1. Constant surf report checking @ surfline broke me down to order "Pure Energy", that east coast video and volume 7 out of their NRG series or so. I don't think its very hot, matter of fact I think it sucks.
2. Broke down again with surfline and ordered The Reef @ Todos, last years big wave competition at Todos Santos, Mexico. Kind of liked it, but its short and has alot of interviews in between, decent music and pretty good wipe outs.
3. Dave the Wave shows up Saturday at my surprise B'day party and what do I get, "Litmus", the movie, wow, I saw it once at the Wave's home, but we all watched it again, clearly the best I've seen so far .
What else is out there?
H the H.
Yo Holger
Try "5 Summer Stories" and "Free Ride". I love these two 70's movies. Excellent surfing, beautiful photography. I don't care much for the current Taylor Steele and clones' stuff, with the same 5 or 6 punk rock tunes. I think these two movies are the best surf movies ever done. I also like a more obscure one, called "go for it" which has some really cool footage of Larry Bartleman, "The Rubberman". And if you don't mind cheesy acting, "In God's Hands" has some beautiful tow-in footage, too.
-Kiko, strictly old school.
<< Try "5 Summer Stories" >>
check out gerry lopez' power stall-tube ride at pipeline, when you see the
movie, you'll know which tube ride this is, the movie prob has about 50 lopez
tube rides total
-Fringnut
JungleBoy Subject: [kooks] Re: Best Surf Videos.
1. the bomb - very good! good music, good footage and sequence, really happy video!
2. tripple c - suckie footage, although good section with female surfers, and one chick moons the camera , i think it was megan abubo :)
3. tripping the planet - it was an old video! kinda sucked! the music sucked!
-Rid
Holger,
Now I do not profess to be the surfers siskel & ebert but if you want quality film and terrific camera work you will find it hard to go past the following: The Endless Summer 1 & 2 All Down the line (TC at G-land & a whole lot more) Another one which I would suggest is one I might get a bit of flak for, but In God's Hands is not a terrible surf movie. The acting won't win any Oscars nor will the script but it has the best Tow-in footage I have ever seen as well as some amazing footage from Indo and Mexico. These recommendations are all shot in 16mm film, not super 8 video and they have the best watermen with lens filming (eg Don King et al).
Marty
This is out on video however inappropriately because of the original format: Greg MacGillvary's "The Living SEA" features the best surfing footage ever taken, IMHO: The film was shot in the 80 mm IMAX format and feature in water and helicopter platforms of Pipeline, Jaws, and Sunset. Seen in the 100 ft IMAX dome (were talking 100 ft waves here!!) at Liberty Science Center it was an unparalled surf flick happening. It is also a great environmentalist theme movie. As far as surf videos go: I cant remember one from the other, they all just seem to blur together with a couple notable exceptions: Agree with Kiko and Fringnut on the classics "Freeride" and "Five Summer Stories" I've already reviewed alot of the Hollywood crap: See below "A Surfing Manifesto"
-KO
I love to surf... as well as every one else does. But for some reason, I only enjoy watching longboarders when I can see it first hand. When it comes to watching surf videos, anything with Christian Fletcher (also Nathan) launches rockets! (sure he's a di@k, but the guy surfs like a god) on that same scene, check out the LOST vid's awesome groms and locations and sometimes you just split a gut laughing your a$$ off.- there's one video where a bodyboarder drops in on Slater and knocks his ass out- it is awesome!! ( I do like the guy) Other than that, Monster Mavericks is choice, Rip Curl'-s are usually awesome, but Surfer and Surfers Journal vids are cool too. Here I must pay homage to my hero Rusty Preisendorfer. RUSTY RULES! -(thanks for the C5)... Until Squeek or Rick put out a vid (HA!). Soundtrack is a must... no good waves with lame ass tunes. Frenzal Rom at the Wedge, Pantera at Todos, Porno for Pyros in Indo.... Spackler and DuBois know that music is a big part of my life- Hey Kev thanks for the tape -you are DJ DuBois rockin Crescent Fresh.. Hey Bro... Rock On!!
I just bought a camera myself.. so I will be making some flicks... I am trying to make a documentary on Wilbur Kookmeyer... Hey Spackler... you interested in the lead role?
-Christopher
For Longboarding I like the scene in Endless Summer with Mickey Dora. The guy I hear is a total jerk, in Brown's Surfing Hollow Days he carves his board right at a guy on his top turn. But he sure can surf. Heroes are all too human. His walking and sideslipping is still the best. And he did it first.
-Keith Johnson
A few years ago, I conned one of the editors at Time Out New York into buying an article about surf videos. Easiest $20 I ever made. Here's the text:
My Beach, My Wave, My Videos
City-bound surfers need surf videos. They need the action-fix as a balm for weeks of wavelessness, and they need vids to maintain stoke -- that lust for waves that drives otherwise rational individuals into the cold embrace of the Atlantic. For the nonsurfing inhabitants of this island (chalk people) these videos offer a rare glimpse into the legends and language of an obscure tribe -- sort of like a Margaret Mead documentary with a rock-and-roll soundtrack. When you come right down to it, surf movies are a lot like pornography. Action, not plot, is what the viewer craves. Yet Hollywood continues to sully the pure, mindless, plunging repetition of surfing with plot and dialogue. It almost never works. The following is a survey of surf videos from the pure to the profane.
Apocalypse Now, 1979 (R), 153 minutes
Some would argue that Apocalypse Now was the best surf movie ever made. Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore is nothing if not stoked. Kilgore: "Bring me my Yater spoon, the eight-six. What's the matter soldier?" Recruit: "I mean it's pretty hairy in there, sir. It's Charlie's point." Kilgore: "Charlie don't surf!" Although the movie does contain some enlightening dialogue on board design as Kilgore's helicopters race to decimate a village, there's only one shot of people actually riding waves. And napalming an entire town just to score some surf seems to carry the localism thing too far. If only Coppola had included a shot of the bowlegged Duvall riding that Yater spoon. Best line: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Wave quality: Mushy, at best.
Big Wednesday, 1978 (PG), 120 minutes
John Milius's elegiac story of three friends growing up and surfing in Southern California is about as close as Hollywood has come to getting it right, but Milius (who cowrote Apocalypse Now) drowns in the mythos he's trying to create. Jan Michael Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt struggle gamely with a script that's as wooden in places as those vintage longboards they tote around. Mercifully, the talking stops when they get in the water and the A-team takes over. Stand-in pro surfers, Peter Townend and Ian Cairns rip it up - Gerry Lopez, the Hawaiian stylemaster, even puts in an appearance on the day of the Great Swell, "a swell so big and strong it will wipe away everything that went before it." Yea, but what do you use to wash away the funny aftertaste of bad writing? Best line: "They've condemned the pier, Jack. You'll be living under the booted foot of the lifeguard state." Wave quality: Clean and glassy to Epic.
Endless Summers I and II,
ESI: 1966, 90 minutes; ESII: 1994 (PG), 107 minutes
When Bruce Brown finally finished editing this globe-circling saga in 1966, he couldn't get a national distributor for the film. So, he booked an auditorium in Kansas, advertised the movie himself, and packed the house every night for a month. "Endless Summer" went on to become a synonym for the surfer's quest. Nearly 30 years later, Brown corralled two hot, young surfers and made another circumnavigation in search of the perfect wave. Nobody can accuse Brown of messing with the formula: ESII hits a lot of the same spots and is plagued by the same cornball narration, but the amazing locations and the bonehead enthusiasm make this travelogue work. A couch full of Midwestern test-viewers managed to maintain a polite interest throughout the entire journey: "Look at that water!" one enthused; "I'm learning so much," another noted; and one sleepy Minnesotan sighed, "It's like watching a lava lamp." Wave quality: Total flatness to bombora outer-reef action.
Point Break, 1991 (R), 117 minutes
Surfing bank robbers -- guns and boards -- think Keanu as an FBI agent/surfer dude! OK, don't think, it'll go down easier. Some of the stunts in this high-concept, low-probability policier are amazing, unfortunately waveriding is not among them. Bankrobbing, adrenaline-junkie Patrick Swayze's surfing double has a sweet backside tube ride, but otherwise the boardriding is bogus. Still, it's fun to watch the buffed-out Reeves vacillate between his former role of Ted (in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure) and that of Joe Friday in Dragnet as Gary Busey, playing his federal agent-partner, works really hard to save the movie from total oblivion. Best line: "You don't understand, I'm gonna learn to surf or break my neck." Wave quality: Clean and green, but the big-wave segment is a closeout.
Surfer Girl, 1994, 45 minutes
This documentary is a standout in the genre, because it explains the motivations of surfers and because those surfers happen to be women. New York filmmaker Donna Olson rounded up five of the best female surfers in the world and brought them to a tiny island in Fiji, where they talk, shred huge, grinding reef break, and talk some more. Music, by Santana, The Sandals, The Aqua Velvets and The Halibuts, isn't bad either. Available via mail-order: P.O. Box 2226, Southampton, NY 11969, $23 postpaid. Best line: "Everything's, like, lifted off of you ... it's a real relaxating feeling." Wave quality: Barrel-city; truly epic.
110/240, 1993, 50 minutes
A pure surf video starring modern wave gods Kelly Slater and Tom Carroll, 110/240 contains high-amp wailing and minimal dialogue. Seeing Carroll pull off a late drop into macking Banzai Pipeline is enough to get any surfer stoked, although 20 minutes of this stuff will begin to look like blue wallpaper to nonsurfers. There's some arty camerawork, but it's mostly meat-and-potatoes ripping totally unencumbered by narrative. Island Sports, the only surf shop in Manhattan, can order a copy -- call: (212) 744-2000. Best line: "When your number's up, it's up - there's nothing you can do about it." Wave quality: Solid juice with state-of-the-art shredding.
-- Rob Cummings aka Barney
SOCIAL ISSUES/HOLLYWOOD SURF FLICKS etc., AKA:
A SURFING MANIFESTO
by Kevin O'DriscollTo most of the general population surfing is just a "cool image," but as we know so well, to true surfers it may be the most important activity one undertakes, besides earning money (which is essential for existence today). For those few gifted, and lucky enough to surf for a living, enjoy it while you can, but it won't last. That is why they call work work and not fun.
Surfing is life, for sure, it's fun, it's healthy, it's an appreciation and intimate participation with nature. If anyone ever tries to tell you that its just a sport, just agree with them, its not really worth trying to explain it to a non-surfer. But to you the tribes' people, I will say that I prefer to view it as an athletic activity based in transient ethereal existence that subsequently transcends reality, and lives on in waves of neurotransmitters coursing the synapses of cerebral function in the addict. Waves are spawned from weather and they embody motion and energy, they are transient, beautiful and powerful. Surfing is the transference of global energy into psychic energy.
Of course being a dedicated East coast surfer is frustrating too. Its like the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, "water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." I've never surfed in a contest and I think its the antithesis of surfing. I'm aggressive sometimes in the water yes, and its nice when a friend sees me get tubed, but if no one sees it, its just as gratifying for me. I don't have many pictures of myself surfing. Surfing is a solitary and selfish activity. Its not a team sport. Its enjoyed by oneself and for oneself. The camaraderie among surfers is great, don't get me wrong, I'm not antisocial, and have lots of friends and even relatives who I like to surf with, but in surfing, others are secondary.
So don't take me for just a frustrated surfer, or even worse a braggart, a nerd or a geek; or do, if you want, I don't really give a turd what you think of me. I can surf decent, I respect the ocean above all, and nobody ever said I'm not gung-ho. I like to write about things that I love, and I'm grateful for this forum. I respect my fellow surfers, as long as they don't drop in on me :), and I like my surfing buddies, until they call me up to tell me how good it was yesterday :) My wife doesn't understand my love for surfing, so I ask her to watch me surf, and she does, and then she still doesn't understand. She said, "You surf like you do everything in your life, you spend 75% of the time working like a dog, then you spend 20% of the sitting around doing nothing, and then you get all sideways and upsidedown, and most of the time you still land on your feet, but sometimes you wipeout bigtime :> I have a job where I should show up in a tie everyday, but tie, has something in common with tied-down :) so I'm seen as that guy with the open shirt neck who usually needs a haircut. Believe me you pays you price and you takes you chances...even the guys in the parking lot where I park my car give me tons of excrement when they see me coming in to work with my surfboard on my car.
So here I am in my office on a fall Saturday when I should be surfing, and I am supposedly working, but really I am just philosophizing on the surf life instead. Sure, I lived the surf bum life during the summers of my youth, but I never quit school or gave it all up for surf. I slept in my car for weeks on end and got mixed up with bunches of ne're do wells. I had long walks on the beach with my Dad, lecturing me about how surfing would never get me anywhere in life. Still, I styled myself with shaggy hair, sandals and bell bottoms, and then spiked crew cut, leather jacket, peg legs and kickers. I had a girlfriend who didn't mind hanging out at the Mudd Club and sleeping on the beach, and all its gritty manifestations !!!OOO.
Surfing caught the attention of the country in the early '60s. Just about the time that Jack Kennedy was assassinated, and Dylan wrote "Blowin in the Wind." Surfing later embodied the rebellion of the country against the mindless anti-pinko Vietnam War. The Beach Boys offered the masses an escape from the nightly body counts that Roger Grimsby and Walter Cronkite reported even while they ripped off Chuck Berry. They sang "Surfin' USA" while the surfers were getting shipped back in body bags from jungles where they had been mutilated by Punji sticks and tortured by the Viet Cong. Berry originally wrote that tune in a tribute to jail bait as "Sweet Little Sixteen." Yep, that was the sixties, fast cars, good times, sixteen year olds that got around, and "Catcha wave n'yer sittin' on top a the world."
I think that Bob Dylan is the greatest poet of our time, I think Bruce Springsteen and Alan Ginsberg tie for second. Dick Dale gives me more shivers down my spine than anything except Beethoven's 9th. I think that John Mellencamp should have never left the farm, and that Madonna should have stuck to turning tricks on 9th Avenue, 'cause thats what she was best at. I think that Jerry Seinfeld, is a geek, and that George is pretty cool. But Kramer is really my hero. I think that the only thing on TV that is worth watching, besides Kramer entering or exiting a room, is "The Weather Channel."
I also got decent grades and never got convicted of anything that would totally jeopardize my future, so I guess I've been lucky. The only class I ever flunked was softball in Columbian High school, and that was because I showed up only once. I boycotted the rest of the semester because the teacher cut me from Varsity Soccer and I held the grudge. Sure in my life, I missed alot of good swells, and still do, but everything is a trade off, ya know what I mean? Now I have lots of responsibility and a demanding career. In fact, realistically speaking I only surf about 30-40 days per year, so some people are going to call me a weekend warrior right from the start. And others will be thinking well, everybody knows that your athletic ability starts to fall off when you reach your mid-thirties, so not only am I lame 'cause I surf mostly on weekends, but now I lame cause I'm over the bleeding arthritic hill too. And as your elders put it "It all depends on where you put your priorities." Well, to bloody hell, with those manure wagon loads. We know where we put our priorities. At least I do: Family members healthy clothed and shod, roof over the head, food on the table, surfer in the hole. Thats it man! Attitude problem? Nahhh, I've got an attitude, and its "No Problem!"
"Live to surf-surf to live" as some advertising genius said. To you everyday macho surf grovelers, you can have it man, there are only about 50 days a year that are really worth surfing in the East. And I hate to f-in grovel! The same to all the phony baloney environmentalists. No I don't throw my wax wrappers on the beach, but even if I did, thats not whats going to ruin it for my son. Joining the Surfrider Foundation isn't totally worthless, they did shut down some dioxin-spewing paper mills and in doing so they made fools of the so-called Environmental Protection Agency, (what a misnomer). If you really want to make an impact, get involved in research: marine biology, oceanography, biomedicine, toxicology, materials recycling, hazmats remediation, epidemiology, geological process development, alternative energy sources: or politics at the grassroots level, or preferably all of the above. Do it for a living, you'll feel good about yourself, even if you don't make alot of money.
"Here by the sea and sand, nothing ever goes as planned, I just want to die when you're gone, I'm feeling so high when you're near" "I wanna drown in cold water!" "Love, reign o're me" "Can you see the real me?" Peter Townsend, Quadrophenia, the best surf music ever recorded (IMHO). Man, life serves you so much manure that surfing and music are the only things that can still make me cry. They let me really be me, and nobody elses version of me.
Enough rambling... Now for the Big Dilemma. Last week I bought a TV with a remote control. All of a sudden I realized that surfing has come totally into the mainstream... Right on this little tiny button on this friggin remote control is a picture of a surfer. A little little tiny one. Pretty soon every funking fat slob in the country is going to think he or she knows how to surf. Sure the Beach Boys were popular too, but now it seems that everybody wants to either surf the channels or the net...OK OK as long as they don't all want to surf in ocean thing will be fine. There are only so many waves, but oh so many people. What if they all really want to surf. So far we have been lucky, its only just a little bit more crowded in the water now that it was twenty years ago. But maybe we shouldn't teach others to surf, or make money from selling surfboards, wetsuits, and the like.
Let me discuss the popular culture of surfing further in this context. This cannot really be separated from the movies and television. Surfing has had an increasingly shady image in these. The classic '60s and '70s surf films of Greg Noll, Greg MacGillivary, Warren Miller and others really don't count because they were only seen by surfers themselves. MacGillivary's recent "The Living Sea" is a documentary too, no count. The original "Endless Summer" and "Big Wednesday" start a trend of harmless fun moving into serious territory, but still remaining largely non-judgemental. "Big Wednesday" is a must see, if you haven't already, with hot late '70s surfing by the Bronzed Aussies. Now this is where the trend starts running like a rip on a big day. Then we had "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" with the stoned-out Jeff Spicoli ordering pizza in math class as played by Sean Penn. Like him or not, the guy can act, alot of us lived it, and this was a pretty funny movie all in all. For better or worse, it propagated the image of the clueless dope- smoking surf bum to the masses. "Point Break" was a lousy movie, Keanu Reaves can't act or surf, and it also took the image of surfers as criminals further, much much further. Now we had bankrobbing, dope dealing surfers with automatic weapons running around, creating mayhem, and eventually descending into murdering each other all for money for the perfect wave. Lets hope Hollywood never makes a worse movie about surfers. "Endless Summer II" again portrayed surfers as mindless idiots just going after a good time, which all in all is probably right on, and with much better surf footage than "Point Break." In fact Tom Carroll ripping Cloudbreak was just about the hottest surfing I've ever seen.
Now lets step back and take a more historical view. Originally, surfing was the sport of royalty, and in ancient Hawaii, the Kahunas were worshiped. Then in the nineteenth century, the Christian missionaries began their work in saving the Pagans in Hawaii and nearly wiped out surfing forever. After all the natives used to surf nearly naked. In the 1930s when the pioneers emerged again, they were seen as bums. The only one with any respectability was Duke Kahanamoku, and that was because he won gold medals for swimming in the Olympics. When it came back into the mainstream, at first surfing had a clean cut image with Gidget and all the boys with crew cuts running after her. Elvis Presley, can be credited with starting to turn the image south of the border in his "Blue Hawaii" in which he playboyed his pelvis around a rich Hawaiian babe. Then came Miki Dora and the counterculture, this scene was further popularized by the novel "The Pumphouse Gang" by Tom Wolfe that gave surfing a "badboy" image that is still left over from the rad late '60's. Fortunately or unfortunately, that is the way we are still seen today. This latest trend of tattooing onself as a surf ritual is contributing. If I ever make it to Indonesia and stay there and live in a village for some months, I would consider getting an authentic tribal ritual tattoo, but I ain't getting one in Seaside Heights!
Maybe this is all good since that way all the good little boys and girls that listen to their Mums and Pops won't be cluttering up the line-ups soon. Don't legitimize surfing anymore that it is. We're seen as rebels and loners and maybe thats a good thing, even though we're really nice people. Maybe the best future is a zero population growth surf policy. Maybe that guy slashing tires at Ruggles last summer was right... You can surf till you die, but you can only teach one other person in the world to surf. Maybe I should stop posting my weekend outlook so that I can get more waves to my selfish little self. Maybe all the surfshops should stop putting accurate surf reports on their recordings and switch over to selling golf clubs. Maybe surfers should put all surf shops out of business by boycotting them and relying on grassroots supply lines and homemade boards. Maybe surfers should go back to their fringe hippy heritage and live by bartering Moroccan hash for corn beef hash. Maybe we should start a paramilitary organization to defend our local breaks from people who haven't spilled their blood in the lineup through tortuous rituals of initiation. Or maybe I should just go home and have a beer, forget all of this, stop going on and on, and pray for surf.
Bad chi, maybe, or maybe just bad indigestion. Either way Miki Dora's spirits live on. On second thought, forget all that,. Aloha and keep surfing.
-KevinOSubject: Kevin
Word to the wise. That Miki Dora quote of old on surf still applies, "If there's surf I'm totally committed-if there isn't then it doesn't exist." Something like that! Helps with the downtime.
Where are our Doras? We're fucking surfers, not middle American Little League clones. Is it me or are todays top pros as bland and stale as Wonder Bread and skim milk. Where are the characters? The hellmen? Most importantly-the freaks?! Don't get me wrong, the top pros rip but who the hell are they? We are a sub-culture not part of the dominant Western, consumer, pop culture.
Where are the subversives? By definition we as surfers have different goals and means then those who live within the bounds of normal culture. Unfortunately something is wrong. Our modern pros have been assimilated by mainstream culture and watered down and packaged for the consumption of the masses. Ugly! The poster boy pros are portraying surfing as aquatic little league. The problem is that the surfing experience is only a little bit about competition.
The traveling adventurers, the eccentrics, the watermen, the hardcore locals, the weekend warriors, the freaks, etc., are the true representatives of surfing and the surfing experience. We are the ones that are part of the subculture known as surfing. We are different. Normal people are scared, dislike, distrust, and are envious of us because we are different. We do not conform to mainstream culture goals so we are seen as bums. Some of us are bums, but most of us aren't. Because we are a subculture we are perceived to be on the fringe of society. Other subcultures on the fringe include criminals. So it takes no small step to understand how the writers of Point Break connected surfers with bank robbers. That is part of the reason that all surfers are percieved as bums by the rest of our society.
We as surfers are different! Celebrate that difference! We are driven by and for the ocean, not money or technology or any of the other trappings of Western culture. We aren't an overhyped extreme sport. We aren't boarders. Don't mix us in with skate/snowboarders. We are surfers! Show your true colors. Be proud of what you are and what you do. We as surfers have a responsibility to be ourselves and not be assimilated by mainstream culture. The ocean infuses us with an energy, a spirit, and an understanding that goes against the grain of the rest of the people around us. We live and act differently because of it.
Live the life as best as you can. Don't let the masses discourage you. They really envy us. The problem is that they are too scared to try. In American culture it pays to be the same. People are not comfortable with standing apart from the crowd. Surfing is also subversive because it says the best things in life are free. That goes against everything our consumer culture is based on. You have to also remember that no amount of money will buy you perfect surf. In a culture where money will buy you anything, that is a refreshing thought.
So go out there and live your life to the fullest. Surfers are blessed in being able to see the world and live the the way they do. We are some of the characters that make life interesting. Don't let anyone discourage you. Let your surfing soul shine through. Maybe your stoke will spark a little bit of life in someone who doesn't know the feeling.
...ya think it's chocolate milk but it's watered down YooHoo...B-Boys ...aloha & mahalo,
-Christian!The Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10032
To the Editor,
Regarding "A Surfer's Primer" which appeared in the "Travel" Section on Feb. 15, I would like to remind you of the proper usage of the term "surfer." Despite the common colloquial uses of the verb "to surf" as in "channel-surfing," "cyber-surfing," "virtual-surfing," "web-surfing," and "net-surfing," the use of the noun "surfer" to refer to a person who uses a web-browser is not common in the specialized language of the computer industry or in the general slang usage. For this reason I would suggest that you are guilty of proliferating an uncommon and inaccurate usage in a headline, which is uncharacteristic for The New York Times. Is one now expected to associate any use of the word "surf" with a sedentary and digitized non-activity? The actual participants in the sport of surfing have dedicated a significant part of their lives to maintaining considerable physical strength and skills that are necessary to ride ocean waves on a surfboard. You do a disservice to these athletes when you lower them to a common denominator with every person having merely the ability to move a computer mouse around their desktops. Perhaps while the appropriation of "to surf" is tolerable, the subordination of a proud American subculture of naturalists, explorers and athletes known as surfers by the prurient and geek-strewn Internet is not. I fear that the late Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic Medalist (in swimming, Gold 1912, 1920; Silver 1924, at the age of 34) and a great progenitor of surfing, would not approve. Seeing both skiing and kayaking were mentioned in the article, I would suggest you ask these athletes if they would like to be associated in the international conscience with the typical internet user. Indeed, your indiscriminant use of the term "surfer" to add cachet and thereby promote the use of the internet is not unlike the exploitative use of scantily-clad women to sell unrelated items. I would therefore consider it to be a somewhat unprofessional journalistic style. Personally, I would have rather seen the article entitled "A Browser's Primer," since "to browse" is an accurate verb for this usage. On the other hand, an article which focused on learning to surf, and the many local and tropical destinations appropriate for this activity, would have been both more welcome to my eyes and more consistent with your theme. It is really a pity because otherwise your article was accurate and informative. At least the geek in the cartoon was standing on the beach where he belongs.
Sincerely Yours, Kevin R. O'Driscoll
SCULPTURE: Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses
by Ed Hewitt
This review originally appeared in "The Surfer's Journal"Take off almost inside the cylinder -- immediately the lip darkens above you, pitched out almost five feet, double overhead. Light appears up high, and the lip recedes as the wall, close against your shoulder, flattens out and tapers away. Again, several feet ahead, the wall darkens first up high and accelerates madly, and you are as close to barreled as you'll ever be. A few seconds down the line, the lip backs off and slopes away, and you coast around the wall, maybe take a look back into the rolling center of the moving ellipse.
It's a sweet ride, for a 12 foot tall, two-inch-thick piece of twisted steel. Richard Serra's installation features three of these steel barrels, and has been called the "best new art in the world this year." But more importantly, it is unarguably the most awesome standing wave made of wrought-iron steel in history.
For a surfer, the analogue is immediate; as you "paddle into" any one of these, they come alive, churning, racing down the line, threatening to close down in front of you as memory and anticipation merge. The experience isn't a static approximation of a wave; the steel actually seems to flow and pitch, charge and back away. The visual effect is astounding, letting you grok the immense mass of a giant wave in utter safety, as an aesthetic experience, rather than a surging wall of water. Even when you go up and touch it, it moves, changes, undulates, never the same, always in flux, like every wave you've ever ridden.
The physical experience of the piece is thrilling, but the simple conceit that gives us these forms will appeal to even the most pure soul surfer. Artist Richard Serra (who is well-known for other massive installations) has positioned two identical ellipses in different orientation, one hovering several feet above the other, and traced the walls that connect their circumferences in steel. Even the name of the installation will resonate for surfers: Torqued Ellipses.
The 12-foot Torqued Ellipse II, described above, is a section-y, speedy, dark-hued tube. The 13'+ Torqued Ellipse I is lighter in color, more angular and severe in size and mood, a soft behemoth that is a cakewalk nonetheless, like some descriptions of Waimea. All steely drop, then watch it peel.
The third piece, Double Torqued Ellipse, charcoal gray and huge, is two distinct cylinders, one completely inside the other. Menacing, duplicitous, it is an obscene, unrideable, but fully imaginable nightmare wave, the ultimate closeout, a horrific exaggeration of "in the pocket."
You can get inside these waves, the ultimate open-eyed duck-dive. Each piece has a slot you can walk through to see the walls from the inside - it's like being part of the wave, a peek into a deep, transporting understanding of the forces that shape the wave faces we ride.
Surfing, more than most pursuits, is a series of transitions, of unrepeatable moments and revelations, and this art achieves the same effect. Serra is well aware of what he has done; his discussions of the piece sound something like a surfer talking story. A critic stated simply "I felt literally seasick." The guy's obviously never been tubed.
Another flat spell? Stuck in the city? Try dropping into a 12-foot wave made of Cor-Ten steel.
Torqued Ellipses was displayed at the Dia Center (542 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, 212-989-5566) through June 14, 1998 and at the Geffen Contemporary Museum at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art from September 20 through January, 1999.
LITERATURE: Halloween Swells: Prehistoric Echos Reverberating into the Future, A Book Review with Historical and Mythic Import,
by Kevin R. O'DriscollThe Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
By Sebastian Junger
Published in 1997 by Norton & Company, New YorkIt seems that the most infamous East Coast storms often coincide with Holidays, like Labor Day 1935 when a class V hurricane wiped out the Florida keys, Ash Wednesday 1962 which rearranged the Jersey Shore in an unprecedented fashion, Lincoln's Birthday 1972 when most of the buildings were damaged or destroyed on the Outer Banks of NC, and in recent memory, the Halloween Gale of 1991. In the past decade, arguably, only Hurricane Felix in 1995 has created better surfing conditions along the entire East Coast.
Human nature being what it is, sometimes it is difficult to sort out the coincidence from the superstition. In order to fully understand the mystic import of the Halloween Gale of 1991, perhaps we must go back to the origins of All Hallow's Eve, which in Ireland is still known as the pagan Celtic holiday of Saimhain, when ghosts from the mythical otherworld are thought to emerge into our real world. Saimhain is the holiday of the ancient goddess D'anu, just as Lug'nasa is in "Dancing at Lugnasa" a recent Broadway show, is the holiday of Lugh the ancient Celtic Sun God. "The Hag of Beare," an 8th or 9th century Irish composition was noted by the famed author Frank O'Connor to be "The greatest of Irish poems." It tells the story of an old woman, who personifies the ancient Celtic goddess D'anu. By her kingly-conquests of love as a young and beautiful woman D'anu legitimizes the Irish forebears as sovereign, and transcends the natural and the supernatural in the rhythms of the ocean.
The Hag of Beare, is indeed the primal "Mother Nature" herself, encompassing the triad of sea, land and sky. The magic number three here echos back to primeval forces, penetrating the emerging Christian world with the concept of "The Holy Trinity" and truly preceding even the Greek concept of Gaia. To make love with this woman was to marry the earth, sky and sea at once. But to stare into the eye of this nostalgic faded beauty, through the vanity and egotism of love reflected in lapping waves, is really to look deep into the eye of the storm. Indeed, there are no Celtic goddesses of love at all, in contrast to the somewhat sexist portrayals of Aphrodite in classical Greek antiquity. The ancient Celts, contemporary and mortal enemies of the ancient Greeks and Romans apparently had a native non-prejudicial view of the equality of the sexes. Celtic women had all the same rights as men, and were expected to make battle along side men in war. Perhaps this attitude had a relation to the mythic goddess mother D'anu who was thought by the Celts to have been their progenitor. Women were among the most venerated of the Druids, a Celtic social class of scholars who were honored and obeyed above even royalty.
Stone age men created female votives such as the famed "Venus of Willendorf" fertility goddess. Instead of the Roman Venus, a goddess of beauty, among the Celts we have Bridget, the goddess of wisdom, and heir to the estate of D'anu herself. In ancient Greece, women were bought and sold as chattel, and in Rome they were largely taken for playthings. Thus, beneath the superficial consort of kings theme, and in contrast to the love goddesses of classical antiquity, we have the Celtic prehistoric myth of the Great Mother of the Gods D'anu. Her name survives even today in the great German river the Danube, and in the prehistoric monument known as the Paps of Anu located near Killarney, Co. Kerry, Ireland, where huge standing stones crown twin mountain tops as would nipples on the breasts of a giant earth mother. It was the mythic mother D'anu who embodies both land and water, and whose tribes peopled the Western European lands from Ireland and Britain, to France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. We celebrate her ancient holiday of Saimhain when ghosts and goblins emerge on Halloween night.
If you think that you love big waves, then think again. If you want to see everything that mother nature can dish up, then eat those words with a fork and spoon. If you have ever wondered about the waves kicked up by the 100-year storm, you must read this book. If, on the flip, you are inclined to sitting on the beach when the surf gets overhead, you will still thrill to the tragic adventures of fishermen, sailors, and their Coastguard and National Guard rescuers during the wicked Halloween Gale of1991. This gut-wrenching weekend read won't sit around much, instead it will be passed from one surfer to the next until the pages are stuck together with a mixture of sand, wax and sunscreen. The evolution of the famous Halloween Gale is chronicled as such a malignant maelstrom that the ancient Celtic Godess herself may have been instrumental on the day when we celebrate her ghost roaming the earth. The monstrous diety lending a hand in the fate of 6 professional swordfishermen, a highly-trained military PJ rescue swimmer, a man washed off the rocks at Pt. Judith RI who was never seen again, and one brave surfer in maxed-out MA shorebreak, who each, on All Hallows Eve, met their liquid nemesis for a final battle and lost.
Read this book if you want to learn how a Nor'easter can develop over the Midatlantic, move over the Georges Bank, then unite with a midwestern Low Pressure System and with the remains of a Tropical storm to make "The Perfect Storm." Read this book if you want to find out what happens when the cables start moaning. Read this book if you want to know what its like to drown in cold water. Read this book if you want to know what its like to be marked by the Ocean for death. Read this book to know your lover. The Earth and Sea Goddess lives and we ride her legacy. Finally, in a sober sense, this is a book which should lend perspective to those whose inexperience, good luck, machismo, or overactive adrenal glands would suggest they can match anything mother nature can deliver. The lesson here is: beware surfers and sailors, the storm and the Mother Godess behind her is your master.
BOOOOOO
Happy Halloween
-KevinO
MUSIC: Better Shred than Dead ,
Dick Dale's New Release (CD)Hey Dick Heads, Never one to miss an opportunity for a phenomenal rehash of 35 year old tunes, the egotistical Richard himself has rererereleased his way way oldy hits from the sixties once again. "Better Shred than Dead: the Dick Dale Anthology" takes off where the sound tract to Quentin Taratino's "Pulp Fiction" left off but with a heck of alot more than just "Miserlou." Yes the old bastard was on tour last year, and must be scraping by to support his middle-aged habits. He appears dressed all in black with a scull and crossed Stratocasters on the cover sporting a martial arts-inspired blackbelt around his head and a ponytail. The liner notes offer considerable insight into his non-training as a musician, and his pioneering of the louder than loud Fender Reverb plus dual 15 inch speaker cabinets, as well as a timecourse of pick destruction. In addition Dick claims that Jimi Hendrix, the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and the Ventures were all inspired by his early SoCal shows. All in all its a great collection if you get off on music that was written and recorded before most surfers were born. Dick remains the King of the Surf Guitar, and just to give you an idea of how cutting edge the sound is, it still blows away U2/REM and other new vague sounds of the eighties, without nearly approaching the Nirvanesque distortion levels of the nineties or the kick-out the jams but cant play much more than A to E to D of the Pistols/Clash City rockers of the late seventies. One thing remains the same, nobody but nobody can double pick like the king, not even the late great Stevie Ray Vaughn who co-solos with the Penis on a noveau-classic rendition of the Chantays "Pipeline." Buy it for around 30 bucks on the Rhino label (R2 72631) and "Lets go Trippin'." Oh and fuck the Beatles, John Lennon is dead, Paul McCartney sucks eggs and the British Invasion never happened. -KevinO
On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, PHILIP MYLOD wrote:> Always thought you were a Dickhead -now such has been confirmed-you missed a > killer concert at club Bene last March? That song dedicated to Hendrix is > alltime! > Keep the Faith, > Phil
The song you refer to is actually Jimi's "Third Stone From the Sun" which was originally recorded for the epic 1967 album "Are You Experienced." The cover appears on "Better Shred than Dead" with the explanation that the mysterious lyric in Jimi's version "You'll never hear surf music again" was written while Dick was suffering rectal cancer and it was thought wouldn't make it.
-KevinO