In an email sent out today to promote the arrival of the new unibody 17-inch Macbook Pro, Apple decided to use some compelling surf imagery. Why would they advertise the “thinnest and lightest” 17-inch computer ever with a thick, heavy wave? Probably because it looks “so rad.”
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We may have been a little tough on Quiksilver lately, but one thing we’ve never questioned is their commitment to surfing. Market forces have worked against the company in recent months, but that has done nothing to slow their sponsorship of the Quiksilver Pro and the Roxy Pro at Snapper Rocks. According to a story on Goldcoast.com.au, Quik has committed to sponsor the events for another nine years.
The announcement was made by contest director Rod Brooks yesterday at the official media launch with surfing elites such as Kelly Slater, Mick Fanning and Stephanie Gilmore looking on.
[Link: Goldcoast.com.au]
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In November 2008 a phone caller posing as pro surfer Nathan Fletcher tried to scam some money out of pro surfer Derek Dunfee. Luckily, that didn’t work. Now looks like a month later the same guy got nearly $800 out of the San Mateo County Historical Museum using big wave surfer Grant Washburn’s name, according to a story in the San Mateo Daily Journal.
On Dec. 12, a day before Washburn was scheduled to attend events at the museum [to speak about Maverick’s], a man identifying himself as the surfer called the museum claiming to be stuck in Los Angeles without money. He told a museum employee that his wallet was stolen and he needed nearly $500 to purchase a ticket to the Bay Area and another $200 to purchase food and other small items, according to a search warrant filed by the Redwood City Police Department.
Money was wired to the man, however, when he called back for more workers became suspicious and called Washburn only to find that he was in San Francisco and had not made any calls.
[Link: San Mateo Daily Journal]
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We’ve heard rumors that Kelly Slater has been spending a lot of time at Channel Islands’ headquarters lately and we’re beginning to understand why: he was shaping a new quiver for his campaign for number 10, according to a story in the Brisbane Times.
“I’m in experimental mode right now. I bought a bunch of boards that I’ve actually shaped. Little boards. I’ve been riding some four-fins. I think I’ve found something for me that feels really good, really fast and responsive with a lot of drive,” Slater said. . . .”Hopefully I can feel confident enough on those boards to ride them. If not, I can use the equipment I’ve been on for my whole career.”
The Quiksilver Pro starts at Snapper Rocks on Saturday (which is tomorrow in Australia) so we’ll all know soon enough if these new boards work, or if they’re just more mojo from the master of mystery.
[Link: Brisbane Times]
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While it looked like a contest was getting pretty close in January, since then there have be no real sizable swells to speak of and it’s looking more and more like the contest will not go off this year, according to a story in the San Francisco Examiner.
Surf forecasters said Wednesday that calm ocean conditions expected in March may lead to the cancellation of the annual surf competition for the second time in three years. Unless an ocean condition called La Niña weakens or the wind patterns on the equator shift dramatically (both of which are unlikely), Mother Nature will not produce the 30-foot-tall waves needed to hold the world-famous contest.
The waiting period ends March 31. Bummer. With The Eddie waiting period ending on Saturday, it looks like no big wave contests this year.
[Link: SF Examiner]
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The LA Times looks for answers to the question: what happened to the surf fashion industry? Writer Andrea Chang catalogs all the year end reports we’ve linked to lately and talked to Quiksilver’s Bob McKnight, Huntington Surf & Sport’s Aaron Pai, ASR’s Andy Tompkins, Tanya Turner at Jacks in Dana Point, Sport Chalet’s CEO Craig Levra, and longtime surfer Mike Dumitras, 30, who paid a friend $20 for an old Hurley wetsuit and patched it with duct tape rather than buying a new one.
Bob McKnight, speaking from beneath Quik’s billion dollar mountain of debt, says they are prepared: “We’ve been through a couple downturns like this, so we know what to expect,” McKnight said. “But this one is certainly worse than anything we’ve seen.”
So what is the answer? Where have all the consumers gone? Turns out the economy is bad and people like Mike Dumitras just aren’t buying as much stuff as they were a year ago. Dammit, Mike. Would you buy a new wetsuit already. We’ve got an entire industry waiting.
[Link: LA Times]
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No offense, but after watching this we can say for sure that we prefer watching Jamie O’Brien standing up on a surfboard.
[Link: Etnies]
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If Wyland can build an empire on painting whales, there’s no reason to believe that photographer Aaron Chang can’t do the same with his images even in this economy. On Saturday February 28, 2009 at 7 PM Aaron will host an event to celebrate the opening of his gallery in the Cedros Design District in Solana Beach, California.
Aaron Chang Gallery, 124 East Cliff St. @ corner of N. Cedros and Cliff
[Link: Aaron Chang Gallery via Global Surf News]
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Three years ago Jeff Seymour, of Carlsbad, California wanted to help out the troops. So he started a program called “Magazines and Movies for the Troops.” With donated magazines and movies from Transworld Media and many other Southern California souces Seymour hoped to spread a little love from home, according to a story in the San Diego City Beat.
Now it looks like most of those donations ended up getting dumped straight into a San Diego landfill. According to the paper a supervisor at the Miramar landfill witnessed “a group of Marines dump as many as six pallets full of the donations—magazines, books, DVDs and hygiene products, packed in boxes plainly marked “For Our Troops in Iraq”—into the landfill last summer.”
“Transworld Media donated thousands of magazines, most of them so new they still hadn’t hit the stands yet,” he says. “They donated cases of beanies—like those skullcaps that kids wear—worth about $20 apiece. I asked them, ‘Do you think the troops will wear these?’ And they replied, ‘Hey, do you know how cold it gets over there?’
Guess, we’ll never know. For the rest of the Marine Corp FUBAR follow the jump.
[Link: San Diego City Beat]
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We often find ourselves confused while trying to figure out what many eco-groups and events actually do.
The most recent is snowboarding’s TTR Series founder Drew Stevenson’s Breathe Foundation. After leaving TTR last year Stevenson apparently moved to Costa Rica and set up a eco-foundation. What is Breathe? Well, according to their website:
Breathe is an organic concept born in the jungles of Costa Rica fusing music, activities, discourse, and inclusive participation aimed at sharpening focus on many social and ecological issues facing our future. . . .Time is short to address the enormity of different challenges facing the globe’s biosphere, natural resources and us as species. They are as big as they are diverse. The solutions are as clever as they are wide ranging. The first step in addressing a problem, is accepting there is a one
Ah, wow. Okay. . . what was that again? Those who understand this should be in Costa Rica right now because the Breathe gathering began February 22 and it ends on March 1. In the meantime, Breathe is holding an online auction “benefiting underserved youth of Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica.” Autographed items from Axel Pauporte, Manoa Drollet, Ingemar Backman, Hannah Teter, Nicolas Mueller, Mads Johnsson, Wolle Nyvelt, Marc Andre Tarte and more are being auctioned off.
[Link: Breathe via Snowbroader.com]
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