…just seeing the Swaylock s HOME page,
when Surfing m crap will do a real board builder issue or a real shaper or a real craftman?
when will be a complete issue about new ways to do the stuff? not a small 1 page nothing?..
almost all, like always, are businessmen not craft people or crew, in those articles
It’s a pretty simple formula. The magazines are about what sells. First you sell the image - hence the articles on exotic travel locales, the pretty boys and the contests. Then you use the image to sell the stuff worldwide, whether it’s L.A. or Kansas City or Madrid. Clothing, shoes and sandals, sunglasses and trunks. Whatever vendors will purchase the adspace. That’s it.
Shapers and glassers don’t make enough money to buy adspace any more than do the factory drones pumping out those sandals and sunglasses. The mags give shapers just enough lip service to perpetuate the image, and only then because they need that image to sell more stuff.
Besides, a single print ad can only convey a very short and simple message. That’s why the big mags look more like comic books than newsmagazines. Excluding the big three the message most shapers want to get out is a lot deeper than that. Going forward, I think that the online venues will be where the trendsetters (continue to) go to see what’s up. That’s where the shapers will be able to shine, leastwise the ones who can take advantage of the format.
GDaday you are so on with this one, I see the internet as being a viable medium to 6 billion people, even if many of them only have computers made of sticks and mud.
This months issue of Surfing Ego plastered with the triumvirate, only to be on the bottom of the bird cage next month.
The net is available for years at a time to go back to, I get almost 100% of my inqui8ries fro these pages and searches for my work.
I would love to stroke my EGO with big, colorful, expensive ads of potential world champs riding South East Slingshot Reef on the latest Maynard G. Crebs model, but I have alreaady been rejected bt the glossy print mags as being a “production” shaper with a lack of irony about my story.
maybe I could amputate a few fingers or put out an eye, wait I already did that.
Maybe I could get on national TV during a sweep of delinquent child support Dads, doh!
Oh, I don’t have anything ironic enough, I’ll never get to be a star
I will never have the shaping skills you have and am fine with what i do have.
In the late 80’s when working as the main shortboard shaper at T&C we sent a board i had made at Jack Revees sanded by my freind with my fins on it to Surfing Mags Manufacturers shootout.
The only thing T&C was the sticker.
It won and i made some for the staff.
I never got a phone call.
10 years latter pro longboarding was going off.
Dino Miranda won the world championship on my board in 10ft Makaha surf.
I never got a phone call.
Jim and Greg - God bless you guys…
I think, I wonder if anyone cares what I do, or, when I get a local ripper to ride one of my boards, then it’s just him, and then to read about some tips of the reality you guys have lived with…
I’m just happy to ride my boards.
And, I’m glad to get helpful input from shapers of your status.
Thanks again and Mahalo -
The bitchin part is, the newest magazine article says that the master craftsmen have returned, from where?
We have been here all along in the trenches, day after day, year after year, making only a fraction of the 90 day disposible sanded finish “performance” boards, but still pulling out the stops on a regular basis to shape, add art, glass, fin, hotcoat, install plugs and boxes, sand, add more art, gloss and polish.
Unless it is the famed Orville Preston model with the pressed Makaha Cockaroach fin, we just don’t exist.
The amusing thing is, we are now a collection of white to grey haired, mostly men, who hear all to often, “you guys build an alright longboard”.
Who was it back in the end of 1967 got on board to redesign the surfboard and chop 3 feet off it, the same bunch of white haired old men, that’s who.
Jim,
I want to buy one of those Pressed Makaha Cockaroach Fins! How much? On another topic, you are so right, WE were the ‘‘shortboard revolution!’’ Of course, the definition of ‘‘shortboard’’ has changed over the years. Most people don’t know that by 1971 it was not uncommon to be shaping sub six foot boards, down to 5’ 2’‘. In Hawaii, in 1968, any board under 9’ 0’’ was a Mini Board. Remember the Greg Noll Bug? I know you do. Those were good days, eh.
There was a true flowering of design creativity at that time. ‘‘Breakthroughs’’ seemed to come on a weekly basis. Guys today don’t know what they missed.
You geev-em, Brah!
…you guys are the giants…the shoulders on which we all stand… pro, hack, newbie, Chinese factory labor…
Fear not. Everybody worth their salt knows.
so I read///
an I think,
I am incureable
I selecrt a song from
memree banx
sly said it ,did he write it?
EVERYBODY IS A STAR
I CAN feel it when
You shine on me
it wasn’t the first verse
the greatest break
the second verse first line,
the sister,dont know her
I dont think I ever seen her
she Is a sister of mine
she touched my soul
so many times
I am replaying it again
the youtube makes it posible
three times over so far
I searched it and
can play it over and over
they do it again after th
ba ba bap ba ba ba ba
break
an there the ba ba ba goes again
sylvester stew art of the craft
was the epitome of the shooting star
the slow burn is a blessing
to achieve and maintain obscurity
obscurity is a refuge,
sacrifice that ?
celebrity sacrifices refuge
like crucifixion ,
the shoot ups die for our sins
‘‘ever catch a shooting star’’
‘‘aint no stopping til it’s in the ground’’
obscurity is not a curse ,or an affliction,
but an open door to purity of creative expression.
as a barometer of pop-trend sure them Ga zinks
publitch schloch [cheap jewelry] gruel for the
birds on the wire massing for an attack
who is the grist for the mill other than the
ones questing the lime light
where are they now
make a list
fallen to earth
I got boxs in thhe attic
old surf GAZINES
whats thet guy’s name
can we pull the nails out of his palms?
fluffy hair in front of the biltmore
with drew harrison
pitch=ed so hard
did He move some place
become somthing else
waiting in the wings
for a twelve minute comeback.
warhol said it
fifteen minutes
take it or leave it
leave it
get it later
''WHEN YOU SHINE ON ME ‘’
shape one for no one but your greatest dream
SHAPE ONE
then another one
this is the gift of our lives
fronted for us by every ancestor
who dreamed of doing something
to satisfy that desire burning inside
to do somthing so cool
making a surfboard to fly on the water
and slip silently through the ether/void
silence in chaos and confusion
the world is the CHAOS
the magazine is the confusion
the slience is the sound
of a hand caressing a
wetsanded rail before
putting it into the water
and dipping it seaward.
I can feel it
you are shining on me.
while the din roars
in the market place
making and breaking
noteriety…
…ambrose…
brad Mc caul
may he rest
may he live
self publishing is the next logical step to overthrow the system.
when will be a complete issue about new ways to do the stuff?
tomorrow
start work now.
I got a buck to spend.
42 cents for postage
or email it for free
a cover and five pages.
any other takers?
mailing a buck will take 42 cents postage
so lets revolutional lize
paler did this
what’s next?
I just got sent a Billabong shaping video, more proof that bullshit will get you farther than being able to hold a planer in both hands.
The most rookie work I’ve witnessed by someone getting a check for what they do.
Absolutely no method to the madness, jumping from nose to tail to swallow to nose to rail.
This is the PRIME example of what I have been railing about, shit in, shit out.
jim you sat through all of it what pain that must have been
10 mins i coulnt stand anymore
I never got my phone call and now i find out i didn’t get my video either.
LOL
My silent protest is when I buy a board I only buy from the true masters. Not always easy, never cheap, but always worth it.
It’s all about image … Thanks to Mike we have sways. At least something can get done without Quick, Bong , etc approval. Reverb is dead right … ing really dropped the ball this time … the master is BACK??? What? China somehow let us down I guess???
It’s all about image … Thanks to Mike we have sways. At least something can get done without Quick, Bong , etc approval. Reverb is dead right … ing really dropped the ball this time … the master is BACK??? What? China somehow let us down I guess???
I think it was covered pretty well here also. BTW: Ing…drops the ball every single time. They just need to rename it Surfing Teen Beat.