If this run of swell continues into winter....

7'6" Round pin single- $750

7' Baby swallow single- $725

6'5" double bump single $675

...you might want one of these and as always an email to info at foamandfunction.com will do the trick. All Lynch designs shaped by Tim Griffin, who can do a custom if you want and has a really nice line in 2+1 setups, something I'm very fond of when there's a bit of water moving around. All these boards are hand shaped by Tim to Wayne's specs which makes them a pretty excellent score- no machined close tolerance blanks here. Although one of my favourite boards is straight out of the computer and I think you should surf whatever makes you happy, I have nothing but respect for the shapers out there who mow foam from a blank and end up with something like these. I know we're meant to hate imports/popouts what have you, but something that has just had the crust scrubbed off it seems pretty much like a popout to me, especially when it's easy enough to feed someone else's dimensions into a machine and there you go- witness all the mini Sim versions out there. All a bit hypocritical it seems. I get the 'support your local shaper' concept, but what if your local shaper isn't Wayne Lynch, Joe Bauguess, Dick Brewer or whoever? Does it make it OK for someone to sell a cheap version of their design? Lynch takes flak for having models with Surftech, but his motivation for that was basically that his designs get duplicated anyway, so he may as well make something on the deal. Not the best way to go about it in my opinion, but now he's got Tim making his boards which is a far better option. Sorry about the rant, surf whatever your conscience says is right, but a doff of the cap to the likes of Tim, Joe, Mick Mackie, Jeff Beck, Jamie Murray, Rob Royal, Pendo and the other craftsmen at work (many who have blogs listed to your right). They deserve our support because it's their efforts that drive the whole design process forward. I'll shut up now, I think I'm a bit surf happy from a week's worth of closeouts on the noggin.

More magenobashi o

Jeff Ho by Craig Stecyk III



Jeff & Carl Ekstrom at the Ventura Sacred Craft

Weather's been good, there's a bit of energy in the water and I've availed myself the last few days. Had some good moments courtesy of the Mackie flextail, coming off the bottom hard and fast which is needed in the closeouts I've been frequenting. Good fun, but back to work now.

What's The Japanese word for flex?

Mackie in Glide magazine. Seriously, any Japanese speaking readers out there- I'd love to know.

Ether Monthly #4

Mark 'Sutho' Sutherland by Andrew Kidman.
From 'Ether' available from Foam and Function

For many of us antipodeans, Sutho is something of a hero. He was and is responsible for the mighty 'Gonad Man' comics, some of the finest 'surf art' ever made. Back in the old days, the mighty Testicular one was a mind blower, utterly hysterical and totally universal in it's lack of respect for the sacred cows of the culture. It was around this time that young editor Kidman met mighty artist Sutho in the 'Waves' office and the two have been co-conspiritors of sorts ever since, both artistically with Sutho contributing animation (and genius monologues- check 'The Ghosts Are Calling' film, available with the new edition of 'Litmus) and musically as the Val Dusty Experiment. The above photo is from the morning after the band broke up. Sutho is still at it and Gonad Man is back at www.gonadman.com For a low subscription price you can have the new work delivered straight to your desktop- genius!

Simster

As I've mentioned before, there's often someone's custom surfboard sitting in my house waiting delivery, and almost inevitably I'm frothing over the thing, wishing it were mine to soil with wax and pressure dents. This one is an absolute beauty, a 5'6" Simster via the talents of Joe Bauguess, and having ridden an earlier prototype of this board, I'm pretty heavily stoked on how this batch look like they'll ride. The original Simster is a lot of fun, sort of a performance version of the mini Sim with the trailing fin and narrower tail giving serious hold and responsiveness- whereas you surf a dual fin, these boards feel a lot more neutral and like a thruster go where you point them no problem. Unlike a thruster however, the Simsters have that awesome drive and planing feel of the mini- maybe not as blazingly fast down the line, but in more serious waves the speed of the mini makes some of those bottom turns a skin-of-the-teeth affair and there's none of that feel here. It's a really nice option on the days that the fat little fish isn't going to be the sensible ride. Along with the Lynch single fin, definitely the board discovery of the past 12-18 months for me. In case you feel like ragging me on the start of the garden, there's chunks that look might fine- like this.

Photographers

Ray Barbee by Patrick Trefz, from the 'Thread' book.

A couple of relevant shots from Patrick's book, Ray Barbee doing the non-music stuff. Trefz has been off in the far reaches of Baja tracking down Christian Beamish who's been sailing his little boat into all sorts of nooks and crannies down there. I have signed copies of the 'Thread' book for $30, free shipping inside the USA. Contact us at info at foamandfunction.com if you're interested- there's some of his prints from the book available too, framed and reasonably priced.


The Whomp- photo by Ryan Field.

Meanwhile Ryan, who's been shooting a lot of the Hydrodynamica footage, has got what is going to be a seriously great photo blog up and running at http://ryanfieldphotography.blogspot.com, he's linked on the side too. Well worth a visit, believe me.

More Flow than Ebb

All round nice guy and charmer Andy Davis had an opening party for the Ebb & Flow shop, and it was fully hard body. RK busted out new Hydro footage with some stuff from the Big South, J. Smart rolled some great footage from 'The Tyler Warren Experiments' and The Mattson's and Ray Barbee played in front of an Airstream, attracting the attentions of the local Constabulary. Fortunately one Copper was a fan of Ray and let him finish the set unmolested, get a permit next time gents. The shop looks great and Wegener's Alaia shaping deal across the road at Patagonia was a huge hit it seems. There was even a nice little swell showing out at the Cardiff Reef. Pretty awesome all round.

Interstellar Overdrive

Mackie's not the only mad bastard out there, here's an early Hydrodynamica Test Pilot board that Bauguess and Kenvin riffed on, but the fin setup made no-one happy. The big keels were taken off then RK decided to see what the spidermonkey groms could do with it as a tiny trailing fin board, meanwhile Joe B. is frothing to make the thing with a new fin setup, and so goes the meandering trail of progress. If you're in SoCal this weekend, vist lovely Cardiff On The Sea Saturday afternoon and evening. Patagonia will be hosting a series of Alaia workshops with Jon Wegener at their store on San Elijo Ave, and across the road the new Andy Davis store Ebb & Flow will host an opening party from 5pm on. RK will be there with films, I'll have some books and maybe boards, Primo in the house again- it'll be fun and I'm going to try and make Jon stick around for the Ando action so if you miss the workshops you can hit him up with those concave questions and score some nice t-shirts at the same time.

Mick Mackie, surfboard shaper

Mick & Taro Tamai



They've had waves in Australia



7 fin option



Asymmetrical Andrew demonstrates 'coming off the bottom'



A few from our man in Ulladulla, he's been working a bit, surfing a bit and after some snow recreation will be making a few boards for us, so now's the time to get that order in for fall and hopefully better waves. There's a stock flextail here and we can set you up with whatever you want, just email info at foamandfunction.com. There's been some pretty epic work being done by the Australians, more soon.......

Mr. Freedom

Here's one of those lovely bits of internet functionality happening. I've been linked to the December Snowskates blog for a bit as Kevin from December has been doing some really cool stuff. He's been handcrafting these bindingless snowskates for a while, and he loves to surf so it seems natural he'd be enthused by a lot of what's been going on in surfing with the alaias (he's built a decent quiver including one that's hopefully going to develop into a board that can be ridden snow, surf and skate style!) With the snow/surf crossover he's very aware of the Mackie/Winterstick/Taro Tamai program, and that has led him to what we're doing here, and it's been great seeing what he's been up to and sharing our new projects with someone as stoked as he is. Then this week I find a box containing the above board in my PO Box. 27" x 7" hand crafted asymmetrical skate deck. Utterly beautiful piece of work gifted from December Snowskates. I'm still tripping on how fantastically cool it is, and my daughter immediately named it Mr. Freedom which works for me. This is definitely what makes all this nonsense so worthwhile- a piece of hand crafted beauty.

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.

A Random Sort Of Selection

Short while ago I was all stoked on handing off some custom Swift mini Simms, especially since one was going to Bali it seemed. Well, it did and the photos above are Steve putting his board through it's paces. Seems he scored some pretty nice surf and got a few blazing runs on the mini. Nice. Meanwhile check the Hydro blog, there's shots of the Bauguess/Ekstrom collaboration orchestrated by RK- there will be some highly interesting foam coming out of this one. Even more random: should you be at the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach this weekend, try to find the board booths as we will be there, a shared Jon Wegener/Hydrodynamica Test Pilot Series/Mackie Surfboards mega booth. Please come by, it'll be nice to see someone that isn't a sticker hunting mouth breathing grom I imagine. Not entirely sure how all this came together as it happened fast, but apparently I'm spending my weekend surrounded by energy drink purveyors and multinational clothing companies trying to interest the masses in cutting edge planing hull design. Excellent. The Kinski board, well that's totally rad. R.I.P. Baby Paul Cullen, one of the Dogtown mainstays. He lived the life, no punches pulled, and I'll miss the mad phone calls out of the blue.

Ether Monthly #3

Photo Kidman from 'Ether'. Available from Foam & Function and worth every cent.

After posting the Narrabeen pics last month and then having my thruster moment courtesy of RT's new film project, it seems only natural to post this particularly epic shot of Simon Anderson at North Narrabeen in 2000. In this photo, he's twice the age of most of the Pro Tour guys.

from his interview in 'Ether'
"At Narrabeen, Col Smith is known as the father of modern, radical, explosive surfing - I think that's fairly common knowledge and he should be proud of that fact. He did set a lot of standards; we were looking at what Col was doing, as opposed to Terry, and trying to emulate that sort of more vertical surfing, that was more oriented to destroying the lip and surfing in the pocket; carving off the top and doing cutbacks, stuff like that.

How I developed my style? I don't know, it just happened. I wanted to surf like Col and be explosive and be radical. Narrabeen, back then, was conducive to doing that under the lip thing and finding out about backhand tube riding. So I was quite happy to practice my craft at Narrabeen and develop my backhand surfing, to a fairly large extent."

Derek

Derek Hynd, Jeffreys Bay, South Africa. 26/06/09 from Yves Van den Meerssche on Vimeo.

If you haven't been checking out Safe To Sea and the Kurungabaa blogs you're missing out. This little gem turned up via them.

Days At The Beach

I've surfed a lot over the last few days. It's a good thing.

RK Droppin' Science Like Galileo

TJS | POV - Richard Kenvin from The Surfer's Journal on Vimeo.

Vimeo gives me all sorts of grief, herky jerky and quiet but it's worth persevering with as Richard gives the goods. Meanwhile here in South Central LA it's like a war zone- you people certainly love your patriotic fireworks. Back home we celebrate an attempt to blow up the English Houses of Parliament but certainly not with as much vigor. This year is exceptional, the dog may not recover.

Modernity Killed Every Night

Kidman

One of those weeks of unrelentingness, but all in a good cause I suppose. Boards were delivered all over the place which is actually fun. Obviously if they're buying a board through me, it's one I like and therefore the customers tend to be quite entertaining and cool folks, and so they were. It's a bonus getting to be the guy handing a new board to someone too, makes me feel like I've improved someone's day a bit, and I snuck a few sessions in around the handoffs which improved my days a bit, and the dog found a dead seal which made it very happy but didn't improve anyone's day at all. The shapers here and in Australia are on a roll, there's new concepts and ideas being thrown around and I'm certainly excited. Also collected and am sorting a stack of art from Trefz and Curren, I'll no doubt have some up here and I'm sure you can buy it if you're so inclined. Go to Warbles and check RT's great little advance promo for his new project- fully shreddy acrobat action, made me want a decent wave and a thruster.

From the bay...

The shaping bay that is. Joe Bauguess in full legend mode, mowing out the beauties and the boys get a little experimental with the colour work. Photos by Level Horizon Phil with more to follow.

Efficiency and Organisation

No seriously, there was some on this last trip south. I collected some boards which will shortly be making certain people very happy. Joe Bauguess is on fire, the boards are looking really clean, especially the first batch of Simsters which are soon to be glassed. Here's the state of my kid's bedroom at present, she's holding a pretty awesome quiver. There's a 5'9" Mackie Sidecut flextail very similar to the one I've been riding in there, and after the last few days I'm back loving it hard. In the better surf of San Diego county it was feeling really good, sort of like driving on a well cambered road- the flow and drive was apparent, even in the bumpier stuff. Tues was cleaner and bigger than Weds, but there were waves that made the whole jaunt worthwhile both days. The Hydro crew were scoring too, check RK's blog.


The nice new shirt colours were collected- blue for the gents, I've got some Hydro spirals and the Foam & Function with a serious green print, both in Med, Lg and XL. The ladies get the lavender shirts, S, M, or L. There's some Spirals and a few Swift Slayers in black and lavender. All $25 including shipping.


This is the sort of weird score of the month- the always genial and utterly legendary John Elwell designed and had printed these Simmons tribute shirts, front and back print shown. Limited edition, M, L or XL white beefy-t only and $25 also- mad O.G.! To order any of the above just email info@foamandfunction.com.

Asym For The Cement

Here's some asymmetrical skateboards from the guys at December Snowskates. I'm aware the rails on a skateboard aren't engaged, but it's a lovely concept and a really nice execution. There's even a cool little video of the painting process here
http://decembersnowskates.blogspot.com/2009/06/super-hooked-on-this-tune-from-movie.html
Yusuke took the photo of Ekstrom's 6 footer in Japan, the flextail is seeing some action and I'm off down south for a couple of days.