p-land

Like many other locals, i've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this spot over the years, lately i find myself ending up here more and more. It's the site of my first proper surf beating after an ill judged decision to paddle out during my first year surfing and it's one of those spots where it often seems to look better from the carpark than it is or better 50 yards down the beach until you paddle there and decide it looks better where you just came from. I, like many others, have had some frustrating trips here.

I'm not sure if i'm just better at sitting in the right spot now but over the last two years i've had some epic waves here and it definately has it's charms. It can be a good noseriding wave when it's small, a fun wave on a shortboard when it's bigger and a godsend when the wind swings southerley. It's definately underated. Interestingly, unlike the other local spots, it doesn't really have it's own locals, it's more of a melting pot of refugees from the other breaks when the wind dictates, which is kind of refreshing.

what's old is new again

The wishthound gave me a new skateboard a month or so ago, much to my wife's disgust i might add.Since then i've spent an enjoyable number of hours (in upstanding member of the community fashion not like a ne'er do well abusing council property or anything :-)) rolling around Barnstaple's new-ish skatepark. I have discovered a few things:

Firstly i'd forgotten how much fun skating is, not having ridden anything other than a big long skateboard for 5 years. I can actually remember how to do some tricks though i've forgotten more. Each time i leave for home, i remember something else that i should have tried, a trick that used to languish in the bottom of the trick bag. all those years ago. There is still that same satisfaction from landing something (however simple now) and rolling away clean that never changes.

Secondly, i don't bounce like i did ten years ago. I have a fraction of the bottle i used to have, gone are the days of throwing myself down sets of stairs with abandon. The threat of broken limbs & their consequences loom ever larger and well, concrete is hard and it hurts, for a lot longer as well at my advanced age. In the wishthounds words, the ability curve for surfing is gradual but with an overall upward trend for most of your life, with skating it peaks early and it's pretty much all downhill from there, but if you're having fun, who cares right?

Thirdly, like surfing, it never truly leaves. Skateboarding was a big part of my growing up, becoming a man, it shaped my future path in life in a way that i only recently understand. It changes how you look at the physical world we interact with on a daily basis and i don't think you ever fully forget that or ever lose the desire to skate, it's just your body that lets you down. Even though there are a couple of long periods when i haven't rolled around, it's always in there bubbling away under the surface.

Finally kids today have it easy! The park in the pictures is one of at least five small skate facilities (off the top of my head) within a 30 minute drive, in a relatively rural area, all well built and good to skate. Back in the early nineties, my friend's mum fought for years for our midland council to build some ramps and when they did it was virtually unusable. Skateboarding is acceptable now in a way that it never was when i started (though there is still a punk ethos like there used to be once you dig beneath the shiny veneer of tony hawk & the x games)

Kids today learn tricks in their first year that were beyond the imagination of the pros of the eighties and it's easy to learn them because the boards are light and you can see things to inspire you in magazines, dvd's, on youtube and in your local town. Things never used to be like that (please excuse the monty python style "it were hard in my day" monologue but..)

Take learning to ollie for example, essential basic skating building block. That took us ages to learn, we had heard reference to it & seen stills of people in the air but never actually seen a video or much less anyone do it in real life. Our town had no older skaters to copy and it wasn't until a friend of a friend managed to get a photocopy of a "how to" from an old mag that we managed to see how it was done, before that it might as well have been magic. In fact i can still remember the afternoon my friend and i first managed to properly leave the ground.

Steve Pezman has a great quote in Andrew Kidman's Glass Love where he talks about surfing as you get older being just as challenging and rewarding even though your actual ability level might be decreasing as your body ages. His point is that as even the simpler things become harder, the satisfaction in still achieving them increases and the sum total of joy (or stoke if you like) in that is the same as it ever was. I think he's right and the same applies to skating, surfing, pretty much any physical activity

So here's to my fellow old skaters with a peter pan complex! It's a shame i have a princess obsessed daughter, a son might have given me the perfect, spouse approved, excuse to keep going!

Incidentally i just saw the latest Flip movie (Extremely Sorry) The level of skating is fully RIDICULOUS!  I always have a soft spot for Flip, being the phoenix from the ashes of Classic Brit brand Deathbox & sponsors of two of my favorite ever skaters Tom Penny & Geoff Rowley. Their new dvd is well worth a watch if you get the chance, just not with any young impressionable children in attendance!

all washed up

Free your ankles!

toys

So i've kept this fairly surf based so far, but those who know me will know that guitar & music in general is another of my life's obsessions. I recently treated myself to the little vox amp in the picture. Four watts of lovely rich tube tone, looks like a handmade chocolate and best of all?

It's quiet & aesthetically pleasing enough to be allowed downstairs in the house!

This pic and the water shots on film are from another new toy, an ebay bargain waterproof film camera + some film that expired 6 years ago. Seems like an experiment that has worked so far!

self portrait

disco fingers

It's probably clear to anyone who checks here often that i think style is important when you surf. I think everyone has an innate type of style, a natural look to the way they surf, be it smooth as silk like Dane Peterson, nonchalant like Lopez at pipe or just plain different like Alex Knost.
Although it is possible to work at surfing in a certain way, it always looks slightly contrived compared those who are lucky enough to have good style naturally. Obviously "good style" is a very subjective judgement and to a certain extent a personal assessment.
I've spent a lot of time watching video of people surfing, both other peoples films and the footage that went into my two. After a while it's very easy to identify different people from the way they move, the body positions they adopt, even if they are riding similar equipment, doing similar things, on similar waves.
I'd like to think i am at least a little smooth when i surf but my own weird style quirk is pointing my index fingers, especially on my left hand. Don't ask me why, i'm not sure it is crucial to successful balancing, but i do it on a skateboard or a snowboard too. Check the photos!

seeds of the revoloution

June 1988, a chance visit to Smiths revealed a whole new world beyond bombing hills in the local park. The rest as they say, is history!

all a quiver.....

My much trailed ramble on the joys of owning a few too many boards is up now on drift. Nice comments only.........pleeese!

clicky clicky

Lovely photos and helpful quiver caddying from Jamie!

the luxury of indecision...

We have some of the biggest tidal range in the world, tides are sometimes as big as nearly ten metres (thats 30 feet ish in old money). It sucks when you walk for ten minutes to the sea (in freezing temps) paddle out then wish you took the other board you had in the van, especially if you got halfway down the beach with the board in question first!

Guess thats the downside of having a selection of sleds to choose from and a luxurious position to be in!

drifting round point concept

Super stoked on my latest piece for Drift, an interview with the talented young shaper Ryan Lovelace with pictures by the equally talented Morgan Maassen.

Check it out here, click on the concept crafts feature

a tale to tell...

I've always thought there was something cool about a used and abused pair of skate shoes, the shape moulded to the skaters foot by the miles on tarmac and griptape, the sole worn in a way as individual as the skater's style itself, each scratch, abrasion or hole in the upper telling a tale of triumph and defeat, tricks learnt, gaps made, shins & hips bruised.

When i started skating, skate shoes were all really expensive, i spent ages gazing at pairs of Van's and Airwalks in RAD magazine, dreaming of owning whichever pair was "in" this month and, just like we had to with skateboards themselves, we tried to eke every last session out them. I have very distinct memories of ripped up converse all stars with cardboard covering the hole in the sole over the ball of my foot, buying replacement soles to glue on from Woolworths (always way too slippy compared to Vans waffle sole!)and going through several tubes of shoe goo trying to rehabilitate wrecked pairs of Airwalks.

Back then a friend getting a new pair of skate shoes was as much an event as someone getting a new deck or the latest Powell video coming out. I remember a friend getting the first ever model of Etnies, back when they were based in France, seeing the first Van's Cab shoe for the first time, back then the first ever signature model shoe and something that seemed a weird idea at the time!

Skateboarding is very different now, it's everywhere, the brands are well known, the fashion is integrated with the mainstream, it's an accepted sport not the fringe activity it was for us, populated with the kids your mum would rather you didn't hang out with.

ps i know those shoes don't look properly griptape abused but I haven't been out for more than a cruise around for ages so they'll have to do like that!

Thank you!

So as the year comes to a close, i want to say thanks to a few people.

A massive thanks to my great family for putting up with my various obsessions and the time i devote to them. There's no way to overplay how wonderful, cool and joy bringing you both are.

Thanks to Tim & Jamie for encouraging me to get this going, thanks to Rebecca & Chris & Jack Brull for the Holga help & inspiration, thanks to Angela and Tim at Drift for the opportunity to foist my opinions on a wider audience and thanks to all my friends in the line up who keep me surf stoked even in the depths of winter.

Finally thanks to all of you who check here from time to time, whoever and wherever you are!

point concept

>Introducing my newest cyber friend. Ryan Lovelace is a young californian shaper who is lucky enough to have Rincon as one of his test tracks. Although he produces beautiful boards of all shapes and sizes, it's hulls and their variants that have him most excited at the moment. Check his blog out for pics of some beautifully bladed out hulls, some forward thinking new shapes (check the "gullet") and some great pics and videos of them in action.
It's easy to think that the major developments in the shaping of hulls all happened years ago but people like Ryan are taking Liddle's ideas and pushing them forward, helping to get a new generation of surfers stoked on them.
Long live the joys of forward trim, and believe me, it is a joy!

Top Pic is taken by the highly talented Morgan Maasen,
This one by Ryan:

long gone

The lifeguards are long gone now, in fact they haven't been at my local beach for years, a result of wranglings between the council and the beach owner. Each year the number of people they pull from the sea increases as more people venture into the surf in their supermarket wetsuits, more people make a weekend run to hit the surf (dude!) with little regard or experience of the power of the sea. It's a shame they only patrol in the summer, the beaches are increasingly full of clueless fools even during the winter when the swell is up and the water temp is dropping fast.

Yet you can't help some people and it sometimes makes me despair about the nature of many in our country. People wont swim between the flags, people shout abuse when you suggest they might want to avoid floating in an area thick with large hard fibreglass objects, some of which lets face it, are under questionable control. Worst of all i've witnessed a father screaming at a friend of mine for suggesting that he might want to stop his young son from swimming in a powerful rip.

OK rant over, ignore me, just look at the pretty picture!

there's something about Vans....

The Shoes i mean, not the utility vehicle!

Not many of the "big" name brands in freesports have managed to maintain their core following and avoid accusations of selling out to "the man" yet Vans shoes somehow have. Despite now being part of a multinational that owns North Face and several other household names, Vans has still managed to keep itself grounded and stay true to the sport that it's been involved in since the beginning. Vans are still seen as one of the shoes to have if you skate (no mean feat in the fickle world of skate fashion), still sponsor a team of ripping skaters, still put a huge amount into the sport at a grassroots level, building parks across America, still produce stylish, comfy, durable shoes.

Ironically they weren't originally conceived as a skateboard company, they were a small family business making shoes to order that saw an opportunity to get involved with skateboarding after requests from the Dogtown team (who were just on the cusp of blowing up worldwide) for a shoe built to their specs to skate in.

As the company moves into it's fifth decade they have released a cool coffee table book celebrating themselves. Put together by Doug Palladini it is part history of the brand, part biography of the skaters, surfers, musicians and others who have become synonymous with it over the years (think Steve Caballero, Tony Alva, Joel Tudor etc) and part eye candy, filled with great action photos and pictures of one obsessive's frankly huge collection of the shoes themselves. It's a well thought out volume, with some really interesting stories and facts within it's pages, some of which you'll know some will suprise you. Since it's been around for so long, the history of the product in a way also charts the history of Skateboarding and to a lesser extent elements of the history of surfing, BMX and snowboarding too, all of which adds to it's appeal. It's a stylish package with good quality pages and the cover is inlaid with a red rubber panel bearing the vans logo, just like each pair of off the wall shoes.

I've owned & worn out numerous pairs since i started skating years ago, in fact I rarely buy any other brand of trainer and I know there are thousands like me across the world. If you've ever bought a pair of Spiccoli-esque check slip-ons or slid your feet into a beaten up pair of SK8-hi's held together with shoe goo (remember that?) prior to hurling yourself off the local architecture, you're bound to enjoy this book and it's a good choice if you're looking for things to put on your letter to Santa!

waxing up

One little pre surf ritual that unites us all, whatever and wherever you surf!

yum yum.....

my wife's baking rocks!!

question....

Important social comment on the plight of Hawaii's indigenous peoples in the modern age or too much time on my hands on a sunny day?

or possibly how pretentious am I? You decide

WOW!

So a little update on my continuing hull experiences. As i type we've been a little starved for decent waves (though hopefully that will change this week) but there have been odd little semi clean sessions. I've been surfing the hull a fair amount and had what can only be described as a pretty shocking wave on it on my last outing. Paddled into a chest high right which stood up as it hit the inside bank. I dropped down the face with a fair bit of speed as the wave prepared to section a good fifteen feet ahead, i crouched, banked over on my inside rail and a split second later i was past the section, trimming in a high line at what felt like mach ten. Felt like a true glimpse of the speed hulls are known for. In fact someone dropped in on me, past the section (i'm hoping because he assumed i wouldn't make it round, not just because he was a kook!) I had so much speed i actually overtook him on my next bottom turn before kicking out as the wave prepared to close out.

I paddled back out hooting myself and sat for a good few seconds slightly bemused by what just happened. As i've said before, they aren't for everyone, they are quirky to ride and probably more about the individual experience than impressing passers by with your radness, but they sure are fun and i don't think i've experienced as much speed with as little effort on a wave that size before!

Walden talks magic (& other stuff!)

Drift feature part two, Steve Walden talks board design, mass surfboard production and the state of Professional Longboarding. Look here

Awesome photos from Jamie Bott.
Thanks to Tim H & Tiki and Global Surf Industries (esp. Dan!)