It's Board Shop Day!
There is one last bastion standing between the VAL horde takeover, the Oklahoman Erik Logan’s World Surf League’s attempt to “change the world through the inspirational power of surfing,” goofy smiles plus positive vibes and the grumpy local.
Between Oprah and us.
Your local, independent surf shop.
Oh, I remember so fondly gingerly walking into Freeline in Santa Cruz, Wahl in Pismo Beach, Katin in Huntington, Hansen’s in Encinitas as an Oregonian and feeling the sheer terror of being rightly judged.
In the now forgotten book Cocaine + Surfing I wrote:
I panic and run into the nearby Laguna Surf and Sport without thinking. To a place even more pressure filled than the mean streets, or at least a place that used to be. The California surf shop was once a bastion of all things cool. The boards, the trunks, the clothes, boardbags, magazines, VHS surf videos, Lagwagon soundtrack, and especially the shop workers. Grown-up surfed-out Orange County preteens who would mock hapless customers from behind glass counters filled with surf stickers.
I remember stepping through the doors and into the fog of sweet surf wax as an Oregonian youth on family trips down south. I would gaze lovingly, longingly at the at the merchandise that I couldn’t afford. I would run by hand along the rails of boards I could only dream of owning. Sometimes a shop worker would ask if I needed any help in the most laconic way possible, usually while flipping through a surf magazine and not looking up to make eye contact. My heart would seize and I would mutter something and flee, trying not to gaze at the Sex Wax in the glass counter, lest anyone catch me and think I was a blushing debauchee.
We must save the core surf shop so it, in turn, can save us and Sept. 19 is our chance. It is the second annual Board Shop Day, founded by Building the Revolution founder Mike Vavek who wonders, “Is it too much to ask that we ask for a day dedicated to the shops that created an industry and a culture for many of us?”
No it ain’t.
Head into your local on Sept. 19, or before, and buy a trucker hat, chain wallet, hoodie, whatever your heart desires.
Suck it, ELo.
I’m feeling too mentally fragile to withstand the withering polite scorn of the staff.
Were I more salt-encrusted, the hostility might glance from the crystalline armour and, rather than mine own flaccid ego, wound instead, some other cunt’s foot.
I’ll spend my money
On a Steak and Pepper Pie
Of course I want sauce
Uuuaaah, my least favorite era of surf shops was the Lagwagon, or Korn era, so extra angry! The previous Cecilia and Kapuno era was more my style, but besides that I’m on board with this call to action, good on you CS!
I worked in one through high school and uni and it was the best place on earth. Two rooms dedicated to boards and wetties with only a couple of racks of clothes and a VHS sale bin that wasn’t restocked for ten years. Customers lucky to get eye contact when they came in if you weren’t too hungover. But still had every piece of hardware you could ever need.Its since closed but there’s still a few similar carrying on. God bless them.
Mitch, thanks for all the over priced Chyna sh!+! Arigato!
I feel the same way when I go into the trade hardware as a humble heating and air-conditioning man. I walk purposefully over to my regular area of the store with my head down to avoid the glare of the late middle-aged hag with silvery straw-like hair that is tied back functionally in a single pony tail that swats lazily at the rear belt loop of her gunt filled Target Country jeans. Despite my efforts, out of the corner of my eye I see the hag bitch pull her frameless glasses down over her craggy nose and mutter out the side of her lip-less mouth to her high-school aged colleague “why is this cunt wearing steel caps isn’t he a FUCKEN air-conditioning man?”. Her cackle makes me shudder and I wilt for a moment under the hot fluorescent lights. It seems like 20 minutes go by while I bide my time and wait for my moment when the high-school kid is manning the check out counter. I make my approach but to my horror the high-schooler is thrust into the back office and I am greeted by two low hanging hard nipples protruding from a logo blazoned blue nylon shirt. I can distinctly make out their shape through the worn-out nylon. They resemble the balloons left on the front fence to weather from the birthday parties of yesteryear. I gulp and let out a barely audible “fucken hell”. I have to get out of this awful place. I throw my merchandise on the counter….
Maybe it was because the A/C was too cold.
How do you think that high schooler feels having to work with his father.
“birthdays” are taboo around here. Shoulda went to the mines, and got your money right.
is she the one with the dolphin tramp stamp just above her…. oh nevermind. nothing. sorry , my bad.
Geez mate you’ve been a bit lucid of late. Maybe Take this amazing advice. https://m.youtube.com/watch…
Sure.
Can BG pick up my $1652 fine for traveling more than 5k?
No worries!
Promise?
How long you reckon Danny boys got before he gets booted out? Dudes lost the plot
He should be convicted of treason.
The sooner the better.
Starting to feel like all the bunker having, gun toting end of days preparing red necks might have been right all along. Time to go marching in and give the dickhead the massive wedgie he deserves and send his ass to jail.
My sons are graduating this year with his kid.
My surname is A’Hearn and I hope we get seated close enough for me to tell him he should be jailed for treason.
Quiet, as to not make a scene and embarrass my kids.
Let me know how you go, you get that sap sweating and seething there’s a beer on me next time your down PI!
Haha..he doesn’t sweat the PM, he certainly isn’t going to sweat a postie.
Must be loving the island with this curfew. I see on Trigger’s cam how the crowds are down quite a bit.
I reckon you might be surprised! He’s probably pretty confident ScoMo’s not going to tap his reset button when the lights are out…..
Can’t wait to see how he welcomes the great and caring Chinese investment to “save the Victorian economy”. Watch this space, slimy prick
Yeah..read today he is talking to legal to keep the BNR happening.
If the shop you go to doesn’t have a moldy couch with a coffee table covered in stickers it’s not a real surf shop.
The lack of surfboards in racks is usually a give away for me