film still rules / love c street!

Much a i like the immediacy and convenience of having a camera and editing software in my iphone shaped trouser pocket, shooting film is still the best. Manipulating an instagram picture this much might seem contrived and yet this is just a straight 120 film scan from my holga complete with light bleed and weird colout cast from the cross processing. I love the fact that you never know exactly how the picture is going to turn out until you scan the negative.

I'm pretty stoked on this one. It's from the county fairground parking lot in Ventura at the top of the C street point, somewhere i surfed quite a few times on this trip. Although the Santa Barabara/ Rincon area is littered with right hand points, most of them only properly wake up in winter when the swells come from the north. In summer, C street is the go for many locals and it is a really fun wave on a log when its small or a fish when its bigger. Despite the crowd, it's pretty mellow in the water and usually has multiple sections / take off spots to thin the pressure on the sets.

As with most of the waves i surfed, even on days that the locals considered sub-par, it was better than 99% of the waves i surf at home.

benched

 

This could be the most photographed seat in North Devon. I don't think ive ever actually sat in it. I'm usually in too much of a rush to get my wetsuit on, especially when the view looks like this!

Winter hasn't been kind to the sand below though. At low tide there's a big lagoon that needs to be waded through or paddled across to reach the breakers. It's rippy too and two weeks ago BGA and i watched some learners (in a lesson i might add) get blown off the sewer pipe and need to be rescued. The helicopter got called but thankfully wasn't needed. 

The next day i watched two kids get swept out in the rip at hightide saunton and need to be paddled back in, one on a supermarket bodyboard, one on a shortboard. Scary for them and lucky that those in the water noticed! Saunton is usually really safe but the winters storms have changed the sand somewhat and it's not fully back to normal yet! With the holiday crowds around, please keep your eyes open, especially on the beaches with no flags!

little fluffy clouds

Another piece that seems to have been marooned on my hard drive for over a year now. I was quite pleased with it at the time, even if it is somewhat self congratualtory chin-stroking.

What is traditional longboarding?

When i was asked to write a "What is traditional longboarding" piece. It sounded pretty simple, it's just noseriding, one fin and drop knee cutbacks isn't it? Yet the more i sat and thought about it, the more difficult to pin down it became.

In it's original sense it's a term that defined a part of longboarding for a few years in the mid nineties. Back in the first "age of the longboard" there was just surfing and everyone rode longboards until Nat Young and chums changed things in 1966. When longboards started to become popular again in the nineties, it was driven by shapers like Bill Stewart applying the lessons learnt with the evolution of the shortboard to longer equipment. The focus was very much on emulating the "radicalness" of cutting edge shortboard surfing with a handful of throwback manouvers thrown in. The boards were light, often narrow nosed with shortboard style concave bottoms and multiple fins.

It wasn't until Joel Tudor and his contemporaries like Wingnut, Jimmy Gamboa, Kevin Connelly and others started to look backwards, sometimes riding vintage thrift store finds that things began to change. Longboarding begin to develop along two fairly seperate paths. While the hawaiians and aussies continued to develop the high performance school, Tudor led the charge back to black wetsuits, single fins, Volan and a focus on a style with it's feet firmly in the body english of the early 60's. Looking in magazines of the time, "traditional longboarding" really means trying to emulate David Nuuhiwa at his 1966 noseriding prime, hanging ten was once again paramount along with smooth footwork and drop knee cutbacks.Board Templates  closely followed those of period noseriders with wide noses and tails, flat rocker, concave nose and paralell soft rails. Once again, first point Malibu became the focus of world wide attention.

The years tick by, things change and evolve, "pro" longboarding faltered from lack of corporate support and to a large extent stayed as a fringe activity in the surf media despite the ever increasing numbers boards over nine feet leaving the racks of surf shops world wide. Tudor retreated from the limelight a little and turned his attention to shorter equipment. Thomas Campbell made a couple of very influential surf films and huge numbers of surfers rediscovered the joy in the glide of a heavy board in high line trim. From where we (i) sit today, traditional longboarding is much more than emulating '66 vintage Nuuhiwa.

 

Almost all of today's top "loggers" are incredibly well rounded surfers, riding heavy single fins in small waves but shorter equipment when the waves get bigger or hollower, be that fish, egg, hull, simmons, even thrusters. Shapers like Tyler Hatzikian and Robbie Kegel have started to take single fin longboard design into different territory. Both these shapers say they use the zenith of 60's design as a jumping off point but aim to design shapes that continue the evolution of the longboard as though the shortboard revolution never happened. They are not alone. The last few years have seen a subtle shift in "log" shapes away from parallel templates and wide noses to more pig influenced shapes with wide points pulled back narrower noses and more defined hips to the board. The lines these boards draw on the wave is subtly different and surfers like knost and kegel have started to turn harder as a result while still retaining the essence of a traditional style. Noserides have become much more focused on being in the pocket not out on the shoulder and the standard of noseriding and the technicalty of the poses struck with toes over has gone through the roof.

Far from being old and stale, a dry study of glories past, traditional longboarding is more varied and alive than ever and that's where the difficulty in pinning it down lies. In fact it's one of the most vibrant parts of the whole of surfing in current times, with an almost punk ethos of experimentation and expression fuelled by a worldwide internet savvy community and not bound by corporate ideas and marketing plans. 

 So if we must try to pin down a definition what can we say? What is "traditional"  today?

 I think it's best to think of it as an approach, a "state of mind" if you forgive the cheesiness of that assertion, defined by  some basic tenets. Fundamentally Style is important, . Surfing with style is paramount whether it's the Steve Bigler-esque exaggerated body English of Alex Knost or the Phil Edwards style smoothness of Tyler Warren. It's an adherence to the principles of good trim, harnessing the waves energy with good positioning and without needless flapping. It's working with the wave, harmonizing with it's form in more lateral lines rather than attempting to bend it to your will or slice it to pieces. It's about using the extra three feet of your longboard for it's intended purpose and noseriding the hell out of any suitable section. It's about believing a good bottom turn is far more important than whatever maneuver you can do at the top of the wave. It's about weight, glide, momentum and grace under pressure. 

It's not about being retro or being overly consumed with looking backwards, it's about taking the essence of Surfing's history and treating those reference points with due reverence but taking them somewhere new. 

Unsurprisingly perhaps, people are beginning to take notice and the big surf Companies are perhaps beginning to sniff opportunity. Vans have poured a fair amount of money into Joel Tudors unashamedly traditional duct tape contests and Billabong, one of the "big 3", just sponsored Tyler Warren  one of the best "all boards" surfers in the world and something that would have been unthinkable even 5 years ago. Whether this is ultimately a good thing remains to be seen but one thing is for sure. Style is alive and kicking.

 

nothin doing, doin nothing

Not quite baywatch is it?!

les conches

Gotta love french beach break!

lifesavers

 

This is the decidedly low tech life guard station at Tonel near Sagres in the western Algarve. In a way this post signifies a full circle for Adventures in Trim since it was pictures i took with a digital slr at tonel and a desire to do something with them that was a catalyst in signing up to blogger originally, that and a desire to see what all the fuss was about as far as blogs went.

 

 The blog lay dormant with a couple of posts on it for a year or so before my friend Tim encouraged me to actually start spouting my strong opinions to the world. By that time i had discovered the holga and the rest as they say is history.......

capsule quiver

I, like many people in recent times, am lucky enough to have a reasonable quiver of boards racked up in the shed, covering long, short and several different schools of design thought. Some are bigger favorties than others and there is a gentle cycling through of boards over the years as my tastes, thought processes and surfing evolve. I dont get to travel far to surf and riding different boards at the same few places keeps things fresh but still local in a way exploring new places does for those lucky enough to be time rich and responsibility light.

So i've usually got a couple of boards in the van and i chop and change them bsed on the forecast and my mood. When i do get to travel is when the difficult choices arise. With the usual luxury of a shape for every eventuality, picking one or two boards for a trip can be a difficult process, fraught with insecurities about making the wrong selection. A fortunate dilemma to have obviously!

Over the years i've come to the conclusion that the photo shows my perfect "capsule quiver". I reckon i can have fun in pretty much anything i'm prepared to paddle out in with a skinnyish fish and a single fin log in the bag. Much as i love the mini simmons i've been riding over the last yearor two, their super flat and foamy nature don't give me as much confidence holding in (or squeezing under) bigger faster waves elsewhere. The GS twinnie above (which is heavily influenced by the christenson school of fish shaping) is slight enough to cope with decent size (for me anyway) bowly waves and still flat and fast enough to be fun in punchy small surf.

As for having a log with you, sure they are a pain to travel by air with but if there are small reeling point breaks (or even small clean beach break) on the agenda then a single fin is a must. My current personal taste being for something a little less bulky and more foiled / narrower than i'd ride at saunton.

baton rouge

forward observation post

If you don't have young kids is difficult to understand how much of an expedition a simple day at the beach can become. If you do, you'll know exactly what i'm talking about. The beach tent, an essential bit of kit!

footsteps in the sand

 

leading to who knows where.......

 All you can do is to keep walking and try to enjoy the journey

le chateau

I worked on this piece about Nineplus founder Richard Balding a couple of years ago before the plug got pulled on it. It seems a shame to let it languish on my hard drive for much longer so i'm going to publish it here, hopefully Richard still stands by what he said then! It might be a little rough around the edges since it was never properly readied for publication but hopefully it's interesting all the same!

Hasu no Hana.... 
Nineplus founder Richard Balding from the heart 

Richard Balding is something of an anomaly in UK surfing. In a scene that is
both insular yet heavily in thrall with the influence of the US and
Australia, his company Nine Plus is almost unique. While many of the
established UK brands dominate the domestic market yet fail to make an
impact abroad, Richard has steered Nine Plus into a truly global brand with
a higher profile overseas than at home. 

From humble but passionate beginnings, the journey has not been without it's
trials, it's small defeats and victories but through it all, Richard has
stayed true to the ideals he started with. At the heart of it he's just as
surf stoked as the rest of us, trying to turn his passion into a way of
putting food on the table. 

So Richard tell us a little bit of your own surfing history. 

I come from a small town called Wimbourne near Bournemouth.. I was really
into skateboarding but once I saw Surfing,aged 14, I fell in love with it
and just lived at the piers (Boscombe and Bournemouth).
I grew up surfing with people like Simon Firley, Dan Firley, Dale
Stergeous and i was the worst in my group for about a year, the one
most of the older guys took the mick out of!
I went to California at 15 with Minnow Green and met up with Joel Tudor and by 16 I was almost living at the beach catching the bus early in the morning trying to find a wave and riding anything. I used to borrow the rental boards from a shop under the pier called Waterways and
surf for hours until my Mum called me out or it was too dark to see!



What drew you to longboarding? 

Simon Firley, who was a couple of years older than me and
kinda a cool kat around town, had one. Then I saw a picture of Joel hanging
ten in the back of Surfing Magazine. That was the start
really, it looked different and I was drawn to that. I remember down at the
pier in Bournemouth, a guy hit me on his board and I ended up having like 14
stitches across my head. It was the first time Simon let me use his board as
I was so concussed and I was half like, "man I hurt" and the other half,
"man on a longboard – stoked!"


After that my Mum drove me down to Cornwall and we bought a longboard
off Minnow Green. He foolishly mentioned me coming back for a weekend to get
some pointers and I rocked up for 2 weeks, broke his board, the locks to his
van and spent 14 nights hanging out at the pub. Quite an education!

You were a pretty keen competitor back then?

I Started competing at 16 and went to the Worlds for 4 years running.  I did
all the European contests for six years while being supported by Oxbow and
Oakley.

When did Nineplus become part of your life? 
I started Nineplus at 19 and i resigned from my sponsors at 23 to do
Nineplus full time. Im now 33 and its been 14 years since the brand started.


Starting your own company at 19 is a bold move, how did it come about?


Actually I very nearly didn’t do it!
As time went on I noticed that competitive surfing for longboarding was a
love and not a money earner. It still is really! I saw that and i wanted to
enjoy the sport I love for the rest of my life so knew I had to do it
another way. I went to 'Toes on the Nose' to become their European person in
1997 but Richard Allred didn’t take my offer so I went the hard route on my
own, and here we are.
I just was like "I’m gonna do this" and had all these ideas in my head,
marketing ideas and would live, sleep and dream it and bore people with my
plans.  . I had met Fabrice Valerie, who part-owned Oxbow,  he sat with me
at Makaha and we talked it through. I  talked to Nat Young about it and
there were so many people who took an interest that I thought it "this could
work ". I kept going and slowly things started happening, like a ball was
starting to roll. 

 What
makes nineplus unique?

At our core we are a surfing company for surfers, we don’t have attitude, or
a plan other than to make beautiful products for people and do our absolute
best to operate a company that is authentic, I still have that attitude and
would leave if it was lost. We do not operate for money, we operate for
stoke and many times I will sacrifice in order to help someone feel the
love. That said we are obviously a group of companies that makes a profit
but its important to me that we stay as an independent, true to the values
that i started with.

Building a company like NINEPLUS must have involved some growing pains? 
For sure,  I started a company with no idea how to make anything, handle
finance, market a product, manage shipments or any clue about anything
regarding to stocking shops. I think the term, "ignorance is bliss" comes to mind!

When we started, Emma Skinner and i would travel all
over the UK in a car full of gear through rain, sleet and snow. We kept
going, no money, no accommodation, no plan, just cash in the dash and a
trunk load of garments. 

We operated out
of a house in St Agnes  and  each shipment of 20
boards or so coming in from California was boom or bust!
Ben Skinner and his mates would come over when they were
about 10 years old and help pack fleeces and t-shirts. Once the Shipments got bigger I would actually
tie wire around the boards that had to sit in the garden and then bring the wire up through the window and tie it around my ankle so I would know if someone tried to steal them!

We had plenty of growing pains to get where we are now, doing our own global distribution and all the logistics and paperwork that goes with that.
The last 10 years have been a huge degree course using the world as a classroom. I was a high
school dropout so its like a reverse education and having to pay now for all
those days I used to surf as a teenager instead of learning.  I've made
many, many mistakes, some which should have stopped us but we got back up,
dusted off and kept going. That’s the difference between being successful or
not, having that commitment.

Starting the wetsuit line seems to have been a real pivotal point for you? 
Definately! It's what communicated the heart of the brand through a product
that sold an image of a soulful company. We started doing them back in 2002
and they were simply to make an understated black suit like I had picked up
from ‘Mitchs’ in La Jolla a few years before. People liked it though they
were never for sale. Soon we had a demand for a product we didn’t actually
make and then had to figure out a way to make the whole system work.

We started down the whole Sheico road ( the factory in Taiwan and Thailand
that manages every major wetsuit brand in the world) and somewhere along the
way we found Yamamoto and they found us and since that relationship
developed we have never looked back. There have been issues to work through
but we now have a partnership in a small but well managed factory inside
China that we built over the past 4 years and between us  we have a good
plan I think.




From the outside it seems the wetsuits really helped to establish you as a
label with it's own identity. Where is nineplus going now?

We are concentrating on the US market right now, in
both marketing and sales efforts. California has the history, nostalgia,
waves and people that understand the ideas behind the brand. I strongly
believe that it's only in California that you are either validated as a
surfing brand or not. It sets the industry standard and is the epicentre for
our market.
Behind that is Australia which is a market where surfing is a lifestyle
almost on proportion to what football is to the UK. Then you have Japan that
look at California to inspiration and next Europe. 

Europe is strange and in my opinion the hardest, its easy to go the route of a good product and
a surfing image but its hard to have the roots that make going the distance a
reality, longevity comes from originality and that comes from the nucleus of
the market. To get there you have to be relevant and to do that you need to
be at the epicentre which takes us back to California. 

Alongside Nineplus, we've recently launched HASU which is going to be the equivalent of
Nike 6.0 in the wetsuit business. We are coming out with new fashion lines
and shoes under the HASU and Nineplus brand which is really exciting. They
are made with an environmental approach but also using the leading materials
and workmanship in the business. 

It seems ironic that a European brand has to make it in America to have the
relevance to be successful in it's home market! 
You can have success here without that but if you want to lead in a market
you have to be relevant in the US because it’s the epicentre of the industry
like Italy is to Fashion. Other stuff goes on for sure but california is a
focal point. If you can get a footing there it gives you credibility. That
to me is the litmus of a true surfing brand.


Do you feel saddened at the comparative lack of growth at home 
compared to abroad? 

Um without sounding negative, the UK is a beginners and
intermediate market as far as sales go. We have some great surfing but the
average market is quite a way behind that lead. It
operates like an island and is, to be honest, quite far behind what is going
on out there. 

The UK surf market follows, to a majority, what the consumer
buys or feels is comfortable. You can actually get quite far here in the UK
with simply a good product. That’s not possible in a market that actually
follows the lifestyle. Take 'Kangaroo Poo' for example - in the UK they
became a multi-million dollar operation with pretty much no overseas market,

They did that with a good product which hit the target audience, the British
public that wants to buy into an image. You put that in a core market like
the US and it wouldn't stand a chance. 

That's why getting a brand to
work from the UK is so hard, we are not built from the lifestyle but rather
instead try to sell from it using a perceived image. It will work well to a
non-core audience but for a true surfing brand, an authentic brand, it takes
actually getting to
the nucleus. That takes either a lot of money, being owned by an established
company with kudos or just slogging it out the
hard way.

Why do you think the UK is so far behind? 
If you have seen the Truman show then it sums it up. You work in a local
environment, see the local environment every day, take your money from the
local environment, promote yourself in the local environment and generally
exist in the local environment. In return you judge everything by the local
environment. Then someone shows you another land and tells you there are
lots of different lands but to each of them the people behave the same -
locally.


It takes being shown what exists and then becoming local to each
environment to do the same in every place.
With surfing it’s the same, the best guy in the UK is noted and in his
environment is important, this is relevant to a brand or competitive surfer
or whatever. Once you start to
realise that the UK is maybe the 10th most important market to branded
surfing goods and you venture out into the wider world, you see why
certain countries run the game.

I personally think this is part of the reason why the UK scene does not
impact outside
of its borders too much whereas other countries do. It takes something
different to export it, be it a person or a brand and that is very seldom
come by. If you are going to be another Kelly, beat Kelly or else carve your

own path -  no matter how much money you make its not success, it can bring
prosperity but true success is about being relevant, and being
relevant means your existence is warranted and if you left there would be a
gap - that’s hard to do,

What's exciting you in surfing at the moment? where do you see things going?


Everything excites me and I think surfing is in a great place. When you
travel you see people are switched on to everything and that’s good. Its
about having an open mind and people like Rob, Kelly, Donavan, and Rasta are
embracing
that.  Joel Tudor is owed a lot of respect for starting that trend,
probably 15 years ago and he is still doing it, he will continue to lead to
an extent as he's the real deal and feels what he does, He is truly
authentic, then gets copied for
it.
The media controls so much of our perceived image of what surfing is but I
think
we will see more people doing their own thing in the future. Companies have
to try to remain
relevant as this approach grows and that will be hard for many
of them unless they truly feel what they do.With the internet, people are
more intelligent
than ever and to get someone to buy into a brand now takes much
more than marketing, it takes walking the walk and that is something that
cannot be bought.

Who are your influences?

Okay, well firstly and as surprising as this may sound its Jesus Christ! I
read the Bible about 5 years ago right through. I was interested in how long
it had survived in a world that disregards everything in due course. I
was staggered how great the influence of Jesus Christ still is on
everything in our age from courts to
governments to the monarchy, its overwhelming and its worldwide. People
disregard it but if you were to equate that influence in a commercial or
industrial sense it would be and is unmatched by anything else, ever -
thousands of years
later, its bigger than when it was started and if you stop and consider that
then you can learn allot. That influences me, I think there's is untold
wisdom behind
that success, When I read it, it was like, okay so I never picked this thing

up before and I know most other people don’t either but i was dumbfounded
at the advice it gave and knowledge it contained.
Adding to that and my biggest influence is passion, I love passion, it is
what changes things  It’s the passion that I see in people that shows
me they live their dream and that inspires me. Business people like Richard
Branson, missionaries like Billy Graham, from Surfers like JT and designers
like
Paul Smith . They draw their own lines
and carve their owns routes and that is what I value as success.
If you follow the heart, there are no regrets !!





You have travelled a lot, where are your favorite places? 

Um, well when I focused on the brand about 10 years ago I thought my travels

were over and now its like i'm constantly travelling.  I feel fully blessed
to be able to
see both sides of the coin. One week I'm in the depths of
China living at a factory and the next sitting in a café in Laguna beach
with famous people,
after waking with views over Trestles. I often fly through a place in only a
few
days but I always try to get immersed in the culture so on that level
favourite places
are Hong Kong, Shanghai and throughout India.
Surfing wise its gonna be Malibu on a south swell, Rincon on a North Swell,
Hossegor on a West Swell and Rainbow Bay on an East!.


What else do you enjoy outside surfing? 
I enjoy charity work, poetry, reading, travelling, designing, sales, music,
business, investment, history, culture & learning more about the work of
Jesus and spending time with
Sarah, my girlfriend.

What are you most proud of with NINEPLUS?

Linking everything into a career that actually puts food on my
table, friends in my heart and a spring in my step. 

pensive......

BGA strikes his best catalogue pose while I lie panting on the grass after he lent me his spare bike then me cycle up a steep hill back in may. Jesting aside I owe Al big thank you's for lending me his old cannondale so i could find a new way of scaring myself/ having fun on those many crap surf days we seem to have suffered this summer! It's just about kept me sane and in some semblance of fitness.

 

It's wet and wild out there again today and it seems like we've gone straight to winter again. Almost seems like we've just had one season of grey wetness all year. I feel like i've hardly surfed over the last month or so and my stoke is at a low ebb from a surfing point of view. Thank goodness for alternative entertainment! There is some hope on the horizon, if the wind forecast holds and the logs might just get dusted off at the weekend.

 

In other news, the new iphone 5 is pretty cool and more importantly doesn't randomly crash at annoying moments like my old 3. Hopefully i can waste some time on it later watching the quik pro from france. Wow thats a heavy beachbreak. When a surfer of jeremy flores calibre is visibly shaken after a wipeout/hold down you know there's a lot of water moving around!

arrifana

 

thirty degrees and a foot of glass

sundowner

A date for your diaries, Bing Copeland and hopefully Matt Calvani from Bing surfboards will be around the village on the weekend of the 15th / 16th september. I'm not entirely sure of the details yet but there is supposed to be a demo day at saunton on the saturday morning and something happening in conjunction with the surf museum on the sunday. Keep an eye on the Nineplus, Trim surfboards and surf museum websites for details!

hut, hut, hut

Possibly now one of the most photographed sites in North Devon! Full marks to Jules for selecting such bright colours!

I wonder if beach huts are a british thing? I cant remember noticing them on my limited foreign beach experience. I will continue my research from a french beach break perspective this week, hopefully in sunshine and better swell than Portugal provided.

Vive La France!

decisions, decisions...

If you haven't visited the Museum of British surfing yet, why not!!

strider

Looks like it's back to winter again.......

a hully hull

There's something about the shape and foil of a displacment hull thats so pleasing to my eye. I think it's the way that there are no hard edges just gentle curves, whichever angle you look from, that flow into each other.

It's a deceptive kind of shape, there's a lot more going on than there first appears and they somehow feel more organic than a pointy thruster ever could.

Still doesn't really feel like summer does it, despite a few small semi clean waves this week. I'm struggling to get enthused as a result but hopeful some portugese sun and waves will restock the stoke next week!

nippers

At the risk of being controversial........ I've never quite seen the point of surf lifesaving clubs. It all seems a lot too much like a serious proper sport to me with all the effort of paddling out without the earnt fun of riding waves afterwards. In fact there never seems to be much fun involved. Of course that's probably me being curmudgeonly and cynical in my (approaching) old age.

I always thought it might be a good thing for my daughter to get involved with when she was old enough, teach her confidence in the sea etc but my limited experience so far hasn't done much to temper my initial misgivings. It's all taken very seriously and competitively even at 7 it seems and that doesn't fit with us. I'm thinking i'll just keep taking her surfing myself where i can make sure she's having fun and not worrying about how fast she can race round a flag.

beach huts.........