Surf Nation

Surfing Inland Germany

Some music

A while ago I posted some cracking footage (thanks Gary) from the Wheels of Fire skate film featuring Natas Kaupas. After a long day I still love watching the film, in which Natas became the first and, to this day, only person to spin 540 degrees on a fire hydrant (on a skateboard). This, the Natas Spin, appears in various versions of the Tony Hawk's video games including Underground 2 and American Wasteland. The excerpt, which I might well post again soon because it is so good, is enriched by Firehouse's "Brave Captain." Check out the drummer's Hawkesque hair. Classic.

Surf Nation - a thought

Here I sit, writing as usual. I got in the water at Sennen the other day but mostly it's 12-14 hours a day of sitting indoors, putting on weight, grafting away, not talking to my wife and kids, playing the odd game of online poker to relax, doing a bit of boxing with Sam Smart, eating too much and then writing again. This routine explains why I am becoming an illusory presence on my own blog (and also why I never reply to emails, voicemails or text messages - sorry to those still waiting...). It will not always be thus, because the end is nigh. I reckon I'll have the book done by the end of next week. Then, so long as my editor does not require wholesale rewrites, it'll go to the copyeditor, then the proofreader, then the typesetter, then it'll appear, as if by magic, on 2 July. Sometimes I think I've thought so much about surfing for the past 18 months that I no longer understand it, and this is certainly true on the rare occasions when I'm actually in the ocean. However, one thing that I know is this: there is a man from Manchester, who lives in Wales, who was asking "whose coat's that jacket?" on some video footage at the same time that the man in the Orkneys, who lives in his Synchro, which is in a perpetual wind tunnel, was saying "Alex, there might be a wave, dude, how're you feeling?" The answer, as I said at the time, was: "Just say no the virtual world."    

The hirtherto unrecognised connection between Supertubes and Skaill Bay

A long time ago, during my honeymoon in fact, I spent quite some time surfing in Portugal. At Peniche, Supertubes was not working, but the smell from the fish factory was as hardcore as it gets. More recently, as regular readers will know, I ventured to the Orkney Islands. Neither the left nor the right at Skaill Bay was on, a bit of a relief if truth be told because having only ever been a Mr Pipeline in my Australian labouring days (when I dug holes for the damn things) it would have taxed a man of my venerable years more than was strictly necessary to take on anything too serious. But there are those, in Peniche and the Orkneys, who surf far, far better than I ever did, and the two groups appear to be facing a similar conundrum: to give renewable marine energy their blessing, or not? Check out this story about the Orkney wave farm - and note the reference to its cousin in Peniche. And, as Neil points out, if optimum swell windows are crucial to location, what price... my local breaks? Or yours? Or is it the case that if we don't crack on with the wave farms, there won't be any waves to surf... anywhere?

Photo courtesy of M R Krul at www.flickr.com

Windsurfing is a good thing

I've just been writing up a chapter of Surf Nation on surfing - and windsurfing - on the Dingle Peninsula in south-west Ireland. Only another 500,000 words to go but anyway, writing this particular chapter reminded me what a wonderful place County Kerry is - and what a great sport windsurfing is. Here's some evidence.

If there had to be a surfers' football club...

It would, of course, be QPR. The club may be going through a rough patch but has historically been associated with breathtakingly slick, fluid and immaculate passing football. Watching QPR their heyday was not like watching Brazil, it was like witnessing an immaculate wave being ridden by Tom Curren, the style-master himself, at his best. We even have a clearly oceanic reference in our blue and white hooped kit. I know that there will be some uncharitable people who will say that this is tenuous. They might even point out that, technically speaking, West London does not have any surf. But we're away to Leeds tonight, it's a desperately tough fixture, and there is nothing wrong with the odd bit of delusional thinking. So, surfers of the world, unite and get behind QPR FC. Meanwhile, back in the real world, a couple of breaks in the far west will be working very nicely on the push in a couple of hours. No doubt the joy before the Elland Road angst.

Photo courtesy of Urbanmkr.

Of dudes and decals

Does anyone know anything about Surfstickers? A nice little site with pictures such as those shown here, dedicated to selling surf stickers. Not, perhaps, a guaranteed money-spinner, but you never know. Anyway, Surfstickers is up for sale, and if you click on 'products,' you meet a bunch of Teutonic dudes who don't look as if they've done a lot of shredding. What's the story? Is there a connection between the Baja point break, the babes and the boffin?

Stealing the Wave

I've just finished Andy Martin's Stealing the Wave. Its subtitle is 'The Epic Struggle between Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo,' and it recounts precisely that. Martin is an interesting man - a Cambridge University don and aficionado of all things North Shore. He wrote Walking on Water nearly 20 years ago, an entertaining account of his experiences as a reporter and would-be surfer in Hawaii. I can't say what I think of Stealing the Wave just yet, because I'm reviewing it for The Times, but I can say this: the Lord on a Board makes an excellent cameo appearance.

Stealing the Wave: The Epic Struggle between Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo is published by Bloomsbury on 5 March. See Bloomsbury for more information.

Surfing and racism

Is surfing the last refuge of the white colonialist? In researching Surf Nation I travelled all over the UK and Ireland and one shocking fact has just (as I try to finish the book) struck me: I didn't meet one black or Asian surfer in 18 months. If I cast my eye over the magazines that litter my office, I start to feel yet more depressed. There are great waves galore and boat trips to island paradises in Indo and everywhere else and in just about every single one of them the only people surfing are... white. So, what's the deal? Is racism - unconscious or overt - surfing's truth that dare not speak its name? (Note: this picture has been used to get your attention.)

Jesse Davies and the Art of the Surf Trip

Surf trips can be good, bad or indifferent. In the first category there is the trip to an uncrowded warm water island paradise where the barrels flow all day long, the mosquitoes have been exterminated and the sharks have emigrated. In the latter, there is the trip that sees a few good waves, a few not so good ones, and maybe a bout of digestive  disorder induced by too much local vino. In the dread middle category there is the trip to a land of much promise, only for the swell Gods to refuse to play ball. Day after day goes by, each one as flat or blown out as the other. There is nothing, or very little, to do, and nerves and tempers start to fray. Things can rapidly get blown up out of all proportion, a petty squabble becomes a fistfight, and before you know it a previously amicable relationship needs "time and space." These possibilities can be avoided, however, if you travel with the right kind of people. Chilled, intelligent and interesting people, whose equilibrium is not wholly dependent on good surf. Well, not all the time, anyway. One such person is North-East charger Jesse Davies, as I learned on a recent trip to the Orkney and Shetland Islands.