HUCK Magazine The Scott Bourne Issue (Digital Edition)

SCOTT BOURNE SKATING’S

vol. 03 issue #011 made in the uk £3.75 scott bourne by stÉphAnie solinas

DARK GENIUS

NYC SURF

BY JAMIE BRISICK HOW EGON SCHIELE SHAPED MY SKATING

BY GEOFF McFETRIDGE

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5

www.surfgotcha.com

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Photo: Jonnie Craig

fly53.com fly53store.com

KAMALEI ALEXANDER

www.analogclothing.com 13

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In an agonisingly personal interview, the HUCK cover star gives a powerful account of his troubled identity as a son of the South, his disenchantment with America and his eventual decision to swap San Francisco for a flat by the Seine. Beyond tribulations of the self, Bourne goes on to paint a grim picture of the world today, despairing at technology’s power to erase memory (“we are leaving nothing of value behind”) and urging those interested in a meaningful connection to reach out and make contact (“are you out there?”). Far more contemporary poet than skateboarding cliché, Scott is horrified by the mass of men who pile into the Ikeas of our world every weekend as CCTV and credit card transactions monitor their every move. “Orwell was a prophet!” he exclaims.

But buried beneath the pile of resentment lies a glimmer of hope. The hope is Scott himself. Without the likes of Bourne, many of us might very well continue our cruise control shopping adventure through history without ever pondering what the hell this thing we call life is really all about.

His interview, the most candid and powerful this magazine has ever run, is on page 50. We urge you to check it out.

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50 SCOTT BOURNE skateboarding’s dark genius.

58 NEW YORK WAVES surfing out the concrete.

62 LANCE MOUNTAIN memoirs of a skate legend.

66 O’NEILL HIGHLAND OPEN surfing the deep north.

70 SNOWBOMBING fancy dress and heavy beats in the austrian alps.

72 GEOFF MCFETRIDGE on art, skating and egon schiele.

76 BEYOND INCUBUS guitarist mike einziger pens a new symphony.

80 BMX SWEAT paying respect to the men on two wheels. mattia zoppellaro

86 DOWNHILL SKATING cape town’s underground skaters take to the hills.

92 DONAVON FRANKENREITER new album, same long hair.

▼

94 LIVIN’ THE DREAM fuck nine-to-five. this is the life.

102 BRIXTON THROWDOWN b-boy battles, south london style.

112 WE LOVE CAPS! roaming the streets for the best hat-wearers in town.

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contents. huck #011

22 summer’s here 24 sunny garcia 26 harold hunter 28 awesome color 30 van men 32 mike maldonado 34 bowlriders 38 travis rice 42 malcom campbell 44 river surfer 46 garbage warrior

▼

Paul Calver

▼

front 118 endangered vinyl 120 music 122 film 124 dvds 126 games 128 books 130 short story

SPENCER MURPHY

the

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back

Publisher & Editor

Vince Medeiros

Editorial Director

Matt Bochenski

Creative Directors

Rob Longworth & Paul Willoughby

Associate Editor

Andrea Kurland

www.thechurchoflondon.com Snow Editor

Skate Editor

Music Editor

Zoe Oksanen

Jay Riggio

Translations Editor

Markus Grahlmann Associate Publisher

Website Editor

Alex Capes

Marketing & Distribution

Danny Miller

Global Editor

Phil Hebblethwaite Junior Designer

Victoria Talbot

Advertising Director

Ed Andrews

Jamie Brisick

Steph Pomphrey

Advertising Manager

Dean Faulkner

Text

Simon Buck, Tim Donnelly, Gemma Freeman, Miles Masterson, Geoff McFetridge, Sam Mellish, Mike Regan, Melanie Schönthier, Cyrus Shahrad, Alex Wade, Olly Zanetti Images

Nate Bressler, Simon Buck, Paul Calver, Sam Christmas, Amin Gray, Brantley Gutierrez, Richard Johnson, Al Mackinnon, Gary Manhine, Geoff McFetridge, Jonathan Mehring, Sam Mellish, Spencer Murphy, Mr. Salih, Scott Soens, Stéphanie Solinas, Mark Taplin, Jorn Tomter, Bertrand Trichet, Tim Zimmerman, Mattia Zoppellaro HUCK is published by HUCK LIMITED Studio 209 Curtain House 134-146 Curtain Road London EC2A 3AR United Kingdom

Distributed worldwide by COMAG UK distribution enquiries: andy.hounslow@comag.co.uk Worldwide distribution enquiries: graeme.king@comag.co.uk

Editorial Enquiries +44 (0) 207-729-3675 editorial@huckmagazine.com

Printed by Buxton Press www.buxtonpress.co.uk

Advertising and Marketing Enquiries +44 (0) 207-729-3675 ads@huckmagazine.com ON THE COVER: SCOTT BOURNE BY STÉPHANIE SOLINAS

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Importato da Johnsons International News Italia S.p.A. Distribuito da A&G MARCO Via Fortezza 27, Milano, Italia

The articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinions of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publishers or editorial team.

The paper used on this magazine is

chlorine free and from sustainable sources.

This one’s for T-dawg. Welcome...

Swiss made – www.swatch.com

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text and photography Jamie Brisick

What I remember most about this shot is not the puzzled look on the kid’s face, but rather the little cove in Marseilles where it was taken.

We were surrounded by flesh: white, brown, black, yellow, pink, freckled, burnt, bare-breasted, Coppertone-slicked, wrinkled and semi-reptilian. The cove was about a hundred metres long, and the narrow strip of sand was so chockablock full of sun worshippers you could hardly move without stepping on a Vogue-reading French wife or a beerswilling German or a cluster of Speedo-clad kids intent on building their sandcastles the way Roman construction workers were intent on building the Eternal City. The occasional football bounced through the scene, a cacophony of different languages danced with the hiss and slap of the sea, and a kind of collective body odour co-mingled with the tropical scent of sunscreen. Best of all were the little bungalows that opened right onto the sand where half-eaten baguettes and empty wine bottles sat like still-lifes on plastic tables. It was a romantic scene that felt distinctly European, the Mediterranean version of what happens on the Atlantic in mid-August.

I remember five franc bottles of Bordeaux passed around bonfires with Austrian backpackers, Ericeira beach parties where local bands covered the Rolling Stones in emphatic Portuguese, a blurry, foggy night in Cornwall where an ex-world champ sang ‘Somethin’ Else’ and a certain magic charged the air. I recall Mercedes panel vans covered in surf stickers and draped with wet wetsuits, showers in beachfront parking lots, cereal eaten from plastic bowls by sun-scorched surfers who hadn’t shaved or run a comb through their hair in weeks, but had slithered across enough early morning glass to fend off cancer, or at least get them through the winter.

Something about sand between the toes, dried salt on the skin, and that rapturous, muted roar of the ocean...

REMINISCENCES OF A EUROPEAN SUMMER.

Photo from Jamie Brisick’s We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations, Consafos Press.

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text ED ANDREWS photography AL MACKINNON

“The water may be a little cold but with all the new wetsuits nowadays, it doesn’t matter. Scotland is just a great place, with some great waves,” proclaims Sunny Garcia, Hawaii’s most famous power surfer.

Despite the chill factor, Thurso, on the north coast of Scotland, seems to have impressed the former world champion. His current stint on the World Qualifying Series has brought him to these rugged shores for the O’Neill Highland Open, with the firm aim of getting back onto the ASP World Tour and reclaiming the title he won back in 2000.

As a self-proclaimed risk taker known for his short temper, aggression and lack of self-doubt, Sunny made a name for himself as a one of the best surfers on the ASP tours of yesteryear. But it was none of these qualities that led to his undoing. Rather, it was an inability to declare his financial

Former World Champion Sunny Garcia is fresh outta prison and back in the game.

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winnings that saw him fall foul of the US Inland Revenue Service. In October 2006, Sunny was sentenced to three months in prison for tax evasion and spent a further seven months under house arrest, leaving him itching to get back to what he refers to as “his job”.

“When I was in prison I trained every day and I ran a lot. I definitely knew that I was going to get back on the tour,” he says with typical confidence.

“My main motivation was to be the oldest guy to re-qualify.”

Sunny is willing to acknowledge that, at thirty-eight, he’s viewed by some as somewhat over the hill. “Some of these kids on tour, I was in the top ten before they were even born. But as soon as you get in the water, the difference is not that big,” he says defiantly. “I just use everything I can, that’s what I do when I compete. I’ll try to make them nervous and then take advantage of that.”

But don’t go thinking that prison – something Sunny described in a recent interview as “a holiday” – has mellowed the surfer. He still firmly lives up to the bad-ass attitude that made him such a formidable opponent: “People say that if you keep knocking on the door, someone will open it. I say just kick the door in, who cares who is on the other side. I just want to get back in and make my presence known.”

SAL 23. ETNIESSKATE.COM ETNIES, SAL BARBIER AND IN4MATION PROUDLY INTRODUCE THE REINVENTION OF THE AXEL CRUYSBERGHS AND ALESSANDRO MAGNANI ETNIES EUROPEAN TEAM: DOMINIK DIETRICH, CHARLES COLLET, JULIAN FURONES, JUERGEN HORRWARTH, WILLOW, TUUKKA

KORHONEN,

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text Jay Riggio photography Paul Calver

Throughout history, there are events that more or less end eras. They are turning points in time that signify what was lost and what has yet to be found. The 1969 Altamont Speedway Festival violence and Manson family murders both marked the end of a generation.

And in 2006, Harold Hunter’s death too marked a turning point. It was the end of an era for the countless lives that knew him and for the city that became synonymous with his character. And since Harold’s untimely death, New York has been characterised by a time that is pre- and post-Harold Hunter.

This summer hundreds of skaters and spectators came together at the Chinatown Manhattan Bridge Skatepark to take part in the second annual Harold Hunter Day celebration. The picture-perfect day was matched only by the energy of the crowd that showed up to pay their respects, remember the legend and do as Harold would have­– skate. The

New York City celebrates Harold Hunter, the skate legend that will not die.

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Zoo York crew was in full attendance as Kevin Taylor, Brandon Westgate, Anthony Shetler, Matt Miller, Ron Deily and their newest am, Chaz Ortiz, cruised the street course, killing everything in site.

At first, it was easy to pinpoint the members of the Zoo crew as they each wore bright white Tees with Harold’s giant, unmistakable face stamped upon them. But as the crowd thickened, tons of Harold Tees were handed out to everyone in attendance. Soon, practically every kid, adult and random lurker in sight had Harold’s huge grill plastered on their chest. Everywhere you looked, there was Harold beaming at you, as if the man had been there, under the bridge, skating alongside his friends, relatives and neighbours.

Other cameos for the day included Jeff Pang, DJ Vinny Ponte, Rodney Torres, Billy Rohan, Jay Maldonado, Giovanni Reda and the one and only Chad Muska, swarmed by tikes and single mothers as if he were Macaulay Culkin in his prime. Tons of product was tossed away, some amazing skating went down, good times were shared and, above all, a NYC legend was thoroughly remembered. Harold himself said it best before he left us all, “Legends never die.” He couldn’t have been more right about that.

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text Phil Hebblethwaite photography Gary Manhine

Ever had one of those nights when you head out to a gig because you’ve got a hunch it will be good even though you only know one band on the bill? You usually wish you hadn’t bothered, right? December 6, 2006 was different. Venue: The Old Blue Last in east London. The bill, in order of appearance: The Bellmer Dolls, Zan Pan, Untitled, Musical Project and Awesome Color. All of them were outstanding, but it was Awesome Color who really split the place open. Hard astral blues with guitar solos and insane drums had all but disappeared from the musical radar. That night it returned with more force and authority than ever.

This summer saw the release of their second album, Electric Aborigines, released on Thurston Moore’s ‘Ecstatic Peace!’ label. Does it rock? Massively.

Awesome Color speak to the Sabbath, Motörhead and Stooges fan within – it’s heavy, no bullshit stuff – but they have a rough, arty edge that pulls in the Sonic Youth and Velvet Underground boffins too. Combined, it’s a crushing concoction that’s perhaps down to geography. “We definitely claim Michigan as a home,” says bass player Michael Troutman. “We have many good friends and family members there. But the band itself was formed in New York. We started by jamming together as three people because we love music. We didn’t really have any goals – we just got asked by our friend’s bands to play a few shows and that kind of got our momentum going.”

Michael was raised in various towns across Michigan; drummer and Michael’s girlfriend, Allison Busch, was brought up in Flint, where filmmaker Michael Moore is famously from; and singer/guitarist Derek Stanton hails

Their name pretty much says it all.

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from Ann Arbor, hometown of Iggy Pop & The Stooges and where the band met. As is clear from The Stooges and bands from up the road in Detroit (MC5, The White Stripes, Alice Cooper), Michigan music is muscle music – it lacks irony and poise, just like Awesome Color.

In New York, the band rehearse at an art space and venue called the Glasslands Gallery, which Derek and Allison are heavily involved in. “It’s an amazing place in Brooklyn that’s really different from any other venue in the city,” explains Michael. “They care passionately about the community and about the music that comes through. They commission new and different artists to come in and decorate the place every few months and they run a children’s after-school programme where kids can learn how to use turntables and instruments.”

Michael’s a lovely chap – a skater kid like his bandmates and with some rock‘n’roll pedigree as well. Back in Ann Arbor, he played in a hardcore band with John and Eric from noise nuts Wolf Eyes and he even worked at an IT company in New York with one of the guys from Oneida.

So, Michael, sum this up for us: where are Awesome Color at right now? “I still think of us definitely as a live band. I’m not sure that we’ve hit 100 per cent in the studio yet to cover the energy, emotion and passion that we have when we play live. We’d like to put out amazing studio records.

Hopefully that’s happened to some extent and hopefully they’ll get better as we get more experience recording.”

And are you making enough money to cover this huge European tour you’re on right now? “Well, my hair’s growing out and I can’t really return to my professional job until I can put it in a pony-tail. That would be unfortunate.” www.awesomecolor.net

text VINCE MEDEIROS photography Al Mackinnon

Escaping the system. Bet you’ve thought about it – packing away your job and moving to some remote outpost to grow herbs and rear your own pigs. But those who’ve tried it know how hard it is – and often find themselves pulled straight back into the machine like the foolish mutineers that they are.

Unless, of course, you’re England’s Chris Ireland, who’s been living in a van with his younger brother Richard for five years. His goal: to surf as much as he can.

“The whole thing stemmed from a dream of following an endless winter,” says the twenty-five-year-old Cayton Bay, Yorkshire, local. “I just put my head down, worked for five years straight and saved up to buy the van and kit it out. Then I quit my job and away we went.”

Living a Spartan life, those five years of work still subsidise him to this day. As for the van, he says it’s got all he needs, including shower, PlayStation, VCR, DVD, cable TV – and even a fish tank. “You gotta have your home comfort,” says Chris, “and I have that in my van.”

One thing he hasn’t got is central heating. So how the hell does he stay warm? “When it’s cold I keep the kettle on and keep drinking tea. Oh, and I have four sleeping bags.”

So far Chris has taken his surf pad on wheels to Scotland, Orkney, Shetland, Faroe Islands, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the latter being his most recent adventure. “The beachbreaks are really good there,” he says.

“I went to Iceland in March, the coldest month of the year, and did not see a single person in the water the whole time. It was pretty much me and the icebergs for three full weeks.”

So things seem to be moving along nicely for Chris. He gets to surf every day, drink cups of tea to stay warm, drive up to Iceland, surf some more. But can this last forever? Any chance of Chris rejoining us, getting a job, maybe a mortgage with a fixed interest rate? “Why would I?” he snaps back. “There are too many places to go to.”

But it’s perhaps friend and photographer Al Mackinnon who sums it up best: “Being self-sufficient, not paying bills and not being a slave to the man whilst living basic with the aim of going surfing – there’s something beautifully anarchic about that.”

Meet Chris Ireland, antisystemic hero du jour.

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Dog days text Mike Regan photography Jonathan Mehring

“Mike

Maldonado,

powerhouse,” says the voiceover introducing Maldonado’s section in Toy Machine’s Welcome to Hell.

Webster’s defines powerhouse as, Mike “One having great drive, energy or Maldonado: ability.” Watch any of Maldonado’s skateboarder, video parts – jam-packed with dog breeder, speed, massive ollies, monster rails, lover of and technical skating – and you’ll be reptiles. hard pressed to disagree with the dependable dictionary.

Born and raised in West Chester, PA, Maldonado had an interesting childhood. “My pops sold any kind of drug you can think of,” he recalls. “I was no more than eight years old before I saw someone bugging on PCP.” In 1986, Maldonado found skateboarding thanks to the movie Thrashin’, and by age fourteen was regularly hopping on the bus with friends to venture out to Love Park, the legendary skate spot in the city of Philadelphia that helped spawn the East Coast scene. “Even before Love Park was the place to go, it was the place to go,” Maldonado reminisces.

By 1997, he was living every skateboarder’s dream: shacked up

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East

Coast

in California with a pro model skateboard on Toy Machine skateboards.

Over the next few years, he acquired a few different sponsors, but due to industry politics, getting caught in the middle of team rivalries, and one board sponsor taking two years to get a shape right, Mike packed his bags and headed back East.

Nowadays the thirty-two-year-old is back in West Chester, where he lives with his girlfriend and more than a dozen dogs and five alligators.

“Dogs aren’t shady; they let you know if they like you from the gate!” says Mike, who was introduced to the dog breeding game by his girlfriend, but does it more for the love than the money. “People, on the other hand, are straight-up snakes.”

The alligators, which are strictly pets, reside in Maldonado’s basement during the winter months and in his backyard swimming pool during the summer. A cement swimming pool is a real estate amenity any skater would have a hard time parting with, so Maldonado had to compromise: “When they [alligators] moved in, I made a deal with them. I said, ‘You guys can have the pool in the summer, and I’ll have it in the winter.’”

Despite his lack of sponsors, Maldonado isn’t about to give up his powerhouse moniker: “I still skate every day. I might be getting older, but I got that pops power. You can’t count me out yet!”

old dogs and new tricks text and photography ED ANDREWS

Skaters past, present and future have descended on the port city of Malmo, Sweden, for the 2008 Quiksilver Bowlriders final. They’re here to compete in either the Juniors, Pros Bridging the or Masters – categories dictated by generation gap age and talent alike. One old-school at the Quiksilver legend who’s around is Dogtown Bowlriders. local Pat N’Goho. Donning a luminous green shirt, pink deck and silverstriped kneepads and helmet, he’s hard to miss against the grey concrete.

American pro and winner of last year’s ‘Best Trick’ award Dennis Busenitz is also on hand, making big transfers at breakneck speeds with his chunky headphones blocking out the surrounding cacophony. Earlier he tried unsuccessfully to enter the contest under his alias Gary Headlock – the name of his (female) dog who he takes skating with him. “I didn’t think it was a big deal, but they didn’t like it,” he laughs. “It would have confused too many people.”

As the competition gets underway, it’s clear that the standard of skating is high. But kids are kids, and the evil tyranny of time does not go unnoticed: as the Masters pull basic grinds with their wide decks and

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expanding waistlines, the kids are throwing down hardflips in skinny jeans and nu-rave sunglasses.

But some youngsters know that history counts. “Man, they were right up there when I started skating so you’ve got to give them respect,” says Ben Reamers from Colchester, England, who at just seventeen sailed through to the Pro semi-finals with plenty of props and hand slaps from Danish defending champion Rune Glifberg.

Later on, Dave Duncan hauls his lumbering frame onto a board to reclaim past glories in the Masters contest. But after a few clumsy falls, he hobbles off, wincing. “It’s hard on the body, but as long as I’m not in a wheelchair I’m gonna keep on skating,” he concedes.

Generation gap aside, some things remain the same. In the Masters final, forty-year-old Dane Nicky Guerrero drops in for his last run. His sprite and skill seem to contradict the bald patch that spreads across his head. In short, he skates like a grom: fast, light and energetic – shunning the pads and helmets favoured by his peers. Such a performance is duly recognised by the judges and, as he lifts the winning cheque for 5,000 euros at the end of the Masters, he leaps up and down frantically, his hood up despite the sunshine.

Skateboarding – it brings out the kid in everyone. www.bowlriders.com

Out Now

www.rockstargames.com/iv © 2006-2008 Rockstar Games, Inc. Rockstar Games, the Rockstar Games r logo, Grand Theft Auto and the Grand Theft Auto logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software. “ ” and “PLAYSTATION” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox LIVE and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft. All other marks and trademarks are properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved. The content of this videogame is purely fictional, and is not intended to represent or depict any actual event, person, or entity. Any similarity between any depiction in this game and any actual event, person, or entity is purely coincidental. The makers and publishers of this videogame do not in any way endorse, condone or encourage engaging in any conduct depicted in this videogame.

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text gemma freeman photography TIM ZIMMERMAN

“We’re trying to make the Planet Earth of snowboarding,” says snowboard icon Travis Rice, comparing his movie That’s It, That’s All to David Attenborough’s nature documentary. travis rice’s “We’re trying to show people that THAT’S IT, THAT’S there’s a lot of raw, fucking beautiful ALL IS AMAZING! places still left.”

The twenty-five-year-old is the brains behind That’s It, That’s All, this winter’s most anticipated snowboard film. But is it the best shred flick ever? Quite possibly.

After a screening in the Quiksilver rider’s hometown of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I’m left open-mouthed: crisp HD images of New Zealand’s stunning Southern Alps cut to Rice dropping his signature double backflip to backside 180 in Japan; mountain-dwelling deer run around the NZ backcountry and Alaskan avalanches detonate across the screen. Like Subjekt Haakonsen

back in 1997, “Wow” is an understatement.

A veteran of over fifteen snowboard movies, the Wyo wunderkid’s first foray into filmmaking was 2005’s The Community Project, produced alongside Brain Farm Productions’ Curt Morgan. The movie was a success, but the team knew they could do better. So, pairing up with the best riders in the world (Terje Haakonsen, Nicolas Müller, Danny Kass and Eddie Wall) and with the added bonus of cash, cameras and the filmmaking knowledge of snowboarder-turned-film-school-graduate Morgan, That’s it, That’s All was set to be different. “We wanted to add a scenic element to show this world through our eyes,” says Morgan.

With the help of Hollywood cinematographers, and a gyro-stabilised, heli-mountable Heligimbal camera system (as used on Planet Earth), That’s It, That’s All was never going to be a trick-after-trick freestyle cliché. Rice explains: “We didn’t want to just blow the minds of friends in the industry but capture that outside audience. If you’re twenty miles out in the backcountry, it’s difficult for people to understand. Most snowboard shots are of ▼

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people flying through the frame – but with our camera system, you can see the entire picture. It’s easier to watch for people who don’t know anything about snowboarding.”

Funded initially by Rice himself, shooting began in August 2007 in NZ, then continued in Alaska in January 2008. But, after some persuasion from the film’s Executive Producer, Circe Wallace (Rice’s manager), Red Bull and Quiksilver came onboard. “Everyone thinks we spent fifteen million,” admits Morgan. “But the film cost just over half a million for thirty months of shooting. If we had fifteen million, I’d be living in a mansion in the South of France with a maid and butler.”

Still, that’s a lot of cash for any film. So, was it risky to focus on one rider – even if they’re as self-assured as Travis Rice? “I’m a bit anal,” laughs Travis. “If you want something done right, you need to do it yourself. It was more about having the resources to go on an adventure, and just go do it ourselves.”

“Travis is a pain in the ass to work with,” adds Morgan. “But I am a far bigger pain in the ass so it balances out. We are both very serious about

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what we do so it makes for a pretty dedicated team.”

There’s little doubt that That’s It, That’s All will be a groundbreaking piece of cinema. But with the excessive amount of gas-guzzling travel it required, do its makers feel guilty? “The environment is always on my mind,” says Morgan. “I admit I drive a truck and fly in a helicopter occasionally.

Still, no one would see our beautiful footage of the world if it weren’t for that helicopter. I hope we encourage respect for this amazing planet we’ve been given.”

“We want to show people that there are places in the world which remain untouched,” says Rice optimistically. “Human kind is not so far gone that we can’t turn this thing around and make things better.”

“And yes,” adds Morgan. “We are planning to offset the carbon footprint of the film.”

That’s It, That’s All will be released in good snowboard shops in September, 2008. www.thatsit-thatsall.com

®

©2008

OAKLEY, INC. 01462 475400

Darwinian,

man text and photography Simon Buck

“It’s all about evolution, taking what we have already and developing it in order to actively evolve surfing.” Of this, Malcolm Campbell is sure.

The Californian shaper’s commitment to pushing boundaries and challenging preconceptions is as fresh today as it was forty years ago, when he and brother Duncan produced their first Bonzer surfboard.

Influenced by the seventies Australian scene at a time when short single and twin-fin boards were amassing popularity, the brothers quickly saw the limitations in those designs.

“We wanted to maintain the speed and drive of a twin without losing the stability of a single-fin and that’s where the original Bonzer came from,” explains Malcolm.

Testing their homemade boards at the local breaks of Oxnard, California, the Campbell brothers soon perfected their design and the first Bonzer was born. Their revolutionary surfboards were the first to employ a triangulated three-fin set-up, pre-dating the Thruster by over a decade.

Evolution 101 with shaping pioneer Malcolm Campbell.

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But innovation didn’t stop there. The Campbells were also the first to develop the single-to-double concave bottom, a concept originated to organise water flow and work in synergy with the three-fin setup. After sharing these designs with Pat Rawson [of Pat Rawson surfboards] in the late eighties the idea spread worldwide.

“I sign ‘peace’ on every board I make so when that person picks up their board and sees that, they’ll spend a second thinking, ‘What do they mean?’ You could see it as a prayer or salutation for peace and over time that can magnify.

We’re just trying to give as much back to surfing as it’s given us,” says Malcolm.

“It’s all about reciprocal maintenance.”

It’s thirty-seven years since the conception of the first Bonzer and twenty-six since the Bonzer 5, a five-fin design still unparalleled in speed and maneuverability. Counting Taylor Knox, Rob Machado, Dan Malloy, Mick Fanning, Mikala and Daniel Jones amongst their high-profile devotees, the Bonzers clearly have their fair share of fans. “They have some real performance benefit in any size surf,” confirms Daniel Jones.

We don’t know what we’ll be riding in another thirty years time but the Bonzer 5 may just be the key to where we go from here. And that, my friend, is what evolution is all about.

All Action, All Weather

Anytime, anywhere, in any weather. The fully waterproof* Xacti CA8 fits your palm perfectly, ready to capture those once-in-a-lifetime moments no matter what you’re doing.

Whether in stunning 60 fps video or vivid 8-megapixel stills.

Finally a camera that's ready for any adventure. *Usable to a water depth of 1.5m.

VPC-CA8 Series Waterproof Body (1.5m) VGA-Size 60 fps MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 8.1 Megapixel Stills Digital Stereo Recording Digital Image Stabilizer 5.0x Optical Zoom (60x with Digital Zoom) 2.5" Low Temperature Polysilicon TFT Colour LCD Note: Do not immerse in water at a depth greater than 1.5m (4.92 ft.) Do not immerse in water for longer than 60 minutes. After 60 minutes of use in water, allow to dry for at least 10 minutes.

Do not immerse in water that is warmer than 40°C (104°F) Do not open and close the battery/card compartment cover with wet hands.

www.myxacti.com

river surfer text Melanie Schönthier illustration MARK TAPLIN

Growing up in Oceanside, California, Elijah Mack spent his youth dabbling in crime until a run-in with some ‘bad people’ saw him flee to Phoenix, Arizona. Devoid of an ocean to surf, he stumbled upon a canal and discovered a new vice: riversurfing.

He went under the wave and came out a new man.

HUCK: Where is the best river wave in the world?

Elijah Mack: Rapid Nr. 11, also known as the Overland Truck-Eater Wave, on the Zambezi River in Africa, more than 700 miles from the ocean. It feels like the ocean – a three-meter, glassy-green, perfectly barreling wave that can hold you down for ages. And you have to share the wave with crocodiles. I wiped out there one time and that was one of the heaviest experiences I’ve had. After Skookumchuck…

What is Skookumchuck?

It’s a massive tidal exchange on the coast of British Columbia, not a river wave. When the tide is high, the water flows through this narrow pass, accelerates, rises up and creates waves between two to twelve feet. Then it broadens into a big, deep pool – the water pushing through hits the water that is still and creates these massive whirlpools that have sunk giant ships and killed people. At Rapid Nr. 11 you have to be afraid of the wave – at Skookumchuck you fear what comes behind it.

Did you get held down there?

Yeah, in 2003 I went for the first time and didn’t realise how dangerous it was. I surfed the wave with no life vest and no idea of what I was doing. I wiped out and got sucked under water. The only thought I had was, ‘I don’t want to die here’. It felt like ages but after eight seconds I finally made it back to the surface. This experience made me change my life.

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How so?

In the moment I almost drowned, I felt something bad was going on. It turned out that my father died of a heart attack during these eight seconds I was under water. He took the bullet for me because at that time I was going through a transition in my life – from what I considered to be a bad person to becoming a good man. I wasn’t committing crime, had moved from California to Oregon and just got custody of two of my three sons. Maybe I was supposed to die in that whirlpool but my father gave his life for me so I could carry on.

How’s life treating you now?

I’m very mellow now. I co-own a barbershop in Eugene, Oregon, and live in a small house with my wife and sons near the ocean and rivers. Some years ago I founded the World River Association. I had surfed about 120 different river waves and wanted people to realise that there are millions of these waves around the world and you don’t need to live by the ocean to surf. The most important thing for the future of riversurfing is to create artificial waves.

American Wave Machines is working with me to build a wave in the river in my hometown. Hopefully there’ll be a domino effect and more towns will follow.

Do you think riversurfing will ever be as popular as surfing?

I believe it will go the same course and that a huge industry will evolve around it. This is inevitable because money rules everything. But the saving grace is that it is so simple to build these waves we could just get enough to satisfy demand. When it’s big and commercial and movie stars start doing it, then I’ll go back to the ocean.

Look out for Elijah in Keep Surfing, a movie about the Eisbach river wave in Munich, out in November 2008. www.pipelinepictures.com For the full interview with Elijah check out www.huckmagazine.com.

Soul.

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4/4/07 21:55:08

built from crap text Olly Zanetti

Mike Reynolds, shaggy-haired maverick, radical architect and star of documentary Garbage Warrior, is no ordinary guy.

For Mike, mainstream Rebel architect architecture is stuck in a carbonMike Reynolds is producing rut that is killing our making mansions planet. “If humanity takes the planet out of trash. down the tube – I’m dead,” he says.

“I’m trying to save my ass, and that is a powerful force.” An architecture graduate from the University of Cincinnati, Mike realised that cans, bottles, old tyres – stuff most people chuck away – could be viable building materials.

And so, in 1972, he built his first house, from beer cans wired together into bricks.

Largely ignored by the establishment, Mike and like-minded friends set up a community of self-sufficient eco homes, or earthships. But regime change in the Taos County, New Mexico, planning department soon changed all that. His architect’s licence revoked, and building halted, Mike’s dreams seemed ruined. What was needed, he realised, was a Test Site – a place outside of conventional law where he and others like him could experiment, build houses and learn from mistakes. In Garbage Warrior, British director Oliver Hodge documents Mike’s campaign.

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Previously a prop maker for big-budget movies like Tomb Raider and The Phantom Menace, Oliver was uneasy about the environmental impact of his work. “When the oil runs out – which isn’t so far away now – we’ll look back and think it was pretty decadent to be doing all these multimillion-dollar movies.”

Oliver had long wanted to make a film with a social theme. Meeting Mike at an earthship project in Brighton, England, he realised he’d found his story.

But with everyone from Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio in on the enviro film act, do we really need another? Oliver certainly thinks so: “Films which show how we’re destroying the environment are all needed, but people are gonna feel overwhelmed. They’ve gotta feel like they’ve got a way out. And Garbage Warrior does that.”

Shot on a tiny budget, largely from his own savings, Oliver went the feature film route to get audiences interested. Mike, he thought, was the perfect hook to hold a narrative together. “There was no point in just preaching to the choir,” says Oliver, “people already into the sustainable stuff, wearing their cardigans and sandals, eating their muesli. We were trying to make a film to sell the green idea to the masses.”

Garbage Warrior is out on DVD in the US and playing festivals and selected cinemas across the UK this summer. www.garbagewarrior.com

NYC. SUMMER 1994.

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The Book The Wackness is now available in all good bookshops

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The Scott Bourne Interview: Raw And Unedited.

Interview Jay Riggio Photography StÉphanie Solinas AND bertrand trichet

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t’s not easy to sum up the man that is Scott Bourne.

He’s a maker, a man of great action and a man of even greater words. He’s a writer, a novelist, a poet, a thinker, a fearless believer in oneself and above all, an artist. His refusal to compromise has led him on a path that is as much self-reliant as it is absolutely free. Yet lingering somewhere behind these many incarnations, Scott is also a professional skateboarder. Unlike most pros, Scott has always chosen to use his voice to speak about more than what is essentially riding a wooden toy – firmly stating his beliefs in hopes of inspiring a fresh take on the world.

Four years ago, Scott fled to France from his long-time residence in San Francisco, seeking solace from an inescapable disenchantment surrounding him in the States. It was in France that Scott continued to skate and write extensively.

Spending much of his time in utter seclusion, he went on to complete a novel and a collection of poetry, the latter being recently published by one of Scott’s sponsors, Carhartt.

As I corresponded with Scott via phone and e-mail, he was in the process of banging away at a 1930’s typewriter, well on his way to the completion of his second novel. These are his words, laid bare.

HUCK: Where did you grow up?

Scott Bourne: I was born in a small town called Plantation in Florida. I was two when my family left for Virginia, then I believe five when we moved to Carolina... North! That’s where I was raised up in a Southern light.

What was your upbringing like?

My father was a minister, stern and strong, a truly wonderful human being. To this day he is the only true holy man I have ever known. Even though I do not believe in the god he loved and cherished, I have no doubt that my father is in his heaven now.

The human mind is that strong. My mother was a Tennessee girl with deep Southern roots. She needed tall trees, open fields, a garden, fresh food, a rocking chair, her children, her man, and a cold beer on the porch in the evening. My father bought her the small family farm where I was raised and my mama raised up his sons.

When did you move to California? Was it strictly to pursue skateboarding? How long were you there?

I think I was twenty when I went and finally stayed. I never went to California with that kind of dream. I went to escape my history. I was partially embarrassed to be a farm boy and when I left I ran

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as far as I could get. I felt dirty and I was trying to outrun it. Southern and unforgivably so. Born of bad blood, dirty blood. Some sort of internalised sensation that one is dirty and no matter what he does with himself he will always have this dirty sensation associated with these deep Southern roots. That accent and those half words of which I have worked so hard to dilute, erase, escape, that place, its ways, my homeland... The South! I was raised on ghosts, phantoms, superstition, folklore, moonlight and moonshine... this is what it means to be raised Southern, an un-natural connection with the natural ways of the spirit within and around. To know things you don’t necessarily wanna know, to make up words and give them meaning. A religious howl, a Bible belt, a small Southern church, just a white box below a crucifix. Smashed glass on railroad tracks and a train whistle to take us away.

How long have you lived in Paris?

I lived in the French countryside for a solid year.

Then moved into Paris about three years ago. I constantly travel throughout the world, but now I return to France instead of the US.

What brought you to France?

A series of epochs starting with a break-up with a young woman I was very much in love with. I know now that much of that break-up was based around all kinds of world experiences I was having and could not relate to her. I began to fall out of love with America and the one person that I had always been able to relate to was not relating anymore.

I took a lot of this out on her in many different ways. As a result... she left me. Good girl, it was well deserved. We had other issues as well but the bottom line was without her there was little to tie me to the States. I packed my bags and left.

You mentioned that you were once a very patriotic American. What led you to abandon that sentiment and leave the country completely?

Americans will buy whatever you sell them. They need no sales pitch. You tell them that George W Bush is president and they say, ‘OK, George W Bush is president’. I mean, come on! The problem is not that George W Bush is the president; the problem is that everyone knows that the elections were rigged and no one protested. ‘The greatest country in the world’ and no one stood up and said, ‘Hey, man! This is criminal!’ They just went back to work. Kept the machine rollin’. They have got you sedated! I have totally lost faith in the Americans. America is headed for a crash.

It’s Machiavellian. It can’t go on. No country can

be conquered unless it wants to be conquered.

The Americans really look as if they want to be conquered. I have never been against oppressors.

The strong survive and flourish, while the weak starve and perish. It’s natural in any species. What I am against and dreadfully against are those who let themselves be oppressed. Those who can’t stand up, won’t stand up or just don’t. Those who are scared to fight, scared to believe, scared to have any meaning worth dying for... for me it seems natural that these people be oppressed.

To me, it’s as if someone were simply taking care of them... giving them orders they could not give themselves. These are the followers and I have always been against followers. Men who have no ideas of their own! Followers are the most dangerous men in the world! Before I experienced other parts of the world I was defiantly patriotic.

I had nothing to compare America to. For years I kept a folded flag on my pillow at home. I had seen forty-eight out of fifty states by the time I was twenty-one. I love that land, its desert planes and smoky mountain peaks, but the land is not the country. The land is the Earth, now I am her citizen, and when I hear the word ‘America’ I do not think of the land, the country, the Earth I love. I think of a violent government that is doing serious harm to the land, the country and the Earth.

What’s your take on the environment?

Nature is supreme! Tampering with it is where man will find out just how small he really is.

The environment as far as man is concerned is reaching apocalyptic proportions. It can’t hold out. The one thing that is stunning to me is that there is actually a hole in the ozone layer, and no one seems to care. The one thing that we know separates us from every other planet in the known universe, and we have knocked a cancerous hole in it. At present there is a toxic black hole of plastic in the middle of the ocean that is killing it. No ocean, no life anywhere on Earth, and for what? Soft drink bottles? Humans baffle me!

What do they think is going to happen when nature is done with our abuse? It’s going to expel the disease, which is humanity.

Is it true that you didn’t learn to read until you were nearly ten years old?

I was extremely dyslexic as a child. The school system was bad and I was simply stuck in the ‘special’ classes until my sixth grade year when my mother threatened to pull me out of school if they didn’t admit me into normal classes. She had seen me fire a rifle by sighting with my left eye (yes, I had a gun in my hands at that age). This was

abnormal. I fired off my right shoulder so I should have sighted with my right eye. I naturally chose the stronger eye to sight with much like when one first steps on a skateboard he naturally chooses whether he is goofy or regular. My mother realised that something was wrong with my eyes and took me to see a specialist. They began to help me with my condition, but it was my mother who single-handedly taught me how to read by sounding words out. I later found out this was called phonics and is still how I read and approach words I have never seen before. I owe my mother everything! Without her I may have been forced into being ‘special’ all my life.

What are you doing now to make up for those years of academic learning lost?

Everything! I never read anything throughout high school or at least very little. I did what I had to do to get by. It was hard for me to read and I read very slowly. I lived in constant fear that I would be called on to read aloud in class. That all the other kids would find out I couldn’t read, laugh at me and I would end up back in the ‘special’ classes. I became a master con man. I was on the honour role all through my high school years but read very little. Now I am going back and reading all the literature I missed out on in school. I’ve read just about all ‘the greats’, and a lot of what I would call ‘the underdogs’.

I’ve read the Bible, Saroyan, Kazantzakis, Finnegan, Durrell, Mirabeau, Buten, Barbusse, Hamsom, Hoffer and Pirandello. I’ve started The Decline of the West so many times I can’t count, and one day I will struggle through that one too but for a long time I was turned off to anything that I had been assigned to read in school.

What did you hope to find in France?

Escape... that’s all. I had to get away from all the chatter around me; all the mindless babble you hear every day. In France I did not know the language so it was easy to not be disappointed in my fellow man. As I have said before, I do not hate the Americans, I am one of them. I spent thirty wonderful years in America and I hope to get thirty years out of France or Europe but the truth is at the moment it’s no better here. Now France has Sarkozy, and my French is good enough to know that the common people are common wherever you go. People talk about nothing, people pour great concern into nothing, their powers and strengths are greatly misdirected. They are kept hypnotised by the media and the Internet. They walk these beautiful streets locked into a cell phone conversation about nothing at all... and all the ▼

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bertrand trichet 54 www.HUCKmagazine.com

“people talk about nothing, pour great concern into nothing, their powers and strengths are greatly misdirected.” while these beautiful buildings look down on them in laughter. Our generations have become invisible and we are leaving nothing of value behind.

How do you feel about our generation’s growing reliance on technology?

When I walk the streets of this city I am forced to admire the beauty of what our forefathers left behind, and, to tell you the truth, I have also become embarrassed by what our generation will leave behind. But then I realised that we would leave nothing behind. Nothing that is digital is stable. All that bad music in the iTunes Store will one day disappear. All this goofy digital photography and art will one day too. That photo you carry of your child in your cell phone will vanish. One day you may not have a single picture of your infant son. In 2008 paper is still the longest lasting way to store data. Vinyl is second. Bob Dylan will outlast us all. We are systematically erasing our history via e-mail and digital file!

I recently saw Carolyn Burke speak about the biography she did on Lee Miller. At the end of the question and answer she urged everyone to write letters. She said as of recent there is a real threat that in the future biographers will not be able to find any information regarding their subjects. She said almost all of what she found out about Lee came from letters that Lee wrote to her editor at Vogue. The same will be true of photography. We are disappearing! Your parents sent love letters, you send texts and e-mails. Which means that one day your daughter will never stumble through a box and find the long-lost letters where you confess your love to her mother. She may never know of that love or the story of her parents. She may never know what she looked like as an infant!

This is the world our generation is up against. Tic, toc, tic, toc, tic, toc!

How do you think this will affect our world in the future?

The backlash will be catastrophic. Because of the Internet we don’t even need education anymore.

All one needs is the ability to use an iPhone and navigate the web. Education ‘as we know it’ may one day become extinct. Universities abandoned like old factories or simply a luxury for the super elite. It’s already started to happen. You have derelicts like myself running large companies. The plus is that anyone with a curious mind can find the information, but do they retain it? You can find something on the Internet in seconds that it took me hours, sometimes days to find in a library, but as a result I retain most of what I search for and much I did not search for. We value things

we have to work for. With the Internet we do not have to exercise our minds so we no longer retain the information. It has no value. We are becoming inhuman by design. Technology erases memory.

You don’t even know a single number in your cell phone, but if you are from my generation I am sure you still remember your very first telephone number. A number you probably have not used in years.

Could you talk a bit about your book? Do you think that it will surprise people who think they know what you’re about?

The book had been burning a hole in my head for close to a decade. I was making money from skateboarding at the time as well as travelling the world. So the writing took a back seat, but I continued to write down ideas I had and ideas I wanted to explore until I finally reached the pinnacle that caused me to leave America. When I finally sat down to hammer it out, it took me almost two years. The book is not a memoir at all. You will never read the book and see my skateboarding career, and if you do, you are a very clever reader because it is hidden within.

As for any ‘fans’ reading the book, yeah, I pretty much think that everyone who thinks they know me or know what I am about will have their idea altered greatly.

You mentioned that you feel lonely and bored around people but when you’re at home, secluded, you feel content. Why is that?

It’s just that people bore me and I am never bored when I’m alone. It took me a long time to understand this and cope with it, because the truth is that I really do want to be around people but in the end I just end up disappointed with not being able to connect with them. In my own company I do not have to entertain other people. This is something I am done with.

I am constantly reading, writing, thinking, or in some sort of study or adventure with the world.

I have too much to do and I know that one day I must die. I do not want to waste time ‘hanging out’. I have things in my head and heart that I want to make tangible as well as understandable.

In order to do that I cannot spend time around other people that do not add to this process.

This doesn’t mean that I do not enjoy life; it simply means that I really enjoy life, that I love it too much to let it slip away in the company of people that I do not value and admire. I want to surround myself with stellar people and I hope that the people that invite me into their lives feel the same about me.

As a creator, do you think it’s valuable to use personal experience and first-hand interaction with people to bring your words closer to real life?

It’s essential if you want your story to be believable. Your experience is what makes the characters credible, brings them to life and gives them colour. I can put you on the back of a freight train, in a fist fight or convince you that making love is like pressing wine. That’s experience!

As a person with very strong beliefs, do you think you can come across as threatening? Most don’t take well to opinions that aren’t the norm.

Do you find you need to be cautious in your interactions with people?

No way, not anymore. Do I look cautious? I used to feel that way, but if I do not say it, who will? I don’t mind if I offend people. It’s my personal belief that if someone should dislike what I say then that’s his or her right. I also reserve that right and I am offended by a lot of things that I am subjected to that people accept as the norm without so much as a single question. Look at what Orwell was writing in 1949. Many thought he was a fool! Now we are living in his nightmare. He wasn’t an author as much as a prophet. We are the proof. He writes about ‘Telescreens’ in every home that watch us.

Now everyone has a computer with a camera in it.

They watch you as much as you watch your friends and loved ones. If you’re on Myspace or Facebook, they look at everything you post, your interests and your friends’ interests. You buy on the Internet and they know what you consume. You post pictures and they know where you vacation. When you pull up your e-mail you get an ad for something in your buying criteria… and you consume again!

It’s 1984! You are being watched and the funny thing is, you love it. You paid to have this eye in your life watching your every move. Do I sound paranoid? No! These companies openly admit to watching you and justify it by ‘giving you what you want’. This is how they fluctuate the economy that began with credit cards, the first way to watch what you consume. This isn’t rocket science and yeah, I am bummed that my generation has bought into it. I’m bummed that anyone would think I’m the crazy one, that my thoughts and reactions to such things are not ‘normal’!

You also mentioned that you no longer identify yourself as a skateboarder. What, if anything, do you identify yourself as being at the moment?

I do not know if I ever identified myself as a ‘skateboarder’. It’s just that at one time that ▼

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“will anyone want a disposable ikea coffee table twohundred years from now? we have to stop creating and buying things that are destined for the landfill.” word most accurately described my person.

Skateboarders are a very closed circle and often shut out anyone or anything that is not part of that circle. I just can’t identify myself with that circle anymore. I am wide open to the world and as a result ‘skateboarders’ have called me just about everything imaginable. Conservative, Preacher, Idealist, Elitist, I have even been called a Yuppie and a Snob... it’s incredible! Me... the tattooed farm boy runaway... a Yuppie? Who would have ever thought it? Well, if having a clean hair cut, putting on a tie from time to time and enjoying the use of manners makes me a Conservative... then I’m a Conservative. If sharing my experiences makes me a Preacher... so be it. If I am an Elitist because I do not have time to waste ‘hanging out’ with people who do not stimulate me, then fine, I’m an Elitist. If someone wants to call me a Snob or a Yuppie because I have developed a taste for finer things... be it food, wine, or theatre, then yes, I am a Yuppie. I have paid dearly for all these privileges that I now enjoy, and yes, I do consider them privileges, privileges well paid for. I have been very fortunate in my life. What experiences I have had I have taken the most I could possibly get from them. These experiences have made me a ‘man’, and that is the group that I would like to be a part of now... humanity. Much of the common man’s perspective is born of jealousy and lack of experience or education. I don’t go for it anymore.

I don’t care what they call me. I have friends in very, very high circles; I also have friends in the lowest of low. When I use the term friend I do not use it lightly. There are many wonderful and different people in my life, and I take whatever opportunities to learn from them that they present. I have learned much from skateboarders, but skateboarding is just a small sub-culture of mankind that does not want to have contact with the outside world. I am trying to make contact… real contact. Are you out there?

Being that your dad was a preacher, what’s your take on organised religion? Do you believe in an almighty creator?

I have more respect for my father than I could ever convey with words in an interview. He was a rock, a mighty man in every respect. He taught me about The Lord, and read to me from the Bible… but he also taught me about myself.

Taught me that every man had his own path, and not to be scared to go down it. Mine is away from myths, away from godly punishments and test.

Mine is away from the systematic separation and destruction of the human spirit through organised religion. A process that puts the world in constant

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war over fictitious beliefs that no one shall ever be able to substantiate. My sin is my experience.

I live and learn. As for my god, I will simply call her nature, the cosmos, the unexplainable of which I need no explanation to admire! In order to believe in the god that religion has given us one must perceive the world as a work of infinitely less beauty than it actually is. There is no god here and the idea that no one has stopped man from acting like a god is only further proof of that.

What about the cross on the cover?

That’s simple! Jesus is my favourite character in literature. On top of that, he is the most influential man in human history. Whether he is real or not is irrelevant to this fact. If you have not read his story, I urge you to. He is the world you live in.

The reason things are as they are.

Tell me about the two-hundred-year-old French castle you recently stayed in, and how it sparked notions about the fall of humanity?

Everything there is beautiful, made with human hands, and has value and meaning. Hand-woven wallpaper, marble stairs and mantle pieces.

Elaborately carved chairs, tables and banisters.

Do you realise that two-hundred years from now nothing we have done will be considered an antique? Nothing will last that long, nor will it have meaning. Erased again! Will anyone want a disposable Ikea coffee table two-hundred years from now? No! And it will not last that long. The slow decline of humanity is coming to a head in our generation. We really have to stop creating and buying things that are destined for the landfill.

Where did your interest in philosophy stem from? Has the philosophy that you’ve read over the years influenced your outlook on life?

I have ideas and, as a result, I was naturally drawn to other thinking men. The play of ideas is far more important than the answers. The play is mind exercise of which modern man is no longer getting. He Googles everything at any given time.

He’s no longer exercising his mind. Philosophy is nothing more than the use of the mind. Reading or speaking with other thinking minds has certainly affected me. It has allowed me to see things from a different standpoint that I did not previously have. From that standpoint I have been able to fill in the blanks in other ideas I have had. I am filling in blanks right now – hopefully someone else is as well.

Your first book of poetry is about to be released. How did the book come about?

I’m not a poet and these things are not poems.

For lack of a better name, we have called it poetry. These are all short ideas I have had that actually had no home. Which basically means that they were motherless, fatherless, bastardised pieces that were relevant in some way or another but did not fit into any of the larger things I have been writing. The book itself is 1,000 limited copies, all the poems are actual scans of the original poems as they were written, bad spelling, mistakes, scribbled... the works. I wanted people to see the imperfections. The message is just to write. Take on your own voice and nail down your thoughts. I hate that the idea of being a writer is about perfection. Some of the greatest authors in human history were drunkards, or uneducated men, low life’s that had real things on their minds.

Editors and publishers cleaned them up and helped them with the protocol. I try to publish as much unedited stuff as I can. I believe a writer’s truest voice lies in his mistakes. Bad sentence structure can be poetry. I reserve the right to build things my way. In this book I have been allowed an unedited voice. This is rare in any piece of published writing and I’m excited to see how people take it. The subject matter itself is very strong, sensual, sexual as well as controversial.

What does the future hold for Scott Bourne?

Work! Work is freedom and I mean that in a very literal sense. When you work on something that you love and believe in then all things fall into a natural place. Winning by all means necessary has gone out of me. I have long ago beat the odds and I beat the shit out of them. Now I just want my work. I have always said that a job is what you do for money and work is what you do for yourself. For me that’s study as well as writing. At present I am editing my first novel, and working on a second. I have written a ballet and have been asked to work with a friend on an opera. I am still skating professionally and keep up a monthly column in a French publication called SOMA. I have two complete books of poetry sitting on my desk; just started a third and the first will soon be out. There will also be two other book projects in the near future that I have worked on with Carhartt, one of which will have all my journal entries from our trip through the Balkans. I am designing a line of optical frames for Hoven and have just begun to do some modelling here in Paris. There is much on my plate. I feel free and that is work.

Any last words?

Follow no one!

.

57

stÉphanie solinas

dave gulick & paul treacy, hardcore surfers.

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A former Californian pro discovers the trials and tribulations of chasing waves in NYC.

Text and photography Jamie Brisick

If you’re of the theory that surfing is a great antidote to high blood pressure – the need to paddle out swelling and shrinking in direct proportion to however stressed out we get – then it would make perfect sense to find your J-Bays, G-Lands, Ulus and Sunsets breaking as close as possible to hustle-and-bustle cities like Seoul, São Paulo, NYC and London. The higher hand, however, seems to have a much better sense of humour than this, and the reality is most of the great waves of the world tend to be situated in places that already offer a laid-back lifestyle.

Jeffreys Bay peels across a slow, sleepy town, for example, and Uluwatu’s spiraling tubes break not far from a Hindu temple, for chrissakes. Meanwhile, the high stress cities of the world, the places where inhabiting surfers might really benefit from a thirty-yard bottom turn or

a four-second tube ride, tend to offer very little in the way of quality surf. New York City is a classic example of this, as I’ve come to discover over the course of the last three years.

The first winter I was here I never once got a surf in, forty-something degree water temp being the primary reason. That summer I skipped out to the Southwest of France, So Cal, and Southern Baja to get my surfing fix – places that are known to deliver during the warmer months. I think I surfed twice that fall on the East Coast: a decent day at Belmar, an average day at Rockaway, and a feeble, barely longboardable day at Sea Girt. My hopes of being an active NY surfer were more or less shot. And what made it worse is I was periodically checking the cams and anxiously awaiting the calls from my surf pals, and neither made much of a rattle. ▼

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the first winter i was here i never once got a surf in, forty-something degree water temp being the primary reason.

I did become more in touch with my inner surfer, however, that fella that’s etched deep into the cell memory, that monkey that beats us on the back when wave riding’s drifted a little too far away.

I devised a couple theories from this.

One, surfing is indeed just a metaphor, a set of training wheels we need not be afraid to shed. That we can apply it to all aspects of life, that we don’t necessarily need a board under our feet to ride waves. My second theory completely contradicts the first, a phenomenon I have no problem with. And it’s this: you can run, but you can’t hide. Once you’ve had an authentic taste, there’s no turning back. You can take the boy out of the surf, but you can’t take the surf out of the boy.

I realised this three days ago when I jumped in the car with a couple good mates and pulled up to eight-foot face A-frames at Rockaway Beach. It came after a surfless couple of weeks, a period of typical Manhattan scratching and clawing. As far as I knew, everything was pretty much status quo. I didn’t feel any major holes in my life, I felt physically fit from cycling and yoga, mentally stimulated from all things NYC, and emotionally satiated in ways that have no business being in a quality magazine such as HUCK. But it wasn’t until I suited up and jogged across the boardwalk that

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it all really hit me. My pals Pat, Vava and I were giddy with laughter when a preteen kid on a dirt bike stopped us to ask, “Why do surfers always run?”

Great question, I thought to myself.

Why do surfers always run? I had six or seven sarcastic answers quickly flutter through my mind, a reflexive survival mechanism cultivated from a youth spent at Malibu. But I repressed them; he was just a kid.

“We run ’cause we’re excited,” I said. “We run because we can’t wait to get out there. We run because of that right there.” I pointed seaward at a three-wave set of A-frames that turned 90th Street Rockaway into something that could stand up as A-grade surf anywhere – Oz, Hawaii, South Africa, et al. The sky was grey, the water a dubious shade of Hudson brown, the crowd minimal, and the possibility of leaving the city far behind better than good.

We continued our trot to the water.

Rockaway has a series of jetties that give a little oomph to the surf. The same way a good piece of tofu will tend to be a little more textural and tasty at the edges, the waves here are generally better the closer you are to the jetty.

And when it’s thumping as it was at that moment, you can use it to jump off, saving on duck-dive time.

There are days that burrow their

way into the memory banks, revealing themselves for years to come in that pastiche of great surf experiences we draw on when enthusiasm wanes or sentimentality abounds. One of the ways I’ve wizened in my longterm love affair with surfing is I can pinpoint them as they’re happening. And they tend to be less about the cum shot than they are about impressions, the more subtle ‘moments in between’ if you will.

One of the images I take away from Rockaway on that day of all days is of my friend Shayne Boyle swooping birdlike off the top of a wave that was about two feet overhead – a trifle flat on account of the high tide, and a slightly silvery hue ’cause of a brief break in the clouds. If I crop tight and pump up the colour and employ enough imagination to turn the full suit into a pair of boardshorts, this image could mesh itself in with, say, a high-tide Ulu top turn, a repose from the spiraling shallowness, one of those follow-through snaps that happen when the wave yawns briefly before going back to its race track self. Or even an outside Restaurants carve before the wave rounds the corner and puts the pedal to the metal.

At any rate, I now have Rockaway Beach filed into the ‘Reasons Why I Surf’ drawer of my brain, alongside the G-Lands and the J-Bays and the Sunsets

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roman barrett, photographer.

vava ribeiro, photographer.

pat conlon, cultural attachĂŠ.

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At the grand skating age of forty-three, Lance Mountain is still going strong.

Text Ces’t pas la Photography Sam Christmas

Lance Mountain was in many ways the first guy to put soul and humour into skateboarding, especially for those of us born in the seventies. Goofing around and being the funny dude with a bagful of creative tricks in the early Powell films captivated a hell of a lot of kids in my neighbourhood.

Back when skateboarding first fell from the planet (circa 1981), Lance Mountain – then on Variflex – wasn’t seen as the best skateboarder out there. He was winning some street comps, and later specialised in vert and pools, but when he joined Powell Peralta he was definitely the odd one out. Powell had a great team of Steve Caballero (“best in the world at the time,” says Lance), Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen. But somehow Lance added that secret spice that made the Powell team ever so stronger. And that team made Lance stronger, so much so that in ’83

he beat his teammates at the Upland Turkey Shoot at a time when contest rankings meant everything.

Along with Hawk, Caballero, Mike McGill and Mullen, Mountain was one of the cornerstones of the golden era of Powell Peralta and Bones Brigade that ensued. The Bones Brigade Video Show (1984) was followed by Future Primitive (which introduced fingerboarding to the world, Lance being credited as one of the inventors of the ‘sport’). In 1987, Peralta dropped the classic The Search for Animal Chin. Ban This, Propaganda and Eight followed, but the tide had already turned.

By the early nineties the old regime (and vert skating with it) was wiped off the atlas and the one-time super heroes found themselves unemployed. As a devoted Christian, Lance turned down an opportunity within the Rocco empire to

take care of Blind and Big Brother magazine. In ’91 he did the uncomfortable and started his own company, The Firm.

A team of Ray Barbee, Matt Beach, Javier Sarmiento, Wieger Van Wageningen, Rodrigo Texeira, Jani Laitiala, Bob Burnquist and Lance himself all appeared on the roster.

The Firm was skateboarding at its purest.

At some point Lance admitted having sleepless nights over not being able to offer what he had once got from Stacy. And after fourteen years, he quit The Firm and moved on.

At the admirable skating age of forty-one Lance Mountain was put on one of the most prolific teams in modern skateboarding, Flip.

And then came the Nike call. Actually, he admits to making the call himself.

You see, going through Lance Mountain’s ▼

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“I think we are all born with gifts or dreams and goals and if we don’t put them in their proper place they will eat at us or drive us to an unhealthy place.”

life is like going through the history of skateboarding as our generation knows it. Still skating deep pools and pushing his forty-threeyear-old body to respectable limits of pain, we caught up with Mr Mountain in a fancy-ass hotel in London’s West End. When I meet him at the foyer, he is sipping tea and wondering if he might find the time to skate Harrow Park with Chet Childress later on this afternoon. For now though, he’s more than happy to chat.

HUCK: How do you keep doing it?

Lance Mountain: I just keep skating. If you stop, it starts to hurt. If I am hurting I try to have a light session, which often turns into a proper skate.

on their boards to jump ahead and do what’s been learned for them. Some will become great skaters, others will be the next generation of skaters that are average but a bit more advanced than the last generation.

Has your approach to skateboarding changed over the years?

Falling hurts more and it takes longer to heal. So you’re not as aggressive as you get older. I skate with two or three friends to have fun, and I have to skate a contest, or shoot a photo or video to push myself to try anything now that I’m older. It’s sad to say but it’s true. Still, that’s much better than not doing it at all.

How many boards were Powell shipping at the height of their power?

Just think how many kids ride skateboards. Take how many skateboards are selling today and share it between five board companies, that was how the industry was then.

Looking back over the years, what’s been your favourite time in skating?

The late seventies was a special time. Not necessarily the best time – I think right now is – but back then you had so many guys to look up to. Gregg Weaver, Waldo Autry, Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, Author Lake, Shogo Kubo, Kent Senator, Jay Smith, Ray Bones, Bobby Valdez, Steve Olson, Mickey and Steve Alba, Brad Bowman, Darrell Miler, Tom Inouye, Duane Peters, Chris Strople – there were so many, that’s why I still love it today. In the seventies we were toying around with our skateboards and just making up tricks...

Actually, the reaction of the old guard to our skating was quite negative, with us making all these tricks instead of surfing and carving.

It’s quite amusing to witness the natural cycle of things.

Yeah, it’s always the way. The pros on top today will find fault in the way the younger kids are leaving out a lot of the basics spending less time

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What was it like being on the Powell Peralta team?

It was really cool. At the time they had the best skaters, best ads, and the best products. I thought, ‘I can still skate and be involved’, and there was the slight chance that I might be able to make a living in skateboarding because Stacy put me on the team to move into his position one day. What followed were some of the most legendary times in the short history of skateboarding.

And when did things turn sour?

Stacy was leaving and the industry was changing.

It started right after Animal Chin but by ‘91 it was time for all of us to do what we had to do to move on.

It took you some time to decide whether to start your own company or not. What was the final nail in the coffin?

A few months without a paycheque.

Was Christianity ever a cornerstone of Firm?

The Firm was a skateboard company trying to sponsor the best skaters I could and trying to show the diversity of skateboarding and how fun it could be. I was a Christian trying to run a business as best as I could.

You never branded Firm. From the outside it made Firm the coolest company. It seems like pure skateboarding doesn’t sell these days, do you agree?

Companies need all the ingredients to be good.

Most companies are missing one or more elements.

I don’t think branding something is bad, the idea is to create a brand that inspires others to skate,

have fun, and dictate what it is about. Sometimes that needs to be branded to work, and that’s the purpose of a company. Most companies’ purpose is to make money – you can’t have one without the other, but few have it in the right order or they are trying to have a purpose without a real need for them as a brand.

Do you think you can care too much for your own good? You definitely don’t seem to have the mentality of a ruthless businessman.

We all need to work on putting things in their place or priorities. I think we are all born with gifts or dreams and goals and if we don’t put them in their proper place they will eat at us or drive us to an unhealthy place.

Do you have any regrets on starting the Firm or the way you handled it?

No, not at all. It was amazing and just one more piece of the puzzle. Fourteen, fifteen years was a long time. I didn’t do everything right but my hope was that we all grew. Now if you see us, like Wieger today, we’re really good friends.

How did you end up on Flip? It seems like there was a clear plan in place when the Firm was run down?

It was just something that had been talked about for a while, it was time for me to stop doing the Firm and most pieces started to fit for everyone.

How is the mood in the Flip team now after such a tragic year? (Ali Boulala is recovering from a motorcycle crash which left teammate Shane Cross dead.)

I think everyone deals with things so differently you would have to talk to each person individually.

How is life under the Nike banner?

Really enjoyable.

And skateboarding today? How does it compare to your early days?

It’s a lot more accessible. A little less of an adventure to see what is possible and a little more set as to what to get from it. But all in all, skateboards are still the best toy out there www.nike.com/nikeskateboarding

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www.Happysquad.com UK (44) 8456800553 France (33) 559 267628

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Brims Point AWAKES WITH A VENGEANCE as the O’Neill Highland Open reaches for surf at the edge of the planet.

Text Alex Wade Photography Al Mackinnon/O’neill

“It’s like Backdoor Pipeline,

with right-handers setting up nicely but alternating with big close-out sets. It’s really heavy.” So says veteran Hawaiian waterman Larry Haynes on day five of the O’Neill Highland Open, as double-overhead bombs detonate at Brims Ness, Thurso, Scotland.

Haynes, here to film the event, is right.

After a quiet start, the ever reliable Brims Bowl has come to the rescue and the Highland Open springs to life with some of the best surf ever seen for a British contest. It isn’t just good surf – it’s epic. The pros are loving it, vindicating O’Neill’s decision to host the event for the third year running on Scotland’s North Shore.

Only a month or two before the World Qualifying Series (WQS) event was due to roll into Thurso, the naysayers had been prophesying doom. One leading name in the UK surfing industry, who declined to go on record, summed up the negative vibes: “O’Neill have been brave in holding the event up there for the past two years, but lucky too. They might just find that it’s flat this year, and then what? They’ll have 150 or so of the world’s best surfers up in the far north of Scotland with nothing to do.”

A heretical view, but the shy industry man wasn’t alone. There was a tangible fear that after two spectacular Highland Opens – the first won by Britain’s Russell Winter, the second by Australian Nathan Hedge – the event’s third year might just see the swell gods refusing to play ball. ▼

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the capricious scottish haar engulfs thurso’s landscape – the north atlantic lies somewhere beyond that horse.

Cometh the hour, cometh the chance to ask the locals. Two Thurso surfers, Chris Noble and Andy Bain, are fielding questions as the circus sets up camp in town. Is there swell forecast? “Aye, there’ll be a wave or two,” says Noble, a former Fraserburgh fisherman who moved to Thurso purely for its fabled righthander. Could O’Neill hope to repeat the success of the last two years? “Aye, I reckon so,” says Bain, the born-and-bred Thurso man who was again working as beach marshal.

The media troops off to check out the principal contest site at Thurso East. It’s flat. The more enterprising among them take to 4x4s and drive six miles west to Brims Ness, the alternative venue for what was, after all, a mobile event.

Brims Ness means ‘surf point’ in Nordic, but the day before the dawn of the third Highland Open it’s not looking up to much. It’s sunny, even balmy, and a wave is breaking. But it’s a small one, hardly the stuff the likes of former World Champion Sunny Garcia – on the WQS after a stint in prison – had hoped for when they signed up to take part in

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the world’s coldest professional surfing contest.

There’s no getting away

from Thurso’s remoteness. This is mainland Britain’s northernmost town; at latitude 59 degrees north, it is on a par with the Alaskan state capital of Juneau. The climate is harsh – with the town’s houses pebble-dashed in dour browns and greys in an attempt to cope with the near-constant wind and rain – and the people are tough. To drink in Thurso’s pubs on a Friday or Saturday night is not to encounter the quintessential chilled surf town inhabitants of cliché, but rather a no-nonsense crew for whom surfing is, at best, an enigma. Sure, they’re stoked by the arrival of the WQS, but the percentage of locals taking to surfing remains small.

No wonder, really. Thurso East might be one of Europe’s great waves, but the cold here is inescapable. As if the sea isn’t chilly enough, the frostbite factor is accentuated by blocks of ice that float down the River Thurso to join locals such as Noble and Bain in the line-up. Hailstones

the size of golf balls cascade from the heavens during winter sessions, when the town and its beach lie blanketed in snow. To say that surfing here is not for the faint-hearted is a bit like saying that Sunny Garcia is known for a mild tendency to shoot from the hip.

The man himself, though, is loving every minute of his Scottish sojourn. He dominates the early rounds of the event, which, thanks to an uncooperative Thurso East, has set up semipermanent home at Brims Ness. The Brims Bowl sticks far enough out into the raging waters of the Pentland Firth to turn the merest hint of swell into a fast, barrelling but super shallow righthander, which Garcia shreds as if he’s been surfing it all his life.

Other early round standouts include Hawaiian Gavin Gillette, who pulls off a frontside ollie to tail tap, America’s Nathaniel Curran and the British duo of Sam Lamiroy and Russell Winter.

Honourable mentions also go to Scotland’s Mark ‘Scratch’ Cameron, adept in the barrel but ultimately outgunned; Ireland’s Fergal Smith, slick

competitor a, banking off the shoulder at the bowl.

and smooth but hassled out of his heat; and Josh Hughes from Newquay, out of his depth but, at just seventeen, showing admirable nerve just to be amongst it.

But could it get any better than day five?

The rarely surfed Point at Brims Ness awakes with a vengeance, producing thumping, doubleoverhead, ultra-gnarly rights and prompting Haynes’ comparison with Backdoor Pipe. Haynes eyes the sunlit, reeling barrels, and, as if making a confession, admits that “I look forward to coming here all year – as soon as the event’s over, I’m looking forward to coming back”.

Again Garcia mesmerises, but the Australian contingent is also looking strong along with Reunion’s Hugo Savalli and South African former World Championship Tour competitor David Weare. Britain’s hopes evaporate with the simultaneous exit of Lamiroy and Winter, at the hands of two typically powerful Australians, Dion Atkinson and Adam Melling. The demise of home-grown competitors may have an adverse effect on spectator enthusiasm in other sporting

events, but not at the Highland Open, and not on day five. Anyone watching is here because they love surfing, and it doesn’t get much better than a fully firing Brims Point.

As the semi-finals loom,

and despite the awesome surfing being served up, a question begins to form in seasoned spectators’ minds. Will O’Neill move the contest back to Thurso, or, now that everyone is in the Brims Ness groove, opt to leave it there? O’Neill contest director Matt Wilson has no hesitation in declaring that Thurso East will host the last day’s competition. The wave first surfed by Paul Gill in 1975 works at a solid three foot throughout the semi-finals and final.

Soon enough, in decreasing swell, the powerhouse surfing of Garcia isn’t quite enough when pitted against the blend of new-school trickery and old-school aggression possessed by the Australians. Adam Robertson edges ahead with a stunning frontside air, and Melling proves unable to find the waves to better the move of the final.

Afterwards, Robertson is rightfully elated. “This is my first win on the WQS and it’s a dream come true,” he says.

The awards ceremony takes place on the reef in front of Lord Thurso’s castle. Unable to conceal his delight at winning the coveted Highland Open sword, as well as a cool $15,000, Robertson lets out a yell of celebration that would have impressed the clan leaders of the ancient highlands.

Fittingly, the sword is presented in traditional ceremonial style by the evergreen Andy Bain, a regular in the line-ups of Scotland’s North Shore.

It’d be a brave man who’d bet against Bain once again bestowing the sword on a suitably stoked Highland Open winner next year, but in the meantime, one thing is certain: Bain, Noble and the hardcore locals of Thurso will be snagging some of the best waves in Europe, despite the cold, the snow, the ice and hail. This may be one of the harshest surfing locales on the planet, but that’s just how they like it

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www.oneilleurope.com/highlandopen

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Bombed Out Superheroes get jiggy in the Alps.

text ED ANDREWS photography JORN TOMTER

Captain America slumps back in the crisp, spring sunshine, the cold, wooden bench creaking under the weight of his burly frame.

He sighs heavily, his lips pursing out to exhale the tang of stale cigarettes and even staler Austrian lager into the clean mountain air.

Last night was a big one; dancing, drinking and more dancing. He needs his rest and plenty of it. For tonight, he will have to do it all over again...

Yet this patriotic superhero of yesteryear is not alone; Bananaman and The Flash sit beside him, equally worn out from the previous night’s exertions. The trio certainly have been enjoying themselves since retiring from saving the world.

On any other mountain, at any other time, such a sight would be considered strange (even to those one-time wacky snowboarders who thought that jester hats were the height of piste chic). But not here, not now, for the now near-legendary Snowbombing has once again hit Mayrhofen in the heart of the Austrian Tyrol. It is exactly this ‘piste by day, beats by night’ festival that has given hordes of snow bunnies and beat-freaks the perfect excuse to

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take après ski to the next level.

The corpulent superheroes are joined by many a skier and snowboarder alike, cruising down the slushy slopes garbed out in a selection of costumes from the obvious to the bizarre. For every Mexican wrestler [see photo], Disco Stu and funky Father Christmas, there lurks a mental monk or cross-dressing granny – all gathered in the name of not-so clean, not-so family friendly fun.

You can almost hear the backcountry purists seething at the sight of ‘Ibiza on snow’ as these rampant hedonists show wanton disregard for the tranquillity of the mountains. But let’s not forget, Snowbombing is music festival first and foremost – the riding part is kind of an afterthought. It’s more of an interesting diversion between getting down to Annie Mac one night and skanking to Madness the next.

But if it gets at least one gurning drum ‘n’ bass head to look up from the haze of smoke and lasers and appreciate the sheer magnificence that the mountains offer, then it hasn’t done much harm at all

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www.snowbombing.com

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it seems clear to me that all tricks are inside you just as much as all drawings are inside you. everything else on the outside is just in the way.

Contour drawing has changed the way I draw. It was taught to me in college as a method developed by the artist Egon Schiele. It’s a way of drawing where you look at what’s in front of you and not at what you’re drawing. You also draw the shapes you see without picking up your pencil or erasing. The goal is to represent the form in line – no shading or any sort of interpretation of depth – just a line in the clearest most objective way possible.

The result of my first attempts were wonky drawings that looked like a pile of string. But inside each drawing there was a part that was just right, an eyebrow or hand that ended up like something I could never have intended to draw.

For me this was a true break from hashed-out lines – it revealed the hollowness of what drawing had become to me. Doing a drawing that looked like it was done by someone who did not know how to draw was invigorating. It was a paradigm shift.

Drawing was also an introduction to ideas of improvisation and chance. Because I was not a naturally talented drawer, there were often challenges that would help me improve and go deeper in my understanding of what I was doing.

I found that these solitary pursuits helped me advance and hone my perception of the world.

Mental tenacity took precedence over technical perfection. In the beginning I saw this in drawing and skiing. Then there was skateboarding.

I remember I first came to skating through the curb. The curb was everything. My world of skating was microcosmic. My attitude was: if I could walk to a ramp or bum a ride to a bank, fine. But pick me up at my local curb spot because I will be

busy doing nosepickers. Me and my friends spent time inventing, repeating and falling into new tricks. That’s the root of what skating meant to me: invention. Things changed over time, but skating was always there, in the trunk with a pair of shoes and some Rectors.

Drawing informed my skating in a big way.

Skating and drawing are both abstract. Drawing is literally abstract, whereas skating is abstract in technique. What I mean by abstract technique is that as a skater I never actually understood how tricks worked. How does a smith grind lock so perfectly? How does where my head looks affect a tailslide? We know how to make tricks happen but most of what we do is done instinctively.

Drawing requires a similar combination of confidence and tapping into instinct. Also, it seems clear to me that all tricks are inside you just as much as all drawings are inside you. Everything else on the outside is just in the way. I think we all have the memory of landing a trick the very first time we tried it. There is a similar feeling of doing something creative, and if it’s going well, it comes to you in a non-self-conscious way. In other words, it comes from within.

I was later introduced to surfing once I moved to Southern California. Having learned to surf later in life, I never really became an expert. But that was a good thing – it reminded me that the joy of sport does not have to be about performance. I may want to do head dips, but it isn’t going to ruin my day if I don’t.

The Solitary Arts is about triggering the paradigm shift, about looking beyond the

definitions of what skateboarding is, and what a skateboard is. Skateboarding is moments between tricks, it’s different boards for different skate spots, sometimes it’s trick-less; it’s about sometimes riding wheels that are not so hard and loud that you can’t hear yourself think. It can be silent no-tap ollies and carving in a way you can only do with soft wheels.

It’s about a quiver.

We have no intention of creating boards for ‘getting beers’ – these boards are for skating. These boards are aperitifs, digestifs and palette cleansers.

They are in your carry-on bag, under your table at Café de Flore and shredding Bronson ditch.

I jokingly call the things I build for my daughter ‘improvisational architecture’. The other day I wanted to build her a tree house in a cherry tree and I didn’t want to nail any nails in the tree.

If I had a plan, the measuring and complexity of cuts would have taken days. Instead, I had to build and cut as I went. A house built as a tree grows.

It looks like it was built by a hobo, but it is plenty strong and looks rad.

We need to cobble together what skating means to us. The same goes for bicycling, skiing, surfing, paddling, climbing, painting, pottery, design and cartooning. We have to separate what we know about the things we love and what we have been told. Puritan versions of culture are the product of marketeers and lowest common denominators. Have a good time doing the worst drawing you ever did and a day without ollies can do you good

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www.solitaryarts.com

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The science of sound Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger turned a health scare into an opportunity to breed a fresh new sound: a live orchestral piece inspired by the Big Bang.

Text jay riggio Photography Brantley Gutierrez

Fear sucks. Who in their right mind wants to consciously be scared, especially when it applies to the realities of one’s own life?

Well, apparently Mike Einziger, celebrated guitarist of the multi-genre band Incubus, does. “There’s a part of me that kind of enjoys the prospect of something terrible happening,” says the thirty-two-year-old from his Los Angeles home about his latest project, an orchestral piece to be performed live, for one time only. After having surgery on his wrist for a debilitating bout of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, Einziger was forced to step away from his guitar for a while. It was during this period that he sat down at a piano and began to compose. The result was ‘End.>vacuum’, a forty-minute orchestral piece inspired by his longtime love of scientific studies. HUCK spoke to Mike about his new venture, his love of science and what it’s like to watch your ambitions crumble before your very eyes.

HUCK: How did you come to compose an orchestral piece of music?

MIKE EINZIGER: I started writing it after I had to have surgery on my wrist for Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. I’ve had it for five years and it really started to affect my playing, and while touring it progressively got worse and worse. About a year ago, it got to the point where I just couldn’t play anymore so we had to cancel a bunch of tours that we had going on. All this happened in 2007, right in the middle of all this touring we were doing to promote the record that had just come out.

So I had surgery and obviously I couldn’t play for a while after that. I was stuck at home without being able to play guitar for a couple of months and, during that time, I had an idea that I really wanted to write music for an orchestra and have the piece performed live rather than make a record. It was the idea of writing a piece and having it performed live that was really appealing to me. ▼

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What does the orchestra consist of at the moment?

There’ll be strings, a brass section, woodwinds and percussion and a bunch of different instruments. Everything except a guitar, actually.

There’s no guitar involved in any of it. Which is good for me because it really pulls me outside of my comfort zone. I’m used to playing guitar, I’m used to being able to hide behind a guitar and this really doesn’t allow for that at all.

What inspired you to write this thing?

It’ll sound somewhat vague, but the best way I can explain it is that I spent a lot of time thinking about the concepts that are discussed in physics and cosmology and a lot of the sciences that I’m really inspired by. There’s a tremendous amount of mystery underlying all of it. The more that we find out about these things, the more light that’s shed on them, but at the same time the mystery only gets deeper.

And that’s what, in a general way, inspires me to write music. Actually, the first part of the

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performance will be a lecture from a particle physicist named Dr. Brian Cox. He’s a science correspondent for the BBC. He’s taken part in all these great documentaries about physics and about cosmology and the origins of the universe and the Big Bang and all these kind of dense concepts. He’s a really great speaker and he’s really good at taking concepts that are very difficult to explain and difficult to understand and explaining them in a way that people like me can visualise.

Being a musician and an artist, as well as a person with an interest in science, seems like a pretty cool dynamic. It’s rare that art and science are paired together…

You’re right. I don’t think that most people would put those things together, but for me, they seamlessly melt together into one thing.

It’s weird. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring those concepts in my own mind and trying to make sense of certain things and it all ties together. For me, it’s really all the same thing.

How does writing and arranging a piece for an orchestra compare to the process of writing music with Incubus?

Instead of approaching it with the guitar as a basis for everything, I’m doing it with a piano.

The writing is different because I play differently on a piano than I would on a guitar. And it’s actually a lot more challenging for me. I’m much more adept at realising ideas on a guitar than I am on a piano.

It’s a brave thing stepping away from your comfort zone.

Yeah, I feel like I’m really throwing myself out there. If it goes wrong, it’s going to go horribly wrong and everyone there is going to see. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this before. So I’m kind of just really swimming in the deep end

.

“End.>vacuum” will be performed on August 23 at the UCLA’s Royce Hall Theatre. www.endvacuum.com

SHOWING AT THE ICA

8TH - 28TH AUGUST, 2008

BOX OFFICE: +44 (0)20 7930 3647

WWW.ICA.ORG.UK

Photography Spencer Murphy The insular factions of surf, skate and snow may unite over the urge to slide, but what about the junkies for whom slipping sideways simply will not do? BMX pros, those sweaty men on two wheels, deserve a moment of our time. So when the Nike 6.0 team rolled over to the BMX Masters in Cologne, Germany, HUCK went along to appreciate a whole new ride. Respect.

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name ALESSANDRO FROIO age 21 hometown LECCO, ITALY sponsors FRONT OCEAN, NIKE 6.0, LEVI’S, MASSIVE DISTRIBUTION

“Some people take the piss because they think BMX is just a sport for kids. They don’t understand it and don’t realise it’s a proper sport like anything else. I think that BMX could become much more popular if the media would give it the attention it deserves.”

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name VIRGIL SINGH age 19 hometown AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS sponsor NIKE 6.0

“In BMX, the height and tricks you do at times need a lot of focus and obviously the thrill starts to mess with your mind a bit. But the culture is very laid back. Even at a massive comp, it’s still very relaxed because it doesn’t matter how good you can ride, everyone gets appreciated in their own way.”

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name JAMES COX age 25 hometown FAREHAM, UK sponsors NIKE 6.0, 4DOWN, S&M BIKES, ATTILA BIKES, RETRIBUTION

“For me, BMX is hanging around in cities and falling down stairs all day. I’m not sure how much respect that deserves. I don’t think I’d even attempt to explain it, I’d probably make us all sound like dicks.

I’d prefer it if everyone thought we still raced around dirt tracks wearing full race jerseys and goggles.”

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name BRUNO HOFFMANN age 15 hometown SIEGEN, GERMANY sponsors WE THE PEOPLE, VANS, RED BULL

“A few old people often come up and ask dumb questions like, ‘Why are you riding a little girl’s bike?’ But BMX is completely different from other biking; the only thing in common is the wheels.”

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name SIMONE BARRACO age 17 hometown GENOA, ITALY sponsors NIKE 6.0, OAKLEY, FRONT OCEAN

“We don’t get enough respect from society so we don’t manage to get what we need to improve, such as the construction of more skate parks. My town still doesn’t have any! But BMX is a pleasant way to go through your life, travelling around the world with your friends and looking for new places to have fun.”

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wayne moses scraping the tarmac at the out law slider comp in district six, cape town.

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DOWNHILL SLIDE CAPE TOWN’S URBAN LONGBOARDERS SHARE A LUST FOR BOMBING HILLS THAT TRANSCENDS DIVIDING LINES. MILES MASTERSON INFILTRATES THIS THRIVING AND UNUSUAL SCENE TO FIND OUT MORE.

TEXT MILES MASTERSON PHOTOGRAPHY RICHARD JOHNSON AND AMIN GRAY

AMIN GRAY

It’s a calm Sunday afternoon

in Cape Town, South Africa, yet a discordant racket reverberates across the tranquil urban veneer. The violent sound – scraping and abrasive – cracks along the rows of dishevelled Victorian houses that line the litter-strewn streets.

Accompanied by primitive howls of approval, the noise is unfamiliar to most, yet loved by every skateboarder alive: the screeching protestation of polyurethane wheels being forced, against their will, to skid at pace along black tarmac.

In this gritty urban neighbourhood called Woodstock, a few passers-by gape at the spectacle: Bible-clutchers, ragtag street urchins wearing cheap surf hoodies and beer-drinking locals chilling on a nearby stoop. They peer up the street in obvious astonishment as another skater drops in at speed and the chaotic cacophony begins once again. Dreadlocks flying, and sporting ratty mittens with perspex pads, he accelerates past them, throws his board into a frontside carve and, his face inches from the surface, slides further and faster along the tar than friction or logic should allow.

He then contorts out of the slide and comes to a stop, receiving a loud affirmation from his peers. He high-fives his crew and points to another skater, a coiffed blonde guy tearing towards them. Wearing an open, studded leather

jacket, he’s riding an old-school Jeff Kendall Santa Cruz board with matching Day-Glo blue wheels.

Halfway through his slide, however, a police car turns into the street ahead and he’s suddenly forced to bail. He kicks his stick out, letting it crash into the verge, and careens onto his butt before coming to a gentle halt under the bumper of a parked car.

A couple of skaters head towards him, but he gets to his feet, dusts off his thighs and gives a thumbs up to indicate he’s okay. Behind them, yet another skater begins his grating slide and once again all attention is focused on the street.

As alien to those on the

sidelines as it may seem, this scene in the aptly named Mountain Road is just another perfectly normal session for the members of this underground fraternity. It’s not surprising that donwnhill skateboarding thrives here. Visible from miles out to sea, the towering granite crags of Cape Town define life in South Africa’s ‘Mother City’. The flat-topped Table Mountain and its attendant sentinels of Devil’s Peak, Lions Head and Signal Hill embrace the natural amphitheatre of the central business district, also known as the City Bowl, like comforting arms. Interspersed by the leafy suburbs clinging to its slopes, this vast, mountainous national park is lauded as a world ▼

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natural heritage site and, for many, a place of much spiritual power. For those addicted to the suck of gravity though, the smooth-tarred roads that lace the city’s winding foothills are a natural source of stoke.

It’s something Capetonian surfers and skaters have been doing for decades, and eventually led to the now defunct Red Bull Downhill Extreme, or DHX, which ran from 1999 to 2003. This globally hyped race exposed the formerly isolated locals to the world’s best downhill racers and the latest equipment. Since then, the local scene has bred a smattering of world-ranked skaters, including inaugural DHX winner and 2004 IGSA (International Gravity Sports Association) world champion Stuart Bradburn.

Cape Town’s downhill skating reputation endures as one of the sport’s ideal locations.

Though it’s home to some of the planet’s fastest skateboarders, lugers and inliners (and still hosts two smaller IGSA-ranked races every December), the dedication of its urban longboarders runs far deeper than clocking the best time. “It’s just a different way of doing your thing,” describes the blonde, leather-jacketed skater Tertius Vivier, a twenty-six-year-old sales rep. A talented former street skater, Tertius attended an illegal downhill race a while back and, as he enthuses, “got amped from there”.

Cape Town, he explains, has precious few places to skate street, despite the urban sprawl.

Thanks to an overzealous metro police force, the city boasts a huge bust factor and, as the one and only decent skate park has also recently closed, Tertius was drawn to the rush of downhilling as an alternative to banging handrails, flipping gaps and being harassed by cops. “The best part,” adds Tertius, who annexed his dad’s gardening gloves and his mom’s plastic chopping board to make his sliding gloves, “is that I’ve got my passion back. I feel young again. I’m so fired up sometimes I’ll go and look for new spots all night.”

Thanks to an apartheid legacy of racially based segregation and the vast distances between its outlying suburbs, Cape Town has a reputation as a cliquey place, where people don’t readily welcome outsiders, and even develop contempt for those from other parts of the city.

It’s a phenom that has unfortunately permeated the politics-ridden street skating scene, but yet says Tertius – who hails from the all-white northern suburbs – is almost completely absent among the longboard skaters. “Everyone gets along and there’s no attitude,” he continues. “Everyone encourages and motivates each other.”

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kent, wayne and anton take advantage of the empty slopes during a sunday session deep in the cape town cbd.

RICHARD JOHNSON

Chilling beneath a poster

of Bob Marley in the lounge of his rented semidetached home, which overlooks the city’s former Malay quarter, dreadlocked skater Kent Lingeveldt, twenty-seven, is drinking a cup of tea on a rainy Thursday evening. He echoes Tertius’ sentiments and reveals that, in fact, many Capetonian street skaters have begun bombing hills in the past few years. Their influx, along with their always-keen surfing cousins, has helped to grow the sport to a core crew of around thirty to forty serious riders, along with scores more who simply use their longboards to cruise around town.

A sometime street skater and surfer himself, Kent describes how he commutes on one of his longboards to his day job in a music store downtown. He also recalls how, growing up in Woodstock, he used to bomb hills on his regular street deck, but was exposed to serious downhilling during the first DHX, which he entered when he was nineteen. Kent has been a stalwart on the scene ever since, encouraging his fellow street skaters to take to longer boards.

“They seem to be more open to it now,” he explains. “They used to think, ‘Ah, bunch of surfer hippies’, but now they see I’ll tackle sliding like I will a street obstacle... that you actually channel that kind of raw aggression into longboarding as well. Plus, it’s a bit easier on the body, which makes it more attractive to them as they get older.”

Ironically, for a guy like Kent, some of the best roads for sliding and speed skating are in District Six, an infamous apartheid flashpoint near Woodstock. During the Sunday session, Kent points out the house his father grew up in, before his family was relocated by the apartheid government to the distant windswept Cape Flats (though his family later moved back). As the homes and businesses of those that lived here have long since been demolished, the area is a great place to skate. With slightly eastern features that reveal his diverse heritage, Kent would have been classed as a second-class ‘coloured’ citizen, as would about a quarter of his fellow longboarders. Yet ethnicity is not something this urban tribe dwell upon. “There are no races now, you know,” smiles Kent.

Hailing from a humble background, Kent initially struggled to finance his downhill skating habit. He tells how the local crew originally obtained equipment from international skaters attending the DHX, but thanks to the piss-poor exchange rate, this still worked out too costly for

most. So, in 2000, Kent decided to try and make his own decks under his label, Alpha. “There wasn’t much literature on it available then,” he recollects. “In many ways I feel like I almost reinvented the wheel, for myself, you know – I had to sit down and figure out how to make concaves and things like that.”

Through years of consulting with wood experts and countless willing test pilots, Kent managed to open a small, self-sustaining board factory near Mountain Road where he grew up. Here he labours most evenings, coming up with functional designs for a variety of boards, including racers, cruisers and pool and street decks, churning out about two or three a week, which he sells to cover costs.

To save further, Kent only uses local material.

“I find getting decent wood in this country is killer expensive,” he says. “I’ve checked out the best way to make as strong a board as I can from SA Pine. I do want to branch out into a better wood, but my boards last. If you make it properly and treat it properly it’s fine. Justin went full out though and he’s getting Canadian Maple and some Birch, which is legend. I’m gonna get some from him soon.”

Kent is referring to the only other downhiller in Cape Town who makes his own boards, Justin Boast of Project Speedboards. As his label’s name suggests, twenty-nine-year-old Justin’s focus is on low centre of gravity, or LCG, boards that go super fast, and such is his reputation that he now exports them to downhill skaters across the world. Apart from making his boards, Justin also produces a skateboarding ’zine called Effect and organises downhill skate races and meets – both legal and the illegal ‘Outlaw’ variety.

“I started doing the ‘Outlaw’ series at the end of December 2006,” says the tall, bearded skater. “Then in 2007, in addition to organising three legal races with SAGRA (South African Gravity Racing Association), I hosted another five ‘Outlaw’ speed races.” Justin explains how these underground events are usually held on a quiet suburban road just outside Cape Town and riders pay R20 (£1.30) to enter. The skater with the fastest speed takes the pot home. “This year word was getting around that there was a whole bunch of skaters that were into sliding, so in May I put on the Out Law Slider Comp and it was a big success,” he grins.

Held on the same backroads in District Six and attended by a few dozen skaters and hangers on, the event almost didn’t happen. Because there’s a government facility of some kind ▼

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RICHARD JOHNSON

kent lingeveldt, creating to skate in his humble alpha skateboards workshop in cape town.

nearby, police patrolling the area tried to shut them down. But after a few words from Kent, the comp went ahead, with Kent taking the honours – and a brand-new Project Speedboard – with a slide of 56.4 metres.

But not every encounter with the cops turns out so well. Although longboard skaters don’t get harassed as much as their street skating kin, Cape Town metropolitan police have developed a fierce reputation and occasionally take it too far. Wayne Moses knows it all too well. Wayne, twenty-seven, has been skating since he was seven and also grew up in Mountain Road alongside his best friend Kent. As public transport in the city is so bad (and often risky), Wayne not only races and slides but also uses his board to get from A to B. One day he was cruising home, minding his own business, when a police car pulled up and asked him to get off his board and continue on foot. Not one to back down, Wayne politely inquired why they were harassing him instead of chasing criminals. “I also asked why they even stopped me as there was a running marathon on and the road was actually cordoned off and empty of traffic,” says Wayne, who explains that the area was also home to some of the most violent gangs in South Africa. “I told them I’m not going to walk past there under any circumstances,” he adds.

Next thing he knew, Wayne was surrounded by seven cops and forced into a headlock so

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severe it popped his shoulder. Then, he reckons, he got tear-gassed and his head bashed into the side of the cop car before being arrested and booked for riotous behaviour. “My eye is still squint,” spews Wayne, who later obtained a medical letter detailing his injuries and tried to sue the Babylon. “The cop who hit me got a slap on the wrist,” he laments, “and the docket with all my witness statements conveniently disappeared.”

Fortunately, incidents like this are rare, and Cape Town’s urban longboarders have more to fear from the city’s crazy drivers and gangsters than being nicked. One perk of having to cover so much distance is that they are intimate with the terrain and traffic patterns, probably more so than anyone, and can quickly escape any threat – official or not. “We know the streets so well,” laughs Wayne, who now avoids the police at all costs. “We know all the shortcuts and can predict the traffic like you won’t believe. No one can catch us. Now when the cops try, we just fuck off... we’re, like, gone.”

During the Sunday session,

even the presence of the police car doesn’t stop the crew from continuing their sliding frenzy. The cops shout half-heartedly at Tertius as he collects his board, but seem more interested in the young girls parked in a BMW blaring R&B outside the

beer-swillers’ abode. As Tertius, Kent and the rest of the gang ascend the hill, Wayne is the next skater to descend Mountain Road. He skids down in a weird ‘superman’ slide, leaning forward over his board instead of adopting the traditional frontside or backside layback styles. “Dude, that guy invented sliding in Cape Town,” someone shouts as he flies by. On his way back up, Wayne relates, words tripping over one another, how he once hit 80km/h sliding and was going so fast he made it through a cattle grid. “My wheels were smoking, bru,” he laughs manically.

The energy of the session is clearly peaking as Kent takes his last run. Now wearing a battered, stickered-up white helmet, he drifts into his trademark toeside slide, bends his neck and pops his helmet on the road. For about fifty yards, his board, gloved hands and the top of his helmet scour the tarmac with a racket. “That’s thinking with your head,” quips Justin and everyone chuckles. Following a group photo, some convoluted handshakes and the odd bear hug, the skaters all disperse. Some melt away on their boards into the City Bowl and the rest climb into their cars for the drive home under the shadow of Table Mountain

.

www.projectskateboards.co.za www.sagra.co.za Facebook: I love Alpha Longboard

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Summer Camp Donavon Frankenreiter kicks it with Jack, Vedder and the rest of the gang as he launches HIS NEW ALBUM, PASS IT AROUND.

Text Tim Donnelly Photography Scott Soens

The backstage area at the Bonnaroo Music Festival is starting to feel like summer camp.

As new and old friends embrace the rare opportunity to relax, something of a reunion gets underway.

California’s Donavon Frankenreiter swaps tales with Hawaiian ukulele super-boy Jake Shimabukuro. Jack Johnson is fully ensconced with his Brushfire crew, including Zach Gill, Mason Jennings and long-time Beastie Boys collaborator Money Mark. With Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam literally around the corner, and Metallica’s surfing duo Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo playing the main stage the night before, anyone would think this was ‘Surf-a-roo’ 2008.

But the collective focus isn’t on the dude who has sold upwards of fifteen million records (i.e. Jack). Instead, all attention is on the sweaty, smiling and mustachioed Frankenreiter, who is rapidly explaining how he has to play three sets that day, has just endured a fourteen-hour trip to Coffee County, Tennessee, from the West Coast via hell and, oh yeah, that his gear is stuck somewhere in Chicago.

But the worst part of the tale is the injury that happened miles from his California home, just outside Teahupoo, Tahiti. It didn’t happen to him.

It happened to his wife, Petra, who sustained a compound fracture to her arm. As the story goes, Frankenreiter had to fly his nauseous, painridden wife and two young boys – Hendrix, age five, and their toddler, the one-year-old Ozzy – stateside in full-on emergency mode.

I had learned of the nightmare journey the day Frankenreiter arrived home, as we were set to discuss his new record, Pass It Around, for an unrelated project that was deadline sensitive. “Dude, let’s rally in a couple of days,” I said, knowing full well that family comes first.

But Donovan wanted to talk; he’d ”made a

commitment,” he said. That’s Frankenreiter in a nutshell: a man who never thinks about himself first.

This kind of maturity and selflessness has allowed him to tap into something new artistically, making Pass It Around the funkiest, cleanest and most earnest record he has put out to date. “It was a learning experience in that I let go,” he admits. “Let somebody else control the production and everything else that goes with it. For me it was a comfortable place to be. On my first record, I didn’t have a direction. I just wanted to make a record. On this one, my third, it was fun putting trust in people.”

With his Id, Ego and Super-Ego in check, Frankenreiter trusted his producer, Grammy Award winner Joe Chiccarelli (My Morning Jacket, The Raconteurs, Kings of Leon), and relinquished a few lead guitar parts to the seriously accomplished hands of Tim Pierce, who’s worked with everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Springsteen.

“Some people could say that I should have done the guitar. But there was some stuff I could not do,” says Frankenreiter, who at thirty-five has no trouble finding his way around the frets.

“It’s better to have somebody else come in, not because he could come in and do it, but it’s the textures, the tones, the vibes, the feel that people have. They just come in and put their little twist on it. It’s a beautiful element to have.”

And Dono’s got it right, because the beautiful elements are heard all over the record: mariachistyle horns, strings, sways and a pop summer classic in ‘Life, Love and Laughter’.

Frankenreiter says the word “beautiful” a lot and he means it. “Bitchin’”, “gnarly” and “rad” are also part of his lexicon which also is not a put on.

But as far as what inspires this musician – who

happens to be one of the greatest ‘free surfers’ of the past twenty years – writing a song about the ocean seemed “hokey”. Until, that is, he met non-surfing, indie rock stalwart Grant Lee Phillips.

“I had a verse of a song, no lyrics and couldn’t find a chorus. When he sent it back to me I was blown away,” he says proudly of ‘Mansions in the Sand’, a tenderly reflective song that compares the shifting changes of the ocean to life.

“I’ve always tried to incorporate the visions of the ocean, the tide, the surf in my music. But I never could, because it would be corny, like I would be ‘In the wave’. It came together from a guy who doesn’t surf,” he says gratefully of the land-locked Phillips.

Frankenreiter has seen, felt and ridden in every ocean. The only places he hasn’t been to: China and Russia. That’s a lot of glorious memories and blessed living, but it’s also a lot of alone time.

“Writing and riding waves are solitary pursuits. Man versus nature. Man versus pen and the results are the same. You don’t know the desired effect until someone tells you, ‘That was a great wave’, or ‘That’s a great song,’” he says. “I feel this is the best body of work I’ve done. This is where I am now and where I’ve come from, in a lot of ways, musically and songwriting.”

After Bonnaroo, between European jaunts, I spoke with Donavon about that three-minute reunion with the brotherhood out in Tennessee, which happened to be our only meeting despite everyone’s best intentions to nail down a plan.

“I heard Eddie played with Jack, and Pearl Jam killed it,” he said. “But man, Jake came by and played. It was so sick. I really wish you were there. What a vibe bro.”

.

Pass It Around is out August 19 on Lost Highway.

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In our humdrum world of nine-to-five, it’s easy to talk about escape. Only the brave don’t talk – they simply do.

Doc Paskowitz

Dads can be predictable. They come in all shapes and sizes – strict, laidback, cool as hell – but are generally bound by one thing: education, and making sure you get one.

Dorian ‘Doc’ Paskowitz has a slightly different take: “There is a wisdom in the wave – high-born, beautiful – for those who would but paddle out.” With a philosophy that laced surfing as number one, the Texas-born doctor packed up his clan (wife, eight boys and one outnumbered girl) in the sixties, boarded a motor home and, echoing Kerouac, hit the road for a life spent chasing waves.

Education for the Paskowitz kids was a home-schooled curriculum of surfing and health. “It was the same way one of the Rothschilds might wanna share banking with his kids,” says the eighty-seven-year-old.

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“There is a core, central power point in my life that has just moved everything. And that has been surfing.”

Having tuned in and dropped out, the Stanford-trained doctor traded in fixed abodes and regular pay for a vagabond life, but ended up becoming a surfing pioneer of political proportions. The Paskowitz Surf Camp, founded in 1972, etched the family name into surfing’s history. But it’s the footprint Doc left in Israel that reverberates a little deeper.

“It turned out to be a fantastic media issue,” says Paskowitz of a trip he took last year with Surfers For Peace, which he cofounded with Kelly Slater, to hand-deliver surfboards to surfers in Gaza. “Over a billion people saw us give those boards. But it didn’t

start off with a billion people in mind – it started off very simply. We saw a picture of two guys in Gaza, who were Arabs, sharing a surfboard and my friends and I – mostly Jews – said, ‘Oh hell, that’s no good. If they want to surf as much as we do, we just gotta go get them some boards.’ So we did. That was the end of it for us – that was the beginning of it and the end of it.”

So what does a nomadic, pro-peace, surfing physician see when he looks back over his life? “I have been a beach bum since I was twelve years old,” says Doc. “On top of that I became a lifeguard, a research physiologist and a medical doctor. But you know, it was all what you might call T-shirts on top of a bareskin beach boy. It was a great life. I’m sure gonna miss it.” Andrea Kurland

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nate bressler

nate bressler

Brandon Lillard Brandon Lillard is still adjusting to the real world. It’s a state of mind he’s come to expect from his double life. For the past twelve years, the thirty-nine-year-old has been juggling two personas, side-by-side: Brandon the Californian local, steaming ahead in the surfing industry; Brandon the boatman, soaking up the good life in Tavarua, Fiji.

Either way, it’s an existence any surfer would kill for. So how, exactly, does one get it? “The Tavarua thing was a conscious effort,” says Brandon, still reeling from this year’s three-month stint. “It was my dream to spend as much time there as possible, drive the boat and surf those waves. When that became a reality, everything else took a back seat. When I needed a job, it had to allow me that freedom.”

As Sports Marketing Manager for Nixon, and with nine years at Etnies in the bag, Brandon’s spent his career sharing waves with the world’s best surfers. A sweet deal in anyone’s book, but not nearly as sweet as the ninety-odd days he spends stranded on an island, year after year. “It’s the ultimate simple life,” says Brandon. “We wake up in the morning, eat breakfast and take it in turns to

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take people out surfing on the boat. It’s not like a real job. Our paycheque is the waves.”

That’s all fine and dandy, when your entire world is twenty-nine acres of sand. But back in reality, when you’re being elbowed out the way, don’t you ever feel pressure to join the rat race full-time? “Maybe for like half a second, when you look around and see how everyone else is doing it you think, ‘Wow, am I really fucking blowing it right now? Are opportunities passing me by?’” says Brandon. “Then I stop and think about what’s really important in life and snap right out of it. It takes me about three seconds from start to finish.”

So is it just luck or can anyone join in? “If people prioritise their lives a little differently, they could do it too,” says Brandon. “If you drove a pick-up truck instead of a Range Rover, you might be able to go on a few more surf trips. If you prioritised going surfing early in the morning over getting that extra hour’s sleep, you might be in a little better shape.

I’m definitely fortunate, and lucky to be surrounded by cool people that have helped me along the way. But I think if anybody wants something bad enough they can make it happen.” Enough said. Andrea Kurland

SAM MELLISH

LCB

Who says life has to be a choice between the mountain or the wave, ocean or the city? Cousins Mark and Pete Lindsell may live in land-locked London, but have still managed to cut themselves a piece of the surfing pie. Setting up a make-do surf shack away from the swells, the Lindsell boys have introduced their custom-made surfboards and clothing range to London’s urban dwellers through LCB, their surf, skate and snow store on Brick Lane.

“It all began with the Airborne back in 2001,” says Mark proudly of the board that launched it all. “Pete and I were on a summer surf trip in Afife, Portugal. At that time we were messing around making longboard skateboards and basically having loads of fun with them. Having always wanted to make surfboards, we met up with then Quiksilver shaper Gonzalo Martinez during that trip. The following summer, I returned to Afife to begin learning from Martinez, who by then had branched out into shaping for his own brand.”

Before turning their hand to shaping boards, the Lindsells worked the family farm in Essex to raise much-needed funds for

their camper van trips. “The summers that followed carved the way for LCB,” says Mark.

“Back in our converted farmyard factory we produced the Airborne and word soon spread. Since then we have developed the e-series and our business has rapidly grown.”

With the surf trips sparking the ignition to set up LCB and leave their farming roots, Pete took up photography and web design, while Mark dabbled in the precarious heights of tree surgery to tide things over while the business grew. Their spare time was devoted to shaping and repairing boards. “With LCB growing our workload increased, which meant we could give up our previous jobs and give 100 per cent,” says Pete.

And the family effort didn’t stop there.

Recruiting the style talents of Pete’s sister Caroline and Mark’s soon-to-be wife Fiona, the boys launched LCB clothing in 2005.

“Even though we’ve had to work around the clock, seven days a week, making the boards as well as the clothing range, we still find time to surf a fair bit – testing boards and catching up with our team,” says Pete.

See. Life doesn’t have to be about compromise. Sam Mellish

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PAUL WILLOUGHBY

Rudechalets

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Helen and Chris Lavender are planning their empire. Not to impose their hegemony as the next coercive superpower, but to ensure their dream can truly be for life.

When the couple met back in 2000 during a ski season in Meribel, France, they couldn’t have anticipated how much their lives would change. Chris was on sabbatical from his urban existence as a man in IT, and Helen was working as a chalet girl to escape her life as a PA. But unlike the herds returning to the UK to re-enter the race, joint frustration propelled the pair towards a new life.

It took from May 2002 – when they crashlanded back in reality – to September that year for a notion to solidify in their collective mind: life in London was not for them. “As soon as I got back I thought, ‘This is an absolute nightmare,’” says Chris. “I was in a sales environment and it’s all about money and cars. You become conditioned – if I’d stayed all that good that had been done by being away would have been lost.”

So how did they prolong their enlightenment? By jacking it all in, heading for the hills and creating a temporary mountain solace for other dissatisfied city-bound souls.

In 2002, Rudechalets was born and today boasts a roster of catered accommodation in Morzine and Chamonix, self-catered apartments in Avoriaz and a new surf venture – aptly named Rudesurf – planned in Southwest Portugal.

Sounds like they’re prepping to take over the world? “Originally we thought, ‘We’ll have a Rudechalets empire!’” says Helen.

“And our accountant would still like that,” quips Chris. “But last season was fucked.

We had way too many staff, were trying to be too big and had no time on the mountain.

That’s when we realised smaller is better.

Now we want to expand the self-catering side to build something that can give us a wage when we’re older and can’t give our energy to running chalets.”

Makes sense. But beyond all the sensible stuff, just how good can life get? “There’re days when it’s 9am on a Wednesday morning, it’s sunny and there’s fresh powder,” says Helen, “you’re having a coffee and just about to ride, and you think, ‘This is why we’re here.’” Pretty damn good, it seems – provided you’re brave enough to get out and do it. Andrea Kurland www.rudechalets.com

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HucK’s FavourITe sTocKIsTs SHOW SOME LOVE TO YOUR LOCAL STORE! Blue Tomato – Schaling, Austria www.bluetomato.at Bronx – Saalfelden, Austria www.bronx.at Sweet Dream – Innsbruck, Austria www.sweet-dream.cc La Resistance – Zell Am See, Austria www.la-resistance.at X Double – Innsbruck, Austria www.xdouble.com BSM 73 – Bourg St Maurice, France www.bsm73.com Hawaii Surf – Ivry sur Seine, France www.hawaiisurf.com Mister Good Deal – Brest, France +33 (0) 2 98 43 28 28 Namaste – Lyon, France www.namaste.fr Ragdoll – Anglet, France www.myspace.com/ragdollshop Surf Panic – Annecy, France +33 (0) 4 50 45 25 90 Attitude Skateshop – Bremen, Germany www.attitude-skateshop.de B Project – Nuremberg, Germany www.bp-nbg.de Backyard Skateshop – Flensburg, Germany www.backyard-skateshop.de Beatnuts – Regensburg, Germany www.beatnuts.de BoardShop – Freiburg, Germany www.boardshop.de Brettl Laden – Dresden, Germany www.brettlladen.de Caramba Skateshop – Flensburg, Germany www.caramba-skateshop.com Cool House Boarding – Berlin, Germany www.chb-boardshop.de CHB Boardstore – Berlin, Germany www.chb-boardshop.de CHB Whitewater – Berlin, Germany www.chb-boardshop.de Der Berg Ruft – Berlin, Germany www.boarderline.de Episoda – Berlin, Germany www.episoda.de Fifty5Feet – Hamburg, Germany www.fifty5feet.com Follow Me – Lorrach, Germany www.fome.de Fua Industries – Lunen, Germany www.fuaindustries.com Good Stuff – Munich, Germany www.goodstuff.de Hall Eleven – Stuttgart, Germany www.halleleven.de Made In – Koeln, Germany www.madeincorp.com Neokeltic – Bad Tolz, Germany www.neokeltic.de Partizan – Wiesbaden, Germany www.partizanshop.de Paul Frank Shop – Berlin, Germany +49 302 7874496 Planet Sports – Munich, Germany www.planet-sports.com Quiksilver Boardriders – Munich, Germany +49 89 23 886 581 Railslide – Frankfurt, Germany +49 692 84956 Rocs Berlin – Berlin, Germany www.rocs-berlin.de

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Subvert – Hamburg, Germany www.subvert.de Surf4Snow - Wangen, Germany www.surf4snow.de Terra X – Nuremberg, Germany www.tx-sports.de WeSC – Munich, Germany www.myspace.com/wescmunich Westside Surfing – Muenster, Germany +49 251 46200 Alfieri Sport – Rende, Italy +39 098 446 5945 Athena Sport – Milano, Italy www.athenasport.com Board Corner – Genova, Italy +39 01 057 04305 Bomboclat – Monza, Italy www.bomboclat.it Carhartt – Modena, Italy +33 20.59.23.66.63 Contest Boardshop – Milano, Italy www.myspace.com/contestshop Deka Upper – Bologna, Italy www.dekaonline.it Detour – Verona, Italy www.detour.it Effe Sport – Milano, Italy +39 02 662 03353 Fible – Milano, Italy +39 02 487 13629 Grillo Sport – Genova, Italy +39 010 247 7594 Impact – Bari, Italy www.impactsurf.com Jolly Sport – Torino, Italy +39 01 165 07553 Juice Surf Shop – Torino, Italy www.juicesurf.it La Glisse – Torino, Italy www.laglisse.it Lo Sportello – Milano, Italy +39 02 745 238 Minoia – Breca, Italy +39 03.03.38.52.15 Mission – Milano, Italy www.sportmission.com New School – Bergamo, Italy www.newschollshop.com Noi Per Lo Sport – Milano, Italy +39 02 869 2803 Original Premium – Firenze, Italy www.myspace.com/ogpfam Pleasure – Milano, Italy www.urbanwarrior.it Radikal Streetshop – Castano Primo, Italy +39 03 318 77063 The Skate Shop – Milano, Italy www.myspace.com/myskateshop S.R.D – Milano, Italy www.tressesport.it Style – Bologna, Italy www.style.bologna.it Sub – Bolzano, Italy www.subskateshop.com Surfing Shop – Milano, Italy www.surfingshop.net Tresse – Milano, Italy www.tressesport.it Tutto – Milano, Italy www.tuttoperlosport.it World Sport – Milano, Italy +39 02 869 2803

Whitewater – Oslo, Norway www.whitewater.no Concrete – Göteborg, Sweden www.concretestore.se Tranzsport – Geneva, Switzerland www.tranzport.ch 50:50 Skateboards – Bristol, UK www.5050store.com Alliance Board Store – Harrogate, UK www.allianceltd.co.uk Airjam – Newquay, UK www.airjam.co.uk Arnolfini Bookshop – Bristol, UK www.arnolfini.org.uk Artwords – London, UK www.artwords.co.uk Attla Snowboards – Truro, UK www.attlasnowboards.com Big Wednesday – Falmouth, UK www.bigwednesdaysurf.com Boarderline – Aberdeen, UK www.boarderline.co.uk Boardwise – Edinburgh, UK www.boardwise.com Boardwise – Glasgow, UK www.boardwise.com Boardwise – London, UK www.boardwise.com Bored on Board – London, UK www.boredonboard.com Brighton Watersports – Brighton, UK www.thebrightonwatersports.co.uk The Consortium – Bournemouth, UK www.consortium.co.uk Dot Dot Dot – Brighton, UK www.oddballs.co.uk East Coast Surf – Norwich, UK www.eastcoastsurf.co.uk Edge 2 Edge – Crawley, UK www.edge2edge.co.uk Edge Riders – Ipswich, UK www.edgeriders.com Elementz – Aberdeen, UK www.myspace.com/elementz_uk Emoceanl – Newquay, UK www.livetosurf.co.uk Entity Board Sports – Bidford-on-Avon, UK www.entityboardsports.co.uk Extreme Pie – UK www.extremepie.com Filf Surf Co – Brighton, UK www.filf.co.uk Flavour Skateboard Shop – Newquay, UK www.flavouronline.co.uk Fluid Concept – Scarborough, UK www.fluidconcept.co.uk Focus – Edinburgh, UK www.focuspocus.co.uk Freerider – Falmouth, UK www.freeridersonline.co.uk Half Pipe – London, UK www.half-pipe.co.uk Granite Reef – Aberdeen, UK www.granitereef.com LCB Surf – London, UK www.lcbsurf.com Loose Fit – Brauton, UK www.loose-fit.co.uk Loose Fit – Bristol, UK www.loose-fit.co.uk Microzine – Liverpool, UK www.microzine.co.uk

Microzine – London, UK www.microzine.co.uk Natterjacks – Kingston-upon-Thames, UK www.natterjacks.com Non-Stop – Nottingham, UK www.nonstopsportuk.com Note Skateshop – Manchester, UK www.noteshop.co.uk Nucleus – Swansea, UK www.nucleus-online.com Porthcawl Marine Surf Shop – Porthcawl, UK www.porthcawlmarine.co.uk Revolutionz – Norwich, UK www.revolutionz.co.uk Ride Snowboard Shop – Poole, UK www.ridesnow.co.uk Skate Warehouse – Okehampton, UK www.thewarehousegroup.co.uk Ski Surf – Colchester, UK www.skisurf.co.uk Soul Fibre Surf Shop – Elgin, UK +44 (0) 1343 569103 Soul Life – Plymouth, UK www.soullife.co.uk Southside Boards – Glasgow, UK www.southsideboards.co.uk SS20 – Oxford, UK www.ss20.co.uk Supertubes – Cornwall, UK www.supertubes.co.uk Two Seasons – Cambridge, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Coventry, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Derby, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Leamington, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Leicester, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Lichfield, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Northampton, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Nottingham, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Peterborough, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Solihull, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Two Seasons – Worcester, UK www.twoseasons.co.uk Troggs Surf Shop – Antrim, UK www.troggs.com Urb – Brighton, UK +44 (0) 1273 -325336 The Wavehouse – Bude, UK www.thewavehouse.co.uk Wonderful Workshop – Bristol, UK www.wonderfulworkshop.com YDNA – Bournemouth, UK www.ydnacentral.com

HUCK is also available at Borders, Waterstone’s, Somerfield*, Presse Tabac, Relais H, Barnes & Noble, Selfridges, Harrods, Zavvi and select newsagents across Europe and North America. (*select stores) Want to stock HUCK? HUCK? Please contact ed@huckmagazine.com

Chico Clothing est. 1993 I www.chico-clothing.de Geisselstrasse 93 -97 I 50823 Kรถln - Germany

PHOTOGRAPHY MATTIA ZOPPELLARO

There’s a battle in the air. The call to arms went out, now blood and sweat must follow.

Rogue combatants, armed with skill and sleight of foot, gather in circles, prepped and ready to prove themselves king. Absorbing the sound of funk and scent of the eighties, they take a moment in the shadows to stretch limbs and check in with their Inner Chi. For every man on the frontline, a war-dancing forefather lies back in NYC. But this isn’t the Bronx. It’s Brixton, South London. And the Eastpak Throwdown is back in town, offering neutral ground for b-boys, krumpers, lockers, poppers and pole-dancing sirens to break it down and bust one out. The time has come.

Let the battle begin. ▼

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Dr. Popper, poised to explode in the krumping battle.

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2006 World Champion Mouse, inciting a duel with Damien aka Tinacious in the toprock battle.

Patrice: solid hands, solid mind.

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Ricardo, filling Carlos in on what’s about to go down.

Abdul wears: Jeans and cap King Apparel, T-shirt Adidas.

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Throwdown regular, looking the part.

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Damien, anything but perplexed.

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Dr. Popper, full-throttle krumping.

Damien, director of B-Better, staring down the lens.

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First girl from left wears: Cap Carhartt, T-shirt and hoodie Eastpak. Second girl wears: Top and jeans Nikita.

Mouse, dominating the floor.

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Watch the Eastpak Throwdown live in action at Www.huckmagazine.com To engage in battle contact Charlie@hiphop.com www.myspace.com/throwdownuk www.b-better.co.uk www.eastpak.com

110 www.HUCKmagazine.com

First girl from left wears: Vest Majestic Athletic, jean shorts Quiksilver. Second girl wears: Sleeveless hoodie Nikita.

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MR. SALIH’S PHOTO BOOTH PHOTOGRAPHY MR. SALIH

Amongst the ticket hawkers and souvenir vendors of London’s Piccadilly Circus, HUCK collared an eclectic mix of cap-loving tourists and locals alike and pointed them in the direction of Mr. Salih’s photo booth.

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Name Jakob From Denmark Cap Etnies

Name Leyton From Forest Hill, UK Cap Stussy

Name Jessica From Basingstoke, UK Cap Stussy

Name Francesco From Italy Cap Carhartt

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Name Joash From Harrow Weald, UK Cap New Era ‘Tartan NY Yankees’

Name Maj From Finland Cap New Era ‘1920 Digital’

Name George From Harpenden, UK Cap New Era ‘As Seen On TV’

Name Veronika From Moscow, Russia Cap Stussy

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Name Ron From Harpenden, UK Cap Dickies

Name Juhani From Finland Cap King Apparel / New Era

Name Sammi From Walthamstow, UK Cap New Era ‘Catwoman’

Name Alex From New Cross, UK Cap King Apparel / New Era

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THE BACK PAGES CSS:

POP HEAVEN FROM BRAZIL!

MAN ON WIRE:

SPENCER MURPHY

CRAZY, ABSOLUTELY CRAZY

THE WACKNESS:

NEW YORK CITY PRE-GIULIANI

AND:

‘POOL’, A SHORT STORY BY JAMIE BRISICK

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WHERE HAS ALL THE VINYL GONE? PHOTOGRAPHER SPENCER MURPHY CAPTURES A SPECIES ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION: THE INDEPENDENT RECORD STORE. Life moves pretty fast, a better man once said. As writers we’re used to the ravages of time rendering our work irrelevant, but seldom have my words been so swiftly outdated as when I wrote the record stores section for a recent London shopping guide. Reckless Records and Mister CD closed down while I was researching it; Disque announced its demise as the editor was revising it; and Deal Real called last orders as the books were being stacked on shelves.

All of which made me rather sceptical about putting pen to paper to celebrate those still holding the fort in Soho, London. My own favourite vinyl haunt, once a bustling bazaar of lunch-breaking soul warriors flipping through the decades in their suits and ties, is these days deserted. Most dance-orientated record shops are dead on weekdays and teeming with DJs panic-buying promos on Friday and Saturday afternoons. The digital age has made the life of the independent record store anything but certain. So what, I wondered, was worth celebrating?

Then I saw Spencer Murphy’s photographs, and realised that the answer had been staring at me all along. It’s the acquired personality of the places themselves; the cumulative weight of

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vinyl dust and cheerful banter and afternoons gleefully wasted between the sleeves. It’s written into the faces of the men and women behind the counter: cheeky bassline-peddler Nicky Blackmarket of BM Soho; the impossibly suave Jean-Claude Thompson of If Music…; Zorra, an embodiment of Zen-like calm amid the urban storm of Wyld Pytch.

Customers may be choosing to stay home and order their music in a torrent of soulless zeros and ones, but as long as the subjects of Spencer’s photographs are opening up shop each morning, the independent record store is growing old gracefully.

It’s up to those of us who still care to show our love as well as our custom, and to remember the good old days while they’re still here. CYRUS SHAHRAD ‘Independent’ was the brainchild of designer and illustrator Ali Augur.

A limited-edition seven-inch fold-out poster of the project is available directly from the artists or at The Photographers Gallery Bookshop. www.aliaugur.com www.spencermurphy.co.uk

SPENCER MURPHY

L

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S M U B L A CSS

Donkey, Sub Pop/Warner Brazil’s CSS set out their stall for record two with this line from opening track, ‘Jåger Yoga’: “We didn’t come into the world to walk around / We came here to take you out.” Donkey is a harder, more aggressive and rockier album than their debut, and seemingly a spiteful response to their rise from the kooky rank – social outcasts in their own country who learnt about music by self-consciously not looking inwards to their own culture but outwards, via the Internet – to indie disco royalty.

They seem to be saying they’re still misunderstood, but in different ways now. A later track is called ‘How I Became Paranoid’. Some of their initial character, however – borne of the pleasure of being imaginatively inept – is gone. Experience has led them to clean up their sound and dollop on the polish.

A bad thing? Not in this instance. Donkey kicks. It oozes with focus and confidence and it’ll send them into the pop cosmos, whether they can handle it or not. PHIL HEBBLETHWAITE

APACHE

Boomtown Gems, Birdman Juvenile delinquent bands from California that do a surf/ garage/glam crossover and have painfully predictable lyrics like “summer time and the girls are hot” are alright by me every freakin’ time, and Apache do indeed make you want to steal a car and throw doughnuts at cops. “You’re never gonna be the real shit, just like me.”

Loser pop. Forever. PH

BLACK KIDS

Partie Traumatic, Almost Gold Florida’s Black Kids are a total limp dick of a live band, and their debut album is an absolute shocker – shockingly good. Former Suede man Bernard Butler produced the record, and he knows how to find the POP in pop, but you hear great things in the writing too.

These are sleek and clever little songs, delivered with taughtness and unexpected passion. PH

CHAKA KHAN

Funk This, Megafan R&B now means syrup and slush. Chaka Khan has dished out a fair bit of that herself, but her roots are in funk. This is a look back to her golden days with Rufus and, for someone who spent decades off her noggin on mushrooms and pot, it’s an unanticipated success.

There’s duff stuff on here for sure, but the lady still knows how to nail the wail. PH

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DELICIOUS VINYL ALL-STARS Rmxxology, Delicious Vinyl

Tonnes of bowel-troubling, window-cracking bangers on this comp of remixes from Delicious Vinyl’s back catalogue, and some total flops too. Hot Chip’s edit of The Pharcyde’s ‘Passing Me By’ is a nightmare, but that matters not when Peaches and Aaron LaCrate/Debonair etc. have come up with nightclub gold.

New-school party fiends bring trusted floor-destroying gems up to date. Delicious indeed. PH

MARY ANNE HOBBS Evangeline, Planet Mu

Mary’s been on the radio for a thousand years, but she clearly still has a real love for finding out about new music and telling others. Here she is in her role as Auntie Dubstep, compiling a killer collection of menacing beats, bass and bleeps that slip into grime and techno too.

An excellent overview of what’s going on in that dark and beautiful world. PH

DR JOHN

City That Care Forgot, Cooking Vinyl As of late, Dr John has been keeping it safe with his (admittedly hot shit) band, The Lower 911, but this is about more than music. Since Katrina, the Night Tripper’s been operating as a one-man news wire from his home city of New Orleans, although he left years ago.

Song titles like ‘My People Need A Second Line’ say it all. Listen the fuck up, in other words. PH

POP LEVI

Never Never Love, Counter Pop Levi knew his debut album was too fuzzy and clever to be a big hit, which he wanted, so he’s returned with a far more glossy and mainstream sound. It’s too compromised, however, and there are a couple of real howlers on here, one of which is called ‘Mai’s Space’. Whoops. Stick with Pop, though: he’s got raw talent and even in this record’s bleakest moments, you sense something decent. PH

SHE & HIM

Volume One, Double Six A rare example of a record by an actress (Zooey Deschanel) that isn’t rubbish. Her voice is occasionally shrill, but she writes well and the ‘him’ (M Ward) has done a tight job on the production. In fact, the grand country-pop backdrops are fun and that’s not something you get out of sour-puss Ward very often. Highlight: a winning version of The Beatles’ ‘I Should Have Known Better’. PH

VILE IMBECILES

Queenie Was A Blonde, Tea Vee Eye The consensus on a band that’s doing genuinely original stuff (a tweaked hardcore/black-jazz/sick-funk crossover in the Vile Imbeciles’ case) is often that it’s good that they are. That’s it. These Brightonians want more, so they’ve left smoother paths into this album than they did on their mental debut. Less abstract, more logical, but still intelligent and challenging. Onwards, bizarre experiment. PH

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MOVIES MAN ON WIRE

Director: James Marsh

In 1974, wire-walking performance artist Philippe Petit and a band of conspirators busted into the barely finished World Trade Center complex, strung a cable between the towers and spent 45 minutes dancing on the roof of the city. Petit is an impish, charismatic narrator, and Marsh embroiders his words with the dramatic impetus of a heist movie. Black-and-white period photography takes the breath away, as does the near-transcendental music from composer Michael Nyman. MATT BOCHENSKI

THE WACKNESS

Director: Jonathan Levine

Evoking more than a hint of Larry Clark’s Kids, The Wackness follows drug bum Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) as he schleps around mid-nineties NYC chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool and all dealin’ some dope outside of the school. Luke falls for the hot stepdaughter of his stoner therapist (a really, really weird turn from Ben Kingsley) and the two of them dance around an awkward summer of love, self-discovery and painful rejection. Josh Peck is a revelation in the lead. MB

ELITE SQUAD

Director: José Padilha

Making City of God look like Mary Poppins is no mean feat, but Padilha pulls it off in the brutal Elite Squad. The squad in question is BOPE – Brazil’s black-clad police whose anti-drug campaign in the favelas doesn’t include anything as wussy as search warrants or subpoenas, but plastic bags over the face and a shotgun up the arse. Based on the testimony of both ex- and serving BOPE officers, Padilha’s film saw him harassed in court by the cops. It’s electric, murderous stuff. MB

ALEXANDRA

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov

Okay, so this isn’t exactly an edge-of-the-seat adrenalin ride, but there’s a kind of pure, ethereal otherness to Sokurov’s film that needs to be experienced. Perhaps it’s the withered light and acrid dust of Chechnya that gives Alexandra its unreal beauty. Here our heroine is visiting her grandson, a soldier passing time on the frontline of Russia’s own war on terrorism. Sokurov explores the communion between young and old, the commonality of the oppressed and the brain-numbing cycle of war. MB

BLINDSIGHT

Director: Lucy Walker

Some films seem so machine tooled to stir your emotions that you almost want to hate them. Take Blindsight. Lucy Walker’s second film is the story of six Tibetan kids attempting to tackle Everest’s Lhakpa-Ri peak. And they’re blind. See what we mean? But here’s the real kicker: Blindsight is absolutely brilliant. Not only because it’s an absurdly uplifting paean to the human spirit, but also because it’s a genuinely compelling human drama of conflicting characters and mixed emotions. Get over the cynicism and go see it. MB

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S D V D

SON OF RAMBOW

Director: Garth Jennings

Garth Jennings gets his Michel Gondry freak on for Son of Rambow, smearing this tale of two boys and their quest to make the ultimate home movie in lo-fi animation and an all-round sense of good old-fashioned fun. Bill Milner and Will Poulter are both excellent as kids from opposite sides of the track irresistibly drawn to each other for friendship and moral support, although what could have been a real kids classic ends up getting bogged down in wasteful eighties nostalgia.

Not quite the smash it should have been, but a solid Brit hit nonetheless. MATT BOCHENSKI

21

Director: Robert Luketic

21 certainly deserves a second look on DVD. Based on the true life story of Jeff Ma, 21 is about six MIT students who used their math skills to count cards and take Vegas for millions of dollars. Luketic’s adaptation is far from perfect: visually speaking, he has nothing new to say about Vegas itself, and Kevin Spacey phones it in as the students’ tetchy professor. But Jim Sturgess (looking like a young De Niro) does a decent job in the lead, and the film rolls on with an easy charm. MB

PERSEPOLIS

Director: Marjane Satrapi

Based on Marjane Satrapi’s own autobiographical comic books, this black-and-white film version makes it to the screen with style, wit and charm intact. It tells of Satrapi’s life as a young girl before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the creeping repression of the Islamic Republic that gradually crushed the people’s expectations of freedom. But the spirit of rebelliousness survived inside the likes of Satrapi, who refused to be bowed by the new regime and was ultimately exiled to Europe to find a new life. MB

DOOMSDAY

Director: Neil Marshall

Neil Marshall continues his one-man assault on good taste with Doomsday, an eye-wateringly violent hodge-podge of action classics from Escape From New York to Mad Max via Gladiator and Aliens. In the near future, a deadly virus has wiped out the inhabitants of Scotland, forcing the British government to build a big wall and machine gun anyone who gets too close. But twenty years later the virus reappears in London, so it’s up to a crack team of commandos to go back to Scotland and find a cure. What follows is a hilarious battle against cabaret cannibals and medieval meatheads, punctuated by Marshall’s freakish love of decapitation. Get drunk and enjoy. MB

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SURFING IN FRANCE..

"WE DO IT IN ENGLISH"

learn to surf

coaching

surfcamp

Ave. du golf, 1888, Hossegor, 40150, France, Camp landline :+33 558 479 104, Mobile :+33 0626 328 759, skype : kosurfcamps, Kevin Olsen Surf School, c/o Cream CafĂŠ, Les bourdaines, Seignosse

www.kevinolsensurfhouse.com

GAMES

SOUL CALIBUR IV **** Xbox 360, PS3

The original Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast was one of the best games ever. With its tactical fighting, upgradeable weapons and beautiful graphics, it was sublime. Luckily, SC hasn’t lost its touch in its fourth instalment. With the same addictive gameplay, outlandish Japanese theatrics and some awesome new features including destructible armour and unlockable Star Wars characters, it’s still a force to be reckoned with. En Garde! ED ANDREWS

STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED **** Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP

Marking a new episode in both the George Lucas cash cow and gaming technology, The Force Unleashed utilises a new game engine that simulates real-world physics to the smallest detail. Without getting all geeky, it means you can fight Stormtroopers and generally smash up the place with near perfect realism, with both environments and bones breaking differently each and every time. There is some lame story about being Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, blah, blah, blah… but that’s not the point. The point is using the force to kick someone’s arse – like Luke Skywalker should’ve done instead of being such a soft, do-gooding bastard. ED A

SEGA BASS FISHING *** Wii

What could be better than a nice relaxing day spent catching virtual fish with your virtual rod on a virtual boat?

Not much according to SEGA. With new improved fish AI and a variety of baits, lures and lines at your disposal, it’s entertaining enough. But it’s not like you can eat your catch now, is it? ED A

SAINTS ROW 2 *** Xbox 360, PS3

As an unfortunate understudy to the GTA series, Saints Row will win no prizes for originality. But it’s still rather good. The familiar sandbox, mission-based game play is tight and littered with humorous diversions such as insurance fraud, fight clubs and streaking to help you climb the greasy gangland pole. Not too shabby. ED A

ZOO KEEPER *****

www.bobpitch.com/zookeeper

Instead of whiling away your time on Facebook, check this out instead. Following the simple premise of stacking the animals to keep the zoo in order, this Tetris-esque novelty will soak up your Internet time like a sponge – but you may end up losing your job as well. ED A

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Your search is over.

Looking for the perfect wave… looking for bus stuff. Beetle stuff.

Stuff you wear. Stuff you carry. Sun visors, key rings, t’s… lots of t’s.

For 10%* discount enter the code ‘huck08’ at volkswagenmerchandise.co.uk

* Valid until 30th October 2008.

S K BOO CHEATING ON THE METRONOME Scott Bourne, Carhartt

If you’ve found yourself struck by the insight and intellect from our very own cover subject, pro skater and writer Scott Bourne, then his new hard cover book of poems, Cheating On The Metronome, should very well be your next read. The 150-page book features some of Bourne’s most personal writings to date and is printed as the work was originally written: hand-typed on a vintage Corona typewriter.

Bourne’s words are rhythmic in their pace, yet manage to stick in your head long after the page’s been flipped. In this important collection, Bourne allows himself to delve into the many topics that plague his soul: love, fear, belligerence, frustration and the great tragedy and beauty of what’s long been called art. There’s only 1000 of these made, so you need to move quickly if you want to get your hands on one.

Go to www.carhartt-streetwear.com to find out how. JAY RIGGIO

GLOBAL SURFARI: THE SURFER’S TRAVEL ATLAS Global Publishing

Since Low Pressure brought out their seminal guide in the early nineties, surfing purists have baulked at spot-by-spot guides. But that hasn’t stopped publishers from churning them out. The latest is Global Surfari out of Australia, which has an environmental flavour and is endorsed by the Surfrider Foundation. Highlights include an enlightening foreword by legend Mark Richards, an informative section on weather and waves and a smattering of good photos. The book covers spots in North, Central and South America, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Australia, East Asia, Western Europe and Africa, and includes intricate directions. But Puritans should chill: most are well-known breaks. MILES MASTERSON

SNUFF

Chuck Palahniuk, Jonathan Cape Publishing

The ever-challenging Chuck Palahniuk returns with another sharp and cynical dissection of American life, this time targeting the porn industry.

Snuff is told from the perspectives of four participants in a recordbreaking gang bang where ageing porn star Cassie Wright aims to take on 600 men. But it soon becomes obvious that the characters have very different agendas. His colloquial style helps paint a very bitter picture of the porn industry, desecrating the supposed glamour and exposing it as false, seedy and fundamentally brutal. ED ANDREWS

URBAN GUERILLA PROTEST

Ake Rudolph, Mark Batty Publishing

Fancy subverting the system in your lunch break? Then get your angry mitts on this ‘theoretical documentation’ of guerrilla protest action from 1995-2005. Sure, the intro says it should ‘by no means’ be used as inspiration. But after absorbing the antics of Reclaim The Streets and The Ruckus Society, we defy you to not wanna smash a pie in some politician’s face. ANDREA KURLAND

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I was ten years old and Dogtown-obsessed, and though I’d yet to actually step foot on a surfboard, I’d seen Super Session twice and had Gerry Lopez’s tube riding stance so deeply etched in my brain that the plum tree that created a tunnel over the sidewalk at the end of our street was less flora and concrete than it was the Banzai Pipeline. My two older brothers and I rode Logan Earth Skis, Bennett trucks, and Road Rider 4s and wore Vans deck shoes, Op cord shorts, and long-sleeve tees deliberately frayed and oversized because that’s what Alva, Jay-boy, Biniak and Shogo wore. We were middle-class Valley kids trying to look poor and our scabby knees, puka shell necklaces and sweat-matted hair parted way off to the side were badges of defiance.

We listened to Zep, Nugent and Peter Frampton, and skated Toe Nails the Toilet Bowl and Jungleland. On weekends, when my mom was visiting her twin sister in West LA, we’d get dropped off at Kenter, Revere or Bellagio – schools with wave-like banks and hostile locals.

We’d made a pact that should anyone ask, we’d say we lived in Santa Monica. I still remember my well-rehearsed response: “26th and Wilshire. I go to Franklin, my bros go to Lincoln.” It was disastrously uncool to admit you were from the Valley.

But there was another equally depressing issue gnawing at me, and it was the fact that I’d never skated a pool. Kevin had once, Steven had sort of, but for reasons related to orthodontist appointments, fishing engagements, or after-school specials that had seduced me at precisely the wrong times, I’d always missed out. Pools were like good waves – they’d happen for a fleeting couple of hours. If you were there you scored. If you weren’t you had to hear about it for weeks on end.

And while classic surf sessions are generally killed by boring stuff like onshore winds or shifting tides or dropping swell, pool sessions came to abrupt, dramatic finishes that often involved irate homeowners, fangbearing German shepherds, and billy club-wielding cops – huge street cred on the elementary school campus, in other words.

The Box Pool’s appeal was twofold. It was located in the backyard of an abandoned house off Sunset not far from the Playboy mansion, and I was being taken there by my older cousin Jeff, who surfed, smoked pot, and was slated for a “Who’s Hot” in next month’s issue of Skateboarder.

We rode the Wilshire bus to Westwood, skated across UCLA, scurried along a dangerously narrow and curvaceous back street, and arrived at the bottom of an ice plant-covered slope. “Right up there,” said Jeff, pointing to a mesa of eucalyptus trees.

Like most of these pool assaults, it was a back door entry. We crawled through a hole under a chain-link fence, bushwhacked through

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a forest of weeds, then parted the foliage to see what looked like a scene straight out of Dogtown and Z-Boys. Shirtless, sun-tanned, stringyhaired skaters traded runs in a blindingly white, rectangular pool with turquoise tile. A giggly blonde in Dittos and sun hat rolled joints and sipped Heineken. Aerosmith’s ‘Get Your Wings’ played on an 8-track tape deck.

I entered sheepishly, cousin Jeff coached me into my first run and, as I roared down the slope, up the transition, into that weightless, astronaut-like sensation of ‘getting vertical’, kick turned, then out of the transition, up the slope, and back in line behind my stringy-haired peers, I felt euphoric, at least three years older. Adrenalin coursed through my veins, serotonin washed about my head, and a newfound confidence spiralled in my belly. I thought of Larry Bertlemann in Super Session: “Anything is possible!”

On my second and third runs I got progressively higher, and by my fourth I got two wheels out over the round hole where the light had been, which I used as a kind of target. I heard cousin Jeff announce to our fellow skaters, “And this is his first pool!” which meant everything.

And then on my next run I got even higher, so high, in fact, that I felt like I was floating, which I was – my rear wheels were literally in the light hole.

The next couple seconds are hazy but according to Jeff’s colourful recount, my trucks locked in the light and I went spilling down headfirst.

I remember seeing stars, a huge bump on my head, and a throbbing right thumb. And then in the calm, be-cool manner that would define the era, I remember cousin Jeff picking me up, hoisting me over his shoulder, and carrying me out of the deep end and onto the steps, where the giggly blonde suddenly turned all maternal.

Cousin Jeff’s next move was straight out of the Dogtown handbook.

He borrowed the Heineken from the girl and told me to take a big gulp.

Then he borrowed the joint and said something like, “Suck it in real deep and hold it in for as long as you possibly can.”

The next few hours were by far the most surreal of my entire ten years. We went to a matinee showing of King Kong at the NuWilshire Theatre. I remember slurping from a big, ice cold Coke then passing out.

The next morning, head still throbbing, right hand heavily swollen and black and blue, my mom took me to Cedars Sinai where I was diagnosed with a mild concussion and a fractured thumb. And while the following three weeks of having to wear a cast and not being allowed to skate have vanished from memory, that split-second of weightlessness between kick turn and disaster are still vividly with me. Jamie Brisick