Thursday, July 29, 2004
Calling all Isla Vista old timers: Some local guys are putting together an I.V. surf flick and looking for I.V. surfing history. If you were around back then and would like to share you historical knowledge, feel free to email me so I can put you in contact. I'll keep updates on the status of the film as the filmmakers get me the word.
What you see on the lower right of the site today is a test at what I said I'd never do: put advertising on. It's only a test, so please give feedback if you find it offensive to the way Maddux set this site up. If it stays, it'll help me kick in some money to Jonah, who's been hosting this site for free even though I'm 10X over the bandwidth I orginally said I'd use. SBS is now serving over 1Gb of data a month. The adds are from google, my most respected web company, so I hope it will stay classy. Please email me with your thoughts.
Here's to hoping that our worst summer for surf in recent memory will soon turn into a strong hurricane season followed by explosive fall swells.
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Perhaps energy from Hurricane Celia is in the water out there somewhere. In other tropics news, Tropical Storm Darby is now strengthening off of Mexico. According the National Hurricane Center, "The chances of becoming a hurricane and then further strengthening are high." Since hurricanes names are recycled every 6 years, we've had Hurricane Darby's in 1998 and 1992. The Hurricane Darby of 1992 was my first and perhaps best Hurricane Surf. Down in Ventura, we had 2-3 days of super fast lefts, combed by offshores and barrelling. The weather was humid with tropical clouds. Back then, with only 4 years of surfing under my belt, my backside surfing was pathetic. It just took one day of 'make or break' screaming lefts to solidify my backside game. The first day of the swell I put a giant ding in my "Vector Vehicles" tri-fin. While that was in the shop for repairs I busted out the 6'6" Haut single fin pintail, which held in giant bottom turns and glided down the line ahead of the curl. Thus far no epic Hurricane name of day's past have ever re-produced the magic 6 or 12 years later, so don't expect much from the 2004 Darby.
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Tuesday, July 20, 2004
A new Report is up, but the surf certainly wasn't in pope's attempt at locating the south swell.
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Monday, July 19, 2004
There are three new reports from this weekend in the reports section. Tropical Storm Blas provided a brief window of waves last Thursday and Tropical Storm Celia is in a near identical location and strength right now off of Mexico. Currently we may or may not be receiving waves from a long awaited southern hemi swell that has finally made it to California.
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Monday, July 12, 2004
Riding Giants Review
I had the chance to see the new Stacy Peralta film, "Riding Giants" this weekend. From my standpoint, with an average surfers knowledge of surf history and culture, I thought it tracked a big wave emphasis of surfing's history quite well. What absolutely killed the movie for me though was the presence of Sam George. Not being a violent man, I found myself wanting to strangle him by the end of the movie. Peralta setup the movie much like Dogtown, by laying out the background very well and shoring it up with a host of interviews that edited correctly provide both insight and humor. Peralta starts with surfing's beggining in Hawaii, onto Duke, and then focusing on the mostly Haole surfers that explored the North Shore in the 50's. He then moved into the shortboard revolution and soon at Mavericks, giving the most detailed report I've seen of the Jeff Clark discovery of Mavericks and the subsequent media blowout. After Mavericks it's Laird and the tow in revolution, ending of Laird's wild ride at Teehoopu. I thought Peralta did a good job handling the history, but others more intimate with big wave riding may find that Peralta's version doesn't jive with their own.
Now, onto Sam George. Why Peralta had Sam George co-write this movie is beyond me. Why Peralta let his co-writer appear in the majority of his interviews is even more disturbing. I can imagine Sam's pleasure as he sat at his desk and wrote himself into and all over the movie. His interviews are completely void of any content, rather he is the cliche monster of the movie, as the interviews are obviously pre-scripted as Sam delivers the punchline that Peralta couldn't coax out of other interviews and wouldn't quite work with narration. Even more crossed up is Peralta's continued inclusion of Surfer Magazine covers shots, which of course Sam George is editor of. Seems like Stacy Peralta is on shaky ground here in the ethics department.
In summary I think this is a good surf movie about the evolution of big wave surfing. If you could somehow digitally remove Sam George it might be a great movie.
Goleta Vally Voice Review
Other Reviews
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Friday, July 09, 2004
New Reports from the 4th of July weekend: 3rd and 4th.
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Thursday, July 08, 2004
Update on the Riding Giants Movie: The venue has been changed. It now will show at the Fiesta Five Theatre. Showtimes are 1:10, 4:00, 6:40 and 9:10. The film opens tommorrow, Friday, July 9 and should show there until they pull it.
The California Coastal Records Project now has photos from 1972 up on the site. You can now compare the coast from 1972 to 2003 and wish you'd been born in the 50's. Here is an example of Rincon.
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Friday, July 02, 2004
June Gloom is gone but it's been flat for weeks now. No new reports until something comes up on the radar.
Goletian Bobby Morris won the US Surfing Championships in Oceanside this week.
Check out the trailer for Stacy Peralta's Riding Giants. It is showing up at the Riveria theatre next Friday, July 9. More details as they are available.
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Santa Barbara Surfing. Created by Tim Maddux. Continued by Pope.
