reflex, click here to donate and here to subscribe or buy a gift sub. Big plans are afoot for EOS in 2023, and we’ll get to that in a moment, but first ...

SUNDAY JOINT, 12-4-2022: WE DESERVE A CARNIVAL!

Hey All, It’s gonna be run-and-gun from now till the end of 2022 here on your favorite nonprofit website weekly newsletter. Holidays, inlaws, fundraisers, snow days, White Lotus—all coming at me like Level Three rocks on Asteroids with no hyperspace button, which means I’ll be Jointing at you with one hand while baking Christmas cookies and lighting Hanukkah candles with the other, and chances ar...

SUNDAY JOINT, 11-27-2022: GOOD, FAST, CHEAP—PICK TWO!

Hey All, Never mind the header, today you get it Fast and Cheap. I just returned from a week in LA and the Joint’s turkey-scented deadline breath is hot upon my neck, so I will try and nudge this thing somewhere close to the outskirts of Good—but no promises. For example: I am looking at the Sunday Joint whiteboard and see a faded orange note that reads “Frampton—Pete Drake—video,” and though I ...

SUNDAY JOINT, 11-20-2022: THAT BURNING SENSATION

Hey All, I moved to San Francisco in 1991 and for two or three years the City flew hither and yon, Tinkerbell-like, across my dull SoCal beach-bro senses. Everything I experienced in SF during this period was at the very least new and different and often borderline magical. I’m not a Grateful Dead fan, but whatever ecstasies the hardcore spinners used to feel during the course of a three-hour Dea...

SUNDAY JOINT, 11-13-2022: GOODBYE AND THANK YOU TO ART BREWER AND KEMP AABERG

Hey All, Photographer Art Brewer and pointbreak stylist Kemp Aaberg both died this week; Brewer on Wednesday, at age 71, from complications following a liver transplant; Aaberg last weekend, at 82, from Parkinson’s. Brewer was, and still is—and probably always will be, given that the profession itself is such a different and arguably reduced medium compared to its pre-digital version—the consens...