photo by Ed Fladung
My buddy Tom is making a mexicocentric gnar gnar surf film called Dias Tranquilos. He’s got some insane footage in the can and over the past few swells we’ve been shooting at the same spots and sharing boats. He just put together a teaser reel from some of the amazing swell that rolled through our parts last month. Some of the footage was taken during the same session as the photo above, check it out.
Incidentally, on the afternoon the above photo was taken, Tom was shooting from the middle of the boat and I from the front. After a particularly large outside set, the boat barely made it over and landed a bit on it’s starboard side, me in the air. I landed in between the front of the boat and the first row of seats, on top of Chicharro’s board bag. A soft landing followed by the unmistakable sound of a stringer cracking in half. Big oops.
We’ve been hearing rumors for a coupla weeks now about Sayulita local and Mexico’s reigning surf champ Diego Cadena doing some crazy cover shoot and the cat is now out of the bag:
Surfing Magazine’s September ‘Mexico’ issue has Diego Cardena on the cover enjoying serious hang time in the green room at surf break called “Lost Point” and it’s a great shot. The story goes that this break was spotted by a father and son team on Google Earth for Surfing Mag’s Google Earth Challenge. Don’t ask me where “Lost Point” is, I don’t know, but I’ve got a hunch or two. I’m sure it will stay a well kept secret just like “Somewhere in Mexico”.
I’m looking forward to this ‘Mexico’ issue and big props to Cadena for landing this issue’s cover. Huge for Mexico and even huge-ier for Diego Cadena.
Posted in surfing | Also tagged lost point |
I caught this scene on the way back through Michoacan.
Though it is now technically illegal, slashing and burning empty land is a pretty common sight, especially just before the rainy season digs in. The practice of clearing lots and burning the (natural) refuse is older than the hills. On my way down, there were several controlled burns on large tracts of land (some looked a bit out-of-control). Even in our neighborhood – pretty crowded all things considered – there are two or three empty lots on our block and at least once a year we get inundated with the burn smell as the lots are cleared and the resulting debris is burned. But to be honest, I have never seen an entire dump on fire. I almost got in a car accident as I rounded the bend and tried to pull over into a tiny clearing.
I can only assume that the process of burning trash in the dumps was started long before petroleum-based products and single-use plastics entered the scene. If I had to guess, I’d say that this particular municipality doesn’t have the money to run a proper dump and that tradition trumps ecology. I can’t see why else they would choose to burn the trash, versus just letting it rot in the sun.
image “politely appropriated” from Intersections
Hey Peeps. just me, checking in to say everything is alright over in my corner of Mexico (so far) with regards to this crazy-ass swine flu epidemic that has broken out in Mexico City. To be honest, I only heard about it the day before yesterday. That’s how slow news travels in Mexico.
I Thought I’d hip yall to the good info about the epidemic. For most Mexicocentric news, I check in with Daniel Hernandez over at Intersections. He’s always got the straight dope with an ear to the street. This past year alone, he’s killed it on the emo riots, the continuing narco drug war, the days/weeks of no-water in Mexico City and now this: the flu epidemic and how it’s playing out on the streets of Mexico’s capital.
Hernandez already has a couple of blog posts up, now, and I’m sure he’s monitoring all news outlets separating the signal from the noise (so you don’t have to). If you are interested in the flu epidemic, go now.
