Search: the new yorker

Dirk Ziff’s Pond In The New Yorker

by The Editors on December 10, 2018

William Finnegan, a surfer who writes well, gives his take on Dirk Ziff’s wave pond along with a recap of nearly everything wave pool related that has happened in the last four years in a really, really long story in the December 17, 2018 The New Yorker magazine. It starts out a little like this:

The first few hours I spent at the W.S.L. Surf Ranch, a wave pool built for surfing in the farmlands south of Fresno, California, were for me a blur. I was fine on arrival, hiking through a little forest of scaffolding, eucalyptus, and white tents with a publicist from the Kelly Slater Wave Company, which built and runs the place. The valley heat was fierce but dry. House music rode on a light northwest breeze.

Not really sure how the story finishes because we lost interest about three paragraphs in, but you might not. Give the link a click and see for yourself.

[Link: The New Yorker]

{ 0 comments }

Matt Warshaw In The New Yorker

by The Editors on September 28, 2016

mattwarshaw_nkrWe no longer read The New Yorker. We let our subscription lapse when the price went over the $70 mark. That’s how much we care about the best writing in the world. Luckily, someone at Surfer Magazine still reads it because they noticed that The Encyclopedia of Surfing author (and Surfermag.com columnist) Matt Warshaw was featured in the October 3, 2016 issue of the magazine for his work with Oxford English Dictionary.

Surfer interviewed Warshaw on being profiled.

We’re just linking it here so if it ever comes up again we’ll be able to find it. Oh, and to add our entry in the New Yorker’s caption contest: “Pffft, you should see him dance on the ceiling.”

[Link: Surfermag.com]

{ 0 comments }

The New Yorker Notices Skateboarding

by The Editors on July 24, 2012

Mark-Gonzales

On the occasion of Transworld Skateboarding’s 30th Anniversary, The New Yorker writer James Guida posts a nice overview of skaters old and young past and present. And, shockingly, gets most of it right (Stacy as in Peralta, however, is spelled with no e, so much for New Yorker fact checkers, huh?).

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Transworld’s videos are highly watchable. Part of the novelty for fans comes from seeing people whose identities you’ve previously cobbled together from anecdotes, interviews, and a few shreds of off-board footage. But once you’ve gotten over that, the profiles simply form an engaging gallery of portraits.

Click the link for the long, overly analytical discussion of the 30 Most Influential Skaters of all Time videos.

[Link: The New Yorker]

{ 0 comments }

That Surfing Physicist In The New Yorker

by The Editors on July 18, 2008

Garret Lisi, that frighteningly smart, unemployed surfer/snowboarder physicist who got so much play in January 2008 for maybe having solved the ultimate physics problem with his “Theory of Everything” was profiled in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

Click the link to read the abstract, or buy the magazine for the whole story. It’s the one with cartoon of Barack Obama on the cover dressed as a Muslim.

[Link: The New Yorker]

{ 0 comments }

Monday News From Before The Now

by The Editors on April 13, 2020

We’ve collected a monster page full of all the news that is news. We’d like to apologize in advance for all the COVID-19 stories. Personally, we been skipping the news lately as an act of self preservation, but please feel free to dive in. Hope you’re all safe and well. Really.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

Apple’s News+ App Includes Surfer Magazine

by The Editors on March 26, 2019

In a keynote address yesterday (March 25, 2019), Apple’s Tim Cook mentioned that their newly launched News+ app is like having an “entire newsstand on your iPhone,” but for us, not so much. First, as we’ve been saying lately there aren’t many surf, snow, or skate magazines left, and second, the only one that made it onto the Apple app is Surfer Magazine. The new “Netflix for magazines” app charges users $9.99 a month for unlimited magazine viewing from at least 300 different magazine titles.

For the olds who enjoy reading The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The Week, and Surfer, this new subscription model might not be terrible, but spending $120 a year for magazines that can only be read on iPhones, iPads, or Apple computers, doesn’t seem like the best deal when a Surfer Magazine subscription can be purchased online for $14. For more info on Apple News+ please click the link.

[Link: News+]

{ 0 comments }

Louie Vito’s New Reality Edit Series

by The Editors on January 18, 2012

We’ve been diving into all the new Youtube “channel” content lately to see what it’s all about. (Want to read more about Youtube’s somewhat skewed logic check out John Seabrook’s story Streaming Dreams in The New Yorker).

Livin’ Louie Vito is just one of the shows Red Bull is populating their channel with that, not surprisingly, promotes an energy drink sponsored athlete. If you hadn’t noticed yet, self-serving media is the new media.

[Link: Red Bull Channel]

{ 4 comments }

Inside Jay Peak’s International Funding Scam

by The Editors on February 12, 2024

It’s not often that a rad, little resort in Vermont makes the pages of The New Yorker Magazine, especially in a story featuring hundreds of millions in potentially mishandled funds. But that’s exactly the position Jay Peak and former resort manager Bill Stenger are in this month with a story titled “The Rural Ski Slope Caught Up in an International Scam,” by Sheelah Kolhatkare.

The crux of the story revolves around how Stenger and a business partner raised money for development at the resort and what they actually did with the money they raised. Here’s the how:

He [Stenger] raised money using the EB-5 visa program, which aimed to channel foreign investments into businesses that created jobs for Americans, especially in rural or economically depressed parts of the country. For five hundred thousand dollars (the amount has since risen to nine hundred thousand), foreign investors and their families became eligible for green cards, so long as that money succeeded in creating at least ten jobs.

As for what they did with all the money, you’ll have to read the story. In the end, it goes to show that running a resort isn’t always about keeping the snow guns blowing and the cats repaired. There is much, much, more involved. And sometimes it even a little prison time. Click the link for the rest of the story.

[Link: The New Yorker]

{ 0 comments }

William Finnegan Pumps Kai Lenny Up

by The Editors on May 24, 2022

In these days of “influencers” and “getting paid” and “content as commerce” it’s difficult to look at a personality profile in a national magazine (like The New Yorker) as anything more than a puff piece designed to increase revenue for the person being featured.

How can a writer, in this case surfer and Pulitzer Prize winner William Finnegan, feel like anything more than a small cog in Kai Lenny’s PR machine? Does it even matter if the story is good? Or well written? Or insightful? It’s Kai Lenny in The New Yorker, getting more views and more attention so he can get more cash from more sponsors. And maybe that’s how it’s always been, but lately, it seems just a little blown out. Then again, we’re likely part of the problem as we’ve written and posted this before even reading the story, because, why?

[Link: The New Yorker]

{ 0 comments }

Jamie Brisick & Surfline’s Techno Narcissism

by The Editors on August 29, 2019

Everyone’s favorite surf writer Jamie Brisick is back in the pages of The New Yorker with a story titled Surfing In The Age of the Omnipresent Camera.  It’s about Surfline’s new Sessions app that allows anyone with an Apple Watch to capture a video record of all the waves they surf in front of a Surfline camera. Of course, Brisick uses this piece as an opportunity to give newbs an overview of the last 50 years of professional surfing, his career as a pro surfer, and the history of Surfline itself.

For so many of us surfers, the ocean is where we go to work things out, to heal, to escape. And for it to become all about the photo op cheapens the experience. And, even if the documenting or the posting is not your thing, you’ll inevitably be surrounded by surfers for whom it is. Emerging from the water with these thoughts, I did not have to wait long before the contradictions of modern surfing returned. Up on the roof deck, we went straight for our phones. Gilovich smiled broadly. “Soon we’ll be able to alert you when the conditions are to your exact liking, based on what you’ve rated with five stars,” he said. He went on about algorithms, and a bunch of other tech stuff, but none of us were listening. We were checking out our waves.

It reminded us of that scene in Dave Egger’s book The Circle when the founder of the company rolls out the ubiquitous “seaChange” mini cameras that will allow crowd sourced surveillance on a global level. Secrets are lies. Sharing is caring. Surfing the apocalypse, indeed.

[Link: The New Yorker]

{ 0 comments }