Surfing Archives - Page 60 of 88

Perhaps the most common, or at least well-known, phrase to come from the mouths of surfers is “Surf’s up”. My guess is that we might be hearing that phrase a lot more lately because discovering that the surf IS up juts got a whole lot easier. A relatively new site called Wavewatch lets you check out how the breakers are rolling from the comfort of your office chair. That means you can get that memo done for the boss and as soon as the sets start rolling in at five feet or so you can say sayonara to the fax machine and the conference room and it’s hello ocean.

It looks like many of California’s best beaches are covered including Ventura Point, Malibu, El Porto, San Clemente, Huntington Beach, Newport at 56th Street, and Oceanside, as well as other places around the world.

Live cams show breakers in real time, and in other areas live satellite feeds show the local conditions. It’s a solid site that seems to already have a pretty good following.

Surfing Photog Bolster Dies

by Erik Olsen on Sep 18, 2006

When I was living in Newport Beach as a youngster, my friends and I would always visit the local bookstore or grocery store to check out the newest issue of Surfer Magazine. The photos in those glossies were like candy to us. Even though I wasn’t as much a hard-core surfer as some of my buddies, I still found those photos of deliciously curling waves and daredevil surf riders to be a thrill. Then, when the skateboarding scene hit So Cal (of which I was much more a part), photos of dudes on half pipes or tearing down asphalt on new polyurethane wheels became cool.

I never really committed to memory many of the photographers’ names who were part of these two tectonic cultural movements in SO Cal, but one name all these years has stuck with me. And the person to whom that name is attached is now dead.

Warren Bolster was considered by many to be one of the world’s top surf and skateboarding photographers and was instrumental in helping the surf/skate glossies lure thousands of young men like me to peruse the pages of their magazines. He was a master of new angles and techniques, like the fish eye lens, and affixing a camera to the front of the board of he world’s best surfers (EVERYONE has seen these shots). The chances are, even if you are not a devoted surfing fan, you have seen some of his photos.

His work was published in major surfing magazines in the United States, Australia, Europe, Brazil and Japan, as well as other publications including Sports Illustrated and The Honolulu Advertiser. So sadly, Bolster is gone and the world has lost one of the great sports photographers.

Surf’s Up in Jersey

by Erik Olsen on Sep 17, 2006

No matter how much people here try to convince me that the surfing on the East Coast, particularly near New York City, is good, I simply don’t believe it. I’ve been to the Hampton’s and Montauk and to the Rockaways and the surf even at its best has never seemed quite as fine as a good day in San Clemente or Huntington.

But I could be wrong. I confess I’m a lousy surfer and am also forever biased towards West Coast surf because that’s where I grew up. But all that said, things can’t be too bad here because this article in Surfer says New Jersey is a true blue hot spot.

According to Surfer magazine editor Chris Mauro, the number of surfers in New Jersey has quadrupled in the last 10 to 15 years as people from the Garden State take to the waves with a passion they once reserved for Bruce Springsteen. Who knows for sure if it’s true, but maybe I’ll have to check it out one of these days. At the very least it’s nice to see NJ get some ink for something other than bad smells along the turnpike. (oh, by the way, the photo here is NOT New Jersey)

Blank Monday

by Erik Olsen on Aug 25, 2006

A while back, I posted a blurb about a company called Clark Foam that went out of business, thus reducing overnight by some 80-plus percent the number of available “surf blanks” available to the surfboard manufacturing community. It was a small, rather odd story, but one that had huge repurcussions for surfers.

The New Yorker last week ran a fabulous story by William Finnegan called “Blank Monday” on the story, which sadly, is not online, but you should get a copy if you can find one and/or Nexus search it. Finnegan is the best-selling author of Cold New World: Growing Up in Harder Country and A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique, co-author with Matt Warshaw of The Encyclopedia of Surfing. He is a world-trotting surfer and a fabulous writer. Check it out if you’re able.