Respect

Respect

Yes.

Dear Mr. Franco, I understand your recent essay in the New York Times about Shia LaBeouf has received a lot of criticism. Mostly from folks who need to put down the microscope and pick up a mirror. Because if anyone has a problem with James Franco, their problem isn’t with art, it’s between their ears. The crime in your mind is an inside job with an easy commute but lousy benefits, A.R.T. stand for Any Random Thought. It’s my guiding principle and it only makes sense when you accept the fact that you’ve lost the plot and you don’t know squat. Art is the hood ornament on your car of creativity. And without an attitude of gratitude you’re headed nowhere fast with an EZ Pass. I’ve been tore up from the floor up, beat up from the feet up, and was messed up till I fessed up that I’m an angel in an earth suit and I’d been wrong about Brussels sprouts my whole life. That’s the secret! Life gives you a pickle, give it a tickle. It's as simple as soup and just as delicious if your spoon’s big enough.Every true artist knows that the odds are good that the goods will be odd. And James Franco helping Shia LaBeouf is proof that there is a wrench to fit every nut on God’s green Cadillac. Understandingly, Gary Busey

A Hundred Miles To The End In Instaglory

John Beattie is putting the hot hot cutting room floor hits up on Instagram. 

A great daily source for Long Island image inspiration. 

Yes.

Post by Sina Aria.

Road To Nowhere (&) Now For Then (&) Bigfoot Country

Sometimes I think "surf films are a dime a dozen." Then I look around the internet and find films in general, any film, are a hay penny a dozen. I recalculate for inflation. Still, I like surf films that take the thoughtful approach and add in some interesting surfing. Here are three surf films. Perhaps of the dollar twenty five a dozen variety (if not a touch more.) Which isn't half bad.

The Hand & Eye

Counter intuitively, or ironically, the resurgence of do-it-yourself, get-back-to-the-land, anchor-yourself-in-physical-reality culture is fed, almost wholly, by the very non-tactile digital social media operating via technological gadgets that have the shelf life of farm fresh milk. This is not a condemnation, just an observation on the subtle hilarity of a situation. In fact, I'm super grateful for any source of goodness.  And here is a nascent bit of that goodness you might keep an eye on.

"The Hand & Eye tells the stories of designers, makers, farmers, shapers, builders and other entrepreneurs who take pride in their crafts.  We feature our favorite products, companies and entrepreneurs and tell their stories, to give credit and inspire others."

The Hand & Eye


 

A Note From Another World

One of the wonders of being alive, perhaps the chief wonder, besides the wonder that is getting to know oneself, is getting to know other people. It is the chief component, in fact, of philianovusyorkus, that curiously masochistic disease that creeps into our very souls and disallows us from taking seriously the notion of leaving this town in a timely fashion.

Anyhow, here is an interesting story from my friend Victoria. Surf la vida mi amigos. Surf la vida and take into account the blessing that is knowing other people.

Bobby Fisher Photo Show Redux

Well, if you missed him the first time, you can get a second glimpse. Bobby Fisher's moments of arrested sight on view again in the NYC. Check out their FB page to see the details.

(On a side note, and somewhat topical, while researching the lengthy, extensively annotated blog post known as "Bobby Fisher Photo Show Redux," I stumbled across some really hard hitting fashion shopping journalism that once and for all puts an ultimate end to the NYC surf fahion coffee shop debate. Read on here for the face punching, tooth pulling, brick wall of no holds barred opinionating.)

Enjoy Yourself.

The sun peaks through a little earlier every morning.
My plans to get out of dodge at strategic moments during my son's school breaks have dwindled to naught.
My dog grows ever larger, less soft, but no less fuzzy.
Life jangles along, the bits and pieces of the dangling overstuffing dragging along side the gypsy wagon, collecting muddy artifacts that will tell a story to someone when we get there.
My knees knew better, my elbow certainly knows no worse and my sinuses have weathered storms of equal quality, but nothing could ever have prepared me for the old age that is.
This has been what I've been longing for.

My friend Braden took photos during an interview with the great Godfrey Reggio. It is worth a read.

And here is this, via these people.
 

Notes from Mastastico

I am grateful for this. Thanks Lentini.

Prose Combat

Clic le pic.

Steve Bender, of the Evergreen Point Benders, used to pick me up in his red Acura in the mornings, shuttling me and a couple other pimply Crusaders to Eastside Catholic High School. At 16 years old, not only had Steve's parents gifted him this hot ride, they'd tricked it out with a multi-cd changer and a couple subwoofers that really didn't have any business living anywhere near the Bellevue Square. I don't mean for this to be a slam on Steve. He was a nice guy and a good basketball player. Really my main gripe is that, as low guy on some social totem pole, I was relegated to the crushingly small back space jokingly passed off as "passenger area" by some Japanese car designer. Squished uncomfortably between the leather protrusions referred to as seats and the invisible yet violently real garage door of bass sound emanating from the stereo system, my real main gripe is that Steve had a deep love of NWA, Easy-E and all things Late 80s West Coast Gangster Rap at a time when my virgin ears were used to the inescapable in-car soundtracks of my father's Loggins & Messina and Fleetwood Mac. This unfortunate sonic confrontation made all the more unfortunate thanks to a burgeoning personal sense that my own evolving musical affinities were far superior, and pointedly not in the direction of West Coast Gangster Rap. Or really, any rap at all. This is an affliction that haunts me still, a stain on an otherwise ecumenical musical laissez-faire attitude I half-pride myself on. Luckily, MC Solaar came into my life just a couple orbits later, rescuing me from a sordid hate-affair with hip hop which might have festered for years to come. On the 20th Anniversary of this wildly influential album, respect. Respect, respect, respect.

And just to add some loosely tied-in surfy visuals in honor of the context, here's this:

A Small World

A friend looking for an illustrator was guided to this blog by an acquaintance and stumbled over this. (Convoluted story, I know.) But hey, there it is.

Happening : Frédérick Lagrange and the Wakhan Corridor

We here at the Endless Bummer No Surf New York Surf Blog rest not when there are sharp pointy bits upon our seat. No! We jump up! With gusto! Antonio (aka: The Other Gustav) edited a beautiful short film accompanying a presentation given by Frédérick Lagrange and Dr. John J. Sakon tomorrow night, Wednesday the 5th at the Rubin Museum of Art.  If you're on the ball (or pin as the case may be) you'll be there.

Are Brooklyn Seahawk Fans Hipster Wannabes?

Even as a kid growing up in Seattle, attending every other home game thanks to my Grandpa's season tickets and my brother's erstwhile lack of interest, the stadium was rarely what you'd deem "full."  Sure there were the monday night games, the games against the Raiders and the Broncos and whatever other actually good team that would waltz through. Those games would get something close to a "sold out" sign on the front door of the Kingdome. But more often than not the view from Grandpa John's cherry seats on the fifty yard line in the 100 level was of a bunch of empty mid & upper bleachers. I can only say mine was a curious fate. I was lucky enough to actually have season tickets and a father who wanted me to take me, unlucky enough to be looked at slightly cross-eyed by my fellow classmates when my weekend plans were made public.  See, the Seahawks were awful. I mean, they really sucked. The sort of mind-numbing terrible where our record was consistently breaking even every year, scratching vaguely to get into the first round of the playoffs, only to have to wait for some other team to lose to see if we'd get in. Coupled with only one single title for any Seattle pro team (thanks to the now very gone Supersonics), this sort of consistent humdrum mediocrity was as depressing as the constant gray drizzle. Yeah, everyone loved Steve Largent and Curt Warner, John L. Williams, Jacob Green, Joe Nash, Ruben Porter, Eugene Robinson, Kenny Easley and the rest. We all put up with Dave Krieg's tiny hands (a curious step down for me from Jim Zorn, who had all but God-like status thanks to my matching Zorn-Largent dolls.) But it was more of a "lovable losers" sort of laid-back Pacific Northwest acceptance of the inexhaustible blah we had to endure. Ground Chuck. Need I say more?  The fact was, or is, that by late high school I was routinely turning down my dad for those Sunday matinees. Of course, looking back I wish I'd taken all those precious chances to stand in line at the bathroom only to belly up to that massive trough, buffeted on either side by some hefty logger, and fail to launch. All those chances to smell the truly stale Rainier beer and feel the stick of my shoes on the concrete steps. All those chances to have the peanuts flung my way by that guy with the afro. But one can't turn back that clock, one can only revel in the memories of yet another quirky sidenote in a boring march out of that prematurely darkening city in search of more accommodating climes. 

This morning my own winter-out-of-touchedness poked me in the nose as I learned of the magazine article implosion that was the "City Surfer Risen" article from Stab. At the moment it was published I was enjoying my own time outside New York, surfing in the sunny consistency of North County, missing completely whatever digital maelstrom ensued. I've never felt like a local anywhere. Partly it's in my nature to be a bit uncomfortable, partly because I never allowed myself the moment sitting still. I read this article, or rather perused it, picking out bits and pieces here and there, paying extra attention to the rabid comment responses with a little bit of amusement, a little bit of head scratching. Really, there is so much obviously wrong about the context of certain statements in this article as to be laughable. I know Chris Gentile well enough. Our kids are buddies, our wives are buddies. I've shared beers with him and gone on a surf trip with him. We don't speak too often anymore, but I know him well enough to know he's probably pretty bummed at being misconstrued as the Alpha & Omega of the New York Fashio-Surf Complex. The guy has poured a lot of his life into that little shop and that is bound to make for hair-raising moments of course. Any surf shop like that, any surf personality in any position of "market-driven import" is gonna be up on a pedestal for a good knocking, and thinly researched (or badly contextualized) articles like this are bound to tee it up. When the Saturdays shop opened they got a lot of flack for their approach, but that seems to have died down appropriately. Those guys are intelligently going for a market as much as Pilgrim is, as Danny DiMauro caustically points out. 

This is to say surfers have always used surfing to surf more. It is one of the secrets of the trade. The argument that surfing, when you're not actually surfing or making hay to surf, is anything other than a considered fashion statement is ludicrous to begin with. If it really did encompass some sort of vibey quasi-lifestyle-state-of-mind, the only niche I can see it realistically inhabiting is the bullshit-macho-insecurity caste of people worried about their wave count. Which, frankly, is a pretty honest worry given the scarcity of resources. 

This brings us back to the Seahawks... hooray Seahawks.

Yes

via Liquid Salt

Happening : Tonight @ PF Gallery

Picture farm Gallery will be hosting the final night of Matthew Lusk's "Closed For Alterations" collage show. An inventive departure from Matthew's normally large scale, immersive sculpture constructions, this stripped down "hangable" show nonetheless keeps pace with his continuing exploration of the 20th Century evolutions in American identity. More here...