EBNY Kookin For J Hall at the 2015 Fish Fry

Photo courtesy of David Edgar, board courtesy of Kris Chatterson 

As Summer Kicks Off, So Will You

Respect

Happenings: Fish Fry, Help Nepal, Eat a Burger with a Shaper

Today's Thought

While I try to keep these impulses to myself generally, I guess I fall into that category of unthinkers who cringe instinctually at most things not-quite-surfing-wishing-they-were-surfing. I know it's unfair and more than a bit stupid, but I have to come clean. And Kite Surfing? When I see them having fun off in the distance, a far distance, from a surf break, I can appreciate it for what it is. The problem is generally that Kite Surfers, or the ones I bump into on the beach, are typically know-nothings about beach safety and all those whinging wires and cables can really take a child's head off. Or at least give someone enough of a scare. It all just falls into the slow diminishing understanding of etiquette and respect the grumpos are always finding out there. And here I own up as well to being a grumpo.

But this guy? He can do what he likes.



Via the incredible Huck Magazine.

Respect

I don't know how to explain someone like Spero in the context of my life. Losing him is like losing a marker of a certain time and a certain feeling. He was, as they say, a "fixture." I think I take losing fixtures hard. There is this thing about suddenly not having that mirror to a tiny, intimately weird part of myself that feels extra odd. Spero was that mirror in that way I am finding. I met him in the early 2000s, inevitably as it would soon to become, in front of a television watching a soccer game. For over a decade every time I'd wander in to watch a soccer game, first son in tow, Spero would look up from his place at whichever local bar it was, and he happened to be at whichever local bar I wandered into, no matter how inconsequential the game, and give me a sly, wry smile and look at my boy and laugh and say something slightly dark and diminishing about the state of whatever pitch-side affairs were taking place. Now that I think about it, he was one of the last intact tendons to that time in the neighborhood when that could happen with all regularity. As it seems to happen, I will not only miss him entirely, or as far as I can miss him entirely, but the time in which he was so very much a part of my sense of things. I will miss him very much indeed. Respect.

Happening Tonight : Nix Nic Nooley

"A spellbinding surf film by Toby Creegan featuring some high performance maneuvers by Ellis Ericson, Beau Foster, Dion Agius and more! Live post-screening performance by Skegss. Black Bear Bar (60 N. 6th St, Brooklyn NY) Doors open at 7:30pm. $5 at the door."