Asym Minisim by Carl Ekstrom

Seriously, this thing is beyond amazing. The first of the Asyms finally done (look up 'perfectionist' in the dictionary and there should be a picture of Carl there) and so utterly worth the wait. My bumbling Ansel Adams effort doesn't do this board justice, it's freaking beautiful and felt incredible under the arm. 5'11" goofy foot asym, PU/epoxy build, boxes and bamboo 101 Fins, Ekstrom hand shape. Andy Warhol bought boards from this guy and I understand that completely. I believe Eric is going to be very happy.

Trefz- Idiosyncrasies

idiosyncrasies. a new film by patrick trefz. coming summer 2010 from patrick trefz on Vimeo.

The good stuff just keeps comin'. Trefz preview.

Ether Monthly #11- Further Fish Tales

Dicko on a Mackie Fish, screenprint by Andrew Kidman

Dain Thomas on Steve Lis, from the interview in 'Ether', available from info at foamandfunction.com
"We spent five afternoons together: first day we drew the curves on, next day we cut them out, next day we did fins, the next day we cleaned up all the curves and on the final day he drew some curves out for me on a couple of blanks. The we bid our farewells as he was going to New Zealand the next day. The next morning, I got up early and I could hear this rustling in the shaping bay outside my bedroom window. I was baffled as to who would be in the shaping bay at that time of the morning. So I walked out there and there was Steve, tinkering around with the curves he'd drawn on the blanks the afternoon before, and he said he'd been up all night thinking about it and thinking about it and he just had to bring those tails in half an inch. So he came back and brought the tails down, an eighth of an inch at a time. He's so meticulous. He's got such an attention to detail. It was a just a classic to think he drove an hour out of his way, the day he had to get on a plane, just to bring the tails in half an inch on the fish."


6'1" Lis, courtesy of Kidman. Photo courtesy of Shipworm or Gribble. Shit courtesy of a small dog.

No joke, of all the stuff I've done in more years than I'll admit to, 'Ether' rates as one of the things I'm proudest of having a hand in.

Air

A few posts back was the Gonz skate shot, one that blew my mind when I first saw it. This was another. No idea who the skater or photographer is sorry, but it's a gem. Curse these winds, there's a head high swell and I'm looking at skate photos? It's a better option than dealing with what I paddled out into on Saturday.

There Is No Surf In England...

...but there's a really good surf newspaper. Put together by Dan Crockett, 'Kook' is 20 pages of tabloid sized newsprint genius and I wish I'd thought of it. It's surfing, but it's also sheep, plywood sliders, channel bottoms, tea, bird pictures, a recipe, the funnies and some superb lo-fi photo reproduction. Dan, who is what I believe his countrymen refer to as a 'diamond geezer', stopped by the compound, ate some bison and left a stack of Kooks which you can purchase for six american dollars (postage included) and help fund his explorations. You get a highly entertaining read at 30c a page and a very cool artifact of the independent brilliance that surfing can still spawn. He gets a gallon or so of gas or a taco plate while traveling and accumulating material for the next edition. Speaking of things to buy, Crockett nearly walked with this.

It's a 2+1 diamond tail Mackie, 5'10" x 21" x 2.5" (or thereabouts). I've been making no effort at all to sell it because I want to keep it, and I sort of avoided the question when Dan asked about it which is not at all what I'm meant to do with the boards Mick entrusts to me. It has a handfoiled high aspect center fin and sidebites, and it's yours for $725 which is a steal. I'll even throw in a free Kook. Unless of course I cave and surf it in this upcoming south...

Zenith

Des Moines' South 239th Street ends at a narrow set of public stairs that drop to the beach between waterfront homes and a terraced bluff. There is little sign of the original slope and the shoreline is lined with high seawalls of various histories. This is one of those old communities where I suspect the structures we see today are the 4th or 5th version of something (maybe a timber pile bulkhead) built early in the 20th century.

There isn't much beach left. Maybe it was buried beneath the walls. Maybe the last sources of sediment have long been shut off. Or maybe the beach has just continued to erode, despite the fortresses on the bluff, and 80 years has left little of the original sand and gravel beach. The sediment that used to be here has had ample time to move north and is now trapped half a mile north against the south side of the Des Moines breakwater. At least someone got a nice beach out of all of this.

This Time Next Week

Friend of the family and all around good bloke Chris Rule (and the lovely Masa) are celebrating the opening of the SurfIndian shop right next to the gallery. The expanded space means more good stuff, mainly in the form of surfboards from a stellar roster of shapers including genuine next gen. Hydrodynamica boards. It'll be a fun night no doubt and it's great to see these new surf shops open. Further worthwhile ephemera will also be ready to go soon too as Dan Crockett is in town. He's been laying down some limey shred at Malibu the last couple of days but I'll have Kooks very soon, so if you've ordered one it'll be on the way and if not fire me an email to info at foamandfunction.com and we'll set you up with the world's finest surf newspaper.

Skagit River

Another freshwater shoreline, although one still influenced by the tides. This spot is really a point bar, not a gravel beach, after all it was formed by the flowing river, not by waves. Today, it was a little hard to believe that this river drains the entire western side of the North Cascades, but given a big fall or spring flood this place might get pretty exciting.

The river here (just upstream of the I-5 bridge north of Mount Vernon) is carefully confined between high levees and riprap. Overbank flooding and channel migration may be the river's natural inclination, but would be messy and inconvenient for the floodplain towns and their rapidly developing subdivisions and commercial strips. I guess we should hope that future floods stick to the script we have provided for them.

Thread Monthly #7- Idiosyncrasies

Harbour Bill by Trefz

Patrick Trefz seems to have the keenly awaited follow up to 'Thread' near ready to go. He has an exhibition coming up at the NoColor Gallery in Zurriola for our European friends, and is a part of the really quite fantastic Surfilm Festibal, who in turn have a place where you can check out the short film contest entries.
http://www.dailymotion.com/group/surfshortfilmcontest
This is some cool stuff.

South Bay/P.O.P.

Spent the last few days rejiggering the Foam & Function site and surfing wind thrashed closeouts as a change from the regular closeouts. It does sometimes get good here but not as good as this fine archival shot. Bet that guy would have made it if he'd been riding a flextail like mine though.

Mick Mackie Fish, Larry Gephardt Keels

Some posts back I had a shot of some keels I'd picked up from Geppy to send to Mick Mackie in Australia. They made it there and he made this,photos lifted straight from his website. Very nice indeed and one of the juiciest tints I've seen in a long while. His emails usually have a good lineup shot in them,guaranteed to make me, suffering through SoCal waves, a little jealous. Here's the most recent one. With this stuff around I'm amazed he finds time to shape at all.

Dunedin's battle of dunes

Dunedin's Ocean Beach Domain is the frontline in an ongoing battle between sea and land that has serious implications for the low-lying suburbs behind the dunes. The forces at work, not least the hand of man, have shaped a significantly modified environment.

Change has been brought about by the pressure for raw resources in a developing city, the introduction of marram grass and ultimately the need to tame the coast for the physical protection of the city.

There are lessons here for those who are prepared to look at the mistakes of the past, say Paul Pope, of the Dunedin Amenities Society, and the late John Perry.

• Kaituna
Ocean Beach is a highly modified environment. The normal activity and movement of sand has been altered in favour of a more stable landscape. The former back-dune areas have been extensively mined and become recreation areas.

The coastline still stretches from the St Clair cliffs in the west to Lawyers Head in the east, but the sand dunes have become much thinner and steeper.

In 1848 in the west around St Clair, the sand hills were much smaller and lower, and the mouth of a lagoon ran through these dunes. They accumulated and grew as you moved east towards Lawyers Head.

High ground was in the west at the St Clair hills and in the east at the beginning of Otago Peninsula and beyond them, Otago Harbour and its extended tidal areas.

Between these features was a low-lying wetland named Kaituna. It was covered with silver tussock, rushes and flax and was an area of traditional food-gathering for Maori who sought tuna (eel), pukeko and weka.

There is also evidence that the Kaituna area was once thick with trees, probably kahikatea. They lay buried under the surface of the wetland and were often dug up and used as firewood by early settlers.

A significant feature was a track along the landward edge of the sand hills, which provided easy access to Kaituna.

By 1876 the urban growth of Dunedin had pushed housing to the edge of the sand hills at Ocean Beach. Sand was being removed constantly by householders to raise the level of their sections. Occasional floods are reported in the 1870s, but mostly from the harbour, into South Dunedin.

On one occasion a Mrs Rae and her two daughters were rescued by a gasworks boat crew from Rankeilor St. Their dog was reportedly left behind.

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Gonz

I've had this picture sitting around for a bit and had wanted to use it, then today I saw a '60 Fury which seemed good enough for me. Mark Gonzales redefining how it's done, in the rain. An epic moment. Surfboard pictures tomorrow I promise.

Carkeek Park

This isn't the first time I've featured the railroad and it won't be the last. Trains only run on a few tens of miles of Puget Sound's beaches, a small fraction of the total, but the railroad grade and its accompanying seawall stand out in a way that a thousand miles of smaller, residential-scale bulkheads do not. The seawall, which is about 100 years old, is elegant - most of it a rock wall with a slight batter that rises 5 feet or so above the highest tides ever recorded around here. Occasional streams emerge through culverts built into the structure. Occasional landslides flow over the tracks and eventually end up on the beach (although the amount of sediment reaching this beach must be far, far lower than historical levels). Of course, there isn't much beach anymore. What there once was is now buried beneath the double track mainline. The only upper beach remaining along the 26 miles stretch from Seattle to Everett is at the occasional stream deltas and cuspate spits that extend seaward of the tracks.

Duwamish River

I probably get glimpses of the Duwamish pretty much every week, usually at 55 mph on the way to or from a meeting south of Seattle, but I rarely get a chance to explore. On the other hand, doing so isn't too difficult, since all these shots are taken within a stone's throw of either 99 or I-5. They include the river flowing under the interstate, the river in front of the Tukwila Community Center, and several shots from North Winds Wier, where a large restoration project has recently been done (but where some more work clearly still needs to happen).

The Duwamish is an interesting river with a complex geologic history, especially if you include its major replumbing in the early 20th century.

Last March, I posted some photos from South Park, a little farther down the river:
Duwamish River (March, 2009)

Dunedin's battle of dunes

Dunedin's battle of dunes

Otago Daily Times
Sat, 1 May 2010

Dunedin's Ocean Beach Domain is the frontline in an ongoing battle between sea and land that has serious implications for the low-lying suburbs behind the dunes. The forces at work, not least the hand of man, have shaped a significantly modified environment.

Change has been brought about by the pressure for raw resources in a developing city, the introduction of marram grass and ultimately the need to tame the coast for the physical protection of the city.

There are lessons here for those who are prepared to look at the mistakes of the past, say Paul Pope, of the Dunedin Amenities Society, and the late John Perry.

• Kaituna
Ocean Beach is a highly modified environment. The normal activity and movement of sand has been altered in favour of a more stable landscape. The former back-dune areas have been extensively mined and become recreation areas.

The coastline still stretches from the St Clair cliffs in the west to Lawyers Head in the east, but the sand dunes have become much thinner and steeper.

In 1848 in the west around St Clair, the sand hills were much smaller and lower, and the mouth of a lagoon ran through these dunes. They accumulated and grew as you moved east towards Lawyers Head.

High ground was in the west at the St Clair hills and in the east at the beginning of Otago Peninsula and beyond them, Otago Harbour and its extended tidal areas.

Between these features was a low-lying wetland named Kaituna. It was covered with silver tussock, rushes and flax and was an area of traditional food-gathering for Maori who sought tuna (eel), pukeko and weka.

There is also evidence that the Kaituna area was once thick with trees, probably kahikatea. They lay buried under the surface of the wetland and were often dug up and used as firewood by early settlers.

A significant feature was a track along the landward edge of the sand hills, which provided easy access to Kaituna.

By 1876 the urban growth of Dunedin had pushed housing to the edge of the sand hills at Ocean Beach. Sand was being removed constantly by householders to raise the level of their sections. Occasional floods are reported in the 1870s, but mostly from the harbour, into South Dunedin.

On one occasion a Mrs Rae and her two daughters were rescued by a gasworks boat crew from Rankeilor St. Their dog was reportedly left behind.

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