BA HUMBUG
You ask a nonsense question that has no answer. You already Knew that.
Would you like some help building your next board? NO ! You just want to clog the pipe… Go away…
BA HUMBUG
i think we are talking about “cool”
not soul (dont believe in it anyway really)
and even then its the not the board
how many cool boards hang on dorks walls never ridden
or a kid on piece of foam in a bali shore break
thats cool man
Quote:
BA HUMBUG
You ask a nonsense question that has no answer. You already Knew that.
Would you like some help building your next board? NO ! You just want to clog the pipe… Go away…
BA HUMBUG
So many good post to respond to. Good one Sting. Example: Soul when was IT lost? As if IT ever existed other than in the minds of a few or the pages of magazines. We all use surf talk from time to time, and I think thats where it mostly fits. Right along with Stoke, Dude and Mr. Hand.
Here are some memories of my youth with no magazine words to put on them: My first surf trip listening to Candy O, Styx, Rush, Sabbath and The Blues Brothers. One of us had a single the other an old school twin. We stayed with hippies, a surf Nazi and wallowed with many a few beautiful women. Life was good cause we still lived at home and didn’t have bills to clutter our fun. I have had many a good times surfing since I learned how to do it better, but none like the memories of when it was new. I still love it though. Is that soul?
I second the sentiments of Stingray.
This discussion belongs somewhere else, as do may of the discussions currently on the first page.
Build something, take some pictures, post them, ask build related questions, get advice.
That’s Swaylock’s soul!
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I second the sentiments of Stingray.
This discussion belongs somewhere else, as do may of the discussions currently on the first page.
Build something, take some pictures, post them, ask build related questions, get advice.
That’s Swaylock’s soul!
Science, technology, and craft…they don’t exist without outside influence.
The equation usually looks like this: $$$$$ vs. Stoke/Art/Soul
That doesn’t mean you can’t have meaningful “progress” or improvement from either or both, but ask youself in this modern world just how many good vibrations emanate from the corporate bottom-line feeders?
Nels
I didn’t say it isn’t an interesting topic. I just said it belongs somewhere else. Either a new section on Swaylock’s or on another forum.
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I didn’t say it isn’t an interesting topic. I just said it belongs somewhere else. Either a new section on Swaylock’s or on another forum
I find it interesting that another section has not been created here at Swaylock’s for these “digressions” (my word and quotes)…my personal feeling is that non-construction/design dimension topics influence design and construction down the road…and that includes having some topics pop up again and again. Flogging a dead horse? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just going at a problem infinitely until we’re sure there is no solution/twist/secret passageway into something new.
I’m wary of dividing up things into too neat niches…that’s practically a form of “branding”, if not without value.
I don’t know that anyone could get a true sense of what I’m about to say by going through archives, but if there were some way to show side by side Swaylock’s content and print and other online content over the past 5 years and correlate that with an accurate snapshot of The Surfboard 5 years ago and what it is today I do believe that data would show that what has gone on here, even if not hugely influential, was ahead of the knowledge/progress curve on everything except maybe corporate offshore manufactured boards. And the fact there is any general discussion in surfing at all about the social value of those products may well be influenced by Swaylock’s.
Western society is dumbing down, surfing is being reduced to fashion along with everything else, and even the internet is struggling to keep from being exclusively just another business tool…but Swaylock’s remains on the cutting edge of thought in the surf world, and everybody is welcome to visit and participate (within wide boundaries). Contrast that to actually going to the beach, getting judged by your vehicle, your wetsuit, your surfboard label…yikes!
Nels
I didnt read the Industry ''section ‘’ for months…
I slowed my posting yet again when I got busy
with the real arts
yeah a poetry corner
and a fashion corner for when
the mood strikes
to discuss a fine set od prada
deck booties with
them little white seall linings…
yeah where do you get off mixing culture and the like with
catalyst measured in a milliliter flask
and a picture of my new fish?
…ambrose…
yep another perch.
skwak!
Quote:
I second the sentiments of Stingray.
This discussion belongs somewhere else, as do may of the discussions currently on the first page.
Build something, take some pictures, post them, ask build related questions, get advice.
That’s Swaylock’s soul!
Swaylocks is about ideas as much as technology. I always wonder why folks feel a need to get uptight about it though. Go to another thread if you don’t like it. It’s that simple.
After shaping all my boards since '89 and falling into a shaping slump for the last couple of years, I recently purchased a used molded epoxy pop out, specifically an 8 ft . Bonga Perkins model shaped by Carl Schaper. I really was’nt expecting too much from this board, but to say the least, I was pleasantly surprised at how it rides. I’ve been hearing all the rants and raves of the new technologies for the last few years and from my experience I’ll have to say that this board is a viable option to the traditionally hand shaped PU/POLY boards. Although that soulful connection you get from riding something you’ve shaped yourself is absent, everything else is there. It paddles as well as can be expected of a board of this length, turns easy, has decent speed and is just fun to ride. I’m glad I kept an open mind to what is available out there and although it took me a while to try one, I’m glad I did.
I’ve just bought a used Southpoint Bonga 6’6" but for a very good reason. I’m planning on taking the family off for a 6 week road trip in the middle of the Australian summer.
I don’t want to take any of my poly boards to have them locked up and baking in the car or stolen from our tent.
Let the Bonga bake and be stolen if it must.
They seem incredibly tough.
If I like surfing it I can walk into a surfshop that sells them and buy another.
I can’t do that with my other poly boards.
Does it have a soul?
I don’t know but it will burn in the hell of a hot car for its sin of being mass produced in a Thai factory.
Personally I think the potential for and existence of “imperfections” is precisely what gives something “soul”!
Soul is the opposite of cold, calculated precision. Its a beat that ignores the metronome and swings instead. Its personal, unique, and unrepeatable. Its new each time, evolving constantly, often by ‘brilliant mistakes.’
Waves have soul because so many factors combine that no two waves and no two seconds of surfing are ever the same. The ocean is not a field/pitch/court/track that remains stationary and reproducible. And it can’t be dominated or controllable by man in a factory or board room.
Which brings me to personal motivation. If its to praise, to learn, to love, to understand… then it has soul. If it’s to fulfill personal greed and obtain more than one’s neighbors, either more fortune or more fame, then its unlikely to have soul. Soul can be found in giving, showing, helping, sharing. It isn’t found in the motivation to dominate a market and drive others to mowing lawns. It’s not found in the motivation to be “better”, or belief in the possibility of being “better”, than others. It’s found in the understanding that there is only difference not perfection. It is found in humility, not pretentiousness, in tolerance not exclusion.
associations i have with soul:
Zen
Punk
Individuality
Soul comes from humans that are able to instil some life force into dead matter. So a shaper connects with a surfer through a board. And that can also mean connecting with yourself, when you make boards for yourself.
So materials are irrelevant, but mass produced boards from Asia definitely don’t have it. And that’s where norms and values come in: they’re cheap and strong, will you sell your soul in exchange for one? Do souls disappear?
i just dont believe in gods or souls or anything
Fair enough! Talking bout these things may kill whatever spiritual aura comes with a petrochemical product anyway… Oh, did it again.
Personally, I find hand shaping a pain in the ass. But maybe I’m putting it in the wrong hole. But give me a pre shape any day of the week. Saves me a hell of a lot of work.
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I second the sentiments of Stingray.
This discussion belongs somewhere else, as do may of the discussions currently on the first page.
Build something, take some pictures, post them, ask build related questions, get advice.
That’s Swaylock’s soul!
Swied, man,
If I was sitting in a lounge room full of intelligent people and they were all forced to talk only about building surfboards…
I’d go mad…
Yeah swaylockers are obsessed with boards, but the world is big and we’re in it.
Josh
Soul?
Funny…on the one hand I’m with Stingray, Sweid, Solo, etc. As the traffic has gone up here the OT threads seem to have gone up too. Do we need abstract philosophical debates here? Don’t we have other outlets in our lives for that? Maybe it’s me. Because I’m such a newbie, I’m eagerly digging for meaningful surfboard info and I get tired of having to page through the threads to leapfrog over non-board building stuff like “What’s Soul?..” Maybe the veterans have got the building thing so dialed-in they’re just looking for something interesting. A little controversy or philosophy will catch most peoples interest.
On the other hand, the question is posed and judging by the response level it’s clearly compelling. Hence there mass response.
Sway’s is great. Personally, I think it’s moving back to being more board focused and I like it.
thoughts… bouncing around in my head…
my soul tells me not to give my financial support to governements and
big business in countries that opress and exploit the working/bottom class…
of course my soul is also nagging at me that on a certain level my own
country/government is doing the same…
there is no soul in an inanimate object…
something about evil succeeding when good men/women stand by and
do nothing…
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Soul?
As the traffic has gone up here the OT threads seem to have gone up too. Do we need abstract philosophical debates here? Don’t we have other outlets in our lives for that? Maybe it’s me. Because I’m such a newbie, I’m eagerly digging for meaningful surfboard info and I get tired of having to page through the threads to leapfrog over non-board building stuff
Well Ryan, it isn’t just about you, amigo! No offense intended. Think of it this way: without any thinking beyond technological methods we’d have stagnation both in materials and construction practices but also in design and hence surfing itself. You want to know what boring and being tired is? Try twenty years of essentially the same surfboard design being ridden by everybody. Some old guys called such a period “the Noseriding Era” and others just say “Pro Surfing”. The absolute beauty of Swaylock’s as it stands is that there are people around here who span nearly all the eras of surfing and generally have their mental faculties intact and have the instinct to share the knowledge willingly. Nels