How to contact the masses?

General Discussion
1

Many comments have been made on several other threads as to the general knowledge of the composite technolgy in the surfboard industry, or lack of it.

The fact that the boards being discussed here are superior is with no doubt. The professionals who share here are on their game, and the amatuers seem to be pretty much all over it also.

Swaylocks, however is only a very small cog in what is a really big machine.

Is it that most industry people, thousands of boardmakers from all over the world, are ignoring advancements, or just plain and simple don’t know about it?

2

consider that the ne plus ultra they, the surf community as a whole, are trying to be is this:

http://alanb.com/spicoli/

your question was??

Swaylocks is an aberration, a weird spot on the map of the surfing world, unknown territory outside ‘the machine’. It’s not about ‘heavy airs until the drugs wear off’.

They may never get it… which is ok with me.

doc…

3

Wildy, coincidence or synchronicity?

I was thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time. I’m mentally preparing an outline with how this could work.

One of the better survival stories to come from the Tsunami, beyond the incredible global response of aid and relief, was that one village (tribe) knew better than to go out to the dry reef and collect all the fish that you could pocket. They had passed the information through generations around the campfire, in the dead language format, and suddenly “groked” what that looney Shaman or crazy elder meant when “The whip comes down, get out of town.”

Those of us who are experiencing Deja Vu of the quantum order remember that an artist (John Seversen) was running, hell, he had started Surfer Magazine, and that he was open to backyarders and revolutionaries, in fact that may of been the reason - WHY boards changed every week (Just like here on Swaylocks) if you catch my ripple.

Whatchu say we send a MASSIVE wave though the corporate tribes beach picnic/surf contest? Paddle in or run for the hills!!!

Now I just need to know where the vested interests are hidden, hmmm… Et tu Brutus Beefcake? Nels, are your hands clean? Scrub on up, we got some surgery to do.

Doc, didn’t the elder Mr Hand take the time (energy) to affect the human being under the (corporate) cultural shell?

Pizza, anyone? I’m buying… just bring a sixer if you want to sample the goods!

4

Contacting the masses: there’s that potential for the law of unintended consequences to prevail again.

The masses will inevitably become informed as cost goes down. The Information Age guarantees it.

Custer went out looking for Indians.

They found him.

Some believe it was a good thing. Some don’t.

It all depends on the goal of the moment.

5

Question… how come there are no more cheap INDEPENDENT gas stations here in Southern California?

If we were finally allowed into the rest of the universes’ living forums and the emissaries came to Earth to meet with the humans, one comes up and a dumbass leader offers a hand to “shake” in universally known(?) friendship gesture, but the ET leader recoils in horror cause that is how they drain their enemies lifeforce. So what’s next? A kiss to the mouth? Say these critters developed their anatomy on a planet with little or no gravity and their ass is where their mouth is? So our leader kissess what? And the Ets start laughing and what does it look like to the military troops that have 'em surrounded? Those ETs are full of poison gas, vaporize 'em, boys.

I wonder what we look like coming into town with a man nailed to a cross, held high? Does the message of self-sacrifice come through, or do we just scare away the language that would have gotten our brothers to higher ground? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!?

6

The leap is a leap of faith,

that percolates inside for so long that

not taking the leap

is unthinkable, because

the time for thinking is past,

and you find yourself

in grateful freefall

toward the high ground.

There will be self-imposed casualities.

Sort it all out later.

Getting some of it bass ackwards is unavoidable.

7

Great reply Doc.

The herd has been following pretty much the same goat with the same bell since the late seventies. Even many shapers have done this, which is why you see so many of them falling into line instead of creating their own lines. The most popular shapers in the world shape pretty much the same thing.

All of the worlds great achievements (which are few) did not come from the masses or from a small group, but instead came from the lonely mind a single man. Sooner or later someone will create something that will be accepted simply because it’s so far advanced or functional that there can be litte debate on it. That is not the case at this time.

8

well said- the Simmonses and the Greenoughs are far betwixt and between, with too many Spicolis in the middle, all around, on top and on the bottom.

this pretty much describes my thinking on the industry as a whole.

doc…

and… far as I am concerned, the only worthwhile bit in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was Mr. Hand, as played by the late Ray Walston.

9

Smoke 'em if you got 'em. (Rowan and Martin’s - Laugh In)

I have met the enemy, and the enemy is us? (Pogo)

A friend of mine who teaches auto and wood shop at high school level told me that he really only teaches the class to one or two students a year that “get it” and go on to machine dragster parts or work in a cabinet shop. And he’s glad that retirement is just a couple of years away so he can sit HIS newly machined hip down on his boat and drink wine to erase the memory of the other 99 percent of the students who sleep-walked through his classrooms, including the one who left his finger on the band saw table.

Only status-quo dictates that we fight it out at lower and lower levels of return. We will never beat a more massive army, no matter what the price of their weapons, if the fight is at their level.

I’m spent…

The Chapter: ZEROING IN ON THOSE POLLUTERS: WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US, By Walt Kelly, Page 224. Beginning with the sixth paragraph:

“In the time of Joseph McCarthyism, celebrated in the Pogo strip by a character named Simple J. Malarkey, I attempted to explain each individual is wholly involved in the democratic process, work at it or no. The results of the process fall on the head of the public and he who is recalcitrant or procrastinates in raising his voice can blame no one but himself. An introduction to Pogo Papers, published by Simon and Schuster in 1952-53, said in part:

‘…Specializations and markings of individuals everywhere abound in such profusion that major idiosyncrasies can be properly ascribed to the mass. Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of the cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.’

‘There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.’

As years passed, the final paragraph was reduced to “We have met the enemy and he is us,” in a few strips having to do with pollution. The nine words form the title and theme of a Pogo motion picture currently in work, believing as I do that we are all of us responsible for our myriad pollutions, public, private and political.”

10

Eggsactly. “self-imposed casualties”

“There is no need to sally forth.” That’s the ticket. Recently, I find myself trying too hard.

So, my next session, instead of always being in the lineup, I will just give up, just sit off to the side, outside, be, wait, do nothing, give up waves, avoid the masses.

Float on my back with my feet on the board, let the ocean cradle me,

Absorb whatever my surroundings have to offer,

Look up and stare until my mind grasps the truth that the clouds and I are in relative movement,

And that therefore in order to be fully alive,

I don’t have to do anything at all except be still.

The less I push, the more the world gives.

11

Amps up to eleven and pass me a beer!

I need another shot of courage…

Tough times demand tough talk

demand tough hearts demand tough songs

demand –

We can rise and fall like empires

Flow in and out like the tide

Be vain and smart, humble and dumb

We can hit and miss like pride

We can circle around like hurricanes

Dance and dream like lovers

Attack the day like birds of prey

Or scavengers under cover

Look in –

To the eye of the storm

Look out –

For the force without form

Look around –

At the sight and the sound

Look in look out look around –

We can move with savage grace

To the rhythms of the night

Cool and remote like dancing girls

In the heat of the beat and the lights

We can wear the rose of romance

An air of joie de vivre

Too-tender hearts upon our sleeves

Or skin as thick as thieves’

rising falling at force ten

we twist the world and ride the wind

Look in –

Look the storm in the eye

Look out –

To the sea and the sky

Look around –

At the sight and the sound

Look in look out look around –

“FORCE TEN”

Words by Neil Peart and Pye Dubois,

Music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson

RUSH - HOLD YOUR FIRE

Released: September 8, 1987

Mercury/PolyGram

12

Hey Doc,

Regarding that recording of Ray Walston (also my favorite Martian), I certainly hope so. Any other explanation is just way too scary.

13

Got that right…one of the things that rattles my cage ( and there admittedly are many ) is that the Spicolis of the world are held up as somebody to emulate. Having had a couple of such useless twits working for me, briefly and not by choice, I’d hold them up, all right. Ideally over an open fire.

And they are held in some esteem by the same ones who are whining about jobs and technology leaving the country and going to places where you can bet they pay a little attention in any kind of schooling they can get. And they don’t punctuate every sentance with ‘duuuude’.

What’s worse, I wonder how many could answer the question on that blackboard…

doc…

14

I like the first answer best. You’re right doc, so I don’t think I’ll worry about it.

15

Well. the thing is that rather than wasting an otherwise perfectly good hour or many that could be spent surfing, making something or ( my favorite) with a blissful afternoon hammock session…

Do, invent, be, think… and do it for yourself. Be generous with what you learn and let your curiosity take you to new places.

If you’ve come up with something good, it’ll get recognised for what it is sooner or later. And likewise , it’ll go away if it’s simply looney. Evangelism isn’t really worth the time.

Yes, there are exceptions, but in the main the better idea wins out eventually, until it’s supplanted by a better idea. Otherwise, what’s the point of it all?

I was gonna say something in the recent ‘what if’ thread, where the question was posed of roughly ‘what new surf thing would you make, technology not yet invented not an obstacle’ …the available technology drives what can be done.

Consider Babbage’s mechanical computers made with gears and shafts and such and how nothing really came to fruition until a paradigm shift to electronics…and we wind up with a discussion of the nth generation descendant of an ancient Polynesian/Hawaiian recreational activity on an nth generation descendant of the Difference Engine. Hell of a note, no? You wouldn’t think that more knowledge and use of the physics of gallium and silicon would lead to a change in how we talk about and learn about surfboards, but there we are.

What will happen when a usable high temperature superconductor appears on the scene? Will it affect surfing? For my money, yes. And a myriad of other things. Keep watching, it’s gonna be fun…

doc…

16

if you contact the masses , how many actually LISTEN ??

And do anything with what they’ve heard ?

17

I guess it’s probably the same old story…‘I’ll try it if you do’…‘but I’ll only try it if everyone else does’.

Glad so many here do their own thing.

18

do we really want to contact the masses. we would end up with all those kooks and idiots that think their so cool becasue they got the latest boardies from volcom and a new 6’0 epoxy board that doesnt work in their local surf.

i am quite happy being one of the lucky who was able to stumble across the holy grail of surfboard construction.

it would be nice if everyone had a good idea of what was going on but the continous " surf culture push by the maedia will never lead to a smart surfing society.

19

The masses I meant are the boardmaking masses, although I guess eventually that becomes the board using masses.

The last thing I want is more people telling me stuff like… ‘I’ve been surfing two years, of course I’m experienced. I know you’ve been making boards for over twenty years, but this is what I want because I know it will work for me’.

On a rare occasion it’s true, more often not.

I think the best advice I could give anyone now is look here, and spend a few weeks searching the archives for everything they need to know.

Then, if all is understood (yeah, right!), they can make their own board.

20

Wildy,

Look around at what the guitar manufacturers have come up with. They have a good solution that is similar to what the surfboard industry is faced with at this point in time.

Check the difference in what a CUSTOM HANCRAFTED versus a FACTORY CRAFTED versus an IMPORT (all the same design) cost out at. Do it right now. Then come back to the next sentence…

No cheating! Get off this site. You back? Now relax. Close your eyes. Get someone to rub your shoulders.

Feel better? When people see you stoked at the beach with whatever the flavor of the week it is, with that big smile on your mug, how can you lose?

EXTRA CREDIT: Clean up your garage and check yourself into Swaylanon