From Batman to Gathman

The other day I watched my nephew introducing his son to bodysurfing. 

The way the little fella was clinging to his dad's shoulders as they soared towards the shore whooping and laughing took me back to Kirra last century and my own dad teaching me about the ocean's pulses and rhythms and dangers - the same ocean where land and time and responsibility and mortgage payments and deadlines end, an an endless playground oblivious and disinterested in our macho machinations and digital dreamings. 

Where analogue starts.

Where generations and memories blur.

Where the Stoke is maintained.

Later, while we all talked story, the little fella and his little brother exchanged surf clobber for Action Hero outfits, oblivious to time, the heat and the rest of us smiling on. 

One day you're rocking the Batman mask and before you can say "Holy drop in, Batman" you're rocking the Gath helmet in full water person style and a couple of decades have evaporated.

Song without a name

Body surf

Surf board

or

air matt

 

 Have a great weekend in your loggerhood.

Neologism

I'm no linguistics guru, but I know a good neologism (aka homemade word or phrase) when I invent one.
The Loggerhood.
You read it here first.
No, it's not copyrighted, so feel free to repeat it in conversations post surf until it laps the world and I hear a stranger using it someday.

The Loggerhood is my freshly minted term to:
1 describe the great community of surfers of logs
2 describe the geographical hangout for said surfers and
3 also be used as a G rated  exclamation of shock eg like when I almost stepped on a venomous red bellied black snake last night while jogging. I could have said "what the logger hood!!!!".
I hadn't invented the term at that point so I cursed in a most politically-incorrect manner.
I also cursed the ungrateful cyclists coming towards me on that concrete path with their 30000000 kilowatt retina-destroying headlamps who not only didn't say "thanks" when I alerted them to another snake (taipan maybe) seen earlier further along the path, but failed to warn me of that pretty, yet venomous reptilian ahead of me. That's not how one behaves in The Loggerhood.

Today's relatively inane post is for polite, erudite surfers everywhere - one's like Phil, my Maldivian shipmate (above and below) and Bec who's part of the younger loggerhood that will drop in, turn off and tune in at Byron Surf Festival this weekend, where all manner of neologists, musicologists, surfologists, sociologists, scientists and scenesters will converge.
I hope somebody gawps "what the logger hood?".

Extract (Bus)

Some half thought out, quickly scribbled diary notes from this week's travels and travails. Have a bus-free weekend. (Unless your "bus" is a kombi)

"This is not my bus. 
No mine is missing in action, a phantom on some mythical schedule where transportation runs on time.
The electronic notice board said mine was 29 minutes away - enough time for me to almost walk home.
So I hop the first bus that comes along that will drop me near my home."

"But the passengers on this Other Bus are a different demographic from way out on the perimeter of the city where young people still get Southern Cross tattoos and sport Bad Girl and We're Full stickers on their cars with pride .

No this is not my normal ride, where everybody vaguely knows each others faces but doesn't talk, preferring to stay immersed in mobile phone apps. Or in my case mobile mantras.

No this is not my bus alright. It's more like some surrealistic Dylan ballad where cowboys, tarot readers and gypsy women mingle in the shared goal of Getting Home."

"The highlight was seeing something I've never seen in all my years of travelling here or overseas - a young bearded bloke making origami sculptures, oblivious to the eclectic mix of passengers swaying as the bus hits its stride. Origami is definitely a handy skill for a twenty something in today's depressed job market. One must have a point of differentiation ."

Rip Off Rant

ok, 

so you think it's fine to steal music from rich bands

well don't come stealing my images for your profit

i didn't spend 20 years processing my own films

i didn't waste hours working dead end jobs

to spend $15K on equipment

i didn't stand in the sun while my mates got barrelled

i didn't nearly drown to get the water shot

for you to steal my images

ok?

(this post is for Steen Barnes 

and all the other surf photogs 

who've been ripped off. 

Hang tight brine brothers!)

Mr Ed

Former editor of Tracks surf magazine and the Australian edition of Playboy, Phil Jarratt snares glassy beach at Miller's Left during the annual Wrecks and Relics gathering of briney old raconteurs.

Invisible

Today's post is for all the wonderful women in my life and as these pics of a bunch of over 50's show, women of that age still surf, still have fun and are not as invisible as the media assert.

Have a great wekend.

Winter Beachie Left Barrel

"music washes away from the soul

The dust of everyday life"

Berthold  Auerbach 

(I might add

surfing

to that equation)

Monochrome Monday (Seapunk)

 Todays post 

is for all the wrecks, 

relics and 

sea punks.