Something for the weekend…

For years now, people have been heralding the return to longboarding as a return to the heart and soul of surfing itself. Whether this is true, like the rest of the world longboarding has moved on. In this respect, Lee Ryan’s book provides a refreshingly forward-looking and modern approach to the subject. That is not to say that the author does not give due respect to the wisdom of those who have gone before. But what he does is to thoroughly demystify the subject without in any way diminishing it. In doing so he provides both an entry level text for the beginner and also an advanced manual for the expert. The breadth of the book is also impressive and covers the technical aspects of both the equipment and manoeuvres with nuggets there for everyone. This is a real gem of a book in which the passion the author has for both surfing and teaching shines through in every page.

So what’s new in Volume 2?
More great tips and advice from professional longboarders including multiple British and European champion Ben ‘Skindog’ Skinner and 2009 ASP World Champion Harley Ingleby.
Ever wondered what board dimensions the top professionals ride? – find out inside.
Want to turn pro one day? Learn how international longboard competitions are judged.
Find out why a full round house cutback is one of the most difficult moves on a longboard.
Watch video clips of the pro’s to help you understand the manoeuvres in real time.
More great photo’s from the world’s best lensmen.

Want to fast track your surfing? Visit www.shortcuttolongboarding.com to find out more and download two free chapters.

Set across the vast Indonesian island chain, Melali: The Drifter Sessions features Rob Machado — one of the most stylish and skilled wave riders of our time. Melali returns to the fundamentals of surf cinematography by focusing on the surfing experience, the artful relationship between man and surf, and the sharing of this experience with good friends.

Spearheaded by Machado and director Taylor Steele (the godfather of modern surf film), this two-disc set contains two versions of the 35-minute surf film, an audio CD of the original score, and a short film documenting the recording of the soundtrack. Joining Rob at the finest surfing locales Indonesia has to offer is an eclectic and world-class cast of wave riders: Dane Reynolds, Kelly Slater, Kalani Robb, Shane Dorian, Dan Malloy, Mike Losness, Marlon Gerber, and Rizal Tanjung.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 6

Set to an original score written by Jon Swift, Todd Hannigan, Fernando Apodaca, and Machado (The Melali Sessions Band), the music complements the imagery of the synergy born from long-standing camaraderie. “When we premiered The Drifter across the country, the best part of the night was the live improvisation with the band to the surf bonus footage,” Machado says. “That inspired us to make another movie with the unreleased surf footage and record some music as the score.”

Swift, a fellow surfer and Machado’s friend of 25 years, led the intense creative push by this team of accomplished musicians, who recorded the score in a barn in rural southern California. The result is a diverse mix of musical compositions ranging from simple ballads to full band improvisations that captures a broad spectrum of moods tailored to the soulful and dynamic surfing.

The company presented their label and collection for the first time, from 7-9 July, at the Bread & Butter, Berlin, one of the leading international tradeshows for streetwear. The location was the mesmerizing and historical building, Tempelhof Airport. At the show TWOTHIRDS combined efforts with artist Kathleen Egan in a bid to further promote the health of our oceans, by way of a PET plastic bottle sculpture.

The Plastic Wave, made out of 500 Pet bottles, was the eye-catcher in the Sport & Street hall, where they exhibited. The exhibit not only attracted people into the TWOTHIRDS booth, but was an attempt to further inform and promote thinking beyond the world of fashion. It helped to create awareness of the current topical debate surrounding the volume of rubbish in our oceans, but also that we have the power to stop this.

You don’t get barreled too often in Berlin, so the installation drew a crowd; visitors got inside the wave and also signed a petition for an ocean free of plastic.

A little background to Kathleen Egan:
Kathleen is an artist/activist living in San Francisco. She explores remote beaches around the world looking for surf and post-consumer plastic. She collects washed up plastic debris and transforms them into plastic wave art. Most of her art work is composed of mosaics, made from plastic “chips” that she has collected from remote surf areas such as Alaska, Indonesia, and El Salvador. Her goal is to show how pervasive plastic pollution is throughout the oceans. Our paradise, a perfect wave on an uncrowded beach, is being invaded by non-biodegradeable plastic.

My mouth was full when it happened. Succulent, juicy tuna steak still purple in the middle, crisp black griddle lines searing across its surface, the tang of lime and coriander on my lips. Delicious. I didn’t choose to watch it, not really, but there was nothing else on and, well I like nature programmes; I like documentaries. Flicking to More 4 didn’t feel like it could do any harm and this film got screened at Sundance last year for goodness sake, it had to be worth a look. So my thought train went. I almost wish it hadn’t.

My dinner lay cold on the table as 15 minutes in, the full horror of what I was watching emerged.  Two years in the making, The End of the Line is a chilling scientific prophecy about what our world will look like in 40 years time, though not because of global warming, or oil leaks or any of the usual environmental culprits. No, this threat is even closer to home, even more tangible. In fact, last night it was sitting on my plate. Overfishing is destroying our oceans.

The documentary, made by investigatory filmmaker Rupert Murray and based on a book by Charles Clover, wasn’t going to sugar coat it. It laid its cards early; hard and fast on the table.

If we keep fishing the way we are now, there will be no fish left by 2048. None.

According to the WWF as many as 90% of all the ocean’s large fish have been fished out. Over the last 10 years fishermen’s hauls have declined by up to 80% as fish stocks have been unable to recover from the intense harvesting they are subjected too. If the ocean were a field, the documentary explains, trawling is like ploughing for crops seven times a year. What can grow in those conditions?

Watching how the demand for cod in Newfoundland in the 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world was bad. Finding out that the longline fishing industry sets 1.4 billion hooks a year on enough line to encircle the globe more than 550 times was worse. Discovering that at present global fishing fleets are 250% larger than oceans can sustainably support was frightening.

But the most terrifying segment of the film came with the relevations around the plight of the bluefin tuna. Now as endangered as the white rhinoceros but still being hunted for rich diners’ tables, the commercial fishing boats are voracious in their hunt for the big bucks that bluefin commands.

Granted, the documentary had a point to make and cut no corners hammering it home. Evocative montages of whitewater boiling with blood as fins thrashed and fisherman waded in, knives held high, ready to slaughter are still burned into my retina, but these are empassioned campaigners and they’re not asking much, really.

The film finished with a set of simple solutions which, combined with political will, could halt the demise of our oceans’ ecosystem before it is too late:

Ask before you buy and only eat sustainable seafood

Tell politicians to respect the science and cut the fishing fleet

Join the campaign for marine protected areas and responsible fishing

Of course, it’s not a crystal clear case; nothing ever is. Cutting the fishing fleet is a big ask, economically and socially and the statistics continue to be debated because there is no definitive way to measure what’s going on under the waves. However, thanks to End of the Line, I for one am convinced that responsible fishing has to be the way forward if our oceans and our fishing industries are to survive. Regardless of how tempting those two for £5 tuna steaks on the Sainsbury’s fish counter are.

If you are interested in finding out more about The End of the Line documentary and campaign, log onto their website where you can watch trailers and campaign update films as well as read about the making of the documentary, and current activity. You can also watch webisodes of The End of the Line on Babelgum.

Knoxville takes us to meet Mat Hoffman and explains how Mat approaches BMX riding with the reckless abandon of a man who’s both in love with his sport and completely indifferent to pain. More than any other figure in BMX riding and action sports history, Hoffman’s responsible for the the big air tricks, hence the title of the Spike Jonze/Jeff Tremaine/Johnny Knoxville new documentary about Mat, The Birth of Big Air, Despite breaking over 20 bones and getting his arm shattered to bits by a semi-truck, Mat continues to just go for it.

The film will be premiering at a private event in connection with the US Open of Surfing the first week in August.

The shelves of your local surfshop are filled with a steady stream of new dvds each featuring an all star cast of action heroes pulling into monster barrels in Tahiti or pulling monster airs in Indo. Yet the number of movies celebrating our homegrown talent is woefully small. Having already seen some stills from some of the sessions included in Fusion, it was with a fair amount of excitement that i slipped it into my dvd player.

In the shops as you read this (or available through http://www.surfclips.co.uk) it aims to reveal British surfing and British waves at their best. It’s been a labour of love for filmaker Ross Johns over the last three years and has lead to many an uncomfortable night asleep in the car and many a junkfuelled petrol station dinner.

From the start, there’s no delusions of Thomas Campbell, there’s no chin stroking celebration of how cool we all are for being surfers, this is straight up surf porn. Set to a pumping soundtrack of dance and guitar bands, it’s a balls to the wall barrel fest of epic proportions.

If you are unaware of the quality of the current crop of top British surfers, or you are unaware quite how good some of the waves in the UK are, you will be picking your jaw up off the floor time and again. Some of the slab waves are very scary looking indeed with tow or paddle entry and the quality of the camera work is good. It’s not all pits either, a large number of lips get well and truly slayed over the 60 minute(ish) running time along with some pretty progressive aerial surfing as well.

It’s filmed all over the South West, shows the brown water of North Yorkshire at it’s best and features some of the recent slab sessions in Caithness at waves like Bagpipes that have been well documented in Carve and others.

The cast list is a veritable who’s who of UK shortboarding from Russ Winter and Stokesy (who has a good section as does Mark “Egor” Harris) to newer names like Tom Butler. Reubyn Ash is perhaps the only notable not present.

There’s a dash of progressive longboarding in the mix too. Adam Griffiths and Ben Skinner wield their nine foot sticks into turns that most people dream of doing on boards three feet shorter, before they prove they are both equally at home on shorter, skinnier equipment.

This isn’t “Thicker Than Water”, its not trying to be. It is a great document of where we are right now and almost certainly shows the highest level of homegrown surfing captured on video to date. If it doesn’t inspire you to pull in deeper or smack the lip harder the next time you surf then nothing will!

Since 1994, the volume of marine litter on UK beaches has increased by 146%* and SAS is helping combat this tide line of trash through its beach cleans and ongoing campaigns. Motivocean is SAS’s most ambitious beach clean tour to date and will be calling in at over 20 major UK beaches and waterside locations across the nation, including:

19th August: Portmeor (St Ives, Cornwall)

21st August: Sennen (Cornwall), Tynmouth (Northumberland) & Cromer (Norfolk)

22nd August: Praa Sands (Cornwall) & Croyde Bay (North Devon)

23rd August: Porthtowan (Cornwall)

24th August: Fistral (Cornwall)

25th August: Bude (Cornwall), Newgale (Mid-Wales) & Gwithian (Cornwall)

26th August: Bigbury On Sea (South Devon) & Ainsdale (Merseyside)

27th August: Boscombe Surf Reef (Dorset), Belhaven (Edinburgh, Scotland) & Scarborough (Yorkshire)

28th August: Compton, Isle of Wight (Hampshire), Machrihanish (west Scotland), Saltburn (Yorkshire) & Brighton (east of the pier, near Yellow Wave)

29th August: East Witterings (West Sussex) & The Thames (London)

30th August: Broadstairs (Kent)

Everyone is welcome at the events and thanks to the support of the youth volunteering charity v, SAS can also offer volunteers between 16 – 25 years old the opportunity to access and experience exciting sports, including surfing, by participating in these beach cleans. The sea and coastal environment are a vital component of so many sporting activities from sailing to surfing, and SAS hopes to further build awareness about coastal conservation by linking beach sports to the protection of the environment.

Hugo Tagholm, Director of Surfers Against Sewage, commented, “We’re delighted to be holding our ‘Motivocean 20th Anniversary Beach Clean Tour’ at so many locations this year. The tour will help us engage a record number of new environmental activists and volunteers to make a meaningful difference to the UK’s precious beaches and the wider marine environment. We look forward to welcoming everyone to local events; our members, supporters, families and youth volunteers.”

To sign up please email Chris@sas.org.uk with the location you’d like to join SAS at, your name, age and contact details. If you are between 16 – 25 years old, you can also sign up directly at www.vinspired.com.

So, please go along to an event near you, meet SAS team members and like-minded volunteers, and help protect a beach near you!

Have a gander at what’s available here, if you like quality custom-built boards, with a flair, intuition, creativity and love, you’ll get on board with Neil’s finished articles.