hey kook!

I had a couple of evenings home alone the other week so i indulged myself with a couple of glasses of a nice red and rewatching some old surf dvds. Notably two of my perennial faves, Thomas Campbells "Seedling" and Michael Halsbands "Surf Movie Reels 1-14". Both feature pretty heavy doses of Joel Tudor in the peak of his "ride everything" influence.

I came to a few conclusions as the bottle slowly drained. One, Tudor is a ridiculously talented surfer on pretty much anything you put under his feet. He is the master of making the difficult look easy and he is SO smooth. He's a pretty impressive skater too!

Two, lots of Tudor's single fin eggs actually have the wide point slightly back of centre instead of forward which is the more widely seen case with eggs. Tudor is quoted as saying he prefers the widepoint back for turning and doesn't like it forward unless he's getting barrelled!

Three, I haven't owned or ridden a single fin egg for ages!

Luckily, a couple of friends do have Tudor eggs and Thos very sportingly agreed to lend me his 6'6 Kookbox Archie's left (in the pics) in exchange for a few days on my Mandala.

Ideally i'd have had Saunton at head high doing its best pointbreak impression as a test track since I suspect that the board would truly light up under those conditions. That's what Thos says anyway. As it was I had to make do with a pretty mushy, onshore, chest high P-land and a clean but a bit too small dawn patrol at saunton.

I did get a good feel for how fun a board it is though! There's lots of foam in there at 21.65 wide and 2.75 thick, a little bit of nose rocker but otherwise flat as.  Widepoint I think just back of centre, flexy kookbox 8 inch fin. Small roll in the nose but quickly into a single concave that moves to a fairly deep double in the back third. Rails are soft for the first foot but then tucked under becoming a hard edge just in front of the fin. In short, it's definitely designed to turn and feel lively rather than cruisy.

It's got far less Hull influence than I expected from what I thought I knew of this model. As a result it's way less quirky to ride than a v bowls, which is ostensibly a wide point back egg too. It went backside well and in both directions had that snappy, pivoty turn that you would expect from a single fin.

I really like a flex fin in a single and you could definitely feel a nice spring from the fin as you exited a deep railed bottom turn.

What really impressed was its glide over the flat spots despite its shortish length. I think the lack of rocker and the plentiful concave in the bottom keeps it high and planing where others bog. In short its a cool little board, really easy to surf like eggs generally are, with a wide range of suitability for waves and the ability to be pushed if you want to.

Thos calls it his "guilty pleasure" and I can see why. 

Hopefully I'll manage to wangle BGA's Tudor Karma off him soon to compare.

all piggy and stuff

So i've had a good chance to put my new gulfstream log through it's paces over the summer so far, both here and in some zippy French beach break.

I can honestly say it's one of the best longboards I've owned. Its got the perfect mix of solid noseriding and whippy turns and I'm increasingly convinced that this type of slimmed out, wide point back template flat out works, especially in the choppier conditions we get lots of.

It seems like more and more people world wide are moving towards this kind of board - almost everyone at the recent joel tudor duct tape at the US open was riding something similar.

while I haven't got a clip of the Slimpig in action, this clip of CJ Nelson in mexico on his Australian Slasher model shows exactly the kind of surfing that the slim pig is designed to do. Note how much more aggressive his cutbacks are
compared
 to
footage of him riding a more classic noserider template. click the link to watch, it wont embed for some reason!


http://www.surfermag.com/videos/be-here-now/#xxllDMREYokRr1F0.97

master and disciples

lest we forget

Tudor is rightfully venerated for being hugely influential in the second rise of traditional style longboarding but in current times it's easy to forget the contribution made by Robert "wingnut" weaver.

Back when Tudor was still all about pink wetsuits and tri fin longboards and Knost still thought his dad was the coolest surfer in the world, wingnut was cruising blackies on a single fin, taking his style cues from edwards and company. He did a huge amount to popularise riding longboards, particularly in a traditional style and not least by riding a log in everything the endless summe 2 shoot threw at him

It could in fact be argued that wingnut was one of the direct catalysts to tudor seeking out single fins and black wetsuits as the 90's wore on. Sure his personality and ceaseless self promotion grated with many as did his latterly association with surftech but he should still be remembered by todays loggers for his influence, despite not having the same "cool quotient" of others.

Oh and he still has one of the best drop knee cutbacks in the business!

authentics....

So Joel Tudor is bringing his Duct Tape invitational contest and atendant circus to Salinas in Spain 28th to 31st July as part of the longboard festival held there. There's a heavyweight list of loggers confirmed to attend but among them is UK vans rider and sennen super styler James Parry which in my book makes a very cool thing even cooler! Hopefully James will get the chance to show off his considerable skills and do us proud.

As an event it's one of the few relevant contests that exist in longboarding right now, with a focus on proper style and single fins. I really wish i could check it out in person.

If you are lucky enough to be close by more details here

basking in the afterglow..

Full of stoke from an uncrowded twilight session in zippy small p-land. Back in love with my Dano and it's ridiculous section beating capabilities from the tip and cruising the net for further logging stimulation i turned this up.

It's a sweet little promo video of tudor's noseriding thing at the US open. Made for pacifico by Dana Morris, a talented young filmmaker and the guy who made "way of life", my most played surf dvd for a long time.

Enjoy wasting a few minutes of someone else's time....

told you so....

just to prove tudor still has it, and to celebrate the fact that some good quality single fin action got some serious exposure with not a rubbish progressive longboard aerial in sight!

Sadly the clip misses knosts board pinballing through the pilings and a couple of harrison roaches good waves.

Although it's all "traditional" longboarding, there's an interesting contrast in styles, here's what Thos had to say:

 Knost's attractive style is like a meta-language, beautifully stitched onto his surfing technique. Cool, show-offy, contemporary, cultural. Tudor's flowing style is more like nature: as if he's somehow made himself as a surfer into a new species. Tudor reminds me of seeing dolphins and seals playing in the waves.

It's almost as if they have inverse psychological desires from surfing: Knost to develop his ego and communicate with people; Tudor to dissolve his ego and become part of nature.

I think he maybe has something. I've long felt that your style comes from within and says somthing about you and your personality, one reason that good style is difficult to force, i think you naturally have it or you don't.

Sorry about the gratuitous stealing of videos, back to homegrown pics for the next few!




p.s. meant to blog a link to this before and forgot. Sure it will relate to more than a few of you!

the forgotten master..

When i really got into surfing, joel tudor was my first surfing hero, a beacon of smooth style amongst a sea of flapping shortboarders on impractical equipment. I know that some people have reservations about his personality, i've never met him. (i must admit to hoping to see him surf in California but no luck!)
What you cannot deny is his influence on the direction of non-mainstream surfing over the last 15 years. From ushering in a return to traditional style and heavy single fin logs, to prompting a re investigation of forgotten shortboard designs, his influence cannot be understated. In recent times he has stepped a little away from the spotlight, devoting much of his time to taking care of his son. His surfing is still as good as it ever was, smooth understated with a casualness that belies the technicality and positioning of the lines he draws.

This section, from cyrus sutton's riding waves was one of my favorite bits of footage for a long time. i still think if you wanted a short segment to show someone the grace of good traditional logging, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example. Slightly forgotten it's back in rotation on my dvd player this summer.