Snap happy arvo

That feeling of getting a new board ready for the next day's dawn patrol.

Buddah, books and upselling

Tip of the sanding planer to Torsten from the Wood Buddah blog. If you can spare ten minutes have a read of the amazing work he's doing in the middle of suburbia, taking a high tech approach to wooden surfboard building. 

I'm hoping to have another surf or three with you sometime, mate.

Speaking of suburbia, my book of the week is George Saunders' collection of short stories called Tenth of December about a fictional world resembling the bleak underside of the American Dream - folks just hanging in there from pay check to pay check, in dead end jobs while hoping, wanting and ashamed that they don't have More - meanwhile their cars break down, their kids are unhappy that they're they don't have jack and all manner of distopian dysfunctional disharmony besets the protagonists.

Why is such a bleak reverse-Disney milieu so entertaining you ask? Maybe it's cathartic. Maybe it's strangely satisfying that despite the wondrous, desirable reality presented in TV makeover shows; Fakebook "status" updates (even the taxonomy has an elitist air) and TV "reality" shows, our own humdrum existences and daily struggles don't seem so bad.
Maybe there's lots of other folks like us losers out there.
Maybe it's a reminder that we don't have to buy things we can't afford, with money that we don't have... to impress people that we don't like.

Maybe I'm overthinking it and it's just blues music for the eyes.

Saunders is just such a great writer - observing the bleak, post-Afghan War,  post-GFC landscape but with dry, cracking humour and after all, those with the Power can take a lot from us but they can't stop us from laughing despite it all. They can't stop us from making jokes about them.

It also reminds me of the futility of comparison or as Theodore Roosevelt said: "Comparison is the thief of joy". Have agreat weekend.

Almond Chicken Pizza

It takes a certain courage or naivete to open a surf shop in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast where even Big Name Shapers have gone to the wall trying to compete with the onslaught of low quality imported boards from third world factories.

So at the minimum, we should all salute Justin from the Sunhouse Surf shop (41 McLean Street, Coolagatta.) His refurbished premises once served up Kentucky Fried Chicken and then pizza. Now it serves up Almond surfboards, coffee and nibbles as well as an eclectic range of salt-oriented sculpture from Grant Newby,  Neal Purchase Jnr and the enigmatic Drouyn to more underground crew like Edward Sawden.

There's a bit of rubber from Patagonia and the odd surf mag as well as Switchfoot II (at least flick to pages 333-334 to view my celluloid renderings of the 75-85 era)

If nothing else, get your old and tired boards and wetties for the surf swap today. There will be live music by the younger Purchase, Isaac Paddon, Paul Wheat. Master of the Tiki-era velvet painting and collector of surfing detritus Baron Von Weirdo will have magical artefacts for sale.

Ohhhh and somewhere in there, Justin is going to squeeze in some shaping demonstrations.
See you there.

Bush spring

bushfires 

and 

back burning

cold wax

to

warm wax

clear moons

surf checks

onshores

spring

Monochrome Monday (sax x sax)

Did the Pre-Raphaelites surf?

There's some cultural anthropologists out there with too much overthinking time on their hands positing ideas like "surfing's infatuation with wood and the retro designs of the Golden Age parallels the Pre-Raphaelite's reaction to the industrial revolution and the emergence of the SteamPunk phenomenon".
Big call. Dirty big call.
Isn't it all just about cheap labour, using advertising and social media to create a demand and moving units so as to maximise profits? But lets hear them out.

As Britain lumbered inexorably towards the ecological wasteland and dehumanisation of the Industrial Revolution and it's climax with the complete devaluation of human life at the mercy of "misery technology" in the First World War, the Pre-Raphaelites constructed an artistic universe (and the occasional commune) in which medieval culture had always existed and Nature was to be revered and represented in colourful detail. The glorious past of the Italian renaissance could be invoked in dirty, grey, Industrial Revolution England.
Escapism and denial maybe, but bloody great masterpieces nonetheless.

Steve Miller from the Caloundra Mal Club showing
what a 50+ goofy footer can do with a tasty beachie.

And so we surfers are at the beach head again. The planet is getting buggered on a daily basis to feed our aspirations. Our leaders and the "free" press whip up xenophobic fear and hostility towards harmless souls fleeing hostile regimes - their lives devalued, their individualism reduced to a soundbite "swarms of boat people invading our shores". (Sounds like Botany Bay 1770 revisited)
And in some quarters of hipster cool, the shortboard was never invented, everybody free surfs for a living and let's all dress like 19th century sailors, with 21st century gadgets.
Which brings me to the SteamPunk movement.

The SteamPunk movement takes these notions to the extreme and posits an alternative history where the internal combustion engine never happened and steam driven technology evolved and mashed with art, fashion and music. And yes Led Zeppelin's craft was real. Hobits existed.
If you're in SE Qld on the weekend, check out their two day SteamPunk exposition. Me, I'll be at the Wooden Surf Show not because of any infatuation with low-fi and past-tech, but as a matter of necessity - eventually we will all be riding wood instead of these petro-chemical projectiles of resin and foam. Might take a film camera.

Planing planks

 Grant Newby and the

the wooden crew

have been busy building

crafts of beauty

from trees

for us to trim

Get to The Alley

this winter

to hear tales of timber

from Grant Newby

and 

Tom Wegener

Pic above is acombo of jpeg's sent to me - sorry I can't recall who though

Monochrome Monday (watered down wood)

This young fella actually ran over the top of me. Glad I wearing my helmet. Even gladder there's no fins on those wooden things.

Short or long?

No matter whether you'e

riding short boards 

or longborads.

Here's to a brilliant weekend!