On The Road (soon)

A digression here. At several occasions over this past summer, I've had visits from friends who are serious travelers. I've talked about Hokkaido and Chile with Joe, the Hebrides and Morocco with Dan, Spain and Morocco with Arshia- you get the idea, a comfortable evening spent imagining epic trips, hopefully with a surf element. It's been a classic surfer preoccupation since Simmons bounced up the coast in the frame of a car. The ideal road trip/camping vehicle debate is a fine way to while away a few hours, and here's a favourite of mine- the Czech built Tatra. Serious off road capabilities, probably fixable with duct tape and fence wire, and that looks like an easily customized load space. For about town they built a few interesting looking cars too- it'd be nice to roll into the carpark of the local in a T-87. All this is round about way of pointing out there will be a lull of blogging as I'm road tripping north for a week or so. SERIOUS board photos on return though, there's an Ekstrom finished, there's Hydro planing hulls being finished, there's the new Mackie- check back and have a fine week.

ADDENDA

If you're in San Diego or environs this weekend, swing by the Hydro loft at 340 16th St on Sat 4th. There's an open studio event going on and RK will as always have something interesting happening there.

Sacred Craft III- Wegeners

bodyboards

bluegill

One of the personal high points of the whole board show deal is that aside from letting me slide into their booth with a few books and Mackies, the Hydro crew have partnered up with Jon Wegener and his creations for the last few shows. From the set up where Jon and Rosa (who is both 'petite' and 'elegant') quickly assemble a simple functional booth in the the time it takes us to break the TV and realize we've brought the wrong boards from the van to the teardown where we bail and leave them standing in a pile of our debris, the Wegeners make this show a much better experience. And they have a stash of good snacks that are poorly supervised. Jon makes Alaias obviously, but generally I'm more moved by his finned creations. He had an epic hollow wood fish shape this time, and more of the bluegills which are basically the missing link between an alaia and a surfboard. The folks I know who own one all seem to get as wild eyed and fanatical about them as the worst of the wide eyed alaia fanatics. Jon also had a few nice looking bellyboards, and with this coming up, it's getting me thinking about a few prone slides.

Point Never

Jim Newitt is a friend of ours, and a very talented designer. He worked with Andrew Kidman on Ether amongst other things, and in his spare time produces Point Never. It's a beautiful, minimal little fanzine, 32 pages long and this issue features the art of Ann-Marie James, Ray Potes (of Hamburger Eyes infamy), Noritake, Nolan Hall, Jeremie Gindre and Benbo George. Neat, sweet and petite as the Addams Family put it, or as Jim more elegantly says "Point Never is an independent publication devoted to the diffusion of images and texts relating to surf and skateboarding culture; a portrayal of multiple truths, mythologies, abstractions, antipodes, commonalities and communities" A copy can be yours for $8, shipping included, with a portion of the price going to the National Geographic Society Oceans Project. Direct inquiries to info at foamandfunction.com. I'm aware this gets mentioned a lot, but it's really a wonderful thing that there's still people willing to produce independent and creative projects in the morass that is corporate surf culture. Your support helps and is very much appreciated, even on the basic level that you're looking at this rather than or as well as a slick corpo website.

Sacred Craft II- Ekstrom,Trefz, Simmonsesque and a bit of Curren

The Rogues Gallery. Portraits of Lucas, Burch and John Elwell by Ryan Field. His portraits of the Hydro players and boards are beyond jawdropping.


Carl Ekstrom's model. You think this is epic, wait until you see the fins he's doing.


The asym is a gloss & polish stunner that was auctioned at the UCSD Cancer research charity luau, and the red board is a Pat Curren gun Carl was brokering a sale on. That is a lot of serious history in one crappy photo.


The night included a screening (on a full size screen) of Patrick Trefz's 'Idiosyncrasies' film. It's really good and there will be more on it later. RT also showed his new trailer. We will definitely be bringing some of this wonderful culture out on the road soon.


More history.

Sacred Craft Gems- Mark Thomson and Jeff Ho

Another Sacred Craft survived, and here's what was, in my humble opinion, a couple of the best things I saw (that weren't in our booth). A total high point was the appearance of one of the single most stoked human beings alive, the mighty Mark Thomson. He was in town to show his brand new mat design off, and as a bonus brought a couple of the totally off the hook carbon fibre fishes he's been doing. Mark's been deep into the mat world for a long time, he's worked with the masters and surfs a mat as well as anybody alive, and these are what he rides. They sport a non skid decking and actually have concave and rocker. He's selling them for $150 shipping included through his website and there maybe a chance of getting one direct while he's up here if you're interested and we can find him....




Jeff Ho has a few new projects coming, all of which are quite epic, and here's the first- it's an old school Zephyr skate that you won't have to pay collectors prices for. It's made entirely in the USA and sports Tracker trucks and some nice black wheels Jeff sourced. It'll be available in the next week or two and will run around $130 complete. It's the first of a few new skate models Jeff will be doing and from what I've seen, they're all totally styling.

More soon, the new Trefz movie was really good, the party raucous and surfboards nice, but I need to recover a bit.

It's On! (with extra Derek Hynd for good measure)

Again Richard Kenvin throws open the loft doors and we launch ourselves into the nether world of surf culture. This time you have Patrick Trefz screening 'Idiosyncrasies' with bonus joy from RT and Derek Dunfee, there will be boards, no doubt Carl Ekstrom will put in an appearance and I'll be there with a stock of fine product, copies of "___" and The Kook among it all. Sacred Craft happens during the day over at the convention center so it's well worth a visit to lovely downtown San Diego. Come on by and say hello. As a bonus, here's a clip of Derek Hynd blowing minds in Morocco (that turn in the lip at about 2'15"!)


You should have seen this already because I swiped it from Kurungabaa which undoubtedly you check regularly as it's about as good as a surf related blog can get.

Joe Curren+miniSim+Rincon+Weekend Fun

Continuing the theme of photographer/filmmakers who surf better than me, here's Joe Curren putting a mini Sim through it's paces at Rincon, extra fine because most photos of this lovely wave I've seen lately tend to show it at waist high. It's nice to see the wave doing it's thing with the right man for the job on it, albeit from a couple of winters back. In a mini Sim and Curren related vein, this weekend (Aug 14 and 15) the Sacred Craft is happening at the San Diego convention center during ASR, and on Saturday night the Swift hoedown will go off with a screening of Patrick Trefz's new opus 'Idiosyncrasies', which of course features Joe's brother along with Cristian Beamish, the Mulcoys, Kidman, Lance Ebert and the ubiquitous R. Kenvin. 340 16th St, SD 92101.

Foam Free Surfing

Yet more from Australia, this time it's Mark Thomson laying down some serious mat speed lines on a very clean little day. I maintain it's a great time to be a surfer given the incredible range of board designs available (even only 10 years ago it was no easy task tracking down a decent fish), and factor into it the acceptance of bodysurfing, handplanes and mats- there's some real fun out there for those willing to experiment. Tomo Snr. will be here for Sacred Craft on the 14th and 15th with a range of mats and there's a chance some of his carbon fibre wizardry will be accompanying him as well. Pictures will most definitely be taken.

Surf Movie Nights

Soon, I hope. We're trying to set up some low key screenings of "___" for the adventurous amongst you. San Diego? Portland? SF? Bodega Bay? New York? UK? I'll update as we get an idea of what's happening and we're open to any suggestions. Of course, you can actually view in the comfort of your own home. Johnny has just made a new batch of DVD/zine combos- the film in a 25 page photo zine for $30 or impress your discerning friends with the full on 50 page spiral bound photo book and DVD for $50, shipping included as always. info@foamandfunction.com if you want one. The colour shot is the filmmaker himself, Mr. Johnny Abegg, launching one. Byron Bay seems to be a hotbed of camera wielding surfers of some quality.