Found this great vid on the Point Concepts Blog. Made by this guy, apparently.

D. Brown Makes Another Film

I can't imagine anything more boring that listening to another bunch of surfy guys and gals talk about how gnarly and epic the North Shore is. Well, sure I can. I mean, of course I can. But still. I mean, still. Watching this clip pretty much summed up all the expectations I had before I watched the clip. Big gesticulations, superlatives, hyperbole, funny accents, images of waves that would make me pee my beach britches. You name it, it's there. Of course I haven't seen it yet and the fact is I will. Because I have to. Because it will be great. Or at least great enough in a very, very specific way. I'm just not sure which way that's going to be. Yet. I'm sure I'll think of something.

More Danielle

Antonio's Morning View, fresh off the digital press.

The preceding three images of Danielle culled from a reputable surf forecasting site:
1. "Beaner" in New Jersey    2. "Jeff Arthur" in New Jersey  3. "OCSupernut" in Maryland

Found here.

And, filed in the people-from-other-places-doing-things drawer... Oficina De Hechos.

Thanks to this place for showing this thing.

Inspiring moment lifted from Matuse

Some things just deserve a thumbs up.

Surfy Danielle

Foto Courtesy of Kookbox

A fun Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, surfing in anywhere from waist to head-high waves that have been lining up more or less like they should. I've pulled out my old Canon AE1 for shooting the last couple weeks, so the lag time on image upload is considerable.  This is to say that I won't have any Danielle images of my own up any time soon.  But here are some good places to check in for new ones...

Tommy Colla's Fotoshack
Jet1A Surfing Scrapbook

"I have a dark side within myself."
"I didn't want to show it to anyone."
"It's kinda like I'm in another world..."
"It's like going back to basics."
"Something sensuous..."
"But I can't resist the curiosity."
- Gou Miyagi

What problem, fun.

Compositional Happenstance in a New York Apartment. 

Today I indulged in a little disreputable joy.  The waves were lining up nicely, but mostly closing out just as surely since the swell direction and the tide were having an argument.  I lucked into a few longish connected types, but mostly dropped into one aborted pull out after another. Somewhere in there I had the best wave of my day, if definitely not the best looking wave from the bystander's appraisal. I was prone.  I turned a little late into something vaguely in the shoulder to head high zone, started to paddle and then just stayed on my belly.  I guided the board from there around a couple sections, up and down the face and out onto the shoulder.  Feeling the rush of the energy and being so close to the wave made my session, but almost certainly hurt my status in the lineup.  There were, what I might be projecting to be, a few dark looks as I paddled back out.  The next handful of waves I tried to make sure I looked a little more serious.  But that prone wave, the one where the speed felt most amped, is the one I'll savor.

Danny babbles on about Zizek.  I haven't read the movie... or watched the book... or smelled the lecture...  to know what it is he is mumbling about.  I looked it up on Wikipedia and it wasn't as good as the Cliff Notes. And I even did my final thesis paper on Hegel.  Not that I understood it then either.  There are these two things and they bash up against each other and the make a third thing.  Sounds like having kids.  But there is this other thing going on, this other thing lately.  This thing with blogs that post visual ideas.  They aren't quite diary blogs.  They aren't quite art blogs.  They aren't geek-out blogs.  More often than not, they sort of exist to prop up a brand of some sort.  It's like they are saying "hey, here is all this stuff we aspire to be, we didn't make these images, but they inspire us and what we are doing, so buy it!"  They are producing a kind of outré branding vision board that has broken out of the agency conference room and is parading around, exposed.  These bits and pieces plucked from here and there.  This is what we're doing, see, do you get it?  And it isn't any different, really, from all these nutty aficionados cultishly perving out on some digital trading cards. Because that's how the stuff gets disseminated in this Twenty First Century world.  Recycle, reuse, rediscover, exacerbate.  But the ostensible idea is to get it to the self-serving creation point.  You throw it all in there as often as possible, fill the pot up so it boils down in your favor.  It's like they are the director, and you, you're the cinematographer, and they've shown up at the pre-pro with all these crazy references stuck to white tack board and you are all "uh-huh, yeah, alright, yep, seen that, get it, yeah." Masters of Light stuff. But with the idea that whatever your brain makes of it all, it will lead you to their own front door. Are they pulling your strings? Are they somehow selling something to you that's not theirs?  Does it matter?  And that's how things work.  That's how it's always worked, just slower maybe, more hidden. But this time, in the end, it has to boil down to something.  Something has to be made. And inevitably, it will, that's the conceit. There is the hope that a universal is happening. A generous altruism of camaraderie. That's the thing that alleviates any moral nitpicking.  We're all in this together. It's just that in the meantime there is that uncomfortable feeling that you're talking to the rich guy who sat next to Willy Loman during training. 

Fotos that have little to do with the preceding late night blabber by Ed Fladung

"You've been blogging your goddam brains out dude." -Angus Gustav Wilson Rhombus III

It's true.  I've been on a roll.  And Antonio hasn't even been around to witness the carnage.  He's been out there.  So the season has begun early.  That is, the season of swell which coincides inconveniently with the season of commercial editing.  It is the hoary and bestial fact of the Nueva York surfing life that as the light gets less, the swell gets more and the work piles on.  Doesn't anybody in New York advertising surf?  So, stuck in a hotel room for an all-night edit-while-they-shoot scenario, after spending the day in my office for an all day edit-after-they-shoot scenario, I'll hop on the first bus, or train or in whoever's car is heading east as soon as we wrap.  In the mean time, it's always good to peruse the niceness of a few handsome young people living the seemingly care free life of logging the Best Coast.  Just stumbled over this blog thanks to this place, and the chummy good times makes the wait for tomorrow's dead-tired afternoon wave riding seem just palatable enough. Great photos, big smiles.

Simon Perini/Rhombus

Simon Perini, the talented, surfy, stella gentlemen from Thirroul just below Sydney has contributed to the Rhombus cause in a massive way by offering up some of his super shots for display & sale on the walls of Rhombus which we are super psyched about!

His shots will also be revolving their way around the Rhombus homepage when Nathan...finally gets the f@rken thing up...thanks Nate..you've done a stella (like that word today) job..can't wait to start blogging..in the meantime i'll keep contibuting to EB before Toddy has an anuerism in the edit suite over my lack of bloggage...

Thx Simo, for the support, the pics & the write up.

I'll see you in Sydney next week for a chat & some waves...yew...can't wait!

cheers ya'll,

Gustav.

oh & click the link to view Simos bloggage at tumblr.

Well isn't that just great. Every time you think you have a good idea, someone already had the good idea. Gooder, in fact. Magic Bus is a finely monikered, straight shooting, visually arresting place to keep you from doing other things for a little while... bah.

The problem with having old friends is that you're not looking for new friends. This ends up being bad for business.

The good thing about new friends is that you weren't looking for them, so really, there's no pressure.

Thanks to new friends Korduroy for the make and 60 Polegadas for the via.

We hope to have our own, über boring version of a hand-plane DIY video soon.

Of course we say that about a lot of "coming soons."

New York Surf Film Festivus 2010

Looking better than ever.

Sums It Up

Alone Time

Ditch Fotos from Toddy

Surfing Mag in New York

I have to admit, of all the surf magazines out there, Surfing has always been my least favorite. There, I've said it.  Jackie Moonbags disagrees.  He says he likes how Surfing cuts out all the soulful bullshit and goes for the jugular (my paraphrase, not his and that conversation was a long time ago, before he got old, so maybe he's changed his mind.)  But here they are, or were, and now they've gone and done it, or did it. Anyhow, here is their take.**

New York Noise Volume One

New York Noise Volume Two

New York Noise Volume Three

** Editor's Note: we haven't actually read these yet.

*** P.S. Editors Note: We've sort of perused them now and the best stuff happens in the comments section.  Go figure.

The Learners

Unidentified Bobbers, Surfer, Teacher

I've never spent much time at beaches where there is a lot of surf lesson action happening. I've always figured this was a lucky draw. But being out in the water with learners, while a hazard, is also kid of fun. Usually those days are small anyhow and it sort of pumps up the ego a little, to be honest. Plus, you get to surf around while the guys who are better than you have to bob and watch while teaching. So, yeah, there's a little sadism there too.

You're here. I miss you.

Dane Peterson Photo Genius

This morning the alarm goes off at 4:30. The little green and blue bits calling me preemptively, my wife nodding her head in approval. Smallish, knee high clean rollies predicted on a possibly inconvenient tide. I lie there. My phone, the hockey puck twenty dollar burner variety pinging and buzzing, I hit stop. There in the dark late summer version of pre-dawn, my mind has already begun its suburban speed-walking-mom jaunt down what should be a lazy path. But the suburban mom doesn't do lazy. That's not how the suburban mom in my brain works. I contemplate the existence of a suburban mom in my brain. Breathing, concentrating on breathing, laying on my back, then on my side. This morning I have no patience for the hour and a half drive for the hour's worth of surf, the time narrowing with every passing forced meditation. Dear lady, would you like a downer? The yellow one...no no, not the red one. The snoozey thing I was sure I'd turned off eviscerates the options. The red one it is. Here in this forced unslumber, already too late to head to the beach, too early to get up and do anything, the woman in the pink track suit with white tennies and a blonde bob scurries about whipping up the compressed time disaster that will be missed opportunities of the future.
I already miss summer.

Finally got around to picking up the Michael Rovnyak surfy photo taken a month ago. A friend took one look and asked "why are you doing the robot?" I just grimaced while my wife explained that that's how I look.

That's how I look.

Anyhow, MJR was kind enough to supply a bonus "clean" image for the blog. Nice.

*note the Dave Muller designed pelican tee.
* also saw the Amazon/Viking Laird Hamilton brood out in Montauk this weekend. Nearly stopped the car to point at the board that Mr. Hamilton's father shaped hisself. But I didn't. And I'm glad.

Tony in Tauk

LI Fotos from Antonio

One of the great pleasures of being the Endless Bummer New York Surf Blog is the fact that more often than not, it isn't a bummer. Given the unforgiving nature of the current global set-up, something not being a bummer is a major achievement. Antoni0 has acquiesced to work remotely out east for the next few weeks, holed up in a little house not far from the beach, editing reams of footage shot by an enthusiastic, bandandeoed man with a beard. We wish him luck while cursing his luck. Today's shots of something vaguely body-surfable.

Korduroy @ Cardiff

When I was a kid I used my brother's fake I.D. to get into a Crazy 8s concert in downtown Seattle. I don't know how I got in there as the I.D. had me down as something like 23 and I had probably just trurned 16, but I ordered a Henry Weinhardt and settled into being one of the only guys on the dance floor. ( I think the Crazy 8s were already past it by then.) At some point I owned an official Crazy 8s cassette tape, one that wasn't a dupe I copied from my brother. Maybe I bought it at that show. It was the clear plastic kind of tape, the kind that smelled like a grape lolli and the tape billfold was the sort that folded into about ten pages. On one of the pages there was a drawing of a corduroy coat and opposite was a little hand-written story about it.

The only time I surfed Cardiff was with sister-in-law's boyfriend and sister-in-law. It was a sucking sort of head-high-ish day, gray and not too forbidding, really, as sister-in-law's boyfriend is a local guy of sorts. I took off on a few good waves and made exactly one nice turn and drop kind of head high screamer that I couldn't believe I lucked into. Thanks sister-in-law's boyfriend.

Memory is a funny thing.

Andy Kessler Montauk Skate Benefit, 2010

All preview fots courtesy of Kim Nalepinski

The Pseudo-Montauk Bureau was able to swing by the Kess benefit for a quick six moments before putting the boy down to sleep.  The art was incredible and the crowd was all-star. As we drifted off before the thing really got going, it just looked like the deluge of people wouldn't end. It definitely looks like some money was raised and everyone had a good time.  It was something, really.  Dunno how to describe it other than that. The energy thing happening was over the top.