via Ok Oh

Yes

Thanks to Charlie Nuckles

Someone down there is either getting real lazy or just got real industrious.  Since we know the parties involved, we have pretty good idea which one.   But we aint sayin.

via

The Life of a New Yorker, Found On Crosby Street This Morning

Articulation

foto: t.colla

Cold Path to Enlightenment by Chris Nelson from the book Cold Water Souls.

Winter Whine Count Up #7

I haven't surfed in weeks.  I haven't touched a soccer ball in weeks.  I haven't had a drink in weeks. Not even a paddle.  Not even a friendly post-work beer.  Ok, so the boy and I have been kicking around the little green mushy ball.  Gotta keep up the touch.  In New York, right now, it is desperate times.  Not so desperate you'd correct, and I'd have to acquiesce.  The flu we just got over was just the flu.  I can still take the subway to work.  I still have work.  But the snowiest January on record has taken it's toll.  Add to that a least surfy January and the toll is complete.  Just flat and fickle and flat and the when it's not the snowplows aren't doing their work and the clients are demanding I do mine and the sun only peaks over the horizon too late to justify the trek.  And the whole time the whole time, social media is popping up images of those intelligent sods who've had the ken to make a life in the right spot, so far yet so close.  The daily flow of images from Drug Money Art and Dalton Portella have this weird sort of inverse quality, something surfers from other environs may not latch on to quite like a surfer in New York might.  At issue is this magical effect of circumstances that make the freezing cold look downright tropical; downright pipe dreamish.  And so the drumbeat picks up.  The wife nudging west, but my mind, somehow drifting east...

Remember Antonio, we work for a reason!

via The Internet via Bergman via Mozart

White Satin Gloves

A great sounding band featured on Weekend Edition today. The music is good enough, sorta classic, great sound, but that it's some couple that sails around together all the time... well, it kinda girds one with goodness, right? I mean, at least for the moment, they've got it just right.

WHITE SATIN GLOVES

TENNIS

via The Surfer's Journal

Place: Long Beach Temperature: 35.1º F

Winter Whine Count Up #4 (or #5?) (Or six?)

Stewart's Law in full effect.
New wetties, new boards, repaired cars.
Flat, less flat, swell.
But the sun is only rising at 7:15 am.
The kid's school starts at 8:30 am.
The wife's job starts at 7:00 am.
The commute to and from the beach a total enigma of time estimation.

There is a film available on VHS starring one of the great thespianic talents of our celluloid times, the one and only Matthew McConnoghey, that details a couple months without surfing which prompts his character to nearly sell his soul to the corporate devil. Or maybe he does sell it. I can't remember.

I've only gone a couple weeks and I am starting to crack.

Ed Cornell Predicts the Future

or...documents someone else, sort of doing it. And of course it includes some guys waiting for the next set...Stewart's Law style... cause they'll never get a wave there, wherever they're bobbing.

Well...alright.

Hilarious

Recent Moments of a Landlubber

Wiki Baby

Our man E.C. on the beat as usual... CHECK IT

Sight I Sound

Carpet Dope

via

Bubbie

Chance For Overtime

More Stoner

 

 

 

via Surf A Pig

Thinking of Soggy Australia...

from Philip Jack via Brine Times

Vaquero

Fake Criterions

Shadows of the Same Sun Playing at Surf Bar

Wednesday the 12th at 7:30pm

Wintry Surf Part Three : Of Kyle Lightner, Vans & Brooklyn

And on the way, what wonders should we behold... Vans is now backing artists. Kyle Lightner in the big black and white lights over the streets of Broadway. Brooklyn is the new surfing mecca? Times are shifting that way, until they shift away again.

Wintry Surf part 2

First Wintry Surf (Part One)

Having spent the bulk of the early winter surf season in climes both abroad and otherwise domestic, we've been itching to get into the chillier water. Toddy to see what his new Matuse 6-5 suit would be like, Antonio to figure out how cold he'd be in his new Patagonia R3. As the battery died on the water camera basically as soon as we got to the beach, no real proof can be made other than anecdotal... so here are the listed anecdotes:

1. Surfing with snow on the sand is exhilarating
2. Surfing with snow on the sand guarantees no crowd
3. Surfing in hip high shore pound guarantees no crowd
4. We were exhilarated and nearly alone
5. The Patagonia suit nearly, very nearly made it. But didn't. New winter suit buyage needed. (5 Mil booties need a two point upgrade as well.)
6. Matuse 6-5 worked great. Toasty, flexible and easy to get in and out of. Looking forward to even colder water. (In-suit urination will certainly be an issue with the booties. Flushing in capped-rubber doesn't happen.)

One of EBNYs Favorite Videos Of All Perpetuity

Addendum

Oh, the bastards...

via Cesious

Ok, so who has an hour and a half to listen to anything? I usually don't. That is, an hour and a half to listen to anything in one sitting. Which is basically what you ought to do with this as one ought to follow the logic and reason carefully. So do what I did. Take an hour and a half to clean, cook, clean, work and clean and let this thing play. Or put it on the iPhone or whatever and listen to it in the car when you're driving somewhere. It's not that I hadn't heard that certain things were bad for me, I just didn't know EXACTLY why. Now I do. Life changing stuff. Worth it.

Your Urban Surfing Must-Have

The inevitable truth is if you don't live right next to the coast, if you can't put your eyes on the swell and feel the wind, you're simply not living a surfing life. If you can't hop into the water the moment the water is hoppable, you're not going to get the most out of your surfing expectations. And this hurts. Of course, there are those who have all these things, but don't have the time to respond to each oceanic whim. They wake up, look at the water, wet their index finger and still have to get to work/get the kid to school/sell some drugs before they can get in the water if at all. And then there are those guys who get to surf so much that over time they lose track of surfing; those types that live the surfy life but will only go out "when it's prefect, bro." All I'm saying is thank god there's magazines like As Is to address these niggling queries about the purity of my shit, how to tell if she's lying about whether I hit her too much and where to stash all that filthy lucre I'm raking in as a piomp. Life is good my friends. Life is good.

Vaquero De Las DMV

Recently I've been in my own legal limbo. That is, my surfing life, so vibrant and joyful on vacation was in serious turmoil back home. Thanks to a recent change in inspection stickers divvied out by the stately types, the car has been out an inspection certificate for the better part of a while. Unable to find an inspector that were still carrying the old stickers while the new stickers weren't on the way until the first of the year, we had to sweat out a pile of possibly pending tickets, leaving the heap near the sidewalk while away in California. Just then, a magical thing happened: snow storm. The car were covered for the whole half-month while the meter maids supped the haughty chocolates. Upon return, I simply dusted off the vehicle, took it over to the guy with the cool accent and enjoyed the fruits of a little automobile luck, not something usually procured. And so with this return to normalcy I am smacked in the face with two equally exciting developments: the new wettie mentioned below, and a brand new slider suddenly on the way. When it rains it pours.

Thrift!

Quick! What goofy twat recently, on the last wave in the last minutes of daylight on the last day of the first decade of this century, after completing a cheater-five-to-switchstance-cutback-to-parallel-iron-cross maneuver in belly high shore dump, jumped, or more likely excreted himself off his board into foot high water landing straight on his head? You got it! I got up a little wobbly, a crick in the neck, but felt much better about myself (for a while) after the hooded beach comber, whom I subsequently imagined must be a long lost surfing superstar, said to me as I walked back up the beach "Nice riding," only to realize, as I presented myself moments later, dripping salt water and momentarily satisfied to wifey, re-watching for the third time the first season of Friday Night Lights as she observed, "Looked like you were having fun out there, what did that homeless man say to you?", the not-too subtle realization that I too could be my very own Jason Street. Don't try that goofy crap at home kids. And adults, try not to rib me too hard next time you see me. I mean, it really was a good wave. It really was, as they say in nearly every television advert on T.V. these days, awesome. Even if subsequent nights of tricky sleep on a dodgy neck hasn't spoken highly of it.
On the flip side, being back in town with a slightly pinched nerve and lots of new yearish errands to run, I bumped into this place across the street from my mechanic. I got real excited before looking closer to spy that each and every dinged, dented and yellowed board comes with a price-tag of at least $1600. You can buy the seat but you'll only use the edge.

Back To Work

1994

The non-calendar year somewhere from the summer of 1994 through the summer of 1995 was a watershed non-calendar year for me. I have been ruminating recently, as season often has it, most notably how much I've been able to get back into the water this last year. It caught me then, upon passing a mirror tonight, catching myself sideways, the similarity of visage from those months and these, reminding me a bit of a photo once taken. I rooted for a while and finally found it, passing by countless hilarious images in their own right.
Someday I'll make Antonio dig up a pre-surf photo of his own from the same time period. That'll be a hoot.

Three Images: 12/31/2010

1. The window of the Encinitas 7-11

2. The paddle of a wetsuitless swami

3. Papa's Tree, Papa's Sunset

The Biggest Board I Never Rode

Dana brought over his 14 foot SUP board. Nearly indestructible, with plenty of screw holes to tie down the tackle and catch boxes (not to mention a cooler of beer) the thing is made for the long paddle. I think Dana had it in his head that we'd get real drunk and paddle out on it at midnight to ring in the new year, or at least get a good new year paddle out of the thing today. What he didn't count on was our 6Am take-off time back to New York. I demurred at even staying up much past nine. Luckily, Grannie is a night owl and at least the two of them got a good card game going into the late night. Next time, flights out on the second of the year. I can't handle the disappointment on Dana's face again.

Red's Hole of Wonder

The exact contents of Red's basement seem to fluctuate with the seasons.  A genuine surfboard graveyard, the little hole is also packed out with old plumbing supplies, family heirlooms and, as always, the official OSVA volleyball court gear.  I first laid eyes on the trove 13 years ago, at one point or another pulling out each old, cruddy board to try in the dumpy beach break out front.  There have been bare times too, when the generation of grand kids et al grew older and moved on for summers elsewhere, often taking their boards with them.  I even got Carmel to bring out to NY the Sunset Surfboards eight foot single fin for safe keeping.  "Old Paisley" is still there, as is a hand full of funky and warn thrusters, soft-tops, sponges, skimboards and one potato chip twin. But lately there's been a nice little restocking going on.  With the great-grandchildren starting to fill the coffers with possibilities, the booty has started to grow anew. Ian donated his ten and a half foot warped corkscrew banana (don't go right on that thing, the warp heads left...) and just before the Grotto closed I brought home a much maligned 9-foot-something toothpick that does the job on hollow days (just be careful of the fully Solar-resed nose...)  Currently, Dana is doing his best to shore up the proceedings with a clutch of SUPs perfect for kelp-bed perusal, and there's even a few women's wetsuits down there for a quick dip.  I think adding a couple cheap fishes to the quiver would be an ideal round-out, so if you need a graveyard in North County, the sort of place that will inevitably stoke the dreams of a new generation, drop me a line, I have just the retirement home.