On Tour #3- Santa Cruz

Seriously, this was our van- Richard was in the swivel chair blasting the tunes and doing some editing on the video suite. Andrew had the solar powered blender going making us smoothies from mother earth's bounty, and I drove. The entire thing was organic and we recycled it after the last show.

At this point we're at the Sunday after the Mav's contest and scattered- Andrew over at the Hess surfboard batcave checking it all out, RK having some exotic breakfast with underground OB big wave guys and me doing the show cleanup with Aleks and enjoying a beautiful sunny morning enhanced by fine San Fran coffee- it's a very civilized town. We reconvened at Ocean Beach which was about as uncivilized as it gets- huge, blown about and terrifying. I've paddled out there on a maybe head high day and it took a solid 45 minutes for me to figure away through, so on a double overhead day like this I was staying well clear. Awesome to watch though and the occasional cloud break sets a mile or so out were amazing. There were a few takers that morning, Danny Hess among them, but fog rolled in and we rolled out for more functional waves. The coast was truly lit up, nearly every glimpse of ocean we had coming down to Santa Cruz showed waves, many big. Pigeon Point was worth a stop and cameras out- huge, hollow rights cranking down the line from the point and to the south there was an equally monumental left cranking up the beach, and all in the most stunning setting imaginable. Santa Cruz was still going off and the Casper's worked their magic until dark and our late arrival at the Mill Gallery for our last minute show. Top german photographer Patrick Trefz had set this one up for us and was pretty done in himself having arrived back from Hawaii at 6 that morning, so it luckily stayed low key. The by now standard array of great characters showed up, Sway's legend Steiny was in full force and a genuine Viking in the form of one Kirkaby turned up too. This guy freedives all over NorCal and has kneeboarded at Mavericks, so he's not fooling about. He was rocking a slew of gold rings and a seal skin vest and is currently my style hero. A fine night followed by one of the coldest attempts at sleeping I've ever had, and off to Rincon we went, as per the Skip post. I'm getting tired just remembering this.

On Tour #2- Aqua

Central Cal Kneelo goes hard

More of our mishaps- we bailed Buellton early as we knew there was swell in the water up north, and there was a chance the legendary Squirrel would ride the balsa Simmons at Mavericks or Ocean Beach. Bypassing the epic but long Big Sur drive we hauled up the 101. Even the sight of about 100 army guys in full camo shooting targets not 50 yards from the side of the freeway just north of Paso Robles didn't slow us down. We hit the coast at the spot above and were greeted by crystalline blue water, double overhead sets and a reeling, spitting right just south of where this kneelo was at work (this is one of the smaller waves but the guy was flying) with a small pack on it. Out back of this guy the set lefts were pretty damn huge, but we bailed on it- Andrew's call 'Small takeoff zone, big pack and a couple of guys dominating it- not worth the hassle' On to Santa Cruz and the Lane in full Saturday madness= a few monsters breaking at middles and the lane was headhigh and amazing. Way more of a pack, but way more room. The boys headed out on the Caspers and any qualms I had at giving up my surf to Richard were snuffed as he was heckled all the way into the water, then put on a show of how to go fast and turn hard. Phenomenal to watch and the guy is undoubtedly Curren's only equal in California. Santa Cruz has probably more great surfers than anywhere else in Cal, but this was a notch up. Back on the road after a couple of hours and we dodged the Mavericks traffic by heading up through La Honda and some gorgeous scenery, making it to Aqua about 10 mins before the show was meant to roll. Again a fantastic time with really cool people showing up- Danny Hess, the Surferbrat, some nutty Kiwi- I was thrashed and entertained by the time Aleks cleared them out. Aqua is another little, indie owned and family run surfery, and the place rules. Aleks (the co-owner) is a mad genius- amiable surfshop guy most of the time, surf-horror autuer when he gets the chance We sat up til 3am watching his new unfinished works and I was drunk on 9% stout and aching from laughing so hard when I passed out, leaving Andrew and Aleks riding the Indo board and watching 'My Eyes Won' t Dry'. If you go to aquasurfshop.com and click on the media gallery you'll find a couple of the works of genius he and his buddy Brian have made. Retarded, brilliant and he has a surf/Bigfoot movie on the way that will redefine how we think of surf film. And gingerbread men.

Unalloyed Capitalism #1

Actually, I'm the conduit only for a fine deal. That's a 6'2" EPS Bauguess shaped Simfish, and a guy called Tim decided he doesn't need it. It's in basically mint condition, ridden once and is only $550. Insane good deal. His email is 49bluenote at gmail.com and someone should jump on it.

On Tour #1- Wetsand

Richard Kenvin paddling out at Ventura 1/11/08. Photo by me which is why it blows. (But Andrew says the horizon's straight so I'm on my way.)

This will be a hazy series of tour stories and updates. 11th was our first day out on the NorCal leg, and we were only a few hours late. The rented minivan was bulging- books, t-shirts, DVDs, clothes, wetsuits and 4 boards (including the 9' Simmons balsa) but we hit Ventura in time for a mellow sunset go-out to wash the past week's chaos off. Except for me- electronic key = no surf for one of us and the boys needed the water more than I at this point. The first batch of many tacos & rellenos were consumed and we hit Wetsand for the show. Absolutely epic shop, probably the best range of boards I've ever seen in a surf shop- biofoam, EPS, wood, long, short, knee, paddle- go to their site and drool. Great folks running the place and a fun, mellow night to start the ball rolling. The one constant with these tours is the people who show up- always stoked, normal folks who surf because they love it and who, like us, are fully in love with surfboards. It's a trip- pros, legends, teenagers, beginners, the guy down the street- all have something going on and it's great. We then drove to a Motel 6 in Buellton to get a jump on the next day's driving. That was not so great.

TOUR CHANGE- We will be at the Pod Room in Oceanside on Weds 23rd. Maybe some music from Andrew, definitely some fun.

Be Like Skip Frye

Skip Frye in Scotland

After a grueling, sleepless Sunday night in a very cold Santa Cruz garage, we drove like the proverbial rocketship all the way to Rincon for the simple reason that Skip Frye was there celebrating his 50th year of surfing. We rolled into the lot exhausted, and there unloading his truck was the man himself with a huge grin and a loud coach's whistle. Sometimes things just work out right. I really can't explain how awesome Skip is, he just radiates goodwill and had as all laughing and struggling into damp, stinky wetsuits for the go-out. (Except Richard, who struggled with his camera.) The waves were chest high or so, the weather beautiful and Skip was rolling with two great Japanese girls, Riiko and Nalu, that he's been guiding into the world of California surf. Crowds, tiredness, my brutally cramped leg- it all evaporated as I got to watch Skip on his 11' Simmons Fish swoop and glide through a little cove wave from the shoulder. He had brought 7 beautiful boards and has been dragging them down to the beach to let all comers have a ride if they so desired. It's really hard to explain just what mana this man has, but needless to say having him give me a big smile and an 'Alright Man!' after a nice little speed run on the 5'5" Casper was undoubtedly the high point of my surfing life so far. He's one of nature's noblemen.
The Norcal leg of the tour is done, we had great shows, some good waves and a suitably surreal time. I'll post a tour log over the next few days as I find time, and thanks to all those who showed up. Met some great people and had some fun is the brief summary. Santa Barbara at the A Frame gallery on State St. happens tomorrow night (Thurs 17th, 7pm) Come on by.

and another...

Here's one swiped from the Nine Lights surfboards site, built by the aforementioned Jeff Beck. No idea how big, but I love them starfins and this looks fun. He offered us a shop tour so hopefully we'll get a chance to visit him

As always, 70percent is on it and got a cool slide show up before I was even close to posting, so go there and look. Kills my stealth blogger deal, but at least I don't look as scary as Andrew. We have managed to add yet another show- this time in Santa Barbara at the Dan Merkel Gallery, 632 State St, SB CA93101. Signing, some art and hopefully room to play the film stuff. Friday is Ventura at the Wetsand store on Main St (7pm or thereabouts) where I will undoubtedly lose it over some of those boards they have. Richard Kenvin is making some 'Untrustworthy' tour shirts so we'll have those on sale, and we have copies of 'Believe' that just arrived from Australia. It's a great film from the small chunk I got to watch today. I've even had some sleep so life is good.

Shelter

8'10" Larry Mabile mega-twinzer

My thanks to the fine folks at Shelter for throwing a hell of an opener for the book tour. It's a great surfshop and couldn't be cooler- family run, full of goodies (like the freshly dropped 8'10" Swift LaMo above) and willing to let us lower the tone of the neighborhood. I had a fine time and saw some very entertaining people- Rob & Maggie from 70% who are great about showing up and supporting these kinds of things, Josh Hall, Eric from Axxxe wetsuits- a whole crew of people who have been cool about backing our half assed projects in all forms. I was stoked to meet Ryan from Warbles in person, and Jeff Beck from NineLights surfboards as well. For a wet Saturday night in Long Beach, it was a stylin' time. High point of the night probably had to be selling a book to Gnar Gnar of 'Invasion...' fame. Epic stuff. And we get to go to Ventura this Friday and do it all again. Makes the past week of book signing and organizational hell well worth it for me. Extra fun is we've added a night at the Pod Room in Oceanside on the 24th of Jan. Andrew will play music it seems, and I will gladly peddle more merch. It's dawning on me that part of the payoff for all this work is I get to spend a month hanging out in some cool surfshops and that it's really not a bad thing. If I can factor in some surf time it's going to be a very tiring and entertaining month.

Goes Excellent In Any Conditions

Happy New Year.

It's all on here, we have books all over the house and they're being signed hours at a stretch. Andrew has been here through a nice little swell and sunny weather and hasn't been even near a beach yet as this is more of a procedure than we ever thought it would be. Beer, good music and lots of talking story are getting us through. First show this Saturday at Shelter and I'm stoked. On a very mercenary note we have plenty of really cool stuff to peddle. Andrew made a run of t-shirts using the screens which he does his art with, and they look pretty amazing. We have movies too: new versions of Glass Love and Litmus with bonus action (Glass Love has the soundtrack CD and Litmus has a short film that we'll be playing at the shows), Patrick Trefz's 'Thread' with the Brown Birds CD and hopefully copies of 'Believe' and 'The Hot Buttered Story' are on the way up from Australia. We'll also have all my regular stuff like 'Way Of The Bird' books and Swift Movement t-shirts. Should you want any of this and are not able to hit a show, please email me at consafos at earthlink.net and I'll happily set you up. Nicely enough I started doing this blog the very night Andrew and I decided to go for it with this book, and here we are actually boxing the damn things up. It took that long to get both book and blog organized right. Hopefully this will keep going as a way to diseminate our little pocket of surf culture to any of you who are interested. I'm hoping to see a 'Thread' book and the 'Hydrodynamica' movie and book happen this year. My thanks to the other bloggers, especially Rob at 70%, JP at Surfy and those on the blogroll for being unwitting inspiration to all this, and my thanks to you for taking the time to look at this.

Lighting it up like a Christmas Tree

Kye Fitzgerald hurling a top turn, no idea who took this but it's good.

I'm off up to central Cal for some decompression time before Jan on the road. Beer, widowmaker, Horan, thickest rubber, dog and warm clothes are in the truck. Enjoy yourselves.

Ventura

5'4" biofoam Eaton Bonzer kneeboard, shaped by Joe Bauguess

Swiped this picture of the Wetsand website- they have their bricks & mortar shop up and running and Andrew Kidman will be there Jan 11th around 8pm. There seems to be a really awesome array of boards there, the vast majority of them made with the kind to the environment biofoam that Wetsand had a hand in developing. Not many places you can go and find an off the rack super hi-tech Stanley Pleskunas flexfish and a Wegener wooden recreation of an ancient hawaiian board (both reasonably priced I might add). The much ballyhooed death of the shaper through foreign imports seems to have bypassed this place. I like going to Ventura anytime, but this is going to be an extra fun tour stop.

Derek Hynd

Derek Hynd, Skip Frye board, Scotland. photo Kidman

Andrew's interview with Derek in the Surfer's Journal Vol. 11 #1 is probably one of my favourite pieces of surf journalism ever. Here's Derek talking about the young Australian's yearning for speed.
"I was woken at midnight once by a chase going down after the Pub all over the neighbourhood between a Charger cop car and a Mach 3 Kawasaki: what a classic double. They were the only sounds around and it was like an amplified dogfight. It went on and on. You wouldn't read about it- they started getting closer and my heart was thumping like crazy and it felt like a lottery win as they got to my street half a mile away, both red lining.
Had to be. The bike raged down the first hill past the house and over the rise down the next hill. He was a local for sure, heading for the bends to shake him off. The V-8 hit the rise 30 yards outside the house at ridiculous speed. I'll never forget the moments when his car left the road before the crash. Greatest thing to happen on our street- both were heroes, better than the Queen driving by in '66.'

Derek is an absolute original; brilliant, somewhat mad and still a fantastic, relevant surfer. He's been working on the finless project and I've linked the Safe To Sea blog over there, it's a great read and he's involved in making the Musica Surfica film.

Fish, Frisco & Finished Books

5'8" Neal Purchase fish.

I've posted so many pics of hull/stubs lately, it seems time for a nice fish. I know may consider them an overdone fad, but personally I couldn't be happier with them. Stay low, drive with that front foot and keep 'em moving- it's just a lot of fun. I rode my 5'10" this morning in sunny, glassy little waves and had a surprising amount of fun. This is a nice one from Neal Purchase. Neal started out as a sander at the Keyo factuory in Brookvale working with the likes of Nat Young, Ted Spencer and Bob McTavish. In 1966 he shaped a board that both Nat and Ted rode and loved. It was called the Virgin and at 8' with asymettrical V it fits neatly into the birth of the shortboard. I'm dropping science like this because today I received advances of Andrew Kidman's book. It's utterly epic and I'm really pleased. As surfers we have our own shared history and culture which have always tended to be dominated by the big players, and valid as the Quiksilver/Slater/Cal-centric may be to may people, there's other stuff out there as well, and 'Ether' is an beautiful chunk of it all. And there's a swell coming. Really, really stoked. The Frisco portion of our story is the nailing down of a Three Sails date there. It's Jan 12th at Aqua Surf Shop, 1742 Haight St, San Francisco CA94117 (415-876-2782) and we're bringing the full dog and pony show.

3 Sails To The Wind Tour

So we have dates finalized: Jan 5th at Shelter Surf Shop, 2700 Rose Ave, Signal Hill CA 90755 (562-997-0100)
Jan 26th at Patagonia, 2185 San Elijo Ave, Cardiff CA 92007 at 6.30
Andrew's art show at The Surf Gallery will open on Jan 19 and he'll be there signing and generally loitering, 911 S. Coast Hwy, Laguna Bch CA 92651 (949-576-9155) and we'll have San Francisco slotted in around the 12th, New York in early Feb and maybe a few others as we can fit them. Don't forget on the 25th & 26th the bi-annual Swift Movement fandango will be happening, so you should all come to at least one show and that as well.

Thanksgiving

Plenty to be thankful right now as I just heard from the printer that advances are ready of 'Ether' which means I should have the finisehed book around year end and our planned tour can go ahead for January. Andrew has a show booked at the Surf Gallery in Laguna Beach opening Jan 19, and the weekend after that it's Festivus time. I 'll start posting solid dates and times in the next week, and please come on by the shows. Andrew will be doing what will be an undoubtedly entertaining slide show of his work from the last 20 years, and we'll be showing a new trailer for 'Hydrodynamica'. The book is absolutely epic, a total piece of art. It's expensive, but it's the coolest piece of limited surf art you'll see outside of a hand shaped board. I'm stoked. (Click on the image above for an enlarged taste) Went with RK to see an Alex Kopps art show this past weekend too, and in keeping with the hull vibe of the last few posts we got to meet the legendary Steve Krajewski aka Esteban Bojorquez aka one of the most polished hull riders you'll ever see. Truly nice guy and hell of a storyteller. We wangled an invite to check out both Kirk Putnam and Steve's archives, and a good time was had by all. It's undoubtedly over-obsessive of me, but it's cool to see another thread of surfboard design concepts that have evolved out of the same Simmons concpts of the late 1940s that have inspired the short, wide twinnies and stubs I love so well. Sure, there's plenty of other equally important elements to the boards we see today, but the Simmons thing is strong when you look.

More Hull-ish action

These two bad boys are 1lb eps, stringerless and shaped by my internet buddy Greg out in Texas. He has a bunch more photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16998046@N06/
There's some great shots of the full s-deck business he has going on at that site. The 'Leaf' is 6'4 and 21" wide, the stub is 6'0" and 22.5- Michael Peterson would know what to do with this particular board. What I think is great about them is he plans to make them both quads which seems like a fine idea. Here's the point where I make all the hull guys angry- My issue with what is traditionally considered a 'hull' -pinched rails, s-deck, single big flex fin- is simply that they don't seem to turn very well. No disrespect meant to the boards at all, I think they're amazing for what they were designed to do, which is go really fast and give the rider a very distinctive feel for how the board is riding. I love the single mindedness and purity of design that Liddle, Steve K, Hilbers, Putnam et al have put into these things. The boards are designed to fly down the line at the right hand pointbreaks that abound in N. Los Angeles county, and fly they do. I however, like turning, and if a surfer as talented as Jimmy Gamboa can't hack a decent cutback on one of these things then I have no hope. The usual complaints about hulls don't bother me much though- mostly I hear people say they're squirrelly as hell and they don't work so well on the backhand or in a beach break. Fine, it's good that the experience comes only after learning to finesse the board- that's called aquiring skill. As for the backhand problem, then ride the thing on your forehand in pointbreaks. It's awesome that we can have boards as finetuned to certain conditions as that. Still, refinement contnues- the Casper family I've had in the lasty few posts have definite elements of the hull, and here's Greg's smaller, flexy hull style boards which, with the quad set up, may turn like a teenager's shortboard. This is the stuff that keeps me stoked about surfboards.

Simfish

5'10" Swift/Eaton 'Simfish'

This is the end result of one particular train of design thought that runs through some of the most functional if non 'mainstream' surfboards of the last 50 years. Richard Kenvin had made some 6' and smaller versions of the classic 9' Simmons board (go to Hydrodynamica.com if haven't done so already- that's the big Simmons on the homepage and the little Casper appears toward the end of the clip) which despite being really odd looking, surf incredibly well. A stumpy wide s-deck, twin keels way back on a 19" wide tail and you have a high speed small wave killer for the under head high stuff. The thing paddles like a longboard as it's carved from EPS by the mighty Joe Bauguess, yet when you pop up it's like riding a skateboard and it's blazingly fast. The sort of thing that can make your surfing experience entirely new and fun again. Being the mad genius types they are, RK & Joe took it another step and here's this thing. Hull and Fish melded? Sort of, but sort of it's own thing. EPS, hand foiled keels and I'm thinking about 5'6" personally, but as they're all custom I guess you can do whatever you want with it.

Making an Effort

Very odd. I've been fumbling to make this blog thing a bit more of a priority and follow through on the orginal intention (a not too subtle way to peddle our merch and to put the creative output of friends out there), and not one but 2 friends tell me they stumbled on it. Just the push I needed, so here we go. My friend Andy said more board pics is the ticket and I think I agree, so here's another one of Dain's. It's a hull, Aussie style. 5'11" and a big flex fin for the classic down the line runner and the start of a bit of a theme. Please note I finally got it together to put some other blog links over there. Probably you've seen them but if not take a look, they're all favourites of mine. Surf In Oregon is one of the greats I believe, and the one that made me think this was a good idea to try. Sissy and Pushing are classics of the genre, and I think Surferbrat has some of the best photography out there. Swallowtail, Fish Bros and Eli are all just into the same stuff I like and pure eye candy board wise. I even managed to get in the water and on a Saturday no less. Crowded as hell at Porto so being the grumpy old man I am I went a bit north and got bounced around by high tide dumpers all on my lonesome. I've said it before but here it is again- the acceleration that Spitfire fin gives you is really, really fun. I made around a couple of sections I didn't think I'd beat, and my one right was worth the whole foggy morning despite being tossed by the reflecting wave coming back from the shore.

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.

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.....

onwards

Neal Purchase, Parmenter widowmaker
Photo Kidman

Time is flying away from me. Festivus was a good time and only a couple of weeks ago. I hung with some cool Japanese guys, got to say hi to Skip Frye and watched two fantastically good bands, then drove home to LA from San Diego at 2 am with a truck load of boards for the Mollusk shop out here. I was tired. Since then it's been a whirl of book shipping, barely mediocre surf, another trip down to SD, mediocre surf and much stress and work in getting the Kidman book through prepress. Here's some details- 240 pages, hardcover, drawn from Andrew's 20 years worth of work, packaged in a screen printed box with an exclusive 10" record, limited to 1050 copies total, signed and numbered, $175. It's gone from a book to a piece of limited art, and it's really, really amazing. I'll keep posting stuff and will update on Andrew's planned tour when we start planning it.