Today's Thought

via Desillusion

This guy just looks like he's having fun. Great style, fun surfing energy. Nothing too serious. Lovely.

Pretty

Via Tim Guffigan

Rest In Peace, A True Hero of the Arts

A Hearty Thanks To the U.S. Servicepeople Deployed Around the World and at Home : May You Get Some Waves This Monday

Today's Thought

One from the workshop

The Johnny HA Fish List

Brooklyn Sofe Style: Dropping the Kid Off At School

Scrapple Part Deux

SIGHTISOUND in Post

Coming to a theatre near you.  Sometime soon.  I got the chance to check out a few rough-cutted sections and the action floats above and through the water in the nicest ways. I am looking forward to the final result... check out Mikey's blog to follow the action.

Right, So We've Gone Soft

All judgment right out the window.  You point us to a link, we'll like it.  I mean, really appreciate it.  That "orgasm on a rollercoaster" video?  Loved it.  That "oh my god I can't believe her top flew off like that" video?  Equally enthused.  We just found Desillusion mag, and they send us to this Sugarmill place. All great.  Think there is some great stuff happening over at Cesarancellehansen.net? We're there. Like the new Point Never mag?  Let us know, cause we'll like it too! We are just spongy soft, see.  Just let us know what we ought to look at and we'll look.
Links rain down on us.  We thankfully stick our tongues out as we're parched.

Brooklyn Commute

Noosa

A number of images I've seen from Noosa offer up this sort of compositional decision.  Through the bush on the point.  Every time I see it, that same idea, I remember what a good idea it is. Via

Scrapple

There are many surprising joys New York living offers. They are the similar joys to those found all over the place really, involving people moving to the big city to "make it" as something, or to "experience" something, then figuring out they don't have what it "takes" or the experience was found "wanting." Demurring at a return to the suburban nightmare from which they hatched, and not having the nous to really go all rural, these desperate souls have turned to that particular sort of DIY culture flowering in the giving urban soil. More or less, they've come, they've seen, it hasn't been all it's cracked up to be, dammit if anything else is better, hey why don't we do something on our own here in the middle of it all. And so here I sit in my apartment, two blocks away from a 100% true blue butchery, the kind that actually cuts up, on the premises, a whole cow from up the highway, or pig, or rabbit, or whathaveyou, and stuffs their own sausages and makes their own duck confit and grounds their own pate and just so happens to make their own scrapple. The kind I am eating right now, lusty bites swiped while typing. Now I'm not saying Alex came here and failed, or that anyone of those butchers failed. I'm not saying they desperately tossed around for something to fill the void left in their heart by their shortcomings. Or even that my little creation myth applies to anyone, really. I'm just saying that New York serves up a lot of people trying to make a lot of good and idealistic things happen in a very real way. And it's a pleasure to be around. And I'm also saying, now it becomes recounting, that when Alex was handing me this free taster patty of succulent scrappled meat, instructing that a quick slap in a cast iron pan with a sunny egg thrown on top might be a good breakfast for the boy and myself, he mentioned to me that he needed to find a board in the 7footish range for a very soonish return trip to surfing he has been planning for quite sometime. This morning, pre-scrapple, I reached out to some friends on the matter via email. This morning post, or I ought to say mid, scrapple I realized the magnitude of the matter. If this guy makes something this good, this morally right, he deserves a pleading post on a surf blog. Luckily I know a surf blog. Do you know a used 7footish egg sorta shape for $300 or less?

Surf Art By Any Other Name...

Jean-François Lauda

Yes.

Drew McKenzie via Magic Bus

Not Normally Our Thing

That is, tracking the goings on in Los Angeles, but this should should be pretty cool and we are hoping it makes it to this coast...

SMASHing Vids

SMASH is setting up all manner of surf related symposiums and events around town. The latest one, with Mark Kelly of GSI, tackled the Surfy Industrial Complex. One can only assume the SMASH You Tube Channel will be added to frequently.

Today's Thought

It is good to remember that once the initial horror subsides, the decimation lingers. And it is always interesting to see what we respond to as a community and what we don't. Suffice to say, it is important to remind ourselves that the hardship continues for many.

"When you sit for long periods, your hamstrings and calf muscles get shorter."

Antonio, Somewhere Out East, This Last Weekend

A Sunday Surf

New York Times "T" Magazine

Nothing could be "cooler" right now in New York than surfing. A few things combine to make it all so very sexy to the cosmopolitan taste makers: the promise of sun, youthful beauty and a rare experience of unblemished nature, plus, the resurgence in the surf community of an emphasis on something entirely palatable to the New Yorky: design. In the end, one can only assume the whole thing will recede into its previously comfy confines of "sidenote." Enjoy it or despise it while it lasts. But really there is no sense in not enjoying when you can.

Rob Kulisek @ Saturdays

DOTD (that means Deal of El Dia)

The Hottest 100 Yards

Quiksilver will team up with Partners & Spade on June 1st in New York City to host a reception honoring “The Eighties at Echo Beach,” a new photographic surf chronology written by Jamie Brisick and photographed by Mike Moir, which documents one of surfing’s most unique and colorful subcultures. “The Eighties at Echo Beach”, which will be published by Chronicle Books this Fall, tells a tale of a significant era in Southern California surf culture and surf fashion through beautiful photography and humorous storytelling.

via Surf Collective

SMASH : Surfers Studio With Mark Kelly

SMASH presents The Surfers Studio: An evening with Mark Kelly, Global Surf Industries Managing Director, Friday, May 20^th 8PM at the famous Tribeca Grand Hotel’s Grand Screening Room.

Mark Kelly has helped revolutionize how surfboards are built and sold. After decades of a cottage industry-style operations, Mark Kelly saw a different way of supplying surfboards to the international surfing market in 2002. Kel’s passion for surfing led him to create Global Surf Industries, which is now the world’s largest distributor of surfboards. Today, GSI has a portfolio of 13 brands, each catering to a particular type of surfer with a specific level of surfing ability and sells boards in 57 countries around the world. Based in Manly on the Northern Beaches of Sydney in Australia, Kel spends 15 – 25 weeks a year traveling the world surfing and doing business.

Mark Kelly’s production method is considered controversial by some and applauded by others. In the second session in a series on the topic of surfboard design and production The Surfers Studio aims to have a smart and informing discussion about where the surfboard business has been and where it’s going.

The Surfers Studio: An Evening with Mark Kelly will take place at The Grand Screen at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. 2 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013
Purchase Tickets Here: http://surfersstudiomk.eventbrite.com
Media Partners: The Inertia.com & Newyorksurf.com

Follow SMASH @ www.SMASHsurf.com

How's The Serenity: In Honor of a Community Movement.

The Update

Ditch Witch No More?

There are upsides to being a surfer in New York City. They are made plainly obvious to anyone within shouting distance. Great culture, constant work, good food and all those normal amenities of big city, (make that New York) life. You see things in juxtaposition with other things here you'd not see in most any other town. You get to interact and inspire and be inspired by an array of expats, trannies, locals, bizarros, fantasticos and galacticos that would not be so available anywhere else. It is truly, as they say, a cosmopolitan small town. And this, of course, extends to the surf community. You tend to know everyone, or you've tended to have seen or heard of most other surfers one way or another over the years. They are always a mixed bag of artists, artisans, white collars, blue collars, students and government workers from every spot imaginable on the globe. Every single one scratching for something, willing to be scratched for something and amped on all that weird New York City energy. It's great in all the ways you'd expect it to be. And then there's http://www.thefeast.com/newyork/restaurants/Ditch-Witch-Kicked-Off-Her-Lot-Montauk-Hamptons-122183944.html
This is indicative of all the worst things about being a New York City surfer. That feeling in the pit of your stomach that you don't belong. Grow up and surf where you grew up and you're a local. Move within a few miles of a spot, stay long enough, and you're a local. Simply move to a town with multiple accessible surf spots and you'll end up finding you're place. But New York City is different. We have a train that goes to Rockaway, those crowded, dirty couple spots that is really the only NYC "local." That's about it. Even the ride out to the jetties at Long Beach demands a particular respect for the guys and gals who live out there and make it out every day. The drive to Gilgo and environs must elicit the same respect. Anything else, further north, east and south and things get far stickier. One can't shake the feeling of being an interloper. One can't get away from the fact that you've either burned out a ton of fuel to clog someone's spot, or had enough coin to rent a short time place for a single season. And when things get hairy, the way they talk about the "Hamptonization of Montauk" kind of hairy, as a New York City surfer, you feel the crushing moral weight of it.
I've spent the last few summers regularly surfing the eastern end of Long Island, and last summer in particular, in Montauk. The best summers I've had in 15 years. But there was always that outsider sense. There is always the sense as a commuting surfer, whether you're really a "surfer" or not, whether you've just begun or whether you've surfed for years, that you just add to an unwanted and increasing population in the water and inevitably add to the crass exploitation of the surfable geography. Basically surf tourism close to home. With the possible closing of the Ditch Witch, all the guilty feelings come to bare. I simply can't, no matter how respectful, thoughtful and low-profile as I try to be, shake the feeling that I've been unconsciously part of the problem.
It inevitably elicits a fair share of internal fight-back. I have every right to surf where I am physically capable of surfing. I have every right as someone respectful of the implicit rules of the lineup, to paddle out where I can paddle out. There are good arguments for this and no amount of "locals only" chest beating can really overcome them. Still, it is equally hard to shake that carpetbagger's feeling. If this news is as true as it seems to be, there is no choice but to feel shame, however justified, unjustified or somewhere in between. And this is where being a New York City surfer gets awfully sticky.

•• More ••

Sundown Super Sale Sale Sale Sale Sale Sale, Buy the Seat But You'll only Use the Edge.

Sundown's Annual Surfboard Swap & Tent Sale!
June 11th & 12th - 2 Days Only
Free BBQ!

Sell:
Bring your surfboards, wetsuits, skateboards & Water Sports Equipment
1. Drop your board off at Sundown by Friday June 10th
2. We will tag it to be sold on Saturday & Sunday.
3. Receive Store Credit for 100% of the Amount Sold.

Buy:
Super Deals on New & Used Boards
Under the Tents & Inside the Store
1. Best Prices of theyear on over 200 New Boards on Display
2. Huge Discounts On All Wetsuits, Bags, Leashes & Accessories.
3. Incredible bargains on Boards & Equipment Under the Tent!

Special Truckload Sale!!!
Webber, Aloha, Walden, McTavish, and more...
15% Off Any Wetsuit
Offer expires 6/12/11
Buy 2 T-Shirts, Get the 3rd for $9.99
Offer Expires 6/12/11
15% Off Women's Clothing
Limited to one item per purchase
Offer Expires 6/12/11
20% Off Any Backpack
Offer Expires 6/12/11
Free Baseball Cap with the Purchase of 2 Boardshorts
Offer Expires 6/12/11

Sundown Surf Shop
2726 Hempstead Turnpike, Levittown
516-796-1565

www.sundownsurf.com

DSLMAGDOTCOM

Saturday night my four year old son troops home after a night of scoring high-fives and burger bites outside the Mollusk shop after the Fish Fry surfy with a nap-sack full of stickers Bubbie had bribely gifted him as the carrot to get him away from the fragile stuff and I notice this one sticker pronouncing "Desillusion." Now, I have been rightly accused of many things, narcissism, myopia, ignorance and naivete being but a few among the multitude, and I seem to be on that side of the Euro again. Well, so it goes. We can't win them all. An interesting place with lots of current-y looking stuff. Click on the pic.

(These) This/This Were Loverly

Via Quality Peoples
Via Cesious

The Quicksilver in Long Island, now The O'Neill in Nova Scotia?  Via Ku Yah.

Today's Thoughts

Yes.

2011 NY Fish Fry Instawrap

We both missed Friday night's Kenvin-Hall talkie, but Antonio got out there for the surf Saturday morning, and all I got was a burger and a beer Saturday night. Some beer.
By all accounts, the 2011 Fish Fry was super fun. Michael Rovnyak was on hand capturing some angles. His photos are here...

The barbeque at the Mollusk shop was fun as well. As usual, the four-year-olds dominated the scene, t-shirts sold like hot cakes, Johnny HA manned the grill and the beer flowed like wine. Here is the second section of the fishy film hastily made for the event, a rough approximation of what it feels like to watch the latest tropical excursion super rad exotic super surfy film DVDQuicktimeYoutubeVimeo while sitting in your cramped Brooklyn apartment with the soundtrack turned up to eleven, trying to beat out the sounds of sirens and people yelling at each other right outside your window.



All thanks to the guys at SMASH for setting up the events and Chris at Mollusk for doing the crazy energy routine on making the BBQ a great time at the shop.

••• Addendum : Michael Rovnyak sent through some more fots from yesterday. Enjoy •••

••• Double Addendum <Mollusk Coverage Here> Double Addendum •••

Fish Fry Tomorrow, Perhaps Pseudo-Film Premiere Too

Last week C.Gentile of Mollusk walks up, "Hey! Wanna make a surf film for the BBQ next week?"
"Sure! Yeah! You betcha! I'm pretty slow right now any how," went the response.
He and Johnny HA proceeded to lay the DVDs on thick.

And of course, the slowness got to be fastness and some things got a little away from us. No to say there wasn't a surf film made. Just not one with every idea we had that popped into our heads come the opportunity. But if the rain holds off, the thing will be projected big style outside the shop tomorrow night. If the rain comes down, look for a premiere of someone else's images married to some new editing some time in the coming weeks.

Yes, we surfed this morning. No, there are no pictures.

Holy Sweet Jesus This Is Good.

Required Reading

 

Ryszard Kapuściński

Long Beach New York, This Morning

WegMoe Rhombo Time Lapso

Official Fishy Flyer

Kenvin! Hall! Field! Garage Smackdown! Ka-Blamo!

THE SURFERS STUDIO: AN EVENING WITH RICHARD KENVIN
WITH SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE BY JOSH HALL

NEW YORK, NY: SMASH Presents The Surfers Studio: From the Garage to the Grill" with Richard Kenvin, Ryan Field and Josh Hall, Friday May 13th, 8PM at Tribeca Grand Hotel’s Grand Screening Room. The greatest discoveries in surfboard design, such as the Fish, happened in someone's garage or backyard. Richard Kenvin will discuss garage shaping culture and the evolution of the Fish through the designs of Bob Simmons, Steve Lis, Carl Ekstrom, The Mirandon Brothers, Ryan Birch and Lucas Dirske. Accompanied by Hydrodynamica short films and slideshow with Ryan Field. Skip Frye shaping protégé Josh Hall will also be on hand to share his experience on backyard shapers in today’s diversifying surfboard market. The Surfers Studio is a series of in depth conversations documenting the lives, careers and contributions of surfers who have made impacts on surf culture and the surf community

Richard Kenvin is a California surfer/filmmaker and the creator of the Hydrodynamica project. Kenvin’s roots are steeped in San Diego surfing history and he is a huge proponent of the Simmons’ school of board design. Ryan Field is a photographer living in Brooklyn. Josh Hall is a San Diego shaper and protégé of Skip Frye.

The Surfers Studio: An Evening with Richard Kenvin will take place at The Grand Screen at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. 2 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013

Purchase Tickets Online or at the Door

To Purchase Tickets Online Click here:
http://surfersstudiork.eventbrite.com/

Follow Richard Kenvin at http://hydrodynamica.blogspot.com/

Follow SMASH @ www.SMASHsurf.com

Media Partners: TheInertia.com & Newyorksurf.com