Big In Japan

Kidman cam catches our boy celebrating some new Japanese press. We transcend cultural and language barriers almost every day around here.

Gloom, Artshows and the rest

Photo by Joe Curren

The run of surf fun ended with Socal's bizarre weather behaviour over the last few days. Onshores howling, tornadoes in Riverside, thunderclouds- wonderful chaos. There's some inside stuff to do though. If you're in New York or environs you're stoked. Weds 28th Richard Kenvin & Joe Curren are part of a show at the Yard Gallery at Soho Grand (how NYC arty is that?) involving 3 photographers and 3 filmmakers. There will be good stuff there and the rsvp needs to go to events@sohogrand. The following night there's the bicycle oriented 'Hello Velo' show that Patrick Trefz is part of happening at 40 Great Jones St near the Bowery. Again totally worth going out for I'd say. Those of us in the greater LA can feel very urbane at the Maggie Marsek show at Shelter on Sat 31. Always a fun event there, and Maggie's photos are great so I say go for it. Added a couple more blog links over there, Jamie Murray's shaping and Norcal photos make me want a road trip, and Niega's road trip and photos make me want to go road trip France & Spain.

Jair Bortoleto's Book

Jair Bortoleto has most kindly arranged to get some copies of his book 'Alma Santista' up here for North American consumption. It's a really cool collection of photos, mostly portraits, that Jair has shot around his home town of Santos which happens to be the birthplace of Brazilian surfing. The book is about 10" x 10", softcover and black and white. It's a really nice moody collection, and even though the text is in Portuguese it's still easy to get a feel for the place. Here's the cover and a couple of spreads from the book, and Jair's blog over there on the right has a nice collection of his photos. The book is $35 postpaid inside the US, and if you want it just email me at consafos@earthlink.net and I'll make it happen.
Lagged a bit on the posting due to this swell to be perfectly honest. I've been out there on the Casper neglecting work as much as possible over the last week culminating in really fun go-outs on both Sunday and Monday. Stayed away from it today and dealt with book stuff that has been happening the way it should and looks like being a great project down the line, so I don't mind missing what was apparently another good day (Andy surfed a northern LA point and said it was plenty fun) as I'll get back on it tomorrow. Some stuff you may want to check out from the last few days are Patrick Trefz doing some updating after scoring excellent looking mainland Mex, and a great little interview with Tim Griffin (who's shaping the fine new Lynch boards for the US) at surfboardbuilders.com/blog.aspx.

Lynch by Kidman

That widowmaker has got me going and any excuse to run a shot of one of my favourite surfers I'll take. Lynch surfing is by Andrew Kidman from Ether. Not sure what happen to the colours but I like it. Not a bad bottom turn for a guy in his 50s. Underneath that is a hurried shot of my Lynch Evolution model, shaped by Terry Goldsmith. It's a 6'8", nearly as old as my daughter and far grubbier than she is (usually).
Oh yes, the board below is based of a Seebold single apparently. Makes it even more epic really.

Someone will be very happy...

Custom 6'3" Lynch Widowmaker made by Tim Griffin

Some very lucky and damn smart person ordered this beauty from Tim Griffin. It's a widow based on a Wayne Lynch single fin and looks amazing. Lynch has had a few bad deals with making his boards available outside of Victoria, but it looks like it's all go now. Tim Griffin is shaping them in N. San Diego County, he's had plenty of experience with Wayne's designs and it shows in the boards I've seen. Pretty epic stuff all round, but a Lynch Widowmaker is right up my alley- I was frothing like a 16 year old when I saw this.

And Now We Present...

Photo by Joe Curren of photos by Joe Curren

In typical Joe fashion he's got a blog he's been a bit low-key about and it's really good. Go check it out.
http://joecurren.blogspot.com

The Week in Pictures

The surf was good this weekend and the in-box has been bountiful and entertaining of late, so here's a rundown. First up is some surfing in Australia from Mick Waters.



Still in Australia, Chef Kidman whips up some special mouth numbing chile jam. The secret recipe involves a potfull of these. (Photo by the Chef himself)



Meanwhile in New York, the East Coast Fish Frye/ AB3 weekend goes down. Some cool boards on display and here's Mike and Richard post event maybe wishing they had some chile jam to go with the pizza. (Photo lifted from Shipworm & Gribble)



And finally, a shot from former Z-Girl Peggy Oki who was rock climbing near Canyonlands. She finds time to still skate, surf, climb, save whales and paint. She's an excellent example of living with gusto

Killin' It Worldwide

Jair reports nice conditions and 6' in Santos, Brazil (like the weather would be bad in Brazil). Mick Waters says it's been good in the Kirra region, barrels aplenty and some of them lefts making him a happy goofyfoot. RK said it was solid windswell joy on a Casper at one of those historically important breaks down south, and the photo is River Rock himself, killing it at Sloat (no idea when it was taken but hell of drop Petro's making there.) I'm going out tomorrow AM. Kidman is making deadly mouth numbing hot sauce. All is good. Here's hoping the NYC Fry gets a few spinners for the boards to be tried on this weekend.

Here comes Trefz!

The world of blogging widens yet further. Patrick Trefz has a really suitably suave looking photo blog. I mercilessly stole the picture above from it) If I'm going to waste time on the damn internet, this is the way to do it

http://patricktrefz.tumblr.com/

Hopefully his disciplined Germanic temperament will keep him updating it regularly, it's pretty epic so far.

Aloha & Welcome to Swift

Fine art by Sailor Jerry

The mighty Philski is up and 'social networking' with the rest of us. Appearing on your internet is not only a page on Myspace for The Swift Movement but also a blog
http://theswiftmovement.blogspot.com
Word has it that the San Diego boys have new digital camera technology and will be displaying all that they can from the Dustbin of History that is The Swift Movement.

South

Photo by Maz, a spot south of here.

Truck is back, books are shipped and I can go surfing tomorrow. Hooray!

Fine Art

Andrew Kidman prints on wood 12" x 16"

With my truck in the shop it's been a surf free week for me with Casper Jnr Jnr sitting neglected, but it's not all bad. I spent a week with my kid visiting, got a fun small surf session in on Sunday, handed the truck over and have been catching up on assorted neglected business since. One chore taken care of has been the sorting out of art left by Mr Kidman which was occupying my long-suffering daughter's bedroom. I'm curating a decent collection here, and the artist is more than happy to sell to any interested parties. Pictured here are some of what proved popular items while on tour. These are wood panels with hand-painted backgrounds and Andrew's screenprint art on top. Each is unique and they're a good deal at $300 a piece. As always feel free to email me at consafos at earthlink.net if you have any interest in these or other of Andrew's output. Those with no art budget can get their jones taken care of by ducking over to Warbles where Ryan has posted pictures of a new EPS creation he's been working on. Whether the thing surfs great or not it's a fantastic piece of sculpture, but I'm thinking it'll work fine and give an interesting variation on the ride.

Casper Jnr. Jnr.

More of the new board. Lame as I am I cranked a few crappy photos off , waxed it and away I went. Too excited to actually take a minute or two for better unsullied photos, but I'll do some nicely posed ones soon. Subsequent sessions have been more rewarding with better waves to play on (still far from great) and I can feel it doing what it should. My new daily driver without doubt. Very fun board, paddles much better than you'd think a 5'5" would be capable of, it's really loose and skateboard-esque and absolutely flies. My experience with this design had been on pretty good waves- lined up Rincon and you're in heaven- so I'm stoked that it rides so well in lesser conditions like the Santa Monica beach break. Still managed to go over the handlebars on one though

Freshly Minted

5' 5" of fun, much thanks to Joe B, Phil and RK and I'm going surfing...

UPDATE
Possibly because of new board excitement, the eye of fate and all that, the waves were crap. Small and gutless on the points with the tide filling, bigger and starting to close out at the beachy. Ah well, such is surfing. I got a couple, Casper Jnr. Jnr. felt as good as that which it was modeled off and I can't wait for a decent go at it. Did run into some friends and had much fun but not much waves. Back at it tomorrow.

Sweet

Couple of nice neo-zaps, got the pic from a Swaylocks thread and the boards are over at solosurfer.com. Both are quad with a fin box for that starfin option. No problems there.

Astounding ineptitude

Made and carried out plans to meet RK and Phil at the Shelter opening. I'll spare the full array of nonsense that has led to us being called the 'Keystone Cops of surfing' by someone who's dealt with it all, but needless to say I didn't get my board and I forgot my camera to document the fun. It was fun too, Boroquez installation art and really fine new digs for the Shelter family, K. Putnam dropping knowledge and story out front, Joe Bauguess rolling up from SD with the boys and charming the ladies all night, getting to hang with Ryan Warbles and Jeff Beck from Ninelights, both of whom are onto some wild and entertaining stuff, getting schooled on balsa by the aforementioned Jeff, Mexican beer and general frivolity. The Shelter folks throw a good party and really enjoy this surfboard stuff which is fine by me. Such a moron for leaving the camera behind. It's been a couple weeks of better than usual chaos and ineptitude from me, so here's a look at a suitable mascot for it all.

Bonza!

Eaton/Swift Bonzer by Joe Bauguess

It seems like you can't be a real blogger without posting a picture of a bonzer, so here's one from me. Joe's in town and busy shaping away so hopefully I'll be seeing my 5'5" mini Simmons very soon. I'm excited like schoolkid the day before holidays.
As the year is about 1/4 gone, I'm seriously facing up to what I need to get done. Hopefully it's going to be a productive year for us all, and by posting this I'm hoping I'll have added incentive to get these things finished. In relative order of expected production, here's my aims:
-Swift website up and running (soon I hope)
-Brown Birds From Windy Hill vinyl released
-Joe Curren book done and released
-'Bird Down Under' book finished and released
-Albie Falzon book started
-Hopefully a couple more 'Ether' shows in there too, Andrew's talking about Spain and I'd like to get those East Coast shows done, and maybe another LA/SD one if he's back in the US. I'm agitating for the full slide show/Hydrodynamica clip performance again as it went over very well.
There's also some tenative fun with Australian surfboards and shapers,and I'll hopefully also be helping Patrick Trefz sell his 'Thread' book (again- that's a really good film) but more on that as it becomes more concrete.I need to pay my rent and eat over this time too, so no doubt Jan 09 will come and I'll be staring at this list in dismay. Don't forget this Saturday is the Shelter reopening which I will most certainly attend, 'with bells on' as they say in my part of the world.

Brazil

Jair in Brazil sent me a couple of emails loaded with photos. He'd been hanging with Mike Vallely and acting as a defacto guide/translator. They went to a youth program in a Sao Paolo juvey prison and into some very harsh favela zones. Whole time Jair is taking some very epic photos. He's doing some great work and he's got a blog that I've now linked.

Surfing

A wave, south of where I was.

Went south on a very weak work pretext and managed to get in the water in a good spot while a swell was running again. After a terrible couple of months I've lucked out twice. Last week during the south/west combo I gambled on the tide making Santa Monica OK and it was, peaks all over, offshores and nicely bowly chest to head high waves. Probably was better elsewhere but I had pretty damn good all to myself. Yesterday I got nice sized and clean N. San Diego beachbreak for an hour or two, then went down to visit the Swift headquarters. RK had surfed Windansea for about 5 hours over two great sessions and had some footage to prove it. The first swell totally lit up La Jolla, insane Waimea-esque monsters in the sunset, but Ed Wood struck and the footage is a bit too mysto for it's own good. However I think the fine lads over at Shipworm have inspired him with their blogging prowess and he's up and running with Hydrodynamica, so we all get to see the fine stash of images he has, and he's started with some nice shots from yesterday. I've linked him over there along with the Grey Ghost who's shaping some truly righteous looking boards out in NYC. I'd like also to say that a visit to Warbles to see the Jeff Beck foam/wood sandwich board is well worth it. If I'm avoiding work by looking at surfboard pictures then you should too.

Purcho

Purcho pic swiped from Solace Surf Au

I've been slack about posting as I've had a week of computer malfunction that was fortunately simply fixed, and now I'm trying to get back on it and caught up with everything. Meanwhile, down in Australia the Noosa Surf Festival has been progressing with all manner of fun including a Brown Birds From Windy Hill show. Here's their guitar hero and the inventor of the rail machine, Neal Purchase Jnr, with a couple of his shapes. There was probably beer involved in the production.