Today's Thought : A Waterless California

Last week when NASA announced that California is on its death bed and has only 12 months of water left, the news hit like a punch to the gut. “Data from NASA satellites show that the total amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins — that is, all of the snow, river and reservoir water, water in soils and groundwater combined — was 34 million acre-feet below normal in 2014. That loss is nearly 1.5 times the capacity of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir,” writes Jay Famiglietti of NASA.

 Read more here...

Brazil, Surfing and the Connection Between The Money and the Sea

Click The Pic

Julianna Barbassa of the NY Times points out what we all certainly know to be true: surfing is a bourgeois pursuit. Or something like that.

This Week In Not Surfing

So I pull up this morning to this beautiful surf in Long Beach. 
Head high-ish ( I guess you could call it head-esque high) and I just start going stupid. 
I rush down the beach dragging shit, puling on my wetsuit as fast as possible, nearly forgetting which ankle to put my "leg rope" on... and paddle out double time not even timing the set. 
Just too excited. 
Of course a set comes right when I paddle out, then a second set. 
And I'm on the 8'1" Andreini so I'm dogging that a bit. 
And I'm getting pounded. I mean, not really, you know, really pounded, but I'm exhausted for some reason, just dead tired and I can't hold my breath for shit and every wave is just killing me.
I actually get pushed into the middle between the jetties and I'm fucked so I just belly in and start again. 
Second paddle out and I don't care how tired and cold I am... and I am freezing to the core, but I get out and paddle a bit far outside to catch my breath. 
I can't believe I need to catch my breath. It's so short. 
I catch a set wave but get out pretty early so I don't get pounded... I'm too cold! 
While I'm paddling back to the spot I look down. I'd forgotten to zip up my suit.
In 30fuckingsomethingdegree water.
That's when the chills really hit.
I zip up the rubber, take a couple more nice closey rights and call it a day.
Fuck.




Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese" is one of those shining, bright, perfect bits of poetry that make one realize poetries irrefutable importance.

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves. 

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers. 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- 

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

In other news, if you're around Williamsburg, Brooklyn within the next little while... stop by the Williamsburg Art & Historical Society to check out the Mototaka Takano show.

Today's Thought

Just a lovely, well crafted article. Read away thanks in part to Noah Sabich.

(Click the pic)

Happening : Halsband

One of New York's most celebrated surfer/artists. 

Happening Tonight : Cluster at ForgetMeNot

Surf videos have always skirted the line into the art film genre.
The sly voiceover, slide-show style morphing into LSD burnout color dial morphing into a slavish repetition with a jarring soundtrack, all set to the beat of strategically amateur-style technical quality with a high dependence on an insider cultural knowledge (or at least deep pockets of patience for self-important hijinks.)

Maybe that all sounds like churlish damnation, but in this I think the surf community actually offers up something of a last-bastion, or at least a current haven, for the art of the art film. (Well, the surf filmmaking community plus a good portion of art school undergrads, also an all-too-often maligned archival source of cultural translation.)

Anyhow, Kai Neville is among the vanguard of the current movement and his films offer a good dose of the ridiculous married to a fantastic dose of the sublime.
Tonight at ForgetMeNot at 138 Division Street.

 Go get inspired.

La Primera Ola

‘La primera ola’ es un documental presentado por VANS y CANAL+, producido por Jocántaro Films y dirigido por Pedro Temboury que recorre los orígenes del surf en España a través de las declaraciones y anécdotas de sus protagonistas, acompañadas de impactantes e inéditas imágenes de la época. Más de ochenta entrevistas a pioneros que nos cuentan de primera mano cómo fueron esos inicios, más de 3.000 metros de súper 8s inéditos de la época, cientos de fotografías y más de 10.000 km recorridos en busca de las historias más emocionantes, hacen de “La primera ola” un documento único e irrepetible. Nunca hasta ahora se ha podido documentar de manera tan exhaustiva los inicios del surf en España de boca de sus propios protagonistas. Será estrenada dentro de el Surfilm Festibal, en San Sebastián, el próximo junio de 2015. Posteriormente se emitirá en CANAL+.

It Doesn't Not Work Volume II

That's right folks. Numero Dos is on the hopper. In the hopper? Around the hopper? Well, it's hopping. Ty Breuer of SMASH and I are back on the trail for the weird, the ugly and the sublime at the Picture Farm Gallery.

WAX Magazine and Board Porn have signed up so far to help make a great event. The dates have been set for the weekend of April 24-26.

We're still settling on our run-of-show, but tune in and tune in to ItDoesntNotWork.com and submit a shape you'd love to discuss, or simply prepare your mind for the altering of good companionship.

And we're back...

Bungling Cyclones + Frothing Grommet + Camper Van

(not entirely sure what that all =)

The sum certainly of some amazing support from a surfing community dedicated to the next generation of global citizens. People like Baggu, Sundown, Token, Pilgrim, Allswell, Pull and an incredible group of people who pledged money via Kickstarter.

Today's Thought : Check It

A friend of mine is directing, or I should say, has been directing, this film and it needs an extra push. He's been telling me about it for the last year, and each story gets crazier and more interesting. A wild project. Check It out... here.