I’ve been putting off the this sad topic but I might as well bring this into the forum. Matt Warshaw just spent years of his life and $70,000 of his own money (plus his $50,000 advance) to publish the Encyclopedia of Surfing. The ultimate in non-essential trivial surfing factoids. Has anyone had a chance to check this thing out? To me it’s the perfect way to round out the Dark Days of Surfing. Alot of you are going to get this thing as a X-mas gift from relatives that know you surf. The book is bizarrely funny at times and maybe someone can invent a fun drinking game that revolves around it. Notable omissions are jail times, date rapes and rip-offs committed by many surf “legends”. (In the interests of being “Fair and Balanced”- author`s note, Encyclopedia of Surfing): I told someone it was like straightening out the closet, except it took almost four years instead of most of the weekend. It wasn’t supposed to sound dismissive. For me, this kind of work?planning, organizing, culling and arranging?is really satisfying. Still, the Encyclopedia advance money was gone after 18 months, and from that point on I went deeper into the red and spent more and more time in this sunless, airless cave of an office, overshooting the deadline by weeks, then months, then more than a year. Surf writer/drifter Ben Marcus actually advised me, in print, to “get a life.” And he was right. It wasn’t like I thought the Encyclopedia would be anything but a monster. It just turned out to be twice as big and monstrous as I imagined. Near the end I blew up two printers trying to get out the 1,739-page double-space first draft. But rarely was the Encyclopedia boring or tedious, never once did I regret taking the project on, and I woke up every morning looking forward to the work. Research assistant and right-hand man Nathan Myers, hired in late 2000, was a godsend; a big, funny, shambling, efficient work partner and friend, and ballast for the whole project. Marcus Sanders came on in early 2002 and was also a giant help. Surfing itself kept opening up before us in ways that were unexpected, comical, beautiful, silly, touching. Putting together the Encyclopedia was both sadistic and wonderful. Not an experience I’d care to repeat, but I wouldn’t exchange it for anything. Matt Warsaw http://www.mattwarshaw.com/books/eos/ 
Matt, Sounds intriguing. Best of luck with this long overdue endeavor.
I had a chance to briefly flip through the book and liked what I saw. Good job! I can’t wait to go back and see what you wrote about one of the most significant, revolutionary subjects in recent surf history… SWAYLOCK’S! You did remember to include Swaylock’s in the encyclopedia, right???
Just got my copy yesterday…Guess who’s listed in the L section??? Thanks to Mr. Warshaw, seems he did it more for the love of the sport than anything. Hope its a success. Derek
Matt, I got a copy two or three weeks ago from the University Book Store up here in Seattle (advance copy?). You did a great job. I remembered it since reading an article in TSJ a while back. Thanks!