i like your style ambrose
observation without judgement
i have some regret
but!
right on ambrose… its all about voting with your dollar. Dont like it? dont buy it. THink its great but a little more expensive?
will you be making a stand for something if you spend more?
Patagonia clothing is ridiculously overpriced?
Ive got a fleece jacket Ive had for 10 years… softgood… 10 years of climbing trips, big wall haul bags, endless boat trips and airplane rides. 10 years of snowboarding and back country lines. 10 years of dawn patrols…
wore it this morning and it still keeps me warm as the day I paid to much for it… when i was 17 and in high school and in no place to spend 98 dollars on a jacket.
How many 60 dollar hoodies do we all own and can they still make that same claim?
So maybe its a little patagucci, but everytime Im shopping for a piece of softgood I have to count on, they usually get my money.
Support people that take care of you, and shun those that dont. Its as simple as that.
Complaining about the state of things never gonna fix a problem, and for surf industry CEO’s, there are no problems right now. More people hopping in the water than hopping out, its up to you to teach the newbies the way it SHOULD BE.
.
Yeah, enough for sure…
Thanks for a great chat though guys! Nels gets my vote for best avatar pic and gallows humor. I can practically hear him going “Arf, arf!!” like a sea lion. Heh heh. Keith Melville for calling a halt to the MaDnEsS, and Ambrose for being out there.
It don’t matter what political stripe a person is or if he has a stripe at all, the stoke remains the same. As long as we have the waves and the stuff to make a board, or boogie, or mat, we’re stoked.
Swaylocks ad infinitum.
apologies
the question surfaced again so I responded when I probably should’ve ignored it…
sorry…
but you know me
some of this stuff is as irritating as uku’s in your shorts
bottomline…
i love to surf…
when i can…
nuff said…
out
Quote:
So why does Burton want a surfboard company?
Terje propably talked him into it. Burton snowboards suck IMHO anyway.
Next time you buy a snowboard, try www.donek.com Handmade in the US. You can even get a real custom for mucho $$$ If you ask nicely they may even do swirls.
regards,
Håvard
The economic naivete expressed by some posters in this thread is starkly evident. It’s clear that you have never been in a position of managerial or proprietary responsibility, and are too limited to even imagine the attendant realities of such a position. That you lack not only critical, consequential thinking skills but also those characteristics that make for long-term success IN ANY AREA is obvious to those who are neither lacking nor bitching/whining/moaning about the rigors of accomodation, adaptation, recognition of opportunity and risky pursuit of same.
Can someone please inform me of when it became politically incorrect to be astute and financially successful??
The have-nots, can-nots, will-nots can maintain hope that Big Gov’t will enable your deficiencies via dependency-producing protections, subsidies and entitlements. Financed, of course, by producers like Merrick.
i do agree with you about buying localy manufactured goods
BUT
i have to bite this time
if you cant compete
step out of the arena
thats the way it is
there is no way to compete in price with quality imported goods.
so the only way is through good customer service and high quality
its the same in any manufacturing business!
your comments are so out there and misguided.
at least half the people on this forum use epoxy resin to some extent!
you dont walk into a pub and start mouthing off about beer
or into a temple and mouth off about religion
its bad taste and impolite
because its not your house
epoxy is a resin
simple
its got nothing to do with your argument about imports or popout surfboards
or future unemployment!
many industries use all types of different resins for different purposes
and each different resin has different issues and different safety precautions
if you want to do some research you will actually discover that epoxy resin is very safe to use in the work place
because of low VOCS, and no styrene
and the fact that solvents are needless in epoxy layups
do you understand?
no one here wants to get into an epoxy poly debate
you can do that on surfermag
you will get a bite there straight away
its all been said at least 1000 times before in the last 2 years ive been posting here
let it go
spuut…do you really still think “epoxy” is the same as “pop-out”?
Fer goodness’ sake. I thought eyeryone was past that.
“Can someone please inform me of when it became politically incorrect to be astute and financially successful??”
Apparently it goes against the “soul” of the sport. I personally believe that its fuelled by the same group pushing the retro revival. The problem that have is that Surftech/S-Core/Brand Name made off shore boards are all excepted pretty much where ever you go. I know three “core” surfers who in the last couple of weeks brought one of the above. I walked into a shop with one of the guys and it easily had 1000 boards, my guess is not one was handshaped. Ask these guys why they didn’t go custom and they will tell you that there’s no point, they know what they want and they don’t have to wait 6-12 weeks to get it. A lot of guys feel that even when they order a custom, all they are really getting is a standard model in their choice of colour. It’s about as custom as rocking up to your local toyota dealer and buying a corolla, “sure you can have a green one, there’s one on the boat arriving in 6 weeks”.
Incidentally I brought a surftech (8’4 Robert August What I Ride) for my wife a couple of years back. I thought it would be great for her being light and easy to paddle, perfect for the small summer waves that she only ever goes out in. She is the only person who has ridden it and doesn’t like it. I struggle to get to use the thing because whenever I take it out all my friends (who are good surfers) want to use it. I even lent it a mate, who is a very good longboarder, who took it to fiji as his big wave board. The thing has copped a beating and only has a couple of gell coat chips this includes some brushes with a reef, and a failed rock off attempt by another mate (if it was on film it would win funniest home videos…cracks me up just thinking about it). Noone has ever been given stinkeye, or called a kook for riding a pop out. It seems no one really cares.
Swaylock’s Surfboard Design Forum
Swaylock’s Surfboard Design Forum
Swaylock’s Surfboard Design Forum
Swaylock’s Surfboard Design Forum
Please lock this down. It’s getting way too personal! I’m sorry that this hit such a raw nerve with some, but I never intended to sneer at custom epoxies or anything else. I was only worried about our little world.
P.s.
“The economic naivete expressed by some posters in this thread is starkly evident. It’s clear that you have never been in a position of managerial or proprietary responsibility, and are too limited to even imagine the attendant realities of such a position. That you lack not only critical, consequential thinking skills but also those characteristics that make for long-term success IN ANY AREA is obvious…”
That’s not nice. No-one else was getting snarky, and most were having a bit of a laugh with this discussion. Ease up there man. As I said before, as long as we have a wave and the stuff to make ANY KIND of surf vehicle (even a pair of fins), then we’ll be alright and no-one can take that away from us!
Awe heck… this thread does suck but just to put a bit of oil on the fire eh!
Ladies at work in Thailand at the Cobra facility…
some good reads:
http://www.reinforcedplasticsbuyersguide.com/WZ/RPlastics/latest_feats/months_features/000043/show/
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2005/09/01/8277774/index.htm
Quote:
Can someone please inform me of when it became politically incorrect to be astute and financially successful??
Quote:
Awe heck… this thread does suck but just to put a bit of oil on the fire eh
Okay…I’m surprised this thread is still going…we don’t have to keep looking at something if it upsets us though…
That said, for some of us - especially me - there seems to be quite a challenge to be “astute and financially successful” as both a consumer and businessperson without growing horns and a pointy tail, especially in the surf/action sports world. It’s less about political correctness than ethics.
I’m OK with this thread still being alive. It’s a topic that keeps poping up anyway.
Everyone needs to work and make money to survive. Making money off surfing seems better than making it building weapons of mass destruction, or working for an oil company, or flipping burgers, or wearing a suit and generating mounds of useless paperwork, or… most other jobs I can think of.
I’m in the surf industry, and I like being able to pay my bills. Heck, I’m even friends with Randy French - who by the way is a core surfer that hasn’t lost the stoke. Ask any of the fifty plus shapers who are making boards with Surftech what they think. Velzy was the first. Was he a poser? Robert August shapes more customs than ever before, but they sell more of his surftech models than most others. Al Merrick sells somewhere north of 500 surftech models a month. Does he make crappy boards? - don’t actually answer that one. Surftech isn’t an evil empire. Cobra factory workers are happy… and paid well compared to those around them. They need to eat too.
Choose what’s right for you with your wallet or hands and sweat. The simple fact is… there are many many surfers who don’t care (or know the difference) what they ride. Most surfers are weekend warriors who’s boards spend more time collecting dust than catching waves.
We treat surfing like a religon - I know I do - but we all relate in our own way. I like my customs, but I don’t want to deprive others from having the tools they need to worship - maybe all they can afford or attain is a plastic Jesus, not a hand carved, gold plated, wood one - does that make them less devout?
The best surfer is the one with the biggest smile.
Unlike a Disney cartoon where the bad guys are REALLY evil and the good guys are well, REALLY good, there are always gray areas along with the extremes.
I remember seeing the cozy little Vail/Heavenly resort transformation at Lake Tahoe a couple of years ago and thinking “Great, now it’s really f’d up.”
Turns out that they’ve adopted wind energy and allegedly (not sure of details) run the entire place on wind generated energy credits. They aren’t actually running on wind power but they are subsidizing the industry to the extent that they match their own usage from grid.
Maybe not so evil after all. Or maybe I’ve just bought into their evil marketing scheme???