The cutest thing in the world.
The cutest thing in the world.

Fresh: Income stream for father/surfers!

Do you need more money? Do you have a child? Come walk the morally questionable path with me.

I know many many men locked into the very teeth of this surfing industry whose wives out-earn them. I used to think it was a surf problem because we are shackled by a lust that drives away gainful employment but recently I have found out it is not. One in three American wives earns more than her husband according to the Pew Research Center. A full 30% of the married population.

Our own Rory Parker is one, and he writes about how he enjoys the fruits of his wife’s labor (many surfboards etc.). I am also one and it guts me to the core. I love that my wife is successful but I regard my own just above average earnings as a sound failure and I am trying to rectify it all the time. Except I am also a father, which means our gorgeous two-year-old daughter is primarily in my care during the daylight/earning hours. I am on a treadmill losing ground. I am fast becoming an evolutionarily non-essential appendage like the appendix. My wife is a better parent. My wife is a better earner. What, then, am I?

And yet in my existential despair I have found a way out. A way that my daughter and I can spend every day together, plenty of surfing thrown in, and make lots of money. What is this magic bean?

Baby modeling! Find out more here.


Rich: Mitch Crews’ (boss) buys Madonna’s home!

19 mil and 1.25 acres of Beverly Hills, California...

The world is just plain full of haves and have nots ain’t it though. Two days ago Quiksilver declares bankruptcy, sending some of their team riders into the unemployment line (for the time being). One day ago Rockstar Energy’s founder and CEO, Russell Weiner, buys Madonna’s home for a sweet 19 mil.

Rockstar, of course, sponsors many moto fellows. Weiner had lived in Las Vegas, and launched Rockstar out of there, which explains brap-brap-brap. But the company also sponsors many surfers like Sunny Garcia, Nat Young, Jack Freestone, Oliver Kurtz, Albee Layer, Matt Meola, Laura Enever amongst many others including Mitch Crews.

The home is, according to the LA Times, “…set on 1.25 acres of manicured grounds, the walled-and-gated compound includes a French country-inspired main house, two guesthouses, a swimming pool and a north-south tennis court. A 500-foot tree-lined driveway marks the entrance to the home. Rebuilt and expanded by the pop icon during her decade of ownership, the sprawling home has two living rooms, a two-story dining room, two offices, a screening room, a gym and an art studio. Cathedral-style ceilings, rows of French doors, clerestory windows and hardwood floors are among the interior details. A total of nine bedrooms and 15 bathrooms are within 17,000 square feet of living space.”

If you are invited to a party by any of the Rockstar team surfers you should take them up on it. Girls just wanna have fun.

They just wanna. They just wanna.
They just wanna. They just wanna.

surfer hair

NY Times: Surf-skate leads digital media!

Befuddled, once-great broadsheet, the NY Times, five years too late to party…

I’m always a little confused by the way mainstream media likes to refer to Millenials (those of us born between 1980 and 2000) as “young people.”

I was born in 1980, I’m 35 years old, far closer to middle aged than “young.”

I suppose it makes sense in the context of The New York Times, an archaic rag that earns its bread from an elder contingent too befuddled by internet tomfoolery to figure out how to find information online. To those geriatric fucks, a generation that spent their adult years dismantling every social program they benefited from, we all seem young.

Today’s technology section circle jerk contains a fascinating examination of digital media, and how hip and new it is.

It’s the next big thing guys! Did you know kids use the interwebs to look at stuff? Videos of extreme action sports. So radical.

Why is this in The New York Times? How is it relevant at all? Why is something that’s old news being used as new news? Money. Or the supposed opportunity for people to grab a hold of some of it.  Not the people who create it, of course. The people who distribute it.

“…as the audience grows beyond devotees, the opportunity arises to make videos and films with higher production values that fans are willing to pay for.”

Except probably not.

The driving force behind the majority of high quality surf and skate clips is advertising, something us “millenials” aren’t so hot on paying for any more. Pretty hard to monetize something I can, and will, easily torrent.

Even harder to get me to pay attention to an ad, a couple of clicks, a great little browser extension, and that shit’s gone. Red Bull gets it. They don’t try and charge for content, their whole gig is meant to make their addictive swill seem cool so they can hook little kids.

And it works. Very well. Add those of us who don’t drink the stuff get to see cool shit. It’s a win/win, except for the obese preteens with heart conditions, but who gives a fuck about those brats? Not me.

And we’re broke.

I mean, I’m not, I’m solid lower middle class, but that’s because I’m a kept man. But I was poor, not very long ago. So poor I couldn’t afford a cable subscription, something I only missed for a bit, and once it was gone I realized how much better my life had become. Like pills, basically. So good when you’re on ’em, so glad they’re gone when you aren’t.

The old way is dying, the new way won’t work. I refuse to pay a middle man for content. If Vimeo thinks I’ll give them a penny to watch videos other people sweat and bled for they’re even higher than I am right now.

(Read the story in the NY times here) 


Freddy Patacchia Jr

Freddy P’s sudden (and odd) retirement!

World #28 scores ten, wins first round at Trestles, quits…

The thirty-three-year-old Hawaiian Fred Patacchia Jr quit the WSL main game this afternoon after beating Gabriel Medina and Bede Durbidge in round one of the Hurley Pro.

With a little under five minutes left in the heat, and a minute after scoring a 10 for the swift murder of a five-foot set, Fred caught a wave alongside Gabriel Medina, high-fived the current world champ, and came in to rapturous applause. He was wrapped in a Hawaiian flag (hello Union Jack!) and announced his retirement, effectively immediately, in his post-heat interview.

Ross Williams was first on Instagram, posting a photo of his “chicken skin brah!!!”

Now ain’t that some way to retire! Screw the possibility of winning the contest, I just hit a ten, I’m out. It’s the oddest thing ever!

It’s in marked contrast, of course, to most surfers, who grind away, grind away, gradually slipping down the ratings until, sometime in their mid-to-late-thirties, they disappear altogether.

Who doesn’t like a little dignity in their farewell?

Fred’s career ain’t bad, in hindsight. He was the 2005 tour rookie (finished 14th), climbed to 12th the following year (his best), but tended to hover in the twenties.

What will he be most remembered by? His last-ever ride, a ten?

Or his frenzied attack upon the Snapper Rocks?

And here’s his goodbye interview…


surfing portugal

Drone-Vision: A year of waves in Portugal!

Including Ericeira, a very secret slab and even Nazaré, all shot from the world's tiniest helicopter…

If his Facebook photos are to be believed, Pedro Miranda is a striking and hirsute man of, let’s say, late twenties to early thirties. Good jawline, a hint of a beard without looking like he came from 2010 and two fine legs held up by a powerful superstructure.

Pedro is part of a two-man “drone operation team highly specialised in surf and bodyboard action shots, a niche where we’ve been doing a lot of experimentation trying to get new unseen angles.”

Their setup is a custom-made DJI Quadcopter with a GoPro Hero4 Black mounted on a three-axis gimbal.

(Ladies? Are you wet?)

Pedro sent me his movie The Flying Machine today and wrote, “The waves featured in this clip are all in Portugal, and all captured during the last winter season. There are a few waves captured in several spots of Ericeira, including the ‘Cave’ which is one of the dangerous slab in the country. The most perfect waves on the clip were captured during one of the best sessions of the season on a secret spot of the west coast. At the end of the clip, there’s some action on Nazaré, Garrett McNamara rescuing Rodrigo Koxa from the rocks, a wave from Ross Clarke-Jones, another massive one by Tom Butler, and the last wave which you may recognise from Samsung’s latest commercial We are Greater than I. That’s Sebastian Steudtner surfing that wave. He won this year’s XXL Biggest Wave Award on an even bigger wave caught that day.”

My advice?

Breeze past the first minute, it starts slow, y’see, and maybe avoid it altogether if a cross-cultural mix of bodyboarding and surfing ain’t your thing.

 

The Flying Machine from Máquina Voadora on Vimeo.