Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Surfing Masses


the weekend's home away from home.


Jon Wegener making finless magic happen

Made it through the US Open weekend although I'm fairly shell shocked by it. The Sacred Craft area was pretty cool, there was a shaping bay where boothmate Jon Wegener sliced out an alaia at full volume and Scott Bass deserves major thanks for not only getting it together but for also managing to get a range from Jon's graceful wooden creations to Maurice Cole's equally graceful ultra modern EPS rockets. The contest scene was terrifying- decent waves but the jetskis were a bit silly, and the crowds were huge and in most cases clueless about surfing. We did hook up with a lot of folks interested in the boards we had on display, Joe Bauguess made a mysto shaper appearance on Saturday, blew a few people's minds then vanished back to his border lair to carve out more whoopee ships, RK was out hitting it all time at Brisick's, a certain secret N. LA spot and we drank lots of coconut water. The celebrity expression session was crazy lame- tow-ats in a dropping swell with the superstar surfers just launching over the back of the wave. Curren paddled into a few on the inside and surfed better than the jet assist circus. Early arrival meant that if you had a booth with some demo boards in it they could get surfed at smaller but way less crowded/media saturated spots before the crowds started rolling in, but of course we were all about working hard and providing some interesting craft for the public to view. There's been incredible stuff showing up in the mailbox and inbox so I'll definitely get onto posting a bit more regularly.

2 comments:

NiegĂ  said...

Yours is the first -and most honest- description of what the US Open is really all about. Thanx!

NiegĂ 

Kirk said...

Don't get me started on the Shaping demo participants that held forth on how machine shaped blanks are what it's all about- one gent had a shirt with 'Hand Shaped By...' on it, yet went in there and took a few riffles of a close tolerance blank for his 'demo'. Bummed Cole didn't show for his turn in the fishbowl, but most of the shapers were excellent to watch and hear. It's a great idea.