Narabeen to New York

Simon Anderson from Ether

Dicko from Ether

Pat Curren from Ether

Dave Parmenter from Ether

Single

Young A. N. Kidman is with the family doing a bit of a recharge in his favourite city, and in his usual manner of keeping things moving, he's not only shaping a few boards (more on that later) but has an event or two happening. If you are in range of NYC,  Andrew will have a collection of images from his most recent and excellent book 'Single- Studies Of Movement' on show at the Crumpler Space from December 12, and if you're not in range of NYC we have copies of Andrew's books & movies available at a very reasonable rate, all you need to do is email info @ foamandfunction.com.

Here's links to a great 2 part interview with the man on the Pilgrim Surf site,

Part One

Part Two

And here's a really quite excellent piece from the Coastalwatch site written by Andrew's better half on shaping her first surfboard- why the dearth of female shaper's out there? Hopefully Michelle is on the path to changing that.

The Uki Experiment

Purcho

Neal Purchase Jnr | Indonesia from Rhythm Livin on Vimeo.

I'm a little slow off the mark with this one, so you may have seen this clip, but it's well worth another viewing. Neal Purchase Jnr. killing it on his own shapes in Indonesia. He's a monster in the surf is Purcho, and his boards are looking very clean indeed. NPJ took serious notice of the Parmenter widows and the classic singles he was riding some years back, and has used the ideas found there on boards built for more everyday surf, and done well with it by all accounts.

 

Purcho also features strongly in 'Glass Love', the very excellent Kiddman film. If you don't have it, you should get it- email info @ foamandfunction.com and for $15 we'll mail you one anywhere you are in the world.

Lush

Michael Mackie of Ulladulla, NSW Australia delivers once again. Both in the 7' neighbourhood, both feel like they'll be rockets.

Surfboards Pt. 9- Barry Snyder

The great thing about this whole surfboards lark is there are days where you look at the pile on the front porch and think 'this is all complete madness' , then you discover someone who's not only there but pushing it further out. Cas in point, Mr. B. Snyder of Oceanside. Can't tell you much other than I saw his work at the Sacred Craft show and was very, very clean and functional looking while playing with some oddball concepts like asymmetry. He hand shapes everything which is righteous and is playing with materials like Agave. Lovely stuff, and you can see more at his website.

Sasquatch

You know the situation- stories coming indirectly of sightings in the far north, blurry pictures that might or might not be what they purport to be and hardy locals who just move away from you if the subject is bought up. In this case it's something at the low end of the 5' range, tweaked for performance either stand up or prone on the zippy insiders but of course it may all be faked and that's actually Bali in the picture......

Mackie Flex!

Some of the surfboards you see in these pictures are going to be making their way to sunny California soon, and better yet that's just part of the Australian invasion as it were, as there's some other seriously good stuff coming this way. Absolute bloody magic!

Burch & More Asymmetry

Functional(?) Water-deflecting sculptures from Ryan Burch. The kid is very, very good.

PT Bi Fin

Hmm, I need to watch 'Stylemasters 2' apparently. That's some interesting asymmetry there. Thanks to R. Royal for directing my attention to this albeit indirectly.

Worldwide Prone Action

Nobby in Japan, old timey action from the homeland. All courtesy of Sally at original surfboards. There's more to come too, some excellent modern design soon....

The One Motorcycle Books & Kidman prints

So it's getting on towards Xmas and you may well be wondering what sort of classy, erudite yet cool gift to buy for some lucky sort, and we're here to help. Hopefully you already have Ether and/or Dogtown, (and if not just email info @ foamandfunction.com and we'll set you up with a special Xmas deal) so a new recommendation is what's needed. My pick of year is this fine collection from See See Motorcycles in Portland, Oregon. The books document the annual One Motorcycle Show, and do it beautifully, and $99 for the pair really can't be beat. Of course photos of a bunch of oily louts from the PNW might not be everyone's cup of tea, so I'd also recommend the latest Kidman limited deal- he's selling a small run of prints from the 'Single' book.

Limited to 10 of each image, eminently frameable and a fine addition to any art collection. Contact the man himself through his site.

Surfboards Pt. 9- Jeff Beck

Alright,onwards with more pictures of good surfboards. Jeff Beck, the one man show that is Nine Lights Surfboards. EPS core, vacuum bagged with a wood skin, these things are seriously handmade- Jeff even mills his own wood.. I have one of his boards and have praised them before and will praise it again- it's great, has a really tight springy flex to it and is tough as hell, but best of all the shape is really good - foam and float in the right place and foil in the other places. Jeff knows his stuff, and there's some great board photos on his Instagram thingy.

The Wrap Up

Yes, I know- enough Holiday pics. I'll leave it here except to say it was totally amazing, and uch of that was to do with the good folk of Cornwall. The mighty John Isaacs was invaluable, as was Sally at Original Surfboards. They were a great intoduction to an array of the Cornish surf community. Case in point- inside a few days week I got to surf with Gwynn Haslock, one of the UK's first woman surfers and still utterly stoked. When she entered the 1st Newquay surf contest in 1966 there wasn't even a class for women, and she was still scoring gems in 2013. Gwynn was brilliant, living history with absolutely wonderful stories, but still very self-effacing and low key. Other end of the scale of the amp-meter was the mighty Jimbo Bennet and crew. Completely stoked and frothing and part of a gang of 20-something groms, Jimbo would roll up late with his jar of tea, make a few calls to see what was up and who was up then it was off to the beach and he'd make you think it was the best day of surf ever, no matter the conditions- he even won the Men's Juniors at Champs (that's the under 60's in the Bellyboard world). Legends all of them, and my thanks to them all.

When A Man Is Tired Of London, He Is Tired Of Life

I can definitely see what Samuel Johnson was getting at although it is a bit of a drive to get some surf, not that the old bloke was worrying too much about that in 1777 admittedly.