Archive for February, 2008
Thursday, Feb 28th, 2008
Categories: surfing
.. or alternatively titled: How I Never Want to Surf Burros Again*.
So the swell continues, thank goddess. We went on a voyage today looking for waves, first to “new favorite break”, second to La Lancha and finally to Burros. Trusty Burritos, never dissapoints, but unless you surf every freakin day, you better come with a freakin longboard. Sets were late as is the usual, but still some nice, heavy, overhead, outside sets and a gnarly, unusual backwash. Caught a few choice rides and one or two on the dome. But the crowd has me in belligerent mode. I work for myself, so why do I always go at rush hour? #$%&^% That’s the sound of me kicking my own ass.
And on the way back we pulled up next to a pick-up truck of one of the local homies, who we had seen parked at the Veneros / El Paredon parking. Turns out El Paredon was overhead as well. I almost swallowed my teeth.
As a consolation prize I bought myself a sixer of Heineken (rare treat) and promptly ate an entire pack of baked tostadas with a whole cup of roasted tomatillo salsa. mexico rocks.
–
*
Oh Snap! Old school calarts homie Geoff McFetridge just started a wallpaper company called Pottok and the first designs are his. Gorgeous stuff. recycled paper? √. water-based inks? √. no varsols? √. no chem waterproofing? √. Can you put wallpaper on concrete walls? I’ll take one of everything.
It’s so cool to see Geoff finding new creative avenues to put out his art, independently. go Geoff!
[via it's nice that via +KN]
That big ole swell that rolled through Californ-i-a this past week has finally made it down Mexico way.
Last night, against my better judgement I went out to Burros. As I drove past Destiladeras, the southern end was breaking overhead in long rolling arcs and lined up like corduroy. Lines stretching up the entire length of the beach. Burros was dumb packed. And the swell overhead and consistent. Magic Seaweed said something like 10 feet at 20 seconds. The outside sets were almost as big as I’ve ever seen Burros. But the gluttony of jerk-offs in the water made it almost not worth it. I grabbed a few choice rides and floated over/under a couple of pristine examples of rampaging natural beauty. But ultimately I spent most of the time jockeying for position, kicking myself I didn’t opt for my new favorite break.
Today I kicked off work early, a treat for working late in to the night, and hit up Burros again. The wave size had dropped significantly, the wind was making a mess of everything and time in between sets was much longer. But with only a handful of people in the water and riding the blue Zippi fish, I had an impressive session with some really nice waves. Not clean by any standard, but nice. Still some really nice outside sets and worth the extra wait. Burros is gorgeous when it’s relatively empty, but when it’s not it’s completely frustrating.
…or otherwise known as “The Current State of Online Shopping”
I really dig the work of Isamu Noguchi. His lamps are particularly beautiful and have ungodly light qualities. The small table lamps are under a hundred bucks and make the perfect gift for those of your friends and loved ones with modernist inclinations, balanced with a good dose of wabi-sabi.
Recently I tried to gift one of the table lamps to a friend, making the purchase online. I was unpleasantly surprised at how discombobulated most online check out systems still are. Admittedly, I only use a small selection of online retailers regularly, so I guess it’s my own fault that my expectation baseline is calibrated by sites like amazon and apple. To be honest, Noguchi lamps are a specialty item and often have a two to four week lead time, since they’re made in batches, by hand. So I had two criteria for the purchase: 1. to have the order ship in 2-3 days 2. to be able to include a gift message. So without further ado, here are the results of the four places I found that sell Noguchi lamps online, I’ve left the guilty nameless:
- Site 1: Ships immediately but no gift message option.
- Site 2: Ships in 2-4 weeks, has a gift message option, but if the message is longer then 100 characters the final submit screen gets a Microsoft Database error message, you can resubmit the order 100 times and it won’t go through, you won’t know what went wrong til you call customer service.
- Site 3: Akari (the manufacturer of the lamps) uses a Yahoo store that ships in 2-4 weeks and no gift message option (yahoo?! come on, how 2002 is that?!).
- Site 4: Ships in 2-3 days and allows you to add a gift message and the check out is relatively pain-free.
So to wrap up a long, tortured, wandering diatribe, if you’re looking to order a Noguchi lamp online, as a present for a friend, look no further then Design Warehouse. These guys rock. Their check out process is great, if you you have a question, their live customer support is friendly, quirky and ultra-helpful. They’ve go stuff stocked and they get the details. and it’s always about the details. They only have a few lamps in stock, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? At least they get the whole online customer experience thing.
gato heroi? we believe in hand making product ourselves applying our personal taste and flavor, putting an emphasis on color and design
I’ve seen the name “gato heroi” floated around the interwebs recently and didn’t really think anything of it. i guess the off-beat name just kinda bounced off the soft-tissue deflector shield. Last night I happened upon the website for this semi-faceless crew of shapers/boardriders. I was pleasantly suprised. I’m digging their whole aesthetic. low tech, intentionally vague and mumblingly wordy. I can’t speak on the boards, but I like the artistic direction they’ve chosen. It’s always nice to see someone pushing in a different direction.
Tuesday, Feb 19th, 2008
Categories: surfing
Ok. So I’ve been living here, in Mexico, for about 3 1/2 years now. I am pained to admit that last night was the first time I’ve surfed a certain local mainstay break here in the area. One word: fuckingincredible.
That big swell that hit California late last week is now rolling through our area. On Sunday, we boated it over to Quimixto for some heavy, blown-out left hander action (which truth be told, was wasted on me as I only got like 2 waves, but I did manage to get some good in-the-lineup pics and video - coming soon) and yesterday we caught the last few hours of sunlight up at “new favorite break”. The waves were consistent and the water glassy, the sun oozing late afternoon golden hour vibe.
The set up: It’s perhaps the longest wave I’ve every surfed. 3 sections and if you can make all three, I’d say it runs in the 600-700 meter territory. yeah, loooong. The first section is perfect longboard territory. The second section ends with two large protruding boulders that make perfect goal posts and enough swirling eddies from submerged boulders that as you shoot the section, the hair raises on the back of your neck. If you can make it to the third section, the wave doubles in speed and height and walls up super nice and fast, this inside section should be called “race tracks”. At low tide it’s most likely deadly and on bigger days I’m sure it’s tube city. I got slotted in a wave in this section, pig-dogging it, and blissfully unaware that I was mini-tubed, or so says homie Pato.
Last night was the perfect storm: a new incredible spot, a nice big mellow perfectly breaking swell, glassy water and a wicked pacific coast sunset. I’d say it was my favorite and most productive session in at least a year. When the boat came to pick us up, we were cursing the jokers assigned to guard time + space for not giving us a few more hours to bask in that moment.
File this one under: “I can’t believe I didn’t find out about this website until now”: Wikileaks. A site whose DNS record was recently ordered to be nuked by a California judge. But the site is still available via IP address. Rage against the machine, people!
Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
and this from Daily Kos:
Created by several brave journalists committed to transparency, Wikieaks has published important leaked documents, such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq [see my The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq], the 2003and 2004 Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, and evidence of major bank fraud in Kenya [see also here] that apparently affected the Kenyan elections.
[via DF via BB]
Here, presented to you, the viewer, 40+ photos from last week’s trip to the mexican coastal state of Quintana Roo, nestled on the Caribbean side. Photos taken in Puerto Aventuras, Akumal, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel above and below water.
I got the chance to put the new Canon G9 through it’s paces with the underwater housing. Overall, it’s just really nice to be able to bring a camera into that underwater environment. Getting in to the water at Akumal, for a snorkel, wondering to myself why I had brought the camera and being presently surprised at the site of 10-12 sea turtles, huge schools of fish and 3-4 different kinds of manta rays. In Cozumel, we dove two amazing spots off of chankanab reef in the columbia area. Huge coral formations with spacious swim-throughs and rolling underwater sand dunes.
I have a few ideas floating around my head on the theme of tourists. you can see the beginnings of this project in the photos above. enjoy!
slideshow | photoset
My cousin Wendy Mason, has a show coming up in Los Angeles at L.A.C.E. gallery called Overlooker. It’s a collaborative show with Mindy Rose Schwartz. The opening reception is Februray 26th:
Wendy Mason and Mindy Rose Schwartz explore their mutual interest in
how objects and spaces hold the history of human interactions and the
physical and ephemeral traces of their use.
Using macramé as an intervention device, Schwartz will un earth
objects found within LACE and LACE’S archive, binding a hybrid of
forms to the architecture. Mason will show a video of a plywood
octagon that colors the air in a room while also being unhinged from
the physicality of its location. Both works acknowledge the unseen as
integral to fully understanding a place as a whole.
Together their work, as the title suggests, points to a fullness that
occurs inside of a space that extends beyond the structure of what is
meant to contain it. The natural organization of objects and meaning
is changed when what is normally hidden is revealed.
If you’re in LA, go check it out!
Marcia and I have been on a circus vibe lately, that’s kinda how our minds work. Get on a theme and learn/discover/investigate. A few weeks ago, we got into the circus thing starting with Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen which marks a perfect jumping off point for historically accurate circus mythology dripping with Great Depression era magic and tragedy. If this book were ever made in to a movie, I’m sure the Coen Brothers would be directing.
Next, at the urging of everyone in my family, we read Geek Love. This book has been floating around my parents’ extensive book collection since it was published in ‘89. Geek Love’s emergency orange cover is burned into my memory. Never knowing quite what it was about, I was delighted to find a heart-breaking story about a traveling family of circus freaks and their eventual demise. I’d love to see Geek Love as a movie, although to be honest I spent most of the book wanted to choke the shit of the narrator, an albino hunchback dwarf with an obsessive, psychotically misplaced loyalty. In short, I loved it. A quick check at Wikipedia tells me that Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and Johnny Depp have all expressed interest in making Geek Love into a film. good crowd.
Making it a triumvirate of circus/freak culture, I introduced Marcia to Tod Browning’s Freaks. This movie is practically in my family canon, first showed to me when I was a kid by my uncle Tim, who managed to get a pirate copy on VHS. It was never officially released on VHS and didn’t make it to DVD until 2005 so for years Freaks enjoyed a cult-classic mythology surrounding it’s bombed release and subsequent burial by MGM. If you saw Freaks, you were privileged or at the very least, had a family member obsessed enough to seek out an elicit copy, long before the holy trinity of ebay, youtube and bit torrent. Unfortunately the versions floating around bt don’t have spanish subtitles and there are some spoken parts, not even I can understand. So my advice is get the DVD. It’s worth it. The signature line from the family of circus freaks shown in the film is “gooble gobble, one of us, one of us”, usually done in chanting style. This is sort of like an unconscious running line in our family that silently unifies us and always gets a smile from all, around the dinner table. I could be wrong, but I think that my entire family were circus freaks, in our last lives.
Danielle Rubi has a show in NYC, that opens on March 1st called Coast. Danielle has been spending a lot of time out at Punta Burro with a cast of infamous friends, generally enjoying Mexico’s vibe and catching those quiet moments that Danielle does so well (perfect example). Her show is a collection of work that has a loose theme of being related to coasts (as in land bodies connected to water), the one here in Nayarit and the one just outside her window in Santa Barbara, where she lives. Her photography and whole personal aesthetic is warm and hand-made and glazed with that yummy coastal golden hour vibe.
If you’re in NYC, go check out her show opening on March 1st, at Pocket Utopia, it’s bound to be experiential. please tell her I said ‘hi’, and if you’re feeling particularly generous, please buy me one of her prints (frames come with wood gleaned from the Santa Barbara house she grew up in - amazing!).
Edit: Danielle just posted shots from her trip running around NYC plus some from the show, you can tell it’s a special exhibit. go!
Fecal Face always comes with the good interviews. This time it’s an interview with Amy Stein! I’ve blogged about Amy before. Her photography is wicked. her blog is wicked. and she’s ultra humble with a punk rock twist. Her photography is starting to get some heavy noticing. Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles is currently showing her Domesticated images and the opening is today (saturday the 16th), so if you’re in LA, go represent!
We’ve been in Puerto Aventuras, Quintana Roo (an hour south of Cancun) for the past few days, visiting Marcia’s mom. Vacation for Marcia, and for me, a half-hearted working trip. who can work with the caribbean just out your window. Today I’m hoping to get in some scuba diving, we went to Akumal the day before yesterday and saw about ten to twelve sea turtles and three manta rays just while snorkeling in about ten feet of water.
The quality of light here is amazing. It must be the white sands and the ultra blue-green water, but something makes the ‘light’ so freakin yummy. my camera eats this stuff up, like waffles with butter n surp.
My parents were here as well, meeting with up the their consuegrita. We went out to dinner last night in Playa del Carmen and I was knocked back by Playa’s strange mix of mexican tchotchke stores, high-end retail and eurodisco cafes. We ate at a lebanese joint and I gotta say, the food was wickedly good. tabouli, hummus, falafel, greek salad, lebna. all super good. I was pretty impressed.
Yesterday. Burros. I’m finally getting my ‘form’ back and riding the blue fish gave me just enough extra push to grab a few excellent rides. 2 hours and I’m fried. Back to the beach and back to black. I wake up from a long sun-burnt siesta. waiting too long for my friend to get out of the water so we can go home. you know that friend, the one who stays in the water, surfing, after you got out 2 hours ago and you have a million things to do. yeah him. I wake from my fiery nap and look out at the waves and the line-up and the sun directly behind. i’m sour, grinchy, complaining to myself and ready to go home. and then it hits me…
I’m the luckiest idiot on this planet.
80 degrees with a killer golden hour approaching. waves rolling up. slightly too many people in the line-up (but even that I can handle). the sun is on full blast with waves and surfers in silhouette. little fluffy clouds. the scene is better then perfect. and for 10 minutes I just jump out of my thick skin and enjoy every second of that moment.
Then back to the grind.
Fake Steve Jobs on why the Microsoft-Yahoo! teamup won’t work:
It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.
The quote is actually from Steve Ballmer, from a decade ago. hilarious.
Ballmer said he loved when his rivals merged, because whenever the also-rans in any market start teaming up they might as well be waving a white flag. Because it’s over. You’ve beaten them. You’ve driven them to despair. They haven’t been able to beat you on their own; there’s no way they’ll do it together. Then he told me that line about the hundred-yard dash.
But Here’s the total clincher, it’s gonna be bad for the companies, but it’s gonna be horrible for the employees of each company (and their families):
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people will have their lives completely ruined and flipped upside down for the next two years because of this deal. They’ll see even less of their kids. And those ski weekends? Forget about it. Ain’t gonna happen. Meanwhile Google will keep pulling away.
I would hate to be a Yahoo! employee right about now. I wonder what the Flickr folks are thinking. anyone got any links?
Life’s A Beach has a great blog post on Reef’s use of thonged models in their ads: REEF = Surf Sexploitation? I don’t know if it’s “sexploitation”, in screaming all capitals but it sure is annoying, low-brow, totally pointless, unnecessary and worst of all heinously art-directed (ok, slight irony thrown in for comedic non-sequitor, flame away!). Perfect examples found here.
I’ve hated Reef’s ads since they started using thonged models (with no faces) to sell their products. I feel doubly bad because well, I really like their products. Surfer Mag’s Curious Gabe chimes in with video interviews, bringing up the moral issues surrounding the reef ads. I’m not gonna conjecture as to why they position their products this way but Reef should take marketing and art-direction lessons from Swell and stop treating their customers like rowdy frat boys. But then again, maybe that’s who their target market is…
File this under the “I did not know that” category: Reef is owned by VF Corp. a large conglomerate, who also own Vans and The North Face along a bunch of other brands I wouldn’t be caught dead in. Oh well, time to start seeking out alternative flip-flop companies. Sanuk are pretty dope right?! and Vans too? oh well.
On a different note: I’ve hated these ads for so long, I’m surprised this is the first time I’ve read anything online regarding them. And I did notice in November’s issue of Surfer Mag that Reef’s got a new “Redemption” campaign that is green-based and non-thong focused. Maybe intentionally or unintentionally Reef is trying to salvage their brand positioning.
We just got back from a micro-trip to Guadalajara. Jetted out of town mid-day yesterday (fri) and returned this afternoon (sat). Your author had to go to Guadalajara for allergy studies. Turns out I have polyps in my nose and an on-going sinus infection caused apparently by house dust and dust mites. I had to endure a cat scan so that the doc could see if the polyps have spread to my deeper sinus cavities (possibly necessitating surgery). If you can’t tell, I get overly doom-and-gloomy when it comes to health related issues. While I had my noggin jammed into the big donut of death, listening to the nasty/horrible/scary sounds cat scans make, I had a strike of utter brilliance. I thought to myself, why doesn’t someone learn from Apple and create/design medical equipment that has apple-esque attention to detail, design and user-experience. #1 on that list would be not scaring the fuck out of the patient. So I’m now in the process of redesigning all major medical equipment to be more user friendly. and I’m patenting the designs. so back off, copy cat.
The upside to a cat scan in Mexico? The price tag: $150 bones. schwing!
While in the big city we hit up Funicula, our favorite pizza joint. I’m surprised to admit that it wasn’t as good as it usually is. The pizza had too much cheese, not enough tomato sauce and the crust wasn’t as delicious. I’ll reserve judgement til next time… Marcia’s family were out of town so we didn’t really want to hang around GDL for too long. hence the short trip. I can now do the 3 1/2 hour drive between Vallarta and Guadalajara in my sleep, facile.
Other random observations: of the two Apple certified repair shops in Guadalajara neither carry the slim/metal keyboard (bluetooth or otherwise) nor Sata I or II internal drives. I thought Cloverfield was great. If the camera work had been a little more stable, the movie would have been brilliant. I’m gonna call it and say that Cloverfield redefined the monster movie category. Now, let’s see someone make the same movie, where the audience doesn’t end up getting seasick.
Just in case you didn’t know where I stand, check out this wickedly good music video Yes, We Can. featuring Will.I.Am, John Legend, Common, Scarlet Johansson, Kareem Abdul Jabar and a bunch of other people who I recognize but lack names for. Here’s the original speech from new hampshire, which admittedly, I hadn’t seen til just now. Go Obama! This time must be different. We want change.
Yes, We Can.
