Sometimes in the course of a year, a month, a week, perhaps, sadly, daily, it is important to live vicariously; to look elsewhere for the things that make one smile.
Here is a place to look, if you are in need of such salve.

Dreaming of Mexico, Dreaming of Dreaming

Foto by Toddy, the filmic experience, soon.

Rhombus Surf Shop

Opening Soon!

85 Brunswick st, Fitzroy, Vic, Aust, 3065

Boards/ Takayama, Neil Purchase Jnr, Larry Mabile

Clothes/ Patagaonia, Lifetime Collective, Das Monk, RVCA

Wetsuits/ Nine Plus, Patagonia

Get Wet @ Rhombus!
E/ info@rhombussurfshop.com.au

Mr. Sanchez, On His Way. See You Soon, Buddy.

Getting Out of Dodge, EBNY on Remote

Dear Readers of Endless Bummer New York (all three of you),

Next week we will be opening a temporary bureau in another country. A different country. A country other than the country we are in at the moment.
There will be a fiesta complete with donkey and star shaped piñatas filled with pinto beans, concord grapes and miniature replica Hagia Sophias carved from coconut shells. There will be music and vegetarian food. There will be a mystic. He will tell fortunes while balancing on one toe. You are not invited to this fiesta. But worry not, the consistent reportage so vital to your surfing life understanding thing will go unabated. Regular updates are ensured. Insured. Please stay tuned for more of the same boring, redundant, unhelpful blather you have come to know and love. I think we can say that. If you didn't know and love it, well, you wouldn't be reading this would you? Unless this is an accident. In which case, there, up to the left of your screen there is a little button that says "next blog." Or you are just checking in for the first time from some link from another surf blog and you are finding yourself bored to tears already. Either way, don't worry, our feelings are not hurt. You've already made our Google Analytics look rad for the day.

Thank you for your continued, or quickly discontinued, support.

The EBNY Editorial Department

INTRODUCING THE NEW EBNY FEATURE: Dream Analyzation

The very latest feature in our never ending quest to provide our readers with scientific yet valuable surf assistance: DREAM ANALYSIS
If you would like to have a dream analyzed, please email us a recent dream. We will pick one lucky narcoleptic Walter Mitty out of a hat in the coming weeks (0r months) and you too could have a similaresque sort of analysis to the one above! Give it a whirl!*

*Nominal fee required for analysis. Comparable prices to standard union pay scale for ubiquitous East Village storefront Gypsy palm readers apply.

Do or die. Fish fry. We've actually never made it out to this thing, but by all accounts, it is a good time. Check the details here: FishFryNY

LATEST BREAKING NEWS : a switcheroo of locales

The Continuing Folly of Pondering the Future

There is an inevitability to misjudging the size of the surf whenever I am involved. I am pretty sure that each and every time I have paddled out I've had that thought in the back of my head "this is a wee bigger than it looked from shore." Maybe there was a time when I had a local sort of break, or when I was going on a couple weeks of straight surfing when I wouldn't be so hoodwinked, but I think I can say there is a consistency to my poor eye-to-brain wave contextualizing. Then, of course, there is the inevitable gaffe of overstating the session size after getting out of the water. To overcompensate, I almost always try to play it cool. I won't talk in terms of feet anymore. I don't even know what that means anyhow.


Head high, shoulder, nipple, belly and knee. That's about how far I go. Oh, and ankle slappers. If it's overhead, it's conversationally head high. If it's head high, it's conversationally shoulder. And so on. If it's way overhead, there is a slight widening of eyes, so that one's got a sort of visual cue.


Surf reports strike me in a similar way. I can never quite get a handle on the physical realities of a surf report. There is a hint of something that's happening, but until I get there, I don't really know. And then, well, then I just misjudge it anyhow. Best to just show up and paddle out.
-Toddy

The prior post, the one about the New Yorker article, did the trick of reminding me of my first stab at a surf blog, back in 2006, those dark years... I had forgotten about that short period of time between other periods of time before Angus and Antonio and the idea we could put together a sort of communal diary of ineptitude.  Funny stuff, to me at least.
-Toddy

Jordan Alport digitally sent these two New Yorker articles through today. Dating back to the August 24 & 31, 1992 editions, they are some the little warning droplets of what would be the inevitable avalanche that would hit the cultural awareness of San Francisco surfing in the nineties. My own time in SF in the middle of that decade was hardly fruitful in the surfing sense, lazy as I was, content to surf the odd OB small day between trips back down the coast. In many ways they were lost years. But perhaps that all serves a purpose.

In the realm of practice, the internet offers a thousand odd avenues. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, fantasy sports, blogs. Each a bizarre avenue to practice aggrandizement. To practice narcissism. To practice connection. Our social skills being honed in blips and bleeps, perfectly crafted PR announcements, gaffes and goofs. Many perceive this world to be a minefield, but the longer it sticks around, the more it flourishes, the more we become accustomed to a lack of decorum, the manipulation of forgiveness. Peter is an old acquaintance, one of the more accomplished surfers at our college. Always had the knack for deep rail power. That in itself is only the end result of a lot of practice. This photo is from Facebook, a veritable gold mine of surf media. This doesn't have so much to do with the above mini-diatribe, I just figured I ought to tell the other side of the story. And I love this moment.

The Liveliest

The pursuit of meditation and photography leads away from fascination with the extraordinary and back to a rediscovery of the ordinary.
- Stephen Batchelor, Confessions of a Buddhist Athiest

Just the sort of thing the Surfer's Journal is for.  I rarely get to mentally "live" the stories I read about in the surfing mags.   Usually they are hairball tales of daring-do in far more exotic locales.  I can't really connect in a muscle memory way with the juggernauts of the North Shore or Western Australia or Bali or South Africa.  The little fertile crescent of my surfing history is just that. Little. But on the subway this morning I am sure at least one observant rider got a treat, watching my body uncontrollably jigger and gander, my muscles tense, my jaw drop, as I read the Mike Davis story about the swell of '69 hitting Hammond's, carrying Pat Curren and he all the way down to Sharky's.  I know that little strip will enough.  It is, I figure, my own surfing fertile crescent.  If you haven't picked up the mag and read that re-telling yet, I can't promise it will make the same stomach-churning, eye-watering affect as it did for me, but I'll guarantee a well told story.
-Toddy

Is that niggling desire to belong an outside instigation, imposed, and gingerly accepted as the case may be, by some nefarious exterior force? Are we simply, on this level as proved on so many others, the guinea pig of society? Or, does this belonging have more to do with the interior sense of guilt, pointing not to a desire to be part of the culture, rather to knowledge of an action we know we must. I am cynical. I admit it. When it comes to feeling inadequate I tend to look darkly upon our intentions. I'll reckon it is the former then the latter, all in pursuit of a relational harmony we crave. Even so, even so, I'll let myself believe that the gnawing knowledge that I don't do quite enough to belong doesn't amount to anything other than a truly enlightened approach to taking things as they come. Suffice to say, sometimes the oddest things remind me of what's out there.
-Toddy

A Boy's Wall, April 17