It has been a sufficiently difficult winter so far, and I am beginning to wonder if they make them any other way lately. This year I did not get my annual late season double holiday in California. Usually, it's Thanksgiving sessions, and fly back again for Christmas and New Years sessions. Plenty of relatively warm water surf, easy living and bean burritos packed into the last half dozen weeks of the year. Sure, there is an 800 pound gift horse of many colors in the room, and I'll stay away from its saddlebag of mixed metaphors from here on out, but damn if this winter isn't getting me down just a touch. The day after Christmas we took Sonny to see his first NYBT Nutcracker. He was enthralled, I was enthralled, we were enthralled. It was spur of the moment (sorry) and expensive, but it is one of those things that reminds you why you like New York. Why you live in New York. The principle dancers had the day off, so it was mostly core doing the lead stuff and they were still amazing. Last night I wore my flips to take the trash out and load some junk into the car. It felt good to give the city the finger like that.
-Toddy

More from Oz.

Our man in Melbourne. Grant doing his thing.

Angulus Spaceblip, covering space, making time, enjoying the moment in Oz on the board of long ago. Origin myth here.

AUSTRALIANS HEAR IT: Surf photog semistar Grant Cornett is down and under by going, I assume, up and over. He'll be there for a while, roaming and being his pleasant self. If you have a moment, or a bed, or a board and a will and a way and the time and the effort and all that, and if you are looking for someone to finally capture that once in a decade sort of shot, making you look good on a board in the process, speak up. He is around and taking offers on documentary assignments, both personal and other. Let us know. He has his cameras and his eyes in tow.

Grant's surfy work covered previously here, here, and of course, here.

Get yourself a good thing.

Sometimes, just sometimes the fashion subba subbas get something right.
And here it is. Getting it right.

Mr. Brull's Sophisticated New York State of Mind

Facebook Surfing: Phil & Josh

A couple G&P old boys, Phil and Josh turn up every year to play in the annual beach volleyball tournament in their speedos. The magic of Facebook hooked me back up with them this week (way out of season) and I spied some nice pics they'd apparently like to hoot about. I reckon I might too. So there you go.

Congrats Jandi and a New York welcome to Matilda, visit whenever you like!
(Gratuitous Ian surf shot courtesy of the format.)

The youngest EBNY contributor struts his stuff on the Pacific side. Future baller, future ripper.

Stepping off the plane in Newark yesterday I was assaulted by texts asking if I would be playing in the Diner Old Boys semifinal soccer game slated for three hours later in the evening. Ah yes, back in New York again.

Before leaving North County I made the decision to retire two boards mostly based on assumption that if I no longer had them I'd be forced to buy a new board the next time I go out there (or, more likely, stumble into another freebie used board gifted by a friend.) Either way, that sort of sloughing energy might produce some unexpected results. Besides, after getting Jackie Moonbags out on both participants in my "California quiver" he subsequently stated that I don't own a surfboard at all, just a couple floaty sorts of things that probably get in the way more than they help. So I stuffed the tensomethingorother foot warped screwball corkscrew banana and the ninesomethingorother squishy buckled toothpick under the house into the board graveyard with the ten or so other elder statesmen to be abused by all sorts of family and friend alike. And abused they will be. Into oblivion, I'm sure.

That last day though, that last day, the RM Clunker did its tenuously flexy job with aplomb on the walling-up pulling-tide set waves at Swamis; feeling, as it always has, as if it were about to snap mid face; feeling, as it always has, that every knee paddle would leave a lasting indentation. Laid to rest with laurels, these boards were.

We won our game last night. Or tied. I never did figure out the final score. All I know is that I gave Raisin one hell of an assist.

Onward into the cold Atlantic.

-Toddy