Siesta
taken next door to “Tacos el Gordo” between Bucerias and Mezcales.

I’ve been messing around with Thumber and some old surf videos I made a few years back. I like the mosaic-style. These would be super cool as printed posters. It seems that the longer the movie is, the smaller the frames get and the more abstract the mosaic becomes.
Peep the source videos: Saturday Morning Sliding and Sunday Log Rolling.
This was inspired by Brendan Dawes’ Cinema Redux project. I think I’ve linked to him before.
I met these two kids down in the plaza in Bucerias. little skate gnar gnars.

via my uncle Timbo:
Art is
more expensive than sausages
more expensive than women
more expensive than anything
Tinariwen on the speakers.
Jamie Robinson is a young brit who’s living in Vallarta with his mexicana girlfriend, Viry. He’s learning to surf and documenting his life along the way on his blog. Jamie is a dawn patrol kinda surfer. He’s got a camera and brings it with him most of the time. It’s great to see another surfer out there docu-ing the local scene. Go have a peek.
Still working furiously. 18 hour days. no joke. strapped to the computer, my arm has a rash from this cheap Ikea MDF desk. I’m going blind. I’m trying to wrap things up in time for our trip next week to NYC. Summer is in full swing and by the time we get back I fully expect Vallarta to be deader than a doornail. Septhambre. That’s fine, more waves for me.
It’s been raining like mad this past week. After two weeks of absolutely no rain, all the green jungle vegetation was starting to turn brown. Last Thursday, a torrential downpour sent water flowing into our kitchen and living room from a door to our open air service room. The sight was totally out of place, Marcia and I both had to take a second to register what was happening. It must have rained 12 inches in a 6 hour period. insane.
We’re being infested with ants. Rather than kill them all with some noxious poison, I put out some sugar water in a bowl to divert their attention from our trash. They loved it. They went home and told their friends. And their friends told their friends. After a few days we had ant trails all over the house. It took me about a week to figure out that I needed to put the bowl outside.
You can tell I haven’t gotten out of the house much lately, huh?
The surf has been dead. I’m sure there’s been some small waves here and there, but no real swells to speak of. This summer has been a total bummer. We are mid way through the season and we’ve only had 3 storm systems pass our way. Last summer we had something like 14. Something about the storm angle being off and heavier than normal jetstream flow across Chile. Global bummer.
For anyone keeping tabs, the seedling is coming along nicely. We’re in the 18th week and he is of the male variety. We’re slowly circling in on a name. Something that sounds good in both english and spanish, and that isn’t easily twisted in school yard fun. A hard criteria.
Club Of The Waves is a wicked surf culture and art site packed with surfing lore from artist and photography profiles to surf history, environmentalism, charity and user forums. It’s a great information resource, I’ve lost countless hours of valuable surf time perusing its intimidating amount of content. Andrew is the site’s curator and publisher. I hoping to see the spirit of COTW transitioned to art shows and books.
I’m honored to have been recently included in the photographer profiles.
If you don’t already know about The Club, head on over and don’t make any plans, it’s addictive. I especially dig the Where in the World… feature. It allows you to search artists and photographers by location – google maps style. PDNonline just launched something similar, PhotoServe (albeit slightly more involved), today actually. In other words, Andrew is ahead of the tech curve.


paintings by Maya Hayuk
I’ve been diggin on the art work of Maya Hayuk recently. Her kaleidoscopic / day-glow / geometric / handmade/ abstractness is really doing it for me, right about now. You might have seen her work on the front of Mollusk NYC, which shares a building with her studio. Incidentally, they call the building Monster Island1. Fecal Face has a great interview with Maya, from Feb’08 and Etsy just put out a video feature on Maya’s work as well. I was poking around her site when I ran into her photography, it turns out she’s an accomplished photographer as well. Peep these shots from a brazilian mag called Trip of the Beastie Boys, amazing! [via Wooster]
They discovering new dead zones all over the world. We have our own floating version, here in Vallarta.
Wow. Thalia Surf Shop has some beautiful new graphic/illustration t-shirt goodness coming from a line called “Rake”. Not much information on the interwebs about the new line or whose behind it, but the designs are stunning. They’re definitely channeling the spirit of Alexander Girard with an updated surf-culture aesthetic twist.
me likes. me takes one of each. me thanks you in advance.
Evan at Surf There Now has a killer post: Points North - Surf Exploration In Northern Sumatra
The swell finally arrives. We wake up at dawn at a renowned surf break, a “secret spot” our guides insists that we keep unnamed. We are mesmerized by surf perfection. Waves start more than a mile out from our anchorage, open up wide on the shallow reef in a blue barrel and reel across it in beautiful groomed lines. There are few waves in the world that break with this consistency and length.
For the next two days we surf until we can’t any more. The wave has broken two of our boards and torn the fins off of two others. We’ve been spun on wipe-outs to the point of not knowing up from down and been dragged across the sharp reef. We are sunburned, chafed, and exhausted. By the time the swell subsides, we’re too spent to surf anymore. It’s everything we’ve traveled across the world for.
I dream of shit like this constantly. Awesome! and it made for a great ‘morning cereal and coffee’ read. The article and accompanying photos are published in recently shuttered Everywhere mag1. Thanks Evan!
The author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?" discusses the corrosive relationship between conservatives and business, liberal bias and his new book about Republican misrule.
Head to the grindstone, little action on the blog means this bwoy is busy bees. Working on epic book version of this blog. keep yer eye out wee lad. 14 hour work days = almost two weeks without water, not much swell to speak of, so haven’t missed much. On evidence of slight uptick in swell, went last night to the favorite walled-up bowl break. At first glance, flat as can be. With patience – waist to chest high pulses rolling through. The potato chip handles nice tight S-carves and fatty whitewater floaters. For some odd reason I was super connected to the board, personal form in fine style. ‘Twas one a my best, mellowest sessions in months. I truly digs dema small waves, I can get open on knee highs and potato chips.
Back to worky, meh sez.
Jim Moriarty, CEO of Surfrider Foundation, has a new semi-annual videocast series called 5′10″1. The concept is to talk about 5 concepts in 10 minutes. Quick, simple and dialed in. The videocast format is a brilliant way for Jim to quickly update the masses on Surfrider’s focus and goals. Delivery of transparent information in a very quick and easy manner is the key here.
It’s great to see that Surfrider truly “gets” the power of the internets. I’m definitely inspired by Jim’s eloquence, focus and conceptual creativity2.
Super dialed-in güero hermano Andrew Field has opened up an authentic Mexican fish taco joint in Rockaway Beach (86th & Beach). It’s called Rockaway Taco and you can bet they’re the best tasting tacos you’ve ever had, outside of Mexico.
Andrew got a nice write-up from Soho Lunch, recently:
in any case. we had tofu tacos, fish tacos (beer battered talapia), and chorizo tacos. i ordered chips and guacamole and he actually cut up corn tortillas and fried them. i watched him make the guacamole himself. pretty impressive. it was cheap and good and made you forget about the projects behind you.1
All you New York sliders and Molluskonian trimmers, go out and support a surf bro on his quest to bring authentic mexican food to the hungry, cold water masses.
I never get tired of watching Kalle Carranza do his thing. Kalle is Mexico’s most famous surfer and famously laid-back and humble. Part of the Reef team, Kalle travels and surfs. I spotted him on Facebook, where he’s slowly dropping crumbs on his travels through Thailand, Cambodia, Loas, Vietnam and now he’s in China.
How many times have I pulled up to the rock bluff overlooking the miles of raw coastline that contain my most frequented surf breaks. I pull out the binoculars to scout for waves and for crowds (or lack thereof). Only to find small waves and large crowds. Crushed enthusiasm, I say ferck it and head back home. I’m definitely guilty of embracing the skunk.
Things are different when you travel 1000 miles on an airplane for a surf trip. You take stock of the local swell report and choose your spot for the day wisely, but once you’re there in those strange waters, you can’t turn back. There’s no going home. You must find the glide. Every spot at every size, has a glide, a sweet spot, waiting for you to find it. Sometimes it takes a longboard. Sometimes it’s the thigh-high walled up inner section with the slow crouching thirty-foot ride. Sometimes it’s a kooked-out drop into the closing tube going the wrong direction. Whatever the conditions may be, the glide is there, somewhere, maybe not in plain view, maybe hidden away, but it’s most certainly there. You just have to look for it.
I re-discovered the glide this past week.
The Oregon/Nayarit surf blog bro-down extravaganza ended today with a drive up the coast to “Rio Bonito”, a juicy, sand-bottomed river mouth break, right around the corner from freakin’ nowhere. As the roles reversed, it was this intrepid Oregon crew who showed me, the itinerant Mexico rustaboot, a new spot. I don’t know how the hell these guys found their way to this little jammy, but believe me I know how to get back here. We caught the joint on a pretty mellow day, mostly closeout waist high, with an occasional head-high thumper. I dropped in on a few, with seconds of glide, ledge overhead to punch out the back and a few pearls as the singlefin kicked out from the steep angled drop. Even at small, closeout sizes, the waves were walled up nicely from the water exiting the river.
Rio Bonito wasn’t exactly firing, an epic day it wasn’t, but we all tried to get a little something. You can tell, though, that this spot gets huge, breaking in long flowing lines from both sides of the river mouth. Luckily Rick, Gabe and Ean have two more days to soldier on and with hints of incoming swell, hopefully they’ll be running to the plane on Saturday with wet swim trunks.
Marcia and I are headed up to Guadalajara for the weekend. And as per usual, that means a nice big swell should be rolling through. Ah the irony.


Sissyfish enjoying some warm mexican water
Rick, the SissyfisherKing is currently down mexicoway with his homies Gabe and Ean. We connected up Monday night for some wicked Chilés Rellenos + chelas with the ladies and little ones (ours being still in seedling format). Dinner was civil and restrained. After grub, the boys retired to the livingroom for a full on bro-down nerd fest, as we talked blog-related schmata and plotted the next day’s surf activities while I heavy-petted and studiously-vetted the various surf vehicles the crew had slogged all the way down here from Oregon. Rick’s MCaro-shaped round-pin quad was pretty amazing in and out of the water. Drop in, set the rail and hum. dialed.
Tuesday morning we reconvened for a dawn patrol sliding session at my favoritest rocky left point break La Chuleta. Afuckingmazing, as usual. That place is blessed with serious surf/stoke/prana. We all got in some quality slide time. I took an hour or so out to snap some jammies from the boat. These are two of my favs, not intentionally out-of-focus, but what are commonly referred to as “happy accidents”.

Virgin Single Fin print by Lisa Candela
My karmic soul sister Lisa Candela gets a nice big write-up at Apartment Therapy for her Sayulita series. You can see more of her ultra-saturated analog bliss over at Lisa’s portfolio site.
Candela takes all her photographs on film, then makes limited edition digital archival pigment prints on this wonderful heavy watercolor paper. And in her gallery on Crosby street — you can see each encased like little treasures in hand-made frames of driftwood (made by her partner David Decker).
Lisa and David own Candela - Decker Gallery and the Sayulita series is showing there, until the end of July, as part of the temporary exhibits. Dan Eldon’s work is exhibited there permanently. For more info on her work, contact the gallery at:
Candela - Decker Gallery
31 Crosby Street. New York, NY 10013
{Between Broome and Grand}
Phone # 1-212-343-1717
There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world. Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.
- Freeman Dyson, on the conundrum of global warming.
[via Steve Isaacs > via terminally incoherent > Marc Lafountain > Kevin Kelly]