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.
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.
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.
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.
We’ve been fans of Felt Bicycles for a short time and of cruisers in general forever, so this new collab with Hurley looks pretty good for a Nike bikie.
Hurley’s world-class design team partnered with Felt Bicycles to create a limited-edition cruiser capturing the essence of Hurley surf style and culture. Hurley’s most recognized and sought-after “Puerto Rico” plaid, popularized on surf trunks worn by the likes of pro surfer Rob Machado, has inspired the new Hurley “PR” cruiser.
Meghan Dambacher and Lisa Carpenter of Solana Beach, California wanted to start a business in the surf industry. First they started a website that helped surfers buy, sell, and trade surfboards called Rerip.com: reduce, reuse, reride. But they wanted to do more. Now they have according to a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The pair partnered with a Los Angeles-based think tank to find a use for unwanted, often toxic, surfboards. Though the research is in the early phases, they have discovered that the boards can be recycled and used to create nonstructural concrete. They’ve been given the green light to use their “Surfcrete” in lightweight capacities, and are starting by using it in landscaping projects. . . . Dambacher and Carpenter have made deals with the city of San Diego to place surfboard recycling bins at city landfills, and the Patagonia Waterman Store in Cardiff by the Sea has agreed to keep a surfboard recycling bin on the premises as well. Other dropoff sites are forthcoming.
See, green marketing really works. Not well enough for Meghan and Lisa to quit their day jobs, but well enough to get a story in the newspaper.
In the grand tradition of morally-ambiguous, surf-lust inspired schemes, I’m launching this site: PostSurf – A place for myself and other Surf Culture iconoclasts to mull over the act, after the act is finished. . . . This site is based on a blind faith that there are many other surfers out there who are dissatisfied with the current state of the surf media. . . . I’m trying to make things better (or much, much worse depending upon your perspective).
Good, honest, insightful, funny writing about surfing is always in short supply and chances are that Postsurf.com will occasionally contain some. That’s why we’ve added the site to our Surf Links and our RSS feeds. Check it out.
Glen Lockery was surfing with friends last Wednesday at Shelly Beach Australia when he got slammed by a shark according to The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Lockery was waiting for a wave, watching his mates paddle in, when he was attacked. . . . “I was sitting out the back on my own and just got hit from below,” he said yesterday. It was a massive impact that flipped his surfboard up to hit him in the face. Mr Lockery caught a glimpse of the shark’s girth – about twice as wide as his surfboard. “People have told me that when it comes from the deep it is either a great white or a tiger. It lifted the board and broke the nose,” he said.
And he escaped with only a broken nose on his surfboard.
Mick Fanning, the 2007 ASP world champion hit the cricket pitch yesterday with former Midnight Oil singer Peter Garrett and other Australian celebrities for a match to raise money for the victims of Australia’s deadly brushfires, according to News.com.au.
While it was played in good humour, the reason why they were there could not be missed. “The generosity from Australians following this terrible event has been incredible,” Garrett said. “A total vindication of that deep spirit of commitment and mateship that we have. The fact we can be on the SCG, on a Sunday afternoon, with a game of cricket, with captains of the calibre of Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor … we live in a harsh land, but we have generous hearts.”
More than 20,000 people showed up for a game we still don’t understand. Reading about cricket reminded us how most people must feel reading about snowboarding, surfing, and skating. It’s like those cricket plays have their own language. . .
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.
