The new 09 Gear Guide issue of Transworld Surf sent Postsurf.com’s Lewis Samuels into a bit of a tailspin regarding the surf industry, advertising, publishing, and ultimately what will happen to surf publications when and if the economy recovers:
I’m tempted to believe that what surfers really want and need are waves – pictures of waves, insights about waves and surfers, thoughtful CONTENT that makes you excited to be a surfer. Even Transworld’s 14-year-old audience doesn’t want a catalog. They’re children, not morons. . . . Yes, the economy is fucked. The surf industry is crumbling. People will lose their jobs. I may lose my job, because of the garbage I write if not because of the economy. But I wonder… if people quit buying shit they don’t need because they’re broke, what will they do if they have money later on? Will they start buying useless crap again, or will they learn that consumer consumption isn’t the equivalent of happiness?
As funny as it is to see a buyer’s guide when no one is buying, we’re going to go with option one. People will always buy useless crap. It’s the American way.
Diver Craig Clasen and friend Cameron Kirkconnell were hunting yellow fin tuna with filmmaker Ryan McInnis and Surfing Magazine staff photog DJ Struntz when a 12 foot tiger shark began circling McInnis, according to a story in the Daily Mail.
With no time to lose, Mr Clasen grabbed his speargun and swam to his stranded friend, who was being circled by the giant predator. . . .’I positioned myself between Ryan and the shark and I tried to watch it for a second, hoping it would pass us by,’ explained 32-year-old Mr Clasen. ‘I noticed that the shark was getting tighter and tighter and just kept trying to get a back angle on us and behaving in an aggressive manner. ‘The shark made a roll and looked like it was going to charge us so I just went ahead and took the conservative route and put a shaft through its gills. ‘Cameron and I have been around sharks for years and we all have a lot of experience with them but this encounter had a different feel to it. ‘Down in my core I really felt the shark was there to feed. I didn’t want it to come to that.’Mr Clasen spent nearly two hours wrestling with the giant 12ft shark, spearing it seven times and even attempting to drown the beast before eventually finishing it off with a long blade knife.
While Clasen was killing a shark with his bare hands, DJ was apparently getting perfect photos like the one above.
Aaron Lieber, the talented, young filmmaker behind the film The Pursuit is working on a new series of videos on Brett Simpson titled Simply Simpo. This is episode one.
Apocalyspe Now screenwriter and Big Wednesday screenwriter and director John Milius narrates Scott Bass and Ty Ponder’s Vietnam/surf doco Between The Lines (which comes out on DVD on April 15, 2009) CNN spoke to Milius about movies, writing great lines, and most importantly surfing.
“One of the most poignant things of the film is how many California surfers went to Vietnam, and how many didn’t come back,” said Milius, 64, who learned to surf while growing up in Southern California. . . “One of the reasons I put surfing in ‘Apocalypse Now’ was because I always thought Vietnam was a California war.”
We were rolling through our online search this afternoon when we ran across a headline that looked awfully familiar on Boardsport Source, a European action sports business site. The headline said, More Fake Vans Seized. It was familiar because it was a story we ran a couple days ago titled More Fake Vans Seized In Manila.
Someone at Boardsport Source lifted the headline and the entire story from our site and posted it on theirs without even a link, a mention, or an attribution to our site or the website that originally posted the news story. Guess Boardsport Source doesn’t really understand the world of blogging. Hopefully, this will help them out: In blogging it it totally cool to quote a story, and attribute that content with links back to the original poster, but nothing is shadier that ripping off content with no links back.
Yes, we all watched it live online three months ago, but watching surfing on the web can make you forget what it looks like in high-definition. As a little reminder Fuel TV will be airing the 2008 Billabong Pipeline Masters starting Monday, March 9, 2009 and many more times during the month.
Craig Elmer “Owl” Chapman didn’t like his profile in The Surfer’s Journal so he sued. Now a federal court in Honolulu has decided that The Surfer’s Journal profile written by Jeff Johnson was not libelous, according to a story in Pacific Business News.
After a six-day trial in U.S. District Court, the eight jurors ruled in favor of the magazine and found that neither the publisher, Steve Pezman, or the article’s author, Jeff Johnson, made false statements in the 13-page magazine spread on Chapman. . . “It’s a complete victory for the defendants and a strong affirmation of the media’s right to write about public figures,” said Jeffrey Portnoy, managing partner of Honolulu law firm Cades Schutte, which represented The Surfer’s Journal. “We’re tremendously excited. There aren’t too many jury verdicts, especially in Hawaii, and this one is one of the few.”
Looks like the truth is a savage taskmaster. Thanks to Steve Pezman for fighting to good fight for writers and publisher everywhere.
In a time when stories rarely make it into action sports magazines without first being vetted by the companies who paid for the trips it’s interesting to follow Scott Bass’s Surfermag.com story of Owl Chapman’s lawsuit against The Surfer’s Journal.
Apparently, Owl wasn’t happy with the way he was characterized in a Jeff Johnson story featured in the August/September 2006 issue of TSJ titled, “El Hombre Invisible (With Apologies to William S. Burroughs) An Owl Chapman Story.” He was so angry that he filed suit in Oahu Federal court. Here’s what Owl is upset about:
According to the court, “The Article as a whole–while a personal, narrative account fraught with descriptive, figurative language–generally implies that (1) Johnson ordered a surfboard from Plaintiff and (2) Plaintiff failed to deliver the surfboard on time as promised, took Johnson’s money up front and then deliberately avoided him for approximately two months, and failed to craft the surfboard to Johnson’s specifications.” . . . Specifically Chapman’s lawsuit claims that, “A ridiculously extreme portrait (indeed a most sinister caricature) of plaintiff emerges that casts him in a false light —- and which, further, points to a grandiose egotist who is mean-spirited, self-serving, full of braggadocio, impossibly arrogant and in the end, a degenerate, pathetic and drug-addled social outcast.”
Wait, isn’t that how it always is when buying a custom shaped board from a genius shaper?
British surfer and freelance writer Alex Wade, the author of the book Surf Nation, has been nominated for the UK’s “Sports Journalists’ Association Sports Feature Writer of the Year award” according to a story in This Is Cornwall.
Alex, who was shortlisted for three stories, two on surfing and one on boxing, says he was ‘stoked’ to be nominated. . . “I’d forgotten all about the awards, and didn’t for a moment think I’d be nominated,” he said. “But it’s also true to say that this year there were a record number of entries for the awards, owing to the number of staff journos having been laid off thanks to the credit crunch.
Wade is up for a national writing award and the local paper still puts his stoked in quotes. . . classic.
Artist, photographer, filmmaker Thomas Campbell’s newest surf film The Present will be premiering Friday March 6 & 7, 2009 at the world famous La Paloma Theater in Encinitas, California with two showings each night at 7 and 9 PM with special musical guests The Mattson 2 & Ray Barbee.
Featured sliders include Patagonia ambassadors Dan Malloy, Chris Malloy, Fletcher Chouinard and Devon Howard, with Dave Rastovich, Chelsea Georgenson Hedges, Michel Junod, Joel Tudor, Kassia Meador, Alex Knost, Rob Machado, Dane Reynolds and others.
Tickets are available at the Patagonia store in Cardiff, CA. For more dates on the North American moive tour click the link.
