On our way through Los Angeles, I had to sort out a storage locker full of crap from my pre-mexico life. Including but not limited to years of collecting graphic design books, magazines, art, interior decorations, my entire artistic career - every last thing I ever drew/painted/designed/photographed and last but not least 1500+ records. 10+ years of daily crate digging. Countless trips to the Pasadena City College swap meet and many long nights after work, digging through dusty crates in run down record stores across L.A. Every genre you could possibly think of, equal parts early-mid 90’s hip-hop, early reggae/ska/dub and funk/jazz/soul records.
My vinyl weighed a ton and after years of figuring out how to get the bulk of it to mexico, I came to the conclusion that this dream would never pass. So with weary eyes pointed to the ground, I trucked my 15 boxes of records down to Amoeba Records and said my goodbyes. Back whence they came, to light up other people’s faces. Better then a most certain death, south of the border, to heat, humidity and no second-hand market.
The upside? Ya see, the rub is this: I didn’t own the records, they owned me. I was their guardian and once I found them a new, good home. I was free. I did end up saving about 150 of them. The really good ones. The ones that will never make it to CD or even MP3, ever. Plus the ones that are really good on record. One Technique 1200, a Griffin iMic 2 and WireTap Studio Pro and I’m all set up to listen to my surviving collection directly from my computer. Ahh, techmology.
This is an update on an earlier post. The surf magazines have finally been analyzed, dissected and filed away into neat little yellow envelopes for later perusal. 20 or so mags pared down to a handful of interesting articles and about an issue’s worth of photos that might make it on to the office/guestroom wall (if the wife allows such a teenagerly thing). This was a personal lesson in letting go and trimming my collected life away. Hoarding less crap is a virtue, even when it comes to surfing mags.
Here’s the rundown: It turns out that 95% of the issues were ads or parts I didn’t even feel the slightest need to keep. Most of the complete articles that I did keep were from features on traveling. Articles on The Maldives, Indonesia, South Africa, The Philippines, Mexico, California, Guatemala etc… It turns out that I basically only care about the earth-roaming parts of surf mags and the occasional special features written by the old schoolers like Herbie Fletcher. There are some killer articles in my pile and I definitely overlooked a few the first time around. Interestingly enough, most of the photos that I wanted to clip, all seemed to belong to those same ‘travel report’ articles. You know the ones I’m talking about, photos of empty waves, abstract, environmental, relaxed and lush. All the gnarly wave-lip destroying action? in to the garbage.
One universal truth: surf mags do not cover longboarding enough.
I feel pretty liberated by this experience and I totally recommend it to anyone wanting to feel a little ‘lighter’ in this world. Next up? When I get them out of storage, I’m gonna attack my nearly complete, meticulously kept sets of Emigre and Raygun as well as large swathes of Eye, Print and Communication Arts. just kidding.
