I Heart Mollusk NY

Hard to believe that around this time yesterday I was stumbling around Williamsburg, Brooklyn looking for the new Mollusk Surf Shop. But I was. And I found it perched on a corner loading dock near the Hudson River, covered in bright graffiti. I have to say that visiting the little shop was one of my favorite parts of my New York trip. Tyler and John from Mollusk SF were there helping Mike open the East Coast version of their legendary store. We ate shaved ice from a street vendor and talked surf (or lack of surf) shooting the breeze about boards and surf blogging. I was really happy to find out that some New Yorkers read my blog. Then I bought a t-shirt and a copy of Glass Love and headed around the corner to joint called Surf Bar (that actually has sand on the ground) where Gee and I grabbed Red Stripes in the sun. A perfect way to transition from the city back to the surf here in Oregon.

Mollusk New York is located on the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and River Street in Brooklyn. Stop by for their opening party July 7. Thanks to downtownfb for the hot tip...

The National - Mistaken for Strangers

Bad Apple in the Big Apple

Hey there. Just an update that I'm currently in New York City, doing my annual art licensing thang. Sorry for the lull in updates! If anybody who reads this in New York wants to surf this weekend, let me know!

Chum

Joe Jackson - Steppin' Out

Sissyfish Summer Mix

SIDE A
1. ELO - It's a Living Thing
2. Robert Pollard - Caught Waves Again
3. Pixies - Ed Is Dead
4. Love is Laughter - Corona Extra
5. Palace Music - Gulf Shores
6. The Ramones - Sheena Is a Punk Rocker
7. Brian Wilson - Surf's Up
8. Pinback - Boo

SIDE B
1. Neil Halstead - Seasons
2. Surf Punks - My Wave
3. Morcheeba - The Sea
4. Shuggie Otis - Island Letter
5. Yo La Tengo - Black Hole
6. Kevin Baker - Riding the Wind
7. Menomena - Oahu
8. Devandra Banhart - Some People Ride the Wave


I love making mix tapes. As a matter of fact, I love it so much, it's what I did for a job during the dotcom boom. It's a hobby I haven't been able to shake since youth, so I started a cd mix club called The Woodpex here in Portland. This is a mix I never actually submitted to the club, so I thought it might be cool to post it here, with some original album art (that I just finished).

Some of the music choices are fairly obvious, some are rare gems. It's the modern age! Go ahead and print out the art and make yourself the mix! Or let me know if you have some better suggestions for tunes...

PS: Yes, I'm riding a blue diamond tail in the drawing. Can you tell what I'm thinking about?

Bad Days Are Good Practice

Nash woke me up at 4:45 am Saturday with a text that beeped relentlessly until I dragged myself out of bed and checked it. He was pulling out of our planned early morning departure. I immediately understood that he was just hitting the sack after raging the previous evening and now that I was up, stumbled to my computer to check the bouys. It didn't look too good. I crawled back under the warm covers and weighed my options. The rest of the weekend was supposed to be even worse and with winds out of the south predicted for later, I could still get lucky at Cove if I left soon.

OS and I bombed out there and were disappointed to find waist high waves rolling in that even the loggers were struggling to get into. So we checked about four other spots. Blown out. Finally we returned to Cove and hesitantly tugged our wetsuits on in a stiff rain that started to come down. There seemed to be some smaller waves with more power on the inside, so that was our destination. At the very least, we'd get some paddling in to prepare for Nica.

The funny thing about less-than-stellar waves is that they always seem to teach you something. Without any other surfers around, we caught tons of waves and because they were so small we were forced to pop up quickly and pump immediately to make sections. I caught quite a few fun rights and lefts and was even happier with my new board, realizing that it can work quite well in small surf. As kooky as it sounds, Taj Burrow's "Book of Hot Surfing" has a great section on surfing in crap, saying it's the perfect opportunity to work on refining one or two aspects of your style: for me it was staying low on backside waves and smoothing out my bottom turn going frontside.

It was a surprisingly good session - much better that staying at home and watching the French Open with the rain slamming the roof.

Land of Talk - Sea Foam
(Checked out this band when they opened for the Rosebuds Sunday. They's good!)

New Board New Spot

Wednesday's session was started out pretty bleak:

1. Drove to the beach and hiked down the trail, waxed up the new board, only to find that the screw to attach my fin was missing.

2. Looked for a longboarder to borrow a screw from. No dice.

3. Waves seemed to be improving.

4. Turned around and found out that two crows had eaten half my sandwich.

5. Realizing I was literally screwed, hiked 20 minutes back up the trail, and burned rubber back to Cannon Beach before the surf shop closed.

6. As I'm screwing in the fin at the surfshop, the owner looks at my finbox and says, "I don't like the way your shaper did this. The fin won't slide all the way back in the box because of the knot from the leash being in there - it's going to create some kind of vortex, being that far forward." Manny warned me that people would look at the board funny, though.

7. Jumped back in the car and headed south.

And this is where I have to edit the story to protect the spot where I surfed (I'm no pimp). It was a new place. Let's leave it at that. I did want to review my new Manny 2+1, which I'm very happy to pimp.

The first thing I noticed about the board is that it got into waves really easy. The thing is greased lightening. I think the entry speed is as good as my quad. It was slightly harder to duckdive because it's 3 inches longer than the quad, but that's to be expected. I could still get it through some big whitewater. Finally, the board turned in a completely different way than the quad. It really did seem to "swivel" more off the back foot - which is exactly what I expected it to do. On the bottom turns, it seemed to be more stable, with more smooth flow. So that's really about it. I caught maybe 10 or so waves and was really impressed. I didn't notice anything weird about the fins dragging or interfering with water flow, but I'm no George Greenough either...

I'm really looking forward to riding it again tomorrow.

Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End
(If you haven't seen the Devil in Daniel Johnston, rent it now! Anyone with any sort of creative compulsion will relate).

Sissyfish in The Surfer's Journal

I woke up this morning to pick up my new board from Fed Ex and logged on long enough to find that one of my all-time favorite magazines, The Surfer's Journal, is doing a column on surf blogs. And in the new issue, Sissyfish is featured with a screen shot and everything! It cracked me up when the author described my failed surf missions and wondered if I'd ever score. Thinking back, I realized that in 175 posts over the course of 2 years, I've probably only written about 10 epic days. But this morning I found out that I'm in TSJ and that I have an amazing new stick. So I guess I scored twice!

Rogue Wave - Publish My Love
The Clash - Magnificent Seven

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Saturday morning we checked everywhere and it was small and blown out despite the 4.5 ft at 16 second conditions that were predicted. So we goofed around in the chop and finally threw in the towel after being dropped in on several times. To salvage the day we came to shore and took pictures of the local wildlife. Summer is here.

Mungo Jerry - In the Summertime