Downhill With The Girls

Carving the Mountains from Juan Rayos on Vimeo.

Not only is this filmed beautifully, the fun these kids are having is sort of contagious- it's hard not to smile at the simple joy of rolling downhill. No idea what Juan Rayos' story is, but I've seen a few clips he's shot with this crew of Madrid longboarders and they've all been good. His other clips on Vimeo are definitely worth checking out.

An aside for all our Australian friends:
Just in case you hadn't seen, young Andrew Kidman and band are out playing their 'spinifex surf rock' live, with projections from his and Trefz's latest films as a bonus. Here's where to go:

Thursday 2nd – The Heritage Hotel, Thirroul
Tickets from venue website | http://www.heritagehotel.com.au/ | Ph 02 4284 5884

Friday 3rd & Saturday 4th, The Boatshed, Manly
Tickets from Heritage Surf Shop| http://www.heritagesurfaustralia.com/ | Ph 02 9977 7623

Sunday 5th, The Vanguard, Newtown
Tickets from venue website | http://www.thevanguard.com.au/ | Ph 02 9550 3666

JULY, 2011
Friday 1st, The Buddah Bar, Byron Bay
Tickets from the band’s website http://www.byronbaybrewery.com.au/

Saturday 2nd, The Coolangatta Hotel, Surfers Paradise
Tickets from venue website | http://www.thecoolyhotel.com.au/ | Ph 07 55 896 888

Friday 8th, The Noosa Surf Club, Noosa
Tickets from Solace Surf, Noosa | Ph 07 54470 2606

Saturday 16th, The Powerhouse Museum, Brisbane
Tickets from band’s website | http://www.brisbanepowerhouse.org

Surfboards by Royal

Rob Royal lives between the Bahamas and the UK at the moment, and he builds some highly interesting looking surfboards. He's been a great proponent of the sidecut design, and seems to really like playing with the concepts of modernized twin fin designs, all of which are very good things. Now he's done this quad with a Simmons bloodline, and I'm utterly impressed. Those English boys have some nice stuff bubbling away over there....

Mackie by Kidman

Asymmetric channels, a sidecut and some lovely keels. I have an idea for what could be done with keels like those, and as soon as the R&D budget gets sorted out it'll be on.
There's a nice little selection of 'Lost In The Ether' images here, then get the film here, you won't regret it.

Sarlo Shoots The Pier

Saturday night I run into Jeff Ho and have a nice hang. He told me Malibu had been good that morning on the South swell and he'd seen someone shoot the pier on what seemed to be one of his boards, then realized it was Allen Sarlo. Jeff thought he should have been riding a bigger board.
Monday morning, someone sends me a link to the above footage. The internet can be a frightening place sometimes.

Denevan & Baikal

Apparently this is Jim Denevan's art on the surface of Lake Baikal. Quite lovely and amazing to see, and that's a nice yurt he has going there. I'd love to hear some of the stories behind this one. Jim's beach art is featured, of course, in Patrick Trefz's film 'Thread'. And in his book 'Thread' which you can get from us for a mere $30 by emailing us at info @ foamandfunction.com. It may seem like I'm now working for Trefz (which in a way I seem to be, unpaid of course but that's how it works) but I hadn't seen these photos until yesterday and his films really are quite good, well worth you investigating if you haven't already done so.

An update: I love it when the comments are better than the post- thanks to Andrew Kidman I can steer you here which has some stunning photos and footage from this project.

Simmons & Curren & Beamish

Christian Beamish & Boards, photo by Patrick Trefz from the film 'Idiosyncrasies'

Beamish built these boards to ride Mavericks on after some study of original big wave boards made by Pat Curren & Bob Simmons. The whole process and result is documented in Trefz's film Idiosyncrasies and is well worth a look at.

Schaaf & The Unicorn

Many of you with a fondness for the skateboarding may remember Max Schaaf. Always a skater who's style I liked and despite aging along with the rest of us, he's still doing some fine stuff. He tinkers with motorbikes and has an entertaining blog along those lines called 4Q, mostly bikes, some skateboarding and he managed to find this quite excellent surfboard. Nicely done Mr. Schaaf.

MP

It's amazing how well and intuitively this man built surfboards, and how much impact his designs have had. Still by Kidman from 'Lost In The Ether', logo by MP, plate by Gerry Wedd.

Tijuana Makes Me Happy

Just saw these guys, they were brilliant. How often do you go to a show where the sousaphone player gets the girls screaming when he steps up to solo? ¡maravilloso!

Gentemstik's 'First Track'

'The First Track' is an impressive looking photobook put together by Taro Tamai and his snowsurf colleagues at Gentemstik. Unfortunately, it's probably not the easiest thing to get hold of (all the good stuff involves a little work otherwise it wouldn't be as good really) but you could try emailing them at worldwide@gentemstick.com and see what's up. No idea about price, but whatever that is it looks worth every yen.

Two Weeks by J. Abegg

Two Weeks... An experience by Johnny Abegg (film) from Johnny Abegg Films on Vimeo.

Johnny Abegg has posted a 20 minute version of his latest cinematic effort. Enjoy, and feel free to purchase his limited, entertaining and quite mad "___". $30 for the DVD/zine version, $50 for the DVD/book. All signed and numbered. As always, info @ foamandfunction.com to purchase, ask questions or just tell us something we should know.

summer will follow...

It's undeniably spring here in SoCal, the weather has turned lovely, the sun is out, the onshores blow and the swell is barely there. Still, we do have the solace of avocados ripening, like this beauty from my mate Greg's Mum's backyard tree. The Mackie board in the previous post weighs in at 5lb 12oz without fins and somehow I find it very satisfying that I have an avocado that's a 5th of the weight of a 6' surfboard. I also have t-shirts for the impending summer, although stocks are dwindling. Here's a selection of favourites still available in a sampling of the colours available. $25 each, shipping included. The Casper shirts are womens' sizes only and only in that blue, and there's womens' sizes in most of these other designs too. info @ foamandfunction.com if you're interested.

Brand New Mackie HP Fish For Sale

This whole "Hey. let's make Mick's boards available in the US' deal is becoming a bit of a nightmare. Nothing to do with Mick, he's a lovely bloke and a pleasure to work with. Boards are done when he says they will be and his turnaround is pretty quick for a one man hand shaping operation, even when I get the 'backed up a few weeks, the surf's been good' message. He makes it all very easy, the quality is great and his design sense is inspiring and progressive. Which is where the problem lies. I have no idea what's causing it, maybe the change of seasons down there, maybe the construction on the new shopping centre going up in Ulladulla has stirred something into the air, but the last run of boards has been mind-blowing, and now this has turned up and I want to keep it. I kept the last one that came though, so I can't keep this, but I want it. 6' x 20" x 2 5/8" EPS sidecut fish. Soooo insanely nice under the arm. Totally high performance, foam where you need it but gone where you don't, a bit of thickness in the tail but a lot less than on that quad and a very hooky side cut outline. Yeah, it's good. Comes with FCS boxes and a set of black FK-2 hexcore keels. $800, info @ foamandfunction.com for inquiries. Unless I cave and wax it up. Actually, I think this Mackie deal was all Kidman's idea so it's actually his fault I'm broke and my kid's room is full surfboards. I feel better now.
A sidebar on Mackie too- he hand shapes these boards so unlike someone who's dealing with a close tolerance blank popped out of a machine, he can tweak what you want- more thickness and a quad setup? Not a problem. This board but 5'8" and an inch wider? Can do but it might look a bit odd. If you want a custom board we can do it and it will be amazing.

Sage Joske via 'Lost In The Ether'

Sage Joske is a young Australian surfer/shaper and truly a kid who makes me believe the current upwelling of interest in non 'mainstream' shapes is just the beginning. He and his dad Paul were very early proponents of the interest in ancient Hawaiian boards and Sage shapes both classic and futuristic stuff under his Valla Saltwater Constructs label.
The screen images are of Sage in Andrew Kidman's 'Lost In The Ether' film and the montage is Kidman photos ofof Sage riding one his Valla epoxy fish.

And further- as DL kindly points out there's a great Sage interview at Phoresia, which is a site well worth your attention and I've been remiss in not adding it to the links until now.

Limey Widowmaker

Aforementioned britisher who's getting the Mackie sidecut is doing alright as he also apparently just got this. It's an absolutely classic looking widowmaker in the Parmenter/Kidman vein from Adrian at Fluid Juice Surfboards in the UK. Many of you may shrug and pass on to some resin tinted confection, but you should give this board a serious glance. It's really quite a lovely thing, clean, functional and utterly stylish in it's simplicity. It conjures images of Central Cal. in the fall for me, cold green water and a solid reef breaking with no one around. Top marks for the logoless clear action too.

The Goods, from Mick Mackie

The surfboard cup runneth over as it were. I just sent a very nice sidecut twin to a luckly gent in the UK, there's an EPS twin coming to replace it, finally a fun little session (on the EPS quad Mick made, still absolutely frothing over that board) and to top it off there's these artfully posed beauties. That stub (6' I think) looks quite tidy, and I'm still very enamored by that quad stinger. All these boards were hand shaped by Mick, and that's how he does it all. He will build you any thing you want custom so if you're interested, email info @ foamandfunction.com. These are very, very fine surfboards. And that's just the Mackie stuff, a visit to Jeff Beck was made and there is some utterly brilliant stuff being cooked up in his little bay of surf delights. More on that when he's got it finished and dialed in, but it's entertaining times all round.

More Legends

Lance Mountain


Lance


Steve Caballero & Lance


Steve


Rodney Mullen & Minor Threat, Kenter Canyon

Given the success of the Dogtown documentary, it only made sense that Bones Brigade one wouldn't be far away. It has the potential of being highly entertaining, and personally I think it's when Peralta was really hitting his stride. He and Craig Stecyk created some serious cultural impact in those days. Courtesy of Glen E. Friedman, here's some shots from the interviews as well as some of Glen's classic back in the day shots. Lance Mountain was and is the man.

Legends

The gent in the white shirt is Mr. Floyd Smith of Gordon & Smith, and because the universe is a random place, he was in Ulladulla NSW visiting a friend and signing some old boards. How's that single fin?

Jay Boy Book

In one of those moments of exceptional coolness, we've got the hookup to make copies of the 'Jay Boy' book available thanks to Mike Pool King. It's a collection of mostly black and white images from the archives of Kent Sherwood, Jay Adams' stepfather and all around Venice icon. The selection is amazing, Jay and the young Dogtown crew (Alva, Baby Paul, Shogo etc) skating and surfing the LA basin in the pre Dogtown days, the last gasp of hippie innocence and feral youth amongst the fast collapsing Los Angeles backdrop. Jay provides captions and a pretty classic dialog for the images, and it's all in all a lovely book. $20 + $2 shipping, email info @ foamandfunction to order or query.

John, by Mick

Patagonia teamrider Johnny Abegg going left! from Little House Productions on Vimeo.

J. Abegg surfing, shot by M. Waters. Both great blokes who have good movies out.