Saturday, October 20, 2007

What a week



Bedraggled Swift Booth

Despite some gruelling moments, we survived the Sacred Craft Consumer Expo. It was absolutely packed and for some reason RK decided to unveil all the in-development boards so we spent most of the time answering questions about boards not for sale. He had the full line though, Casper, Casper Jnr (a 5'5" Casper), Sputnik (a Casper with quad keels and a very odd tail notch) and the White Pony (a 4'11" ultra wide Simmons styled fish). All EPS, all pure white, all very non-mainstream. There's a nice photo thread at www.mylocallineup.com/shows and you can find our booth at the front and the back of it. There were lots of other great boards there and lots more really generic ones. I did get to hang with some nice people though. Larry from Pro-Box who has done me right with the Horan fins, Tim Stamps who is now making the Horan boards (and very nicely too) all the Fineline/Hull crew who were well into the Casper family, Paul Jensen who makes beautiful wood boards (he and Danny Hess were the high water mark of the show I thought), Jake Moss who was next to us, Terry Martin, John Cherry- quite a roll call really. I sold some books,the consumers all seemed to be enjoying themselves and somehow we got the rack and 18 boards (including the Simmons repro and a couple of big Mirandon Bros twin pin logs) into the van and home without incident. The Joe Baugness Simfish was the board that RK was selling most of (I'm horrified no-one took advantage of our delerium and grabbed the Seebold quads at knock-down expo prices, to say nothing of the big root beer tint fish). It's a small wave machine, basically Casper with a fish tail. You'll be seeing more of it. Yesterday I went and surfed. It was sucky, dirty small red tide waves but it felt good to get wet. Too much work, not enough water has been the story of the last few weeks. Next week I go north, then back to set up more Kidman dates. It doesn't stop. Time to go rinse the wettie out I guess, the dawn patrols are what will save the shreads of my sanity.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

NSW




both these photos swiped from the Six Ounce Boardstore site (www.sixounceboardstore.com.au) Truly a temple of fibreglass.

I've been a bit aussie-centric lately, but if they keep making boards like these why not? The first is a 5'10" Dain Thomas fish. Dain's a young guy in Byron Bay, his label is Sea Surfboards and I'm loving what he does. Very classic, beautifully made and as much a piece of art as anything else. He builds some incredible looking logs and singles too. I'm sort of glad I don't own this board as I'd feel bad getting it all covered in wax and dings. The second board is another from Mick Mackie in Ulladulla on the south coast of NSW. Personally, I think he's one of the most interesting shapers out there. This particular oddity is 6', nearly 23" wide and close to 3" thick. It sports a really long, narrow raked fin and is apparently insanely fun to ride (according to Neal Purchase Jnr. who has a similar one) Mackie builds some really wild boards- very curvy fish with deep swallow tails (some with flex tails), amazing quad stubbies, a few very extreme 3 fin bonzer style boards with side runners and ultra narrow center fins as well as doing a good line of gunny thrusters for the folks who ride the big hollow reefs in his part of the world. I'm like a kid in a candy store with this stuff, but with these cool, sunny fall mornings I'm loving the dawnies and getting excited about a new board for winter. It's all window shopping right now, but soon.....