HUCK Magazine The Stephanie Gilmore Issue (Digital Edition) by TCOLondon

vol. 03 issue #012 made in the uk ÂŁ3.75 sTEPHANIE GILMORE by PATRICIA NIVEN

Stephanie Gilmore Rise of the rookie

Tora h Br ight

Peter Li n e

OBA M A SPECI A L W ITH

K elly Slater

Lea n ne P elosi

Ch uck D

Ada m Yauc h

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SO SAYS THE CAMPAIGN SLOGAN, AND WE’RE WILLING TO BUY INTO IT THIS TIME AROUND. after all, Prophet of Hope Barack Hussein Obama has MANAGED THE IMPOSSIBLe: he has ended “the appalling silence of the good people”, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, by galvanising millions and suggesting there might just be some light at the end of the tunnel. WHILE FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE WILL SURELY REMAIN BEYOND REACH, the symbolism of his potential win is huge. Half African, half white, born in multicultural Hawaii, schooled in Indonesia, transplanted to Chicago and then Washington DC, Obama is the Melting Pot realised, the American Dream come true, the dawn of a post-racial era in a planet rife with petty tribalism and hate. The mythological U.S. of the Declaration of Independence, of Hollywood fanfare and of the fancy of children the world over will be closer to reality come Election Day 2008. The planet is ready for it. Question is: America, are you?

CONTENTS. HUCK 012

the big stories 46 STEPHANIE GILMORE surfing’s super rookie. 52 PETER LINE legend. full stop. 54 OBAMA SPECIAL with kelly slater et al. 62 THE WILD WEST britain’s toughest surf scene. 66 MIDDLE EAST WAVES surfing through the divide. 72 GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS the snowboarding sorority speak out.

jamie brisick

78 REMEMBERING LIBERIA memoirs of a surf trip. 80 THE O’NEILL MISSION road trippin’ through france. 86 JAPAN blood, sex and culture shock. 94 BOOTS FOR ALL kitting out the melting pot. 96 FIXED CHARGE FASHION snappy dressing, snappy bikes.

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CONTENTS. HUCK 012

▼

paul willoughby

▼

THE FRONT 22 24 26 30 32 34 38 42

leanne pelosi billy rohan melbourne street art maxine sapulette my own two feet henry rollins stoked caroline beliard

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▼

american girl 106 albums 108 films 110 games 112 come dancing 114

MY SEARCH...*

wears RECYCLED OUTERWEAR

*MA QUÊTE

vol. 03 issue 0 2 Publisher & Editor

Vince Medeiros

Editorial Director

Creative Directors

Matt Bochenski

Rob Longworth & Paul Willoughby

Associate Editor

Andrea Kurland

www.thechurchoflondon.com Snow Editor

Skate Editor

Music Editor

Global Editor

Jay Riggio

Zoe Oksanen

Phil Hebblethwaite

Jamie Brisick

Translations Editor

Website Editor

Junior Designer

Alex Capes

Victoria Talbot

Editorial Intern

Markus Grahlmann Associate Publisher

Marketing & Distribution

Advertising Director

Advertising Manager

Danny Miller

Ed Andrews

Steph Pomphrey

Prudence Ivey

Dean Faulkner

Text

Jonathan Crocker, Tim Donnelly, Fred D’Orey, Michael Fordham, Gemma Freeman, Steven Fröhlich, Josh Jones, Niall O’Keeffe, Alex Wade Images

Cole Barash, John Callahan, Christy Chaloux, Sam Christmas, Bryan Derballa, Canyon Florey, Matt Georges, Philip Grisewood, Elizabeth Looke-Stewart, Patricia Niven, Russell Pierre, Josh Robenstone, Allen Ying, Mattia Zoppellaro

HUCK is published by STORY Studio 209 Curtain House 134-146 Curtain Road London EC2A 3AR, UK www.storypublishing.co.uk Editorial Enquiries +44 (0) 207-729-3675 editorial@huckmagazine.com Advertising and Marketing Enquiries +44 (0) 207-729-3675 ads@huckmagazine.com ON THE COVER: STEPHANIE GILMORE BY PATRICIA NIVEN

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Distributed worldwide by COMAG UK distribution enquiries: andy.hounslow@comag.co.uk Worldwide distribution enquiries: graeme.king@comag.co.uk Importato da Johnsons International News Italia S.p.A. Distribuito da A&G MARCO Via Fortezza 27, Milano, Italia Printed by The Blue Printing Company 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.

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Gabi Viteri, See What I See.

no boys allowed text Gemma Freeman

photography Christy Chaloux

“We’ve proved to the snowboard industry that there’s no such thing as a token girl anymore,” states Leanne Pelosi, pro snowboarder and co-founder of Runway Films. The Runway girls continue “We have a crew of fifteen, who are all talented and can produce their postfeminist strike. really strong sections each winter. When I compare what we’re doing now to four years ago, I’m like [cringes], ‘Oh my god! We were doing those tricks?!’” Ten years ago all-female snowboarding films didn’t exist; now they’re cutting edge. Faced with the macho bravado of male-dominated movies – often obsessed with gnarly tricks rather than style – women riders took their talent to the big screen in true post-feminist style. Instead of fighting the guys, they created their own niche of slickly produced, progressive snow cinema. It began in 2004, when Olympian Lesley McKenna and photographer Josie Clyde released Dropstitch, the first all-girl international snowboard film. But, compare the film’s tricks like 360s and boardslides to the technical street rails, gargantuan spins off epic booters and burly backcountry in Runway’s latest, See What I See, and the progression in women’s snowboarding is clearly immense. The existence of all-girl films has helped facilitate this rapid rise in standards. “Once you see one girl do a 900, or a 270 onto a rail, or a crazy cliff – you want to be that person to do it the next year,” says Pelosi. “I get really inspired watching what tricks are being pulled. Some of the stuff the girls are doing on rails is insane.” Natural female competitiveness also pushes the girls to charge harder, as Pelosi saw on a trip to Nelson, BC: “Anne Flore [Marxer] was stealing the

show and killing it, which made Natasza hit this really big pillow. I was like, ‘No way – that’s gnarly’, and Janna [Meyen] was like, ‘Nah’, but then Natasza just went and did it. It’s good to get all the girls together; it’s like, ‘You just did that? Holy shit – I gotta do something bigger!’” If you see Natasza Zurek’s riding in See What I See you’ll agree that going bigger would be nigh impossible: her stand-out section is filled with huge hits that force you to pause, rewind, and rewatch – again and again. But unlike Runway’s first 2007 film, La La Land, this year’s opus is not just more snowboard porn: “Back then, we wanted to be legitimate, so followed the shot-shot-shot-rider intro format, to be more core,” explains Pelosi. “This year we changed to more lifestyle, did more trips and gave the girls Super-8 cameras so they got to film a lot themselves, which we spliced into the whole film. It’s got more of an artistic feel; it makes you stoked on snowboarding and really want to go up the mountain.” So would Leanne ever work on a mixed-sex movie? “I’m not opposed to making a film with guys, but for me it was easier with sponsors to work with all girls. But it would be awesome if other films started showing the female side of the sport – instead of only us.” And how about this all-girl approach? Is it paying off? “When I started snowboarding there was just Janna and Tara [Dakides] in the magazines. Now every brand has a whole team of pros. There’s a lot more exposure and support for women, and they’re riding hard,” says Leanne. “We still need to work together. But with the number of all-women films, magazines and camps now, collectively we make a much bigger impact than just one woman alone in a film.” Check out the video interview with Leanne Pelosi on HUCK TV. www.huckmagazine.com www.runwayfilms.com

school of skate text Jay Riggio

photography Allen Ying

In high school I wasn’t what one would call a participator, especially when it came to gym class. Essentially, I was a dreamer, and ninety-nine Pro per cent of my dreams revolved around skateboarding. skateboarder Often, I’d stare down at the Billy Rohan buttery-smooth basketball court is teaching kids where most of my gym classes took how to push. place, and imagine what it would feel like to skate on it. I’d make up lines in my head, incorporating four-trick combinations with the bleachers’ bottom bench. My thoughts would almost always progress to the far-fetched notion of replacing gym class with a much healthier and enjoyable ‘Skate Class’. But what was once a ridiculous fantasy has become a fully-fledged reality for kids in New York City. Today, if you happen to attend Eastside High School or the New Design High School in Downtown Manhattan, then you’re psyched to register for their Skateboard Physical Education Classes. Pro skater and

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long-time New York local Billy Rohan recently started up an after-school skate programme at the Lower East Side’s Open Road Park – and found himself with a new title as ‘Teacher’. “The school would see sixty to seventy kids skating there after school. So they approached me and asked if I would be interested in teaching a class,” explains Rohan. “So the first year I did it on a volunteer basis as a trade-off so I could keep the ramps there after school. And this year they decided that they wanted to renew it and have me teach different grades.” At the moment Billy is teaching students from grades nine through twelve. The class isn’t jumping the gun straight into tre flips just yet. It begins with the basics, like how to hold one’s board and the proper way to push. “The real goal of the class is first to get the kids running around and doing stuff active, and second to ride a skateboard, so that if they want to go skate with their friends, they know how to ride around the city and learn tricks on their own spare time.” It’s only a matter of time before the public school system embraces all things fun. Imagine a vodka drinking class? Lord only knows I can.

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stencil down under text JOSH JONES

Civilian.

photography Josh Robenstone

At the turn of the millennium, Melbourne was a city known for its bubbling music scene, laid-back way of life and cosmopolitan vibe. Then, just Could months into the new century, the walls started to change colour. Melbourne, Taggers and throw ups had always Australia, had a place on the city’s walls, but be the new graffiti capital a new style of street art was making itself known. Stencilling eked out of of the world? the cracks and, starting off small and colourful, began to expand and spread across the entire inner city. Stencil graffiti – pioneered by Frenchman Blek Le Rat and brought reeling into the mainstream by England’s anonymous yet super famous Banksy – had arrived. And it was taking over. So much so that the Lonely Planet Guide notes stencil art as one of the number one attractions for visitors to the city. At the heart of this burgeoning scene sit two artists: Civilian and Prism. For Civilian, an activist hailing from Newcastle, some 100 miles north of Sydney, art and politics are decidedly related. “I moved to Melbourne and there was this beautiful mess of graffiti everywhere and it’s definitely where I started my more creative stencilling,” says the softly spoken artist. “I was really drawn to it, with the political slogans and tags and stencils and pasteups and everything.” Queensland-born Prism started painting at a very early age, sneaking out and using model plane paint. But it wasn’t until a student exchange trip to Brazil in 1999 that he discovered the freedom of stencilling. “The speed of it really appealed to me, and it was something different,” says the selfproclaimed vandal. He soon turned political – famously bombing a stencil featuring the then Prime Minister John Howard with devil horns across Melbourne – before moving into more character-based stencilling. Like so many breaking scenes, when things kicked off, they kicked off hard. “When we started in early 2002, it went bang! The whole city went nuts,” Prism recounts of his exploits with fellow painters Phibs, Rone, Wrecker, Sync, Macatron and The Tooth. “Then it infiltrated everything, from the media, to fashion and the music scene. I mean, you could not find one fucking band poster that didn’t have a paint drip coming off it from some graphic designer.” ▼

Prism.

Civilian also worked with other writers, including Psalm, arguably the first stencil artist in Melbourne. “There was a stage when there was a bunch of us who felt like when we went out we were going out against each other,” says the dreadlocked artist. “You got a really good buzz about doing stuff, because we were pushing each other and hitting as many spots as possible.” The stencilling kept coming. Prism and his buddies famously set up the city’s first illegal ‘galleries’. Suitably gonzo, the ‘galleries’ consisted of painting large, white spaces in the city’s labyrinthine alleys, such as Hosier and Canada Lanes, which within days would be filled with colour. Although a visitor to the city would be forgiven for thinking that the Melbourne authorities are pretty slack, there are actually pretty stringent regulations in place. During the Commonwealth Games in 2006 a zerotolerance policy on graffiti was brought in after a proposed consultation with criminologist Alison Young, Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne and unofficial spokesperson for the writers, was thrown out and denied. And most recently an even more controversial law has been passed statewide. “If you’re caught within something like 1,500 metres of any form of public transport with spray paint or marker pens, they can charge you on the spot just for having them,” Prism says with obvious frustration. “Then you have to prove that you need those pens or paint for a legitimate commercial purpose. It’s guilty until proven innocent. What the fuck?” Civilian’s not a fan of Big Brother either: “It’s the classic thing that the people who will suffer most from this law will be the kids out in the suburbs who you never hear about – the taggers who aren’t as educated and don’t have as strong a community as stencil artists. This law will also lead to things

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like resisting arrest. And whatever else is found in the bag searches will only make it worse for the kids.” These new laws, though, aren’t stopping more people from getting into the scene. Youth centres in the city even run stencil-making workshops, and new work appears week after week across the city. “I think there’s a lot more stencils with a lot lower quality now that there are so many kids involved,” Civilian says. “But don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing that so many young people are into it.” One thing both pioneers have noticed is a relentless wave of changing stencil styles and trends sweeping across the city. “I remember a while ago everyone was doing guns and gas masks and stuff,” Prism says. “Then there were loads of stencils saying, ‘No more fucking guns.’” Styles become popular and then replicated, and other people interpret them in their own way. Civilian adds, “It’s definitely a ripe environment for very diverse styles, which come and go in waves.” Whether Melbourne is still the capital of stencilling, who knows? There’s always someplace else discovering their scalpel and cardboard skills. Even Indonesia’s got the bug now. “The stencil scene in Jakarta is really taking off at the moment, which is hardcore!” says Civilian. “You’ve got to have balls to do that! I have no idea what the penalties are there.” But for now, Melbourne is the tidemark against which all other stencils are measured. And that means it’s always gonna be somewhere near the top of the tree

Check out a gallery with artwork from the Melbourne stencil graf scene at www.huckmagazine.com.

In Her Wake text Jonathan Crocker

photography Paul Willoughby

Perched on the coastline of the Black Sea, Anapa is a small tourist town, where Russian families spend their rubles on tawdry fairground rides. The locals seldom see a foreigner Meet the in town, and they’ve probably never punk heroine seen anything like Maxine Sapulette, of cable wakeboarding. here to compete in the Cable World Wakeboarding Championships. Rocking a spiky, dyed-blonde crop, a star tattoo on her wrist and a boisterous attitude, the seventeenyear-old Dutch rider has the skills to match the look. “And I have this too,” she grins, pointing into her mouth at a multi-coloured tongue-piercing. “Last year I tried a trick, it all went wrong and I landed hard on my face. That’s the last thing I remember: I was out cold in the water. It’s strange, but I don’t have any fear. None of us young riders have any fear.” Max has made a habit of killing the competition and is leading the first elite generation of wakeboarders who have chosen cables over boats. Why? No boat, no limits, it seems, judging by the aggressive trickery Max is capable of when pulled through an obstacle-strewn circuit behind a speeding cable. “I started wakeboarding when I was ten,” she explains. “My mum’s friend took me to the local cableway in Holland and suddenly I was doing tricks. It was just easy for me to express myself on the board. I came second in the Juniors when I was twelve and then became World Champion in Austria two years ago.” Today, there’s a world title at stake. And with 220,000 viewers watching on the internet, it’s another chance for Maxine to stamp her dominance on the sport. Conditions are bad. The wind is churning the water into a jagged battlefield. Waiting for her call to get ready, Max distracts herself by practising bottle-flipping tricks learned from the local barman. “Not bad, eh?” she half-smiles, balancing it precariously on the end of her finger. A few hours later and she’s swapping dripping hugs with the other competitors. “I’m so happy I won,” she beams. “But I know I didn’t show what I can do.” In that case, god help us when she does. www.protestboardwear.com

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My Own Two Feet text Andrea Kurland photography Canyon Florey

There are some activities in life that lend themselves to that ‘love-hate relationship’ thing. Hiking, for example. Hate the breathlessness The all-hiking and aching legs. Love that moment of solitude promised at the end. snowboard Chris Edmands likes to focus film that will on the love. So last season he pried inspire you to use your LEGS. a collective of pro snowboarders away from the zoom-zoom of their snowmobiles for a filming experience that called for a little more legwork. Throughout the winter, the likes of Travis Parker and Tom Burt joined Chris for a mammoth hike-a-thon across the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Hiking, filming and sleeping in the snow, the result was My Own Two Feet, a snowboard film produced without a drop of CO². “I had spent most my life exploring the mountains on foot,” says Chris, whose childhood snowboard consisted of a pair of Vans shoes screwed into a skate deck. “When snowmobiles came into the picture, it just kinda bummed me out that we had to use them to get around. As well as being super bad for the environment, everything just goes by you so fast – you don’t have time to look off the side of the trail and see what’s out there.” Eager to see what in fact was out there, Chris mapped out a schedule of hikes which, weather dependent, would see his recruits venturing into the

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wilderness for up to five days. “Sometimes we were seven to ten miles away from civilisation and out of cell phone service with no chance of rescue,” says Chris, whose filming experiences with Straight Jacket, Defective and Standard Films more than prepared him to go it alone. Question is, were his fellow hikers prepared? “Hiking out in the mountains is really no joke. If you’re accustomed to riding the chairlift, you really don’t have the lung and leg power to get around,” says Chris, knowingly. “Most of the riders practised hiking before they came out. But everyone seemed to have the best time, because we were doing something completely new to them. The first time Erik Leines came out with us was the first time he ever camped in snow. And that was true for a lot of the guys.” So what’s the big idea behind all this traipsing around? “Snowboarding has gotten so saturated with pushing the level of progression that people have forgotten about the basic experience of snowboarding; getting out there, adventuring and riding for yourself,” says Chris. “People are so focused on fashion, so disconnected from the environment, they literally forget how to relax and have fun. I want people to realise you don’t need to waste all sorts of gas to have fun on the mountains.” What you do need, though, is a solid pair of feet. My Own Two Feet is available on DVD in all good snowboard stores now. Check out the trailer on HUCK TV at www.huckmagazine.com. www.leewardcinema.com

“This could be snowboarding’s answer to Skate.” - Xbox 360 Forum

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Rollin’ On text Niall O’Keeffe illustration PHILIP GRISEWOOD

Henry Rollins is a coiled spring of contradictions. He’s a punk rock idealist who goes to Van Halen gigs. He’s a misanthrope who devotes time From Black Flag and money to humanitarian causes. He’s a pillar of sobriety who reveres to the spoken Iggy Pop. And he works hard – damn word, Henry Rollins is still hard. In fact, the former Black Flag frontman’s brutal work ethic has driven going strong. him to establish multiple careers, as a spoken word artist, actor, publisher, TV and radio presenter, documentary maker and travel journalist. But despite his workaholic tendencies, he’s still got time to talk to HUCK. HUCK: You reformed The Rollins Band for a tour two years ago. Have you since felt a drift towards the talking shows and away from music? Henry Rollins: Basically, we wanted to see if there were any sparks, and there weren’t. And about three or four shows in, it was like the dinner date with the ex-girlfriend. Before the drinks come you’re like, ‘Oh God. Get me out of this.’ I went out on tour last year and on a night off I saw Van Halen: men in their fifties playing thirty-year-old music. And they were good – it passed muster, for the most part. But it was like, wow, a moving museum. And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go and do ‘Liar’ again, because I can do it very well. I can probably sing it better now than when I wrote it. You’re better at it when you get old, in a way. You get grey and then you actually get good. But what would that say about me? The braver thing to do is that which makes me unsure. Do you still get a lot of hate mail? It’s mentioned a lot in your book, A Dull Roar. Sure, yeah. Every once in a while when the Fuel Network will rerun the TV show

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[The Henry Rollins Show] I’ll get the same kind of angry mail... The Gene Simmons interview: ‘Why didn’t you punch that guy’s lights out? What a dick!’ I write back, ‘Really? He’s more Borscht Belt humorous than anything else. Believe me, he’s laughing at the shit he’s saying, and he’s not dropping white phosphorous on kids, so how mad can I get at him?’ And then you have the one where I do the letter about creationism and how corny that is, and you get guys going, ‘I will debate you on this Darwin guy any time, man.’ I write back, ‘Okay, bring the pumpkin and the tooth fairy with you and the three of you can gang up on me.’ You went to a military school. Did it ever occur to you to join the military? No. My dad wanted me to follow my step-brother’s steps into the Navy and I said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ You’re a super disciplined person, though... Well, that was part of the schooling, that’s the way my father raised me, and it’s a great way to get things done. It’s a great way to go like a hot knife through butter in the entertainment industry when everyone else is waking up at two in the afternoon, and you can get up at 6am and get all your work done. Becoming a solo guy, owning my own publishing company, whatever, it was the discipline and the focus and the tenacity that got me through. Not my talent – I don’t have any. I can’t sing, I can’t write, I can’t do any of this stuff. But I hit it hard enough to where it kind of looks like talent. I’m the dumbest guy in the room any night, but I’m like the dog wagging the tail who knocks the teapot over. I’m so excited to tell them these stories I’ve got. You’ve said you expect McCain to win the election. Do you think things would degenerate or improve? He’s a bit more palatable than Bush, but it would be more palatable than Bush if Liza Minnelli were president.

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digital snow text ed andrews

Imagine a snowboard, a chauffeur-driven helicopter and a mountain blanketed in fluffy white goodness. Heaven, right? But what with the credit Destineer crunch and the impending doom that is global warming, fulfilling Studios and such a dream doesn’t seem Absinthe Films take snowboard very likely. It’s lucky then, that whenever the weather or your video games to wallet isn’t playing ball, you can the next level. always retreat into the comfort of your own living room and realise your powder dreams through a video game. Snowboarding games have been doing the rounds on consoles since the days of 16bits and Sonic the Hedgehog. Legendary games like Cool Boarders, 1080 Snowboarding and the awesome Amped series have allowed global joystick bashers to nail that perfect switch-corked-900-tocrooked-nosepress-to-triple-backflip time and time again. Impressive stuff, but try that in real life and the closest you’ll get is spine-snap-faceplant-tohospital-ward. Finally, though, there is hope. That hope is Stoked, a brandnew snowboarding game for Xbox 360 that promises to do to the genre what Skate did for skateboarding. “No paths. No boundaries. No limits,” raves Ced Funches of Destineer Studios, the developers of Stoked. “The goal is to fully explore the backcountry and complete challenges to earn sponsorships. Once sponsored, players can unlock gear, complete pro challenges and become a phenomenon in the snowboarding world.” No easy task, it seems. Many have tried before and fallen flat. So in order to recreate that authentic backcountry experience, Destineer teamed up with none other than master snowboard movie producers Absinthe Films. “I always thought a video game would be a great complement to the work we do with films,” says Patrick ‘Brusti’ Armbruster, co-founder of Absinthe Films. “In Stoked, you can get dropped wherever you want by helicopter and just ride. That freedom is what we try to represent in our movies; riding in the backcountry and planning your own lines. This game really allows you to do that.” ▼

This was no simple rubber stamp endorsement from Absinthe. Brusti’s role in Stoked’s creation started with a little friendly advice but soon expanded, seeing him getting no less than thirty snowboarding brands involved including Burton, Billabong, Volcom, Oakley and Quiksilver. As well as this, a whole host of Absinthe riders including Travis Rice, Nicolas Müller, Wolle Nyvelt, Annie Boulanger and Gigi Rüf are set to appear in the game. It was something that Destineer were, well, stoked about. “I was a huge fan of their film Optimistic? and was really fired up to get the chance to work with them,” says Ced. “The Absinthe approach is shared within the game and really influenced by their crew of riders with everything from the camera angles to the gear they ride.” And so Brusti, alongside Nyvelt, headed out to Destineer Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to help give this ambitious project a healthy dose of authenticity. It was there that they advised on the biomechanics of the avatar riders and demonstrated tricks and grabs in motion capture studios. “We also supplied them with a bunch of footage, and helped get the look and the riding positions right and, most importantly, made everything look stylish,” says Brusti. So what can you expect from this shredding simulation? First of all, no less than five real-world mountains including the free-riding Meccas of Alaska, Patagonia and Les Diablerets in Switzerland with more than forty-five squaremiles of open terrain to explore on each peak. But according to Funches, these aren’t just lifeless scale models – they are living, breathing mountains. “Every day the snow and weather conditions change thanks to a dynamic weather and time of day system. Snow settles on mountain surfaces, changing the riding experience, opening new paths and building new trickable features and challenges. It could be clear with blue skies when you start but a nasty little storm could roll on through. This changes the way you play, and because the snow accumulates, it dramatically changes the way the game looks.” But looks aside, the all important aspect is the ride. It appears that Stoked has learnt a thing or two from the analogue controls that made

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last year’s Skate such an addictive title. Ced explains: “Players will use the analogue sticks to control their riders and pull off moves; left analogue stick steers the rider while the right analogue stick controls the action. By pulling down on the right stick as you ride you begin to crouch and generate pop, pushing up initiates an ollie. The rest is up to the rider. The triggers are the corresponding grabs: right trigger is the right hand, left trigger is the left hand. From there, players are free to try any combination of spins, tricks and grabs, with no button mashing.” And as you progress, destroying challenges and racking up competition wins, you unlock tons of sponsored boards, boots, bindings, jackets and accessories. And, of course, with pro riding comes some virtual media interest. “Stoked truly gives an organic feel to being on the mountain and pulling off the move you want to do, when you want to do it,” says Ced. “Say you found a killer spot for a photo op. Once you’ve mastered a trick you can pull that trick off on anything, anywhere in the game.” But while previous gaming titles have also embraced the perils of the backcountry – challenging gnarly virtual riders to shred lethal tides of avalanches – their absence in Stoked is a philosophical choice, not a technical one. Says Ced: “Real backcountry riders don’t promote to kids that riding an avalanche is cool. It’s dangerous and a little taboo.” In fact, it was the opinion of many Stoked collaborators, including Brusti, Travis Rice and Nicolas Müller, that such a mortal hazard should not be celebrated. Such is Stoked’s commitment to realism, even Brusti – a man with access to a snowboard, helicopter and the kind of big mountain terrain us mere mortals can only dream of – can’t wait for its arrival: “I’m going to pimp up my apartment back in Switzerland with a flatscreen TV, home cinema and massive sofa, so when the winter starts drawing in, I will be spending a lot more time indoors.”

www.gettingstoked.com

Passion. Passion. Passion.

‘…The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire…’ ‘…The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire…’ (Ferdinand Foch)

(Ferdinand ‘…The most powerful weaponFoch) on earth is the human soul on fire…’

Longboards, post-modern boards, wetsuits, fins, leashes, boardbags, accessories, t-shirts, (Ferdinand Foch)hoodies, seasonal clothing lines and a little bit of soul. Nineplus Group, Unit 1, Goonhavern Est. Truro, Cornwall, TR4 9QL, UKhoodies, / 00 44 seasonal 1872 573clothing 120 / info@nineplus.com Longboards, post-modern boards, wetsuits, fins,Ind. leashes, boardbags, accessories, t-shirts, lines and a little bit of soul. Nineplus Group, Unit 1, Goonhavern Ind. Est. Truro, Cornwall, TR4 9QL, UK / 00 44 1872 573 120 / info@nineplus.com Longboards, post-modern boards, wetsuits, fins, leashes, boardbags, accessories, t-shirts, hoodies, seasonal clothing lines and a little bit of soul. Nineplus Group, Unit 1, Goonhavern Ind. Est. Truro, Cornwall, TR4 9QL, UK / 00 44 1872 573 120 / info@nineplus.com

www.nineplus.com www.nineplus.com www.nineplus.com

Itchy Feet text Andrea Kurland

photography MATT GEORGES

You should never underestimate the power of itchy feet. Without itchy feet, complacency would rule supreme: There’d be no Edmund Hillary at Pro Everest’s peak; no Mandela putting injustice in its place. Itchy feet, you snowboarder Caroline Beliard see, is more than simply an urge to travel, it’s a yearning for progress. is a woman Caroline Beliard is a long-time on the move. sufferer and proud. Symptoms first arose during childhood when, along with her siblings, Caroline waved goodbye to the conventional life of a small-town kid to travel the globe with her humanitarian aid-working folks. Today, those nomadic seedlings have come home to roost, and the twenty-five-year-old pro snowboarder from France has a full-blown case of the travel bug. “I want to see every country in the world,” says Caroline, fresh off a plane from Chile and straight into a surf trip in Hossegor. Though the air-mileage she clocks-up each season may resemble the workaday life of a travelling pro – Canada, France, Austria, Colorado, [breathe], California, Chile, back to France – Caroline’s itchy feet drive her further afield than most. “I’ve been focusing on backcountry for the past three years,” she says, claiming parts in Ero One’s What’s Poppin’ and Nicolas Droz’ Homies. “It’s the part I prefer in snowboarding so I’ve been competing less and filming

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more. In the backcountry you are by yourself; you have to learn everything again – about snowmobiling and the mountain – and be really creative to find new spots. It’s more difficult than the park, but when you finally do it, it’s way more powerful.” But as rewarding as it may be, exploring new territory is seldom an easy ride. “It’s really hard for a woman to do just backcountry, because the sponsors are not always behind you and you need a lot of money to film a good part. There is maybe one or two riders who are able to do it,” she says, meaning Victoria Jealouse and Annie Boulanger, to be precise. “The rest of the industry is focused on competition results and the Olympics.” So what’s a girl with itchy feet to do? Give them a good scratch, it seems, by not being complacent and putting out a shred flick all of one’s own. That’s precisely what Caroline did with SnoWhite, the European allgirl film she co-produced. “Lots of European girls want to film and there’s nothing for them,” she says. “We focused for one year on this project, did it on a tiny budget, and were really proud of the result.” Between training to become a yoga teacher and prepping for the season ahead, is anything else keeping Caroline on her toes? “I want to do humanitarian work,” she says. “The country changes every year but I’m focused on South America: either Peru or Bolivia.” Itchy feet, see. They can change the world. www.oneilleurope.com

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Rise of the 46 www.HUCKmagazine.com

R o o k i e Focused, mature and fresh out of high school, Stephanie Gilmore burst onto the ASP World Tour last year and ended up walking away with the title. But where do you go once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve reached the top so young? Alex Wade tracked down surfingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most venerated rookie in South West France to find out. Text Alex Wade Photography Patricia Niven

â&#x20AC;&#x153;deep down something is pulling me towards those waves. i need to free myself up and just be in the moment.â&#x20AC;?

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My son Harry, thirteen, is struggling with the idea of meeting Stephanie Gilmore. Not, you understand, because of a lack of respect for the 2007 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Champion, but because we’re in Seignosse, France, and he wants to go surfing. The waves aren’t classic, but for a surf grom and wannabe pro, they’re more than good enough. “Dad, why do we have to meet her? Can’t we just get some boards and go for a surf? Why didn’t you arrange to interview her when it was dark?” These and other taxing questions come my way early one August afternoon as Harry and I make our way from Hossegor to the site of the Rip Curl Pro Mademoiselle, the fourth event on the 2008 ASP Women’s World Tour. Gilmore won the contest the preceding day, and so should be visibly illustrative of her nickname – Stephanie ‘Happy’ Gilmore. But as we walk along the sand to Les Bourdaines on a typically baking hot day, Harry is decidedly unhappy. He comes up with yet another lament. “Why didn’t we bring our own boards with us? If we had you could talk to Steph while I go surfing. Now, I’ve got to sit around and wait for you to finish.” Harry is right. He is to be condemned to the role of passive early-teen boy for the best part of two hours, while his father talks to one of the hottest properties in world surfing. We didn’t bring boards because it was too much hassle, but if truth be told I’ve deliberately evaded hiring any, too. The reason? I want Harry to meet Gilmore, to listen to what she has to say and to learn from her. If he wants to make the grade, Gilmore can help point him in the right direction. But once at Les Bourdaines, a languor sets in. The event site has been all but stripped bare, with what’s left hinting only vaguely at the drama of the past week’s competitive surfing. Like being in a football stadium when everyone has gone home, there’s a mild feeling of melancholy in the air. And it’s hot, really hot. Getting in the water would be good. I can see Harry’s point. Maybe there’s time to sort out a board for him? Just as these ruminations are underway Gilmore appears. She’s carrying a leashless Rip Curl board coming in at around 5”10’. We shake hands and I introduce Harry. I ask if it’s OK for him to sit in and listen. Gilmore says sure, no worries, but then something occurs to her. Her brows furrow, ever so slightly, and her green eyes flash. “Unless you want to go surfing?” she says, directly to Harry. “You can borrow my board if you like. Just be careful – it hasn’t got a leash at the moment.” Before I know it, Harry has grabbed the board and is running down the beach. “Are you sure that it’s OK?” I ask, fearing that he might trash it in the notoriously powerful shorebreak of the Landes coastline. “Yeah, no worries,” says Gilmore, with a smile. She really does look happy, and one thing’s for sure – my son is, too.

Stephanie

Gilmore

was

born

Murwillumbah, New South Wales, in January 1988. Her father Jeff was a regular in the line-up at the famed right-hand point break of Snapper Rocks, and when his daughter was ten, he took her surfing at nearby Kingscliff. The experience is recalled by photographer Brad Nielson, who, shortly after Gilmore’s world title win, cast his mind back to the first time he had seen the Australian hotshot. It was ten years ago, and Nielson had opted for a surf at Kingscliff. Before he paddled out, he bumped

into Gilmore senior. As he put it: “A few metres behind him followed a young girl around ten years of age, blonde hair and slight of frame. ‘This is my daughter Stephanie, she wants to learn to surf,’ Jeff added. I kinda felt sorry for her. She looked drained of energy as she tried to keep up with her dad.” But if Gilmore’s early surfing experiences were no different to those of every newcomer to the sport, she soon started to demonstrate extraordinary talent. Nielson says that by the time she was twelve, she was a regular at Snapper. She “grew stronger… and every time she surfed she got a little better, a tidy bottom turn here, a cutback there.” Gilmore herself credits her father’s role in her surfing education: “I’ve got two older sisters and Dad got them into it. It was only a matter of time before I’d follow on.” By her mid teens, Gilmore was winning just about every contest she entered. The natural footer notched up state, national and world junior titles, but just as important as the influence of her father was that of her environment: “I grew up surfing a reeling right-hander just about every day. What’s not to love about it? It’s one of the best waves in the world, packed with awesome surfers. You have to learn to be patient, but when you’re out there you learn by watching some of the best surfers around.” Not least, the likes of Men’s World Champion Mick Fanning and fellow WCT contender Joel Parkinson. “I love watching those guys surf,” she says, adding that she is also stoked to see any of Tom Curren (“he still surfs as well as ever”), Rob Machado, Lisa Andersen (“powerful and yet feminine”) and Chelsea Hedges in the water. But whatever their pedigree, no professional surfer has blazed quite so stunning a trail as Gilmore. In 2005 she received a wildcard entry for the Rip Curl Roxy Pro Gold Coast – and won it. She followed suit with another wildcard win in 2006, this time bagging the Havaianas Beachley Classic in Sydney. By the time of the 2007 season Gilmore had no need of wildcards. Then midway through a five-year Rip Curl contract, she embarked upon the Women’s World Tour with the surfing cognoscenti predicting that Mick Fanning wouldn’t be the only Australian to win a world title that year. The season had its ups and downs, but Gilmore came good. She won four events on the tour, including the Billabong Pro Maui, which she had to win to take the title. “Winning the title there was the best feeling in the world,” she says. “Honolua Bay will always have a special place in my heart.” And for being the first surfer – male or female – ever to win a world title in her rookie year, Stephanie Gilmore sealed her place in the hearts of surfing devotees from the Gold Coast to Santa Cruz. Harry has vanished into the ocean. The sun continues to beat down upon the sea, edging to the south-west as the afternoon idles on. Thanks to the glare, and the ever-present crowds in France’s summer line-ups, I can’t see where, exactly, my son has gone, but I do know one thing: the sense of lassitude which accompanied our arrival has disappeared. There is something invigorating about Gilmore. Even when she is not surfing – not smoking her rivals with a blend of powerful yet elegant, almost casual surfing – she is alert and focused. She also seems open and forthright, the kind of person who doesn’t shy away from difficult questions. And so, almost at the outset of our conversation, I decide to stray into potentially awkward territory. Surfing is an enriching, wonderful activity, I hear myself saying, but it’s also got its fair share of macho types. ▼

What’s Gilmore’s take on sexism in surfing, and to what degree has she experienced it? The 2007 World Champion, who is also showing strongly on the 2008 tour, is unfazed, greeting the question with a maturity beyond her years. “Surfing has been male-dominated for so long that some guys are having trouble adjusting to the arrival of lots more women in the line-up,” she says. “But the fact that more women are getting into it is a good thing.” Gilmore chuckles as she says that “the line-up could do with a little more oestrogen,” but counts her blessings, too: “Sure, Snapper and my home breaks can be aggressive, but I’ve grown up with a lot of the pro guys. I think they’re stoked to see me doing well.” At just twenty years of age, Gilmore has already pondered the gender imbalance. “It’s crazy how a female athlete has to make a choice at such a young age – to have kids early and carry on competing, or to put all that on hold and have kids later, once you’ve achieved what you want,” she says. “Guys just don’t have to face the same decision. A lot of them are married and their wives and families are at home. It’s different for girls.” While some of her fellow competitors on the Women’s World Tour have had children, Gilmore isn’t sure of her plans. What she does know is that if she is to try and beat Layne Beachley’s record of seven world titles, she has to be implacably single-minded: “To try and win ten titles is such a selfish thing. To win just one was a selfish thing.” But if she is aware of the sacrifices entailed in athletic achievement at the highest level, Gilmore is also happy to go with the flow – for now. “When I won the world title, I had this feeling that I wanted to win everything. And I mean everything. I felt like I wanted to take over the world. But the more I travel and meet people, the more I’m exposed to new things, the more I find that my goals are changing. Right now, I’m stoked to have won my first title, but I don’t want people to think it was a fluke so I want to win another. But after that? I don’t know.” She pauses, and we gaze at the ocean. Is she really happy all the time, I wonder? Or is there simply too much pressure, too much of the time, on one so young? Gilmore smiles broadly. “I got that name because I am happy,” she says. She allows that she does get depressed – “I’m only human” – but mostly only when she loses a heat. And she extols the virtues of the good life: “In my day-to-day life, I try to live a good, healthy lifestyle. There can be drugs and booze in surfing, but it’s not my scene. More and more surfers, male and female, want to be top athletes, and substance abuse doesn’t go with that. I guess the hardest thing for me is the travel. You’re living out of a suitcase and hauling a quiver of boards around, and it’s not all glitz and glamour. But once I’ve arrived somewhere I get to go for a surf. The ocean is my office, and as offices go, it’s got to be the best. I don’t really have all that much to moan about.”

To stay in shape Gilmore doesn’t rely purely on surfing. She puts in time at the gym, and swears by CHEK, or Corrective Holistic Exercise Kinesiology, training. Core strength, posture and balance are integral to CHEK work, and Gilmore is also fascinated by sports psychology. “I think that the mental aspects of competition take up ninety per cent of your performance,” she says. That she has a pronounced competitive streak underneath all the amiability is undeniable, but just as evident is the sense, present in all great surfers, that Gilmore goes with, and never against, the flow.

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“If you paddle out feeling angry you’ll have a bad surf,” she says. “Surfing is all about instinct. It’s about being there in the moment, about being relaxed. If you get into the water feeling relaxed and happy, you’ll have a good surf. It’s the same with music.” Gilmore’s allusion to music is not idle. She is an accomplished guitarist who counts Jeff Buckley, John Mayall, Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix among her heroes. “I’m pretty old school when it comes to music,” she says, “I like anything with a guitar, whether acoustic or electric.” Would she ever consider performing publicly? Again, the trademark Gilmore smile precedes the answer. “That’d be a fun thing to do,” she replies, “but I don’t know if I’m a musical performer. Music is more of an escape for me. It clears my mind and allows me to forget what’s going on in the world.” If music is an escape, it also has parallels with surfing. “I started playing the guitar at the same time that I started surfing,” says Gilmore, whose home is at Tweed Heads on Australia’s Gold Coast. “The two things complement each other. They’re both about rhythm and timing. You’ve got to surf in time with the wave, just as you’ve got to be in tune with the sound waves of music. Ocean waves, sound waves, they’re both invisible balls of energy that we tap into.” No surprise, then, that one of Gilmore’s sponsors is Cole Clark Guitars. “I’d be stoked if there was one in every place I compete.” Music may well be something to which Gilmore turns more fully later in life, but just now something else preoccupies her – big waves. She readily admits that she hasn’t surfed Pipeline, Teahupoo or too many other renowned big-wave spots yet – and is just fine with that, too. But as she puts it: “Deep down something is pulling me towards those waves. I know that I need to detach myself from common sense, go out there and just go for it. I need to free myself up and just be in the moment. It’s something I feel I need to do, sometime in my life.”

As our conversation draws to a close I see Harry emerge from the sea. “He’ll be stoked to have borrowed your board,” I say, adding that, given his age, there might not be much visual evidence of this. Gilmore laughs her ready, easy laugh. Then she says that her parents insisted – even as she was winning international surfing events, even as she was already sponsored by Rip Curl, and even as it was abundantly clear that her career lay in professional surfing – that she complete her high school certificate. At one stage this meant sitting an exam in the Australian Consulate in Los Angeles at the same time as her school contemporaries back home, the day after she had won the world junior title at Huntington Beach. How on earth did she manage to concentrate? “It was cool,” she says, “I’m glad I did it.” Just then Harry returns. Gilmore’s board is in one piece. “How’d you get on?” she asks. “Cool,” he says. He’s stoked, and I’m stoked, too, to have met so warm, ingenuous and natural a person as Stephanie Gilmore. We say our farewells, and Harry and I walk off along the sand to Hossegor. I’m planning a fatherly tale of how Gilmore stuck at her exams and also became a world champion, but Harry beats me to it. “She was great,” he says. “That was well cool of her to lend me her board. What’s her background?” www.ripcurl.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153;to try and win ten titles is such a selfish thing. to win just one was a selfish thing.â&#x20AC;?

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Peter Line: legend through and through. Text Zoe Oksanen Photography Cole Barash

If you’re old enough you’ll

remember this. The good old days when resort bandits and super heroes dominated the slopes. The days of idolising a rider just because he was shit hot on a snowboard but didn’t seem to give a shit what anyone thought. A time when a few iconoclasts led the way and wouldn’t be pushed into any particular mould just because it would suit a sponsor’s marketing plan. The days when duct-taped gloves and boot-ends simply added to your kudos, and when professional snowboarding was anything but, well, professional. Peter Line, ladies and gentlemen, was that time.

Life as Peter as we know

him all began twenty years ago at Crystal Mountain, Washington, when he first strapped his small frame into a Burton 140 Elite with swallow tail and a fin on the base. Five years down the line and Peter had his first board sponsor, Division 23, offering him a pro model. It wasn’t long before he was stomping through the ranks and creating his own version of snowboarding. It was Peter Line who introduced switch tricks into the game. Then came the corks and spins and voila – from backside corkscrews to backside rodeos, Peter Line was responsible for a lot of that crazy shit you see on the hills today. “Obviously I feel proud to have been able to be a part of snowboarding’s progression and to have helped advance something I love,” he admits. “Not many people can be so involved and change a sport or anything they’re really into. I feel privileged.” No wonder then, that Peter has donned the ‘legend’ label for some time now. But what does he think of this term, being that he is still riding and filming? “I like it, it’s a nice transition term as I get older. I always have it in my back pocket to pull out as an excuse when I’m out riding with the young kids. I’ve been pro for fifteen years and still riding and filming − that’s a long time for the snowboarding industry. I’ve seen many good riders come and go within my career. So I guess the term

legend means even more to me than just that I did my part well and moved on. I’ve been here for the long haul and am still trying to progress the sport.” Peter has attracted some interesting labels during his snowboarding tenure: innovator, genius and talented businessman to mention but a few. He’s also been called a ‘weirdo’. “It’s better than people thinking of me as typical or normal,” he laughs. “I’ve never really been a follow-the-crowd type person. Those people put me off, the nonthinking conformists. I’ve always really hated team sports too, I don’t know, maybe I am strange…” Strange? Possibly. Smart? Definitely. It only takes a quick look at ‘Peter the Entrepreneur’ to realise that. It was with no baby step into the business world that he entered the scene. Instead, he went big, co-founding Forum and Foursquare, and owning part of Electric Eyewear. And although Peter doesn’t consider himself a corporate guy (“I never ran any day-to-day operations, so I would never consider myself a businessman”), he somehow found himself making solid amounts of money from snowboarding. “Forum and Foursquare were companies that we started that were snowboarding through and through,” Peter says. “I could have moved on for bigger pay to companies who didn’t have that as their drive. That wasn’t an option for me. Having ownership in the companies was a way for a smaller, core company to afford me.” Peter set out to create the world’s best snowboarding team with Forum, and many still argue that he did just that. With riders such as Devun Walsh, JP Walker, Bjorn Leines and Jeremy Jones, Peter put together a team of eight riders who represented all that was progressive and cutting edge. From the pros’ images to the ads Forum created, the brand was simply cooler than cool and kids everywhere wanted a piece of it. Having made a massive success out of his snowboarding brands, Peter has decided to explore other avenues. He had a stint on ESPN as an X Games commentator (“I wasn’t hired back the next year because someone high up thought I was too wired for the show”) and he co-owns a

town car service in Seattle called Crown Black Car: “It’s basically a taxi service where we have tattooed rocker dudes driving. It’s tight.”

These days, Peter Line

seems to have come full circle. Having dipped his toe into the retirement pool, he’s jumped right back out to ride as a sponsored pro, snowboarding like never before and filming for Forum. Yet with Volcom’s recent purchase of Electric Eyewear and Burton’s earlier acquisition of Forum and Foursquare, was Peter never tempted to retire to the poolside with pina colada in hand? “I kinda tried that a few years ago. But I’ve still got the drive to progress and still love the feeling of sticking a good trick. I’ve got some new ideas of tricks I want to try too, so all that keeps me going strong. My body is definitely a little worse for wear but it still works for what I need it to.” And so Peter Line is back in the game and working as hard as the rest of them. For one, it was close to impossible to get hold of him for this interview – a typical problem with filming pro snowboarders in the cold depths of winter. And his daily winter life is all about the shots once more: “Today I woke up at 6am, unloaded my snowmobile at 8am, rallied up the hill to film a jump. It turned out to be shitty and I didn’t get any shots. I got back down by 6pm, ate sushi and returned to the condo we’re staying in here in Idaho. Tomorrow the same thing, only hopefully I get a shot on the jump.” As we approach the end of my interview, it seems clear that a key part to Peter Line’s success has been his little regard for the rulebook. Instead, he’s done most things his own way: “My major life decisions have to revolve around snowboarding: where I live, will my girlfriend deal with my travelling, always needing a car with four-wheel drive. I’ve been riding for a third of my life so these decisions have become my normal thought. It has shown me life from a different, alternative view. More than anything, it has reinforced my thought that there is more than just one way of going through life and accomplishing goals.”

Going into election number forty-four, the White American Male is undefeated in the race for the U.S. presidency: forty-three to nil, to be exact. But as election day approaches, Barack Obama is poised to end that winning streak. HUCK speaks to Kelly Slater, Chuck D, Stacy Peralta, Ed Templeton and the Beastie Boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Adam Yauch about the impact of an Obama victory on America and on the rest of the world. Interviews Tim Donnelly and chloe mcCLOSKY ILLUSTRATIONS PAUL WILLOUGHBY

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Kelly Slater Icon, Surfer, 9X Champion of the World What is the significance of Obama’s nomination for president? The idea that you actually can be anyone you want to be in America, no matter your race. Also, a voice of change from people who are fed up with the direction we are going. It symbolises a lot of change that’s happened in our country’s history. If he wins what do you think he can change? The perception that our country is just full of nutcases and warmongers hell-bent on policing the world. I think the bigger picture is that our current cabinet is an indication of how far we, as people and as Americans, still have left to go. What do you think America’s new role in the world should be? Take care of ourselves first. Set an example of humanity and kindness above all things. There’s a lot of cleaning up we need to do in our own homes and schools and backyards. There’s also a lot of cleaning up we need to do around the world with the situations we’ve created. Go and actually take care of people. Next, we need to have more fun. There’s not some bogeyman around every corner ready to blow us up because they hate our freedom. Let’s all just relax, get rid of that colour-coded terror threat on the news, and stop paying out on everybody who doesn’t believe in what you do. It’s down to everyone to open up to what the world has to offer.

Adam Yauch Beastie Boy, MCA, Activist What is the significance of Obama’s nomination for president? Maybe I’m being naïve, but it’s the first time I can remember that there has been a politician that actually seems sincere. When I think of politicians who most people think highly of in the United States – like Bill Clinton, who is not someone I think terribly highly of – Barack Obama really comes across as being sincere, incredibly intelligent and with his heart in the right place. And the fact that he happens to be of African descent, that one of his parents is African, is amazing – that the country has come that far and is ready to embrace somebody of colour is a great thing. It’s very exciting. If he wins what do you think he can change? A lot. I think it’ll change the rest of the world’s perception of the U.S., which has gone down the toilet in recent years. I think he’ll push towards renewable energy sources; I think he’ll help get the economy on its feet. I could be wrong, but this is certainly the way I’m thinking about it. It could be a really exciting time for the U.S. to move in the right direction. What do you think America’s new role in the world should be? I think that America should be leading by example. If the U.S. doesn’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons then the U.S. should be pushing for an international ban on all nuclear weapons for everybody. There is no reason that the U.S. should feel that they’re allowed to have nuclear weapons and that they can somehow be entrusted to them, but Iran can’t. Particularly when the U.S. is the only country that has ever used one on human beings. It’s very hard to say, ‘Oh you can’t have that, but we can!’ That’s the sort of thing the U.S. needs to be doing.

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Ed Templeton Skateboarder, Artist, Entrepreneur What is the significance of Obamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nomination for president? On the surface it is very historical to have our first African-American presidential candidate. I think that if he were president it would send a message to the world that we have grown up a little bit. It still worries me that both candidates have to involve their religious views in their politics. It would be even more historical to have an atheist candidate, which is funny, because I think our founding fathers would be beside themselves seeing how things are run now. We still have a long way to go before this country is where I personally think it should be. As usual, it is a choice between two evils. Barack Obama is in my opinion the much lesser evil, and a vote for him will not be thrown away. If he wins what do you think he can change? I am very cynical about this, because for the most part I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think much would change. But if, and that is a big if, he does do some of the things he is saying he will do, then I would be happily wrong! We need universal healthcare, and we need to get out of Iraq. The only way things would really change is if we had control of both the House and the Senate with a Democratic president. Then things could really start rolling. What do you think Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new role in the world should be? At this point we need to play catch-up to gain back our respect.

Stacy Peralta Dogtown Legend, Bones Brigadier, Maker of Documentaries What is the significance of Obama’s nomination for president? We have had very few American presidents that did not come from extreme wealth. Obama does not come from wealth and in fact is far more representational of all Americans because of his challenging background. If he wins what do you think he can change? I think he may listen better than any other modern president we have had. Also, I think his presidency will positively affect the perception of America, both here and abroad. An Obama presidency will be proof that there is such a thing and such a reality as the ‘American Dream’. What do you think America’s new role in the world should be? A benevolent leader not an imperialistic bully.

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Chuck D Public Enemy, Hip Hop Pioneer, Voice of the People What is the significance of Obama’s nomination for president? Change must take place now, in a better direction at the Twin Towers of U.S. politics – because the more that things stay the same for Amerikkka, the more things change for the worse for my constituency. This is why Barack Obama makes the most sense in this verbal word storm. This cat is setting us a pick, as they say in basketball, to realise we cannot sit on our asses. At least what I hear is that a person like myself better be aware, awake, and have as few excuses as possible for not taking some sort of control of my surroundings. If he wins what do you think he can change? There are going to be haters galore. From all ends... Even if he answers from a more conservative perspective, it’s still a warning to us black people that maybe we better wake our asses up to something more serious. I have to be aware that his policies are gonna sway the other way much of the time. [But this is] a wake-up call to understand we got time to comprehend, prepare and move out the way before the sickle comes swinging from the government. It’s the cost of possibly getting this country on the heartbeat of the rest of the planet as well as calling to alert its Western cousins. What do you think America’s new role in the world should be? Regardless, it ain’t time to play. Play your position. No longer can we afford not to. Then again, it ain’t about what I think. We will all see that teamwork is necessary for a collective come up of a people

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Photos: Roger Baumer

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OUTLAWS, OUTCASTS AND WITCHCRAFT ON THE MOORS. WELCOME TO WEST PENWITH, ENGLAND’S WILD WEST OF SURF. TEXT ALEX WADE PHOTOGRAPHY RUSSELL PIERRE

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James Parry, in his element.

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Jill Pierre dropping in.

Local style-master Sam Bleakley.

West Penwith offers one of the landmarks in British cinema. It’s where Sam Peckinpah chose to set his ultra-violent Straw Dogs, the 1970s film that, to this day, has the capacity to shock and disturb. In Straw Dogs, an American mathematician, played by Dustin Hoffman, arrives at a remote Cornish village with a delectable local girl. He’s there for the peace and tranquillity necessary for some complex research. From the locals, he gets anything but. The film ends ambivalently but one thing is for sure: West Penwith, Britain’s Wild West, is cast as a malevolent place, one of psychological disturbance, disorientation and outright violence. So what’s West Penwith really like? Is it, rather than St Agnes further up the coast, the true home of British surfing’s Badlands? The lair of outlaws and outcasts? One local surfer tells a revealing story: “I’d not long been here when I got into a fight. It was a late night incident and I wish it hadn’t happened. I didn’t start it but I sure did end it.”

He goes on to confess that he spent days fearing the arrival of the police, wondering how his combatant had fared. Eventually, with the ghosts of retribution gnawing at his conscience, he confessed the incident to a police officer. “He told me to forget it. But one thing I won’t forget is what he said: ‘Down here, you can get away with a hell of a lot.’” There is, it’s true, a Wild West feel about life on the southwestern fringe of Britain. Rugged moorland sweeps down onto cliffs and pristine beaches. Ancient stone circles abound and there are more than a few witches. They take their art seriously, too. But the surfing community is different. Sennen Cove is the heartland of surfing here, and it’s long been a stronghold of free surfing. Here, grace, style and fun define surfing rather than aggression and competitive success. Perhaps this is no surprise, given that just as Peckinpah was busy filming Straw Dogs, an ex-architect and trawlerman by the name of Chris Tyler was setting up what, to this day, remains Britain’s premier surf camp.

The Skewjack Surf Village opened in 1971 and its counter-cultural animus, rather than the Peckinpah leitmotif of insularity and resentment, lives on. There are a number of highly rated local surfers. Chief among them are amateur boxer and shortboard ripper Sam Smart, former European Longboard Champion Sam Bleakley, young longboard tyro James Parry and the mercurial, but brilliant, John Buchorksi. There’s a discerning crew of long-time, diehard surfers such as Jonty Henshall and Mike Newman, as well as a large ‘surf for the soul’ contingent and two super-talented teenagers in Seb Smart and Christian Jackson. Among the women, the Smart family again features prominently, with Amanda Smart a regular standout. There are other breaks besides Sennen Cove, but people don’t talk about them. Best to cast your eyes over these pictures for an idea of surfing on the edge of things. Mean and moody, with lots of granite and solitude. It’s the way surfing should be – at least some of the time. And it’s alive and well in the Wild West.

Surfing a c r o ss Interview Andrea Kurland Photography Bryan Derballa

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the divide A new documentary film looks beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to capture a story of life and surfing in the Middle East.

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“every single guy we talked to had either seen combat or knew somebody who’d been killed in combat. so that’s a pretty heavy weight to carry around, and for a lot of them, surfing is an escape.”

Alex Klein is piecing together the story of a people and a place a world away from his own. Earlier this year, the American skateboarder gathered up three of his best friends, borrowed $30,000, procured an HD camera by not entirely ethical means, and got on a plane to Tel Aviv. He went to document the efforts of Surfing 4 Peace, a grassroots movement that refuses to let bombs, embargoes or militant threats dampen its mission to bring surfing to the ravaged Gaza Strip. What he ended up capturing, however, is an image of a nation divided by borders, but united in the surf. The result is God Went Surfing With The Devil, a documentary film that takes its name from a pearl of wisdom uttered by Jewish surfing ambassador Dorian ‘Doc’ Paskowitz: “God will surf with the devil,” he said, “if the waves are good.” Holed up in a roasty editing room in Los Angeles, Alex took a moment out to breathe, reflect and talk to HUCK about the tales that he found. HUCK: What motivated you to make God Went Surfing With The Devil? Alex Klein: It started with Doc Paskowitz, the guy who brought surfing to Israel. In August 2007 he got with a guy named Arthur Rashkovan, who I’d met on a skateboard trip to Israel a few years earlier. Together with Kelly Slater they founded Surfers 4 Peace and donated a dozen surfboards to the guys in Gaza. Six months later Arthur decided he was going to do it again, this time with twice as many surfboards. In the time that had elapsed, the situation in the region had deteriorated greatly. Gaza was entirely under siege and the borders were closed. Palestinian militants were launching daily rocket attacks at Israel, and Israel was responding with counterattacks that were killing militants and innocent bystanders alike. It was a really dire situation. But Arthur was undaunted and committed to getting these boards in, claiming he had various connections with the government. The whole situation was fairly intriguing, so I thought I’d try to document the process.

What was it about Israel that drew you there? Israel is a pretty magical country. It’s a land steeped in history and culture and conflict, and makes for a good backdrop to any story. One thing I’d noticed about the media coverage from the Middle East though, is that it tends to be pretty rote, just this endless repetition of conflict footage and bombings. I was interested to examine and report on how real people lived and dealt with the conflict. Did your religious roots have any bearing on your interest in the area? We’re all mixed. Collectively our four-person crew has one Jewish father, one Arab father, one Jewish mother, a few Christian parents and a few Catholic parents. I don’t know that it was a sense of culture or identity that drove our interest in the region. I think we were more interested in the humanity of it all. That this group of young guys, who were supposed to be enemies, were instead trying to come together and surf with each other. That seemed like an important story to us, something that transcended any kind of personal ties to the people or land. Did you set out with a firm idea of the kind of story you wanted to tell, or did the narrative develop and change along the way? We didn’t have an agenda at all. We were curious to let the story reveal itself to us. When we arrived, we just set out to meet as many people as possible, and then we honed in on the stories we felt were most compelling. In addition to following the journey of the twenty-four surfboards into Gaza, we also explored the lives of various surfers in the region, from a young Jewish surf champion who lives in a wealthy suburb, to a poor Arab-Israeli surfer who lives in a shanty with chickens running around. I learned that a lot of documentary filmmaking is just letting go of preconceptions and allowing the story to emerge on its own. I think when you have filmmakers going in with a fixed hypothesis, and then setting out to prove that hypothesis, you get problems. First of all it’s

disingenuous, second of all it’s boring. For us, the most interesting people appeared when we least expected it. Like this random guy approached us on the sidewalk and started talking to us, and we all thought he was this crazy, kooky weirdo, but we let him talk on camera anyway, just to appease him so that he’d go away. But then forty-five minutes later we were still filming him, and it turned out he was completely fascinating and relevant to the story. But this was a person whom initially I completely resisted interviewing. He looked like George Washington on drugs. What does surfing mean to the people you met? For the Jewish guys, surfing is a huge escape. Everyone in Israel serves in the army. The country is constantly under the threat of attack, and every single guy we talked to had either seen combat or knew somebody who’d been killed in combat. So that’s a pretty heavy weight to carry around, and for a lot of them, surfing is an escape. For the Arab-Israeli guys, their life is often an uphill battle against poverty and discrimination, by virtue of being Arabs in a Jewish state. For them as well, surfing is a way to put all that behind them. Did you travel outside Tel Aviv at all? Besides Gaza, we travelled around the south of Israel, to Asheklon and Sderot. Both places have been under heavy rocket attack from Palestinian militants, and we wanted to talk to people about that. Sderot has been getting hit with these homemade Qassam rockets for years, something like 6,000 in the last five years. The town is constantly under attack, with bomb shelters on every corner. The IDF [Israeli Army] has this large zeppelin that sits at the border of Gaza and monitors incoming rocket fire. Usually it’s one of two groups, either Islamic Jihad or Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The militants can set up a tripod pretty quickly and fire a bunch of rockets into Israel. This trips an alarm system that tells residents in Sderot that they have twenty seconds to run to a bomb shelter. Any time the militants launch rockets, the Israeli Air Force is pretty quick to respond with ▼

“there was no talk of politics or religion with any of them, palestinian or israeli. they all just want to meet and surf together, something they’ve never been able to do in the past.”

a counterstrike. Usually an Apache helicopter takes off after the militants, who by this time are fleeing from the border in a pick-up truck. The helicopter then tries to hunt them down and kill them. This is how you get a lot of innocent Palestinian deaths, because the missiles will miss the militants and hit a bunch of kids playing in the street, or accidentally blow up a house. One of the first weeks we got there, an Israeli helicopter killed a vehicle full of militants whose jeep happened to be packed with explosives. The secondary blast ended up collapsing a nearby house and killing a woman and her five children. The papers there report on these kinds of tragedies daily. So anyway, that’s Sderot. No surf there, just rockets. Ashkelon is noteworthy because it’s a larger city, around 100,000 people, and it only recently came into missile range in March, when the militants acquired these larger, long-range missiles. For the citizens of Ashkelon, they’re dealing with the reality that suddenly they are very vulnerable to daily terror attacks. For the surfers in Ashkelon it’s even more dangerous, because the force of a missile exploding in the water is five times greater than if it explodes on land. Though it didn’t take place in the water, one of the first people to be injured in one of these rocket attacks on Ashkelon was a surfer, who suffered very serious injuries after a rocket exploded in the beach parking lot. We talked to him about it, and saw the scars from his injuries, saw the site where the blast occurred. While we were there we could hear the fighting going on, the ‘boom’ of explosions in the distance and the sound of machine gun fire. You can actually sit there eating an ice-cream cone, listening to a war being fought a few miles away. That’s the strangest thing to understand. Ashkelon and Gaza are only 7km apart, and Sderot and Gaza are only 3km apart. That’s like if the Lower East Side in New York declared war on Brooklyn. You can actually see Ashkelon from the beach in Gaza, or look into Gaza from Sderot. They’re all eerily close. Do you think the American public – and the

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world at large – have a warped image of what is happening in Israel and Gaza? Sure. Most Americans have no idea that there is basically a low-level war being fought between Gaza and Israel, one that almost exclusively targets civilian populations. The Palestinian militants target everyday Israeli citizens, and the Israelis respond by placing all of Gaza under siege, crippling the economy and severely damaging the lives of all the residents there, militants or otherwise. Even within the region there are tremendously warped views. For the Israelis, there is very little understanding of who the Palestinians really are. Many feel that the population is rife with terrorists, all of whom have declared a jihad on Western life. Before we went into Gaza, numerous Israelis warned us that we would get kidnapped or killed if Hamas discovered us. People genuinely feared for our lives. In reality, the Palestinians are tremendously hospitable and tremendously well educated, many possessing graduate degrees and PhDs. Lots of them mourned the siege because the lack of fuel meant the school buses couldn’t take them to class, and the lack of electricity meant they couldn’t study at night. The majority of the people there are really regular, they’re just being held hostage by a very radical government. That’s the thing most people don’t understand: that it doesn’t take a lot of guys with AK-47s to seize control of a population. We felt that ourselves. When a bunch of Hamas gunmen surrounded us on the street and told us to get in the car and go down to the police headquarters with them, we went. You tend not to argue with a guy carrying an assault rifle, or in our case, six guys with assault rifles. What is the surf scene really like out there? The surf scene in Israel is great. Surfing and beach culture in general are really popular. People are stoked on it. They all complain about the lack of waves, but other than that it’s good. In Gaza the surf scene is really young. The guys there literally had nothing when we went to visit. I think they had two beat-up shortboards and a couple windsurfing boards that they used as surfboards. Together

about fifteen guys would share these. None of the Palestinian guys had boardshorts or even swim trunks, they’d surf in jean cut-offs or biker shorts or capri pants. Most of the people there are really poor. There’s something like seventy per cent unemployment, and if you do have a job, you’re likely earning two dollars a day doing construction. Beyond that, even if you do manage to scrape some money together, there’s nothing to buy in the markets. No goods, no clothes, nothing. But the surfers there make do, building fins out of random pieces of wood, and forging leashes out of spare pieces of rope. It was pretty inspirational to see. Together they share their boards and surf every day they can, catching waves with each other, loving every second of it. Do you believe that surfing can be this great equalising force that brings people together? All the surfers we met just wanted to surf and travel and make friends. There was no talk of politics or religion with any of them, Palestinian or Israeli. They all just want to meet and surf together, something they’ve never been able to do in the past. It’s actually really funny, because none of the surfers in Israel have ever been to Gaza, and yet somehow there are these persistent rumours that Gaza has the best surf around, that it’s like this Shangri-La for surfing. It’s this ‘grass is always greener’ syndrome that’s somehow snowballed out of control. If you hear Israelis talk about it, Gaza is like Indonesia or something. What do you hope people take away from the film? I hope people are marginally enlightened and entertained. I think most documentaries are hopelessly depressing, so ideally God Went Surfing With The Devil will convey a sense of optimism, that it’s possible to make the world a better place, even if it’s in a small way

God Went Surfing With The Devil is due for release later this year. www.godwentsurfing.com

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If you think this little line-up are just here to look pretty, then youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d better think again. In the world of pro snowboarding, this sorority of chargers haVE more than earned THEIR place. Photography Sam Christmas InterviewS Ed Andrews & Andrea Kurland

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Kjersti Buaas

Torah Bright

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“All-girl competitions allow you to get the attention you deserve. The kickers are also a bit smaller so allow you to do the best tricks possible – when the kicker is too big, it’s too difficult. But it’s good to mix with guys as well to get motivated. It shouldn’t be about being better than guys though, you should just be inspired to improve yourself.”

“Even though only a few girls snowboarded when I started, it was embraced in my hometown. As it’s becoming mainstream now, many more females want to get involved in the lifestyle. I don’t think there should be full segregation of the sexes, but it helps to have a separate platform for girls to develop our own style. But we shouldn’t be compared to guys; it doesn’t happen in any other sport so why should it with snowboarding?”

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alexis waite

01.09.93

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“It’s important to show that you are a girl on the slopes, and be a little bit pink and fluffy. It’s good for the girls to go riding with the boys because they push us to ride harder. But you don’t have to keep up with the guys; just have fun and you will come a long way.”

“The industry loves to grab onto pink and fluffy girls because they are easier to push. I once had to do a shoot and they made me up like Paris Hilton. I was like, ‘What the fuck? I fucking hate her!’ I think now it is moving away from that, but there will always be twelve-year-old girls they want to market to.”

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lisa wiiK

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“When snowboarding companies used to make female boards, they thought we all wanted flowers and pink butterflies. That has changed. Girls are doing crazy and spectacular tricks these days and going big. I think the guys see this and feel a little bit threatened! Contests like the Roxy Chicken Jam help girls push each other and make it easier for girls to get the respect they deserve.”

“For sure snowboarding’s pretty masculine, but I didn’t really find it hard to get into it. I’ve always liked to hang out with guys, so it kinda fit me perfect! I like all-girl snowboard films but I think it’s really cool when a girl gets to film with an all-guy film company, that’s what really progresses girls. But there’s still a lot of haters; it sucks because we’re all only trying to do our best.”

Margot Rozies

Erin Comstock

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Tarbes, France

Salt Lake City, Utah

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“All girls have their own style and they want to look good on their snowboards. But girls are getting tired of all the butterflies and flowers. They aren’t buying these anymore so the industry is changing. Girls need to be more confident, they don’t need to compare themselves to the guys but we are still able to ride the same parks as them.”

“Within the last five years, the progression has been huge in half pipe, slopestyle and even street rails. I think that the men are slowly kind of stopping and seeing what the women are doing. I definitely am really happy that in competitions like the X Games, the prize money’s equal. It’s the same course, so why not pay the same?”

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LOOK GREAT SMELL GREAT

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T h r e e n i g h t s i n L i b e r i a Snapshots from a war-torn land. Text Fred d’Orey Photography John Callahan

The first night.

I knew our time in Liberia would not be a package tour, but nothing prepared me for that first night. The plan was to cross the capital, Monrovia, before dusk. But we had arrived right in the middle of the Israel-Lebanon crisis, and exactly that day the many Lebanese trader-residents, who control what is left of the destroyed Liberian economy, closed their stores early and headed to the U.S. embassy to protest against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Running low on supplies, we accepted an invitation from our guide, Dominic, to sleep in his house and go shopping the next day. As the car neared his home, the situation went from

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curious to dangerous in a few minutes. Local faces appeared from nowhere, but not one of them was smiling. We were five well-nourished outsiders loaded with equipment and boards, and they were survivors of more than twenty years of mayhem and murder. Following Dominic’s instructions, we unloaded our things from the car as fast as we could before attracting more unwanted attention. The house had no windows, and the children gave us the only room. But something other than the heat of that night sticks in my mind: screams around the house, a heated argument, bottles cracking against walls. The next day, Dominic, with dark circles beneath his eyes, told me how a group of men had arrived eager to put the door down

and steal our things, and how two big sticks had made them change their minds. He knew what could have happened, and protected us from it.

The one with the kids.

In Robertspot we were treated like kings, mainly by the children. They were in the camp from dusk till dawn. They followed us wherever we walked, brought us nuts, coconuts, water from the stream, and helped John carry his photography equipment. Maybe it was the surfing, maybe it was us, but something in our presence fascinated them. One rainy night after dinner, we huddled together under the tent in front of John’s

Macintosh to see the pictures of the day. Something in the mist caught my eye. I went closer and in the light of my torch spotted eight little boys perched on an improvised wooden bench in the rain, gawping at us in silence. They were in the dark of their ad hoc cinema, and we were the film they were watching. And as the torch caught each of them, it revealed eight beaming smiles, somewhere between shy and happy to be found.

The last.

After twelve days of camping on the beach, my body ached for a bed and clean sheets. I had read in a newspaper that at least one hotel had survived

the war and indeed, thanks to the UN presence, in Monrovia there were quite a few still open. On the last night I made the announcement: “I don’t know about you guys but I’m going to the Royal Hotel.” The guys left me in the Royal (there was nothing royal about it, bar a clean bed and hot water) and went to sleep on the floor of a house belonging to a Canadian Christian missionary. The next day, we reconvened to have dinner at the hotel’s sushi bar. Following a board that read ‘The Living Room’, we went through a heavy door and into what seemed like a parallel universe. Sultry light, red velvet walls, a black glossy floor: the opulence of the place rendered us instantly speechless. Beautiful women in micro

skirts, pimped-out dudes dressed P-Diddy style and businessmen draped in gold necklaces and Rolex watches talked merrily on the sofas. The tables were crowded, the restaurant was a hit. If it wasn’t for the beautiful Chinese model who showed us to our table, we may well have stood there until eternity, open-mouthed, in awe. This, it seemed, was how the elite had fun in a destroyed country – while high walls and men with guns kept the miserable masses out. The first night, the last, and the one with the kids in the dark couldn’t be more different. But they were all connected, all part of the puzzle of a surf trip, of a country called Liberia and a world reeling from the way we built it

“I grew up taking a lot of road trips on the Gulf Coast of Florida. They’re epic. We had to drive almost three hours to get some surf. I’ve probably done a hundred thousand of those. We did trips to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, which is a seventeen-hour drive, and from Florida to Texas which takes twenty-four hours. I don’t think I’ve taken a road trip that wasn’t about surfing. I just like the adventure of travelling and I love to go to places I’ve never been before. I like the freedom of it, you can do whatever you want. Travelling is something I’d like to do with my future kids too. It’s important to see different places and meet other cultures. It teaches you to respect different people and respect everything you have. There’s so much poverty in the world and you don’t see that unless you leave the bubble you live in.” Cory Lopez (31)

The O’Neill Mission hits the West Coast of France for a surf contest unlike any other. No rules, no judges and no set plan – just nine pro surfers living out of campervans and chasing waves from Brittany to the Basque Country. After a week roaming wherever the charts or crowds dictate, and filming every break claimed along the way, the collective decide who amongst them will claim the $25,000 prize. Free to surf as and when they like, road trips, they discover, are still what it’s all about. Interviews Steven Fröhlich Illustrations Paul Willoughby

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“I’ve never done a road trip in a campervan before. It’s fun. Whether you’re going out having beers or getting good waves it’s all about living the lifestyle and doing things unplanned, going wherever you want. Just doing it! And of course the surf is important. But when you go on a trip with an open mind anything can happen.” Adam Robertson (26)

“I live on an island so I never really go on road trips. On Maui everything is like forty minutes away. Though when I do hit the road a key factor is the crew. A trip without surf can still be good as long you’re with the right people – then it doesn’t matter if you play golf, soccer, party or surf.” Ian Walsh (25)

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“Surfing is a lifestyle more than anything and road trips are part of that. It’s where surfing started, I guess, packing up the Kingwoods or Kombis with boards and going away for the weekend. I try to do as many road trips as possible when I’m home. I live in Sydney and it’s always crowded and pretty busy. Road trips give me the chance to unwind from city life and the hectic surf tour. Pulling up somewhere and being surrounded by trees or the desert and surfing uncrowded waves is the best. A big part of it is the exploration. Just being away with no real plan, doing anything you want and going anywhere you want. The options are endless.” Jarrad Howse (29)

“Surfing is all about keeping it fresh these days: new waves that people haven’t seen before with cool backdrops to shoot. So finding the best waves is an important element. You need a good leader though, someone who knows where you’re going. The best trip for me so far has been for the filming of Kelly Slater’s Young Guns 2. We were on a 100foot boat in the Mentawais for two weeks with the likes of Kelly Slater, Dane Reynolds and Ry Craike.” Julian Wilson (20)

Julian Wilson was voted winner of The O’Neill Mission 2008 by his fellow pros. For more about The O’Neill Mission visit www.oneilleurope.com/themission.

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

Text and photography Jamie Brisick

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Yamanote line, Tokyo, 10:30am. The ubiquitous snoozing passengers say as much about Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s low crime rate as they do about long work days and heavy boozing.

y interest in Japan is twofold: On the one hand, I’m curious about Japanese surf culture, how a sport that’s fundamentally individualistic and renegade fits into a society built on the group, obedience, playing by the rules. On the other, I’m trying to purge myself of sins committed in Japan some two decades ago. I grew up in Southern California, came to surfing at age twelve, rose up the amateur ranks, and joined the ASP tour in ‘86. This was the era of Carroll, Curren, Occy, Pottz, a time when surfing was trying to shake off its dubious past and step into its professional and mass-marketed future. I did pretty average – my best results were a couple of thirds; I finished most seasons in the mid-40s – and when my career came to an abrupt end in 1991, I fell into a severe depression. I’d spent five years living my dream and suddenly I was put out to pasture, a has-been at age twenty-five. I drank a lot of beer, sabotaged a perfectly good relationship, and moped around for a few months, until I realised that it was the selfexpression part of surfing that I so loved, and if I couldn’t make my living riding waves, I could make my living writing about riding waves. You see, unlike most publications that require its writers to have college degrees, surf magazines demand only firsthand immersion, a willingness to

sleep on couches, and a strong constitution. For the next fifteen years I would travel the world writing for Tracks, Waves, Surfing, Surfer, The Surfer’s Journal, The Surfer’s Path, Adrenalin, etc. And while it’s been a wonderful, saltwaterdrenched ride, I recently hit something of a dead end. I felt like I’ve said all I could about the WCT, the hot young upstart, the A-list surf trip. I found myself viewing surfing from a more pulled-back, anthropological perspective. Thus, I applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to “better understand Japanese culture through the lens of surfing”. I got it, and so here I am, scribbling away in a tiny nomiya bar in Shibuya whilst the non-English speaking proprietor sings along perfectly to Jerry Lee Lewis. y first few weeks in Tokyo were filled with the standard observations that whack most gaijins (foreigners) over the head upon arrival: the ubiquitous drink machines, the conveyor belt sushi, the pigeontoed women, the magazines that read back to front, the taxi doors that open automatically, the surname first, Christian name second, the sing-songy irasshaimase that’s sung when you enter stores, the over-wrapping of even the most basic items that completely contradicts Japan’s advanced recycling program, the slurping

of noodles that your mother told you was bad manners but here is standard practice, the way the Japanese will wait for the light to change before crossing the street, despite the fact that it’s 4am and there’s not a car in sight. That I wasn’t more cognisant of these differences during the eight or nine visits I made to Japan in the late eighties bespeaks the myopic, blinkered nature of pro surfing. I remember miso soup, broiled fish and pickled vegetables for breakfast, and the fact that nudey magazines had the private parts scratched out, but beyond this, I remember only jockish narcissism. What struck me about a month into my stay, especially after my vivacious wife Gisela arrived, is how absurdly delicious the food is. I imagined myself trimming down, eating light, mild meals consisting of rice, sushi, a cup or two of sake. Instead, I found myself gorging on okonomiyaki, gyoza, ramen, soba, tempura, sukiyaki, yakitori, sushi, sashimi, tonkatsu, goya champuru... I’d sit down to dinner with no appetite, then suddenly find myself under a kind of gluttonous spell cast by the exotic flavours and the fact that I couldn’t even begin to pronounce what I was eating. And the drink! Some years back it was learned that the oldest man in the world swore by his nightly drop of shochu. Since then this clear, potent spirit made of either barley, rice or sweet potato has become Japan’s drink of choice. I told myself

While the plight of the salaryman may seem unattractive by Western standards, it’s an esteemed, honorable, often lifelong commitment in Japan.

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Tenjin Matsuri in Osaka, a summertime Carnival of sorts replete with kimonos, portable shrines, fireworks, and fanwaving nubiles with $1,500 handbags.

that these indulgences were ‘research’, that the more dishes and drinks I could knock back, the closer I’d get to understanding Japan. Disaster struck on a sweltering hot Sunday. Gisela and I are strolling through the Aoyama District where poodle walkers sashay in Louis, Dolce, Issey and black Bentleys with blacked-out windows idle down the steam-cleaned street when suddenly we hear sirens, and then a few seconds later, watch a convoy of police cars race past. “Something’s happened,” says Gisela with intuitive conviction. Sure enough, a couple hours later, back at our shoe-box of a Roppongi flat, I’m tooling around on the internet when I come across this on JapanTimes.com: “7 Killed, 10 Injured in Akihabara Stabbing Spree”. It turns out that while we were sipping coffee and marveling at the beautiful people, a deranged twenty-five-year-old was ploughing his rented truck into a crowd of pedestrians. When bystanders jumped in to help, they were met by a knife-wielding lunatic, who leapt out of the vehicle and managed to stab twelve people before police could apprehend him. It was quite ironic considering that I’d spent most of the day marveling at how civilised Tokyo is, how its inhabitants operate with a heightened sense of social and moral responsibility, how they all seem to be intrinsically aware that ‘one bad

apple spoils the whole bunch’. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve stopped strangers in the street, mispronounced the name of whatever destination we’re trying to find, and had them literally walk us there, sometimes blocks away. I remember thinking that while America has road rage and schoolyard shootings, Japan has excessive politeness and cordiality. What’s even more ironic, though, is the video I find on the LA Times website seconds after reading about Akihabara: In grainy blackand-white, a man attempts to cross a busy intersection. He’s slammed by a car, goes head over heels, and lands hard on the pavement. The offending vehicle slows, as if to ponder the ramifications, then speeds off. But this isn’t the shocking part. The shocking part is the stream of cars that literally drive around the lifeless body, the pedestrians that curiously addle to the edge of the sidewalk, stand on tiptoes to get a better view, then continue on their merry way. Several minutes and at least a dozen people pass before someone jumps in to help. The clip then cuts to interview footage: the thuggish but sweet-faced African-American kid who says something like, ‘Damn right I’da helped the guy, that’s what choo do’; the chafed, retirement-aged highway patrolman who concludes his tirade with the scripted, “Sad state of affairs when a man’s bleeding in the middle of the street and no one

comes to help out. I mean, how can you just walk past something like that?” What’s interesting is how the Akihabara Massacre answers this question. I think of my friend Scotty, who came around a corner in deep Mexico, encountered what appeared to be a horrific car accident, pulled over to help, then found himself being robbed at gunpoint by banditos. I think of a renowned environmental organisation who were busted a while back for embezzlement. If ‘the greatest sin is the desecration of a child’s spirit’, as my dear father so loves to quote, then the second greatest sin is the desecration of these simple ‘brother’s keeper’ precepts. surfed Chiba, Shonan, Shimoda and Miyazaki, and though the waves were terrible, the people were fantastic. The Japanese are astonishingly methodical in the way they go about surfing. They carry portable showers, change mats, and coat hangers to dry their suits. They do extensive stretches at the shoreline before paddling out. I watched a guy in Shimoda pull first a pair of knee-high stools from his customised van, and then his spit-shined longboard, which he deftly set on the stools so as not to let it touch the pavement. It struck me as ridiculous, the pageantry trumping the act itself. ▼

Rooted in the geisha, Japan is universally hailed for its excellent service.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but surfing is innately improvisational. The fact that Matt Johnson shows up at Malibu drunk and boardless in the opening scene of Big Wednesday is not an embellishment, but a truism. The fact that Tom Curren did some of his most genius surfing ever in the nineties Search era on borrowed boards speaks volumes. Being unkempt, barefoot, half naked – winging it, in other words – is half the allure. My friend Naki, a Japanese surf photographer who’s lived between Kamakura, San Clemente and Kauai since ‘94, has an interesting take. He says that because of the heavy work schedules and inconsistent surf, there are these long incubatory periods during which videos are watched, magazines are read and imagination is stoked. “California is where it’s original and cool,” he says. “Japanese try to copy and digest. It’s like a father/son thing. We watch: how the top pros walk, how they wax, what car they drive.” He goes on to say that Japanese surfers are a lot more self-conscious than surfers elsewhere. Because it’s built on the group, because ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’, there’s a kind of sheep mentality. Surf magazines in Japan, for instance, contain pages of ‘How To’s’ – how to bottom turn, how to cut back, how to hit the lip – and according to

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Naki, these are studied religiously. Not until one’s mastered the basics in this ‘by the book’ manner will they try and put their own spin on it. I find this fascinating because it completely counters my introduction to surfing. At Malibu in the seventies, if you gave any indication of deliberate, methodical effort you’d be laughed out of the water. nd then there’s Japanese porn. My initial titillation came a few years back when Gisela and I rented In The Realm Of The Senses, the true story of Sada Abe. Set in the thirties, the ex-prostitute Abe meets the sexually omnivorous Kichizo Ichida and the pair embark on a wild fucking spree that starts as some of the greatest jerk off fodder ever filmed, then turns sick and obsessive, then spirals into that asphyxiation-at-the-point-of-orgasm stuff which, for vanilla sexers such as myself, is extremely tough to watch. He eventually asks her to strangle him to death, which she does, then cuts off his penis, wraps it in a magazine, puts it in her purse, and goes walkabout on the streets of Tokyo. When the cops finally catch up to her two days later she has a calm, dreamy look in her eyes. She produces the severed organ, explains that, “I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories,” and

goes on to become one of the most famous murderesses in Japanese history. Japan’s an extremely sexy country, though in a way that’s different to, say, France, Italy or Brazil. You see very little affection displayed in public. I recall when I went to meet Gisela at Narita Airport. She was arriving from JFK, i.e. an international flight. Normally that point where arriving passengers meet their loved ones is a logjam of hugs, kisses, chins nuzzling necks. Not at Narita. Husbands would greet their wives with a nod, pat their kid on the head and off they’d go toward the parking lot, efficiently, coldly. But the same way the preacher’s daughter is the ravenous wildcat under the sheets, so too does this upright society have its shadow side. At the sex store up the street from our flat, I was surprised to see entire shelves devoted solely to coprophilia, golden showers, BDSM. I could tell you about the video we saw – the seven salarymen who take to their blindfolded victim with buzzing vibrators; the caged girl on hands and knees who suffers the pleasure/torture inflicted by a water cannon-like purple dildo machine with flashing neon lights and chainsawlike sound effects; the gallon jugs of KY jelly and black tarps and boxing ring-like bedrooms – but that would be inappropriate. I can tell you about the hentai manga that shows nymphets with cum-splattered faces, dogs

fucking nurses and, in one particularly disturbing image, a blade-shaped phallus/murder weapon. I read somewhere that the Japanese see this stuff as a kind of safety valve, an antidote to the pressures of the treadmill. While America blames Marilyn Manson for its schoolyard massacres, Japanese see it in an opposite light. Better blood be spilled on the page than in real life. Chikan is a distinctly urban way to get your rocks off. In trains so crowded that the whitegloved conductors have to stuff in every last protruding limb so the doors can shut, perverse bastards have devised a way to exploit the issue. Call it hit-and-run dry fucking, the ability to sniff out private moments in public places, a kind of erotic take on the punk rock slam pit: chikaners place themselves within grinding distance of their victims, strategically wait for that cascade of bodies that happens at every stop, swiftly writhe their way to orgasm, then slip out the door. One thing I learned about Tokyo: all the best stuff happens down narrow lanes, often under train tracks. The best food is served not in big, fancy restaurants but rather in hole-in-the-wall joints. The best bars are little bigger than your average closet, and seat maybe five. The best takoyaki (fried octopus balls covered in sauce, mayonnaise, seaweed and bonita shavings) can be found in ramshackle shacks under tufts of

electrical wiring. Tokyo appeals to that same part of the psyche that was drawn to cubbyholes, crawl spaces, and tree forts as a kid. Intimacy with the city takes place not on the big boulevards and main streets, but off the beaten track, behind drape-covered doors you have to duck under. ’d heard stories of Japan’s heavy localism, and envisioned showing up to Nagasaki, paddling out to some rural beachbreak, having some angry local get in my face and order me to “Get the fuck out!” and then using this as a segue, localism in surf culture mirroring Japan’s xenophobia throughout the sakoku period. Truth is, I never made it to the beach, let alone surfed. I did spend a couple hours in the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, which is a disturbing, powerful ride that’s laid out with the same tension/release, peaks/valleys that makes for great novels. It starts with backstory – WWII, Hiroshima, the B29 ‘Bockscar’, the offending bomb nicknamed ‘Fatman’, the fact that they had Kokura in their sights but it was covered in smoke, thus Nagasaki was Plan B. Then the bomb is literally and figuratively dropped, which is illustrated by a tattered wall clock stuck at 11:02. You wade through an extensive display of melted bottles, coins, household appliances, a particularly moving

schoolgirl’s lunchbox, scorched clothing that forces you to ponder the fate of the victim, a burnt helmet with shards of skull lodged into it, and still more glass, more coins, more photos of the devastation. At the time it felt almost monotonous – do we really need to see another piece of scorched concrete? – but later I realised this was strategic – lull them into numbness then ram the point home. The survivors’ testimonials are detailed and visceral. You learn exactly what melting flesh looks and smells like. You hear about the piles of dead stacked along the very river you crossed to enter the museum. You come to realise that the severely burnt survivors had nowhere to go – the hospitals were all up in flames. You wince at the rogue illnesses that cropped up in the aftermath. And then just when you’re positively convinced that nuclear warfare is the most inhumane thing imaginable, you’re tossed into a large, high-ceiling room devoted solely to the history of nuclear war development. In a detailed chronicle that’s presented as a giant wall mural, you see that for every move to put an end to it, there’s a counter move that ensures its survival. The world becomes one giant chess board – Russia inches forward, America counters, while they’re facing off France adds a new pawn to the game... It’s meant to galvanise you into joining the fight against nuclear arms, but it does much more than this: it lessens your faith in humanity. ▼

Ueno Park is home to Tokyo’s largest homeless population, comprised mostly of middle-aged and elderly men who live in blue-tarp and cardboard shacks and are remarkably clean and organised.

But the kicker is the final photo: A demure-faced nine-year-old boy stands amongst the post-apocalyptic wasteland, his dead baby brother strapped to his back. In the wall text, the photographer explains that he’s actually at a cremation site, how when the baby brother is taken by one of the stand-in cremators and set aflame, the older brother tries to keep himself from crying by biting down on his lower lip. He bites so hard, the photographer says, that a trickle of blood drips down his chin. Suffice to say, I walked out of there crying. apan’s a unique country in that it existed in a kind of vacuum for twoand-a-quarter centuries. Having observed the way in which the Japanese took up Christianity brought by the Portuguese, and seeing this as a threat to national purity, Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu declared sakoku (meaning ‘closed country’). From roughly 1633 to 1858, foreigners were not allowed in and Japanese were not allowed out. There was, however, a trickle of contact, and this took place in Nagasaki, where Dutch traders brought, along with their wares, medicine, literature, physics and astronomy. I became interested in this as a potential thread to surfing. How did the Japanese respond to this imprisonment? What does this do to a country? Could a line be drawn from the first Europeans right up to the U.S. Naval officers who brought surfing to Japan in the post-WWII years? It turns out that much of what I’d suspected is true. At the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture, I learned about nampaks, those Japanese who became obsessed with all things Dutch. At the Edo-Tokyo Museum I discovered a haikuist called Somo Katu who visited the U.S. in 1860 and came back with flags, playing cards, maps, newspapers, bottles and, in what’s laden with symbolism, the blueprints for a hot air balloon. One could argue that sakoku imprinted a kind of ‘outsider complex’ on the Japanese psyche. Having been shut off to the world for two centuries, there was the sense of being behind the eight ball, needing to catch up. And like the preacher’s hellcat daughter, they embraced the outside world, particularly the West, with a vengeance. As writer Paul Theroux put it, “By losing their Japanese-ness, they become even more Japanese.” What’s refreshing, what’s a pleasant digression from all the posturing and attitude that pervades the California surf scene, is the general innocence and enthusiasm of the Japanese. Several times I’d be talking to a waiter or bartender, notice a wetsuit tan or some kind of saltwater tattoo, and ask, “Are you a surfer?” and without fail, their eyes would light up and

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they’d enthusiastically nod in the affirmative as if they were suddenly ten years old. On the flipside, though, is localism. From what I’m told, in taking up every facet and nuance of surf culture, the Japanese have added localism to the list. Doesn’t this sound out of character? The irony of embracing this rapturous import then building a kind of moat around it... But of course hypocrisy is part of the surfing spectrum as well. Part of the human condition. o getting back to previous sins. It’s 1989, I’m a young, loud, and snotty pro surfer and so are the majority of my fellow competitors. A well-known photographer of the time, Cap’n Fun, arrives at the Marui Pro in Chiba with two suitcases full of seventies polyester he’d picked up at a San Diego thrift store. We’re talking giant collars, skin-tight bellbottoms, white patent leather platform shoes, glitter ball necklaces, feather boas, vibrant wigs. A half dozen of the best surfers in the world, along with yours truly, gather in Cap’n Fun’s hotel room, to sip beers and piece together outfits, the more hideous the better. We then head up to the local 7-Eleven, buy a couple fifths of Jack Daniels, maybe twenty beers, and bags of chips, rice crackers and Pocky Sticks. We hop the Tokyobound train with a swagger that recalls Alex, Pete, Georgie and Dim in A Clockwork Orange. Our first transgression is the ghetto blaster we snatch from a pair of happy-faced schoolgirls, turn up to ear-splitting volume, and use to fuel our cavorting, ridiculous dance moves. Then we steal a fire extinguisher and chase each other up and down the aisles. Then we tear down the posters that hang like Tibetan prayer flags. Then one beer spills, another, another, another, and the next thing you know, the floor’s like an ice skating rink. What twists the knife of guilt that surfaces in my stomach when I ponder this stuff are the faces of our fellow passengers: they just smiled. Our behaviour was so obnoxious they hadn’t even the means (nor the words) to deal with it. I can still see the grey-haired salaryman peering over the top of his newspaper, faking a little laugh whenever we caught his eye, perturbed, repulsed. By the time we arrived in Tokyo a Top 30-ranked pro had puked out the window, a world title contender was nearly blinded by whatever chemical it is that they put in fire extinguisher spray, the entire car had been evacuated by our fed-up fellow passengers, and a river of dubious fluid and rolling beer cans sloshed to the front of the car at each stop. Needless to say, the cops were waiting for us. But we were clever. Cap’n Fun had declared

a meeting point (“McDonald’s on the corner of Roppongi Dori!”) and we scattered like buckshot. I can still remember tearing through the station, hopping turnstiles, and laughing hysterically at my twisted Aussie mate who flashed BAs at the cops, bystanders, anyone who happened to be looking. We ended up at a fashionable club called Lexington Queen where we made fools of ourselves on the dance floor, offended American models, and got severely pickled on JD and Cokes. If there was a Robin Hood element, which is how we rationalised it at the time, it was that the staff and clientele at Lexington Queen were pretentious and uptight, and we were lighthearted and self-deprecating and thus liberators, crusaders for freedom. ut that was two decades ago. Having spent the last four months experiencing Japan with new, more mature eyes, I see things quite differently. In its order and regimentation, a new kind of freedom surfaces. Ten-year-old kids can ride the subway alone. Women can walk down dark alleys late at night. Non-Japanese speaking, clueless gaijins can ride bullet trains across the country, show up to unfamiliar towns, and know there will be a hot meal and bed to sleep in. Japan is like something out of a fairy tale. I mean, where else in the world does this happen? I’m walking down a dark, narrow alley in the pouring rain when suddenly I feel an umbrella over my head. I look over, and there’s the malehalf of the couple I nodded to in the 7-Eleven, with a warm smile on his face. “To keep you dry,” he says. “Thanks,” I say, and take the handle. “Where are you from?” asks his simpatico girlfriend. “New York.” “What are you doing here?” “Studying.” “Do you have a place to stay? Friends?” “Yes, I’m staying here with my wife and good friend.” “OK, just want to make sure you have friends.” “Yeah,” adds the boyfriend. “Japanese difficult for foreigners.” “That’s really nice of you,” I say, and when we bow goodnight, and I try to hand the umbrella back, he insists I keep it. And that’s Japan for you. You step out of the house at one in the morning for ice cream, and come back with new friends and a free umbrella

Special thanks to Fulbright Japan.

BOOTS FOR ALL

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PHOTOGRAPHY mattia ZoPPellaro While the motoring masses drive around in a carbon-fuelled daze, a silent revolution is taking the tarmac by storm. Fixed gear bikes â&#x2C6;&#x2019; those stripped-down beauties born for the track â&#x2C6;&#x2019; are liberating riders from the confines of gears and brakes. This is London; potholes, traffic, warts and all. And these are the girls who skid across her streets.

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Juliet wears T-shirt Hell Yeah I Jeans WeSC Posy wears Vest Nikita I Leather Jacket Carhartt I Necklace Nikita I Jeans QuiksilveR

Helen wears Shirt Fly53 I Jeans Lee I Belt Carhartt

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Juliet wears T-shirt Hell Yeah I Shirt Vans I Cardigan Quiksilver

Posy wears Vest Nikita I Hoody Element Eden I Jeans Quiksilver

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Vest Majestic Athletic, jean shorts Quiksilver. Second girl wears: Sleeveless hoodie Nikita. Vest Majestic Athletic, jean shorts Quiksilver. Second girl wears: Sleeveless hoodie Nikita. Vest Majestic Athletic, jean shorts Quiksilver. Second Vest Athletic, jean Howies shorts Quiksilver. Second wears: Sleeveless Emily wearsMajestic White T-shirt I Grey Topgirl Chiemsee I Hoody Howies

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Sam wears T-shirT Hell Yeah I Jeans Nikita I Cardigan Forvert

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Kat wears T-shirt Carhartt I Shirt Carhartt I Jeans Topshop I Shoes Vans

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THE BACK PAGES MUSIC, MOVIES, GAMES AND GIRLHOOD

LADYHAWKE

ELIZABETH LOOKE-STEWART

NZ’S ANSWER TO CYNDI LAUPER

GRACE JONES

THE STATUESQUE POP QUEEN RETURNS

AND

‘COME DANCING’, A MEDITATION ON TIMOTHY LEARY, SURFING AND LIFE

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AMERICAN GIRL PHOTOGRAPHER ELIZABETH LOOKESTEWART IS PRESERVING GIRLHOOD. I used to have a fear of Roxette. A genuine, profound phobia of Sweden’s androgynous pop export. It was 1989 and, against the sound of ‘Look Sharp!’ blaring from a tinny pink tape deck, my big sister and her friends would huddle in her room to perform the activities mandatory to their eighties adolescence. Hair was teased, lips were painted red, and stonewashed boys called Brandon and Dylan were ogled over. I remember sitting in her bedroom doorway, petrified. I didn’t want to grow up, ever. And I blamed Roxette entirely. Thanks to photographer Elizabeth Looke-Stewart, this is one irrational fear I can put down to a rite of passage. It wasn’t the peroxide-happy duo that gave me the shivers – but the inevitability that I would soon morph into one of these mystifying teen creatures that shook me to my core. Through ‘American Girl’ – a body of photography chosen for the prestigious book project, 25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers, Volume 2 – Elizabeth explores those fleeting moments that define every female’s bewildering journey from curious girl to aloof teen. The oldest of five girls, Elizabeth witnessed the metamorphosis first hand. “I began to notice the two sisters closest to me in age were becoming more self-conscious,” she says. “Meanwhile my two younger sisters were still imaginative and spontaneous, almost acting against the shift in their older sisters. I took one picture and decided I needed to take many.” In capturing these transitory moments in her sisters’ lives, is Elizabeth tapping into a bigger picture of the pressures young girls face today? “The work was meant to be critical of a youth culture in which girls hit that initially self-reflective, self-conscious stage of adolescence when their confidence starts to waver,” says the Princeton graduate. “They internalise certain personalities and attitudes from each other. By observing their choice of expression, you see their idea of themselves, their sense of how they should articulate that idea, and the lovely mess of their attempt to actually articulate that idea. “Younger girls are more open about who they are and who they want to be,” she adds. “I appreciate that sort of translucence since it is such a fleeting fraction of girlhood.” A few years on, and there I was: teasing hair, painting lips, ogling over stonewashed boys. Girlhood may have been fleeting, but my tinny pink tape deck never played Roxette. ANDREA KURLAND 25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers, Volume 2 is published by powerHouse Books, www.powerHouseBooks.com.

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ELIZABETH LOOKE-STEWART

S M U B L A GRACE JONES

Hurricane/Wall of Sound

Grace Jones could fart and most people would give her five stars for it, but who could really have imagined that her first album in almost twenty years would be this amazing? Jamaican super-producers Sly and Robbie are back on board as well as Brian Eno, so you get gorgeous reggae and skewered pop productions distilled from all her back catalogue. And it bites lyrically too. Staggeringly good and relevant stuff, and she’s still a proper sexpot. PHIL HEBBLETHWAITE

LADYHAWKE

Ladyhawke/Modular/Island

The first track anyone heard from this Kiwi lady, ‘Back Of The Van’, is a golden super pop song and it’s just one of many gems on her debut. Most, in fact, don’t sound much like that: she has range and an electric taste that covers classic rock, eighties cheese and electro. She seems part Stevie Nicks, part Cyndi Lauper, and she’s got personality and attitude to boot. PH

CONSTANTINES

Kensington Heights/Arts & Crafts

The last Constantines album was a glacial and great outdoorsy kind of rock‘n’roll record. A clue to this one: Kensington Heights is the name of their rehearsal space in Toronto. They’ve come down from the mountain, in other words, and written a more claustrophobic city album. But it’s still euphoric and excellent. They’ve got hard feelings this lot, and real heart. Bruce Springsteen should take them on tour. PH

SWAY

The Signature/Dcypha

Sway has lyrical skill but that means nothing if you were given a personality by-pass at birth. This is full of embarrassing and empty boasts about how brilliant and rich he is. Grand delusions indeed, and he’s still moaning about people downloading his shit for free. He should be elated if anyone bothers to check this out at all, illegally or not. A disgrace. PH

FUCKED UP

The Chemistry of Common Life/Matador

A building guitar line, then WWWWAAAAAAAAARGHHH! and we’re off. Last year’s eighteen-minute ‘Year of the Pig’ single suggested this meatand-potatoes hardcore band – much riffage, huge drums, throaty vocals – were onto something exceptional; here’s full-length proof of their brilliance. I’ve been cycling home like a maniac to this all week and I swear I’ve been arriving five minutes before I left. Now that’s fucked up. PH

LAMBCHOP

OH (ohio)/City Slang

More misery and heartache from Kurt Wagner and Co., but as Bill Callahan proved with his (very poor) last record, who wants to hear from great songwriters when they’re hanging with hot hippy babes likes Joanna Newsom? As it happens, there is real hope here, but to know these perpetual Nashville outsiders is to know music as deeply pensive and tender high art. Stunning. PH

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MOVIES THE ARGENTINE

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh’s four-and-a-half-hour biopic of Che Guevara turned out to be so divisive they even cut the damn film in half. That leaves us with this all-action first instalment that sees Benicio del Toro offering an epic performance as the face that launched a thousand T-shirts, battling his way across Cuba’s Sierra Maestra. But is there a great dramatic vision at work here? The jury’s still out. MATT BOCHENSKI

WALTZ WITH BASHIR Director: Ari Folman

If this animated documentary isn’t a masterpiece, then it’s close enough to make little difference. Haunting and quietly devastating, it’s the autobiographical story of director Ari Folman who served as a fucked-up teenage grunt in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Plagued by cryptic nightmares later in life, Folman undertakes a journey into his own psyche that takes us back into the folds of history. This is a work of mind-boggling self-analysis, and the story of a country mired in moral denial. MB

CHOKE

Director: Clark Gregg

From the writer of Fight Club comes this black comedy about sex addict, Victor, who habitually chokes himself in restaurants to elicit money from strangers for his mother’s hospital treatment. Sam Rockwell plays the cynical anti-hero perfectly, wrestling with his conscience (or lack of), while Anjelica Houston shines as Victor’s deranged mother. Sharp, sardonic and hilarious stuff. ED ANDREWS

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON Director: Alex Gibney

Hunter S. Thompson was the anarchic journalist who invented ‘gonzo’; a style of reporting marked by its subjectivism and interpolation of the writer’s personality. Well, that’s how journo teachers put it. But, put simply, Hunter took a fuck load of drugs while filing mind-warped rants from the frontlines of the revolution in 1960s America. But while any sixteen-year-old with a copy of The Rum Diaries could tell you that, Gibney doesn’t take the chance to delve deeper into Thompson’s troubled psyche. Fun stuff, but a missed opportunity. MB

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX Director: Uli Edel

Terrorism gets a makeover, as the Baader Meinhof Complex injects some sex appeal into a subject dominated by dodgy beards and chicks with no make-up. Germany’s RAF was an achingly hip anarchist cell that caused Bonnie and Clyde style mayhem in the 1970s. Led by Andreas Baader and journalist Ulrika Meinhof, they robbed banks and killed police until their core members were captured and imprisoned, at which point things really got out of hand. Hopelessly romantic and overlong, this one leaves a sour taste. MB

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GAMES

GEARS OF WAR 2 **** Xbox 360

The meathead marine Marcus Fenix returns to blast the shit out of the malevolent Locust Horde who, once again, inconveniently threaten the human race in this violent, third-person shooter. The duck-andcover combat mechanics and numerous quirky ways to execute your enemies make GOW 2 perfect for venting some suppressed anger, but the finest part is its stomping cinematic soundtrack that demands your volume be turned right up. Yeah, it makes out war is a right old knees-up but you’re killing genocidal, mutant scumbags… so it’s fine! ED ANDREWS

MIDNIGHT CLUB: LA **** Xbox 360, PS3

There may be a plethora of titles offering a street racing experience, but none do it as well as this free-roaming speed-fest. Taking an unconventional sandbox approach to game play, you are given free reign to cruise around the City of Angels scoping out rivals to pit your skills against, while avoiding traffic, lamp posts and the LAPD. Along the way, you can pimp your ride, inside and out, to the smallest detail then get online to race and show off your wheels. With some super-sharp graphics and an engrossingly realistic city to explore, there’s no need to go out into the real world anytime soon. ED A

JAMES BOND 007 QUANTUM OF SOLACE *** Xbox 360, PS3, PC, DS

Forgive the scepticism, but multi-port film tie-in games are usually a big pile of shit. But not only has Daniel Craig revitalised the womanising secret agent on screen, he’s done it again for the game. This first-person shooter blends in elements of stealth and duck-and-cover combat, giving it a polished, well thought out feel. This may perhaps be due to the fact that it’s based on the impressive Call of Duty 4 game engine, but it works, so who’s complaining? Certainly not Ms Moneypenny… Oh James. ED A

SKATE IT **** Wii

Thanks to the Wii’s unique controls, the digital skating experience gets a whole lot more real. The game builds upon last year’s excellent Skate but features a whole host of locations around the world to skate. Whether you’re using the Wii-mote or balance board, Skate It is easy to pick up but difficult to master, making it a simple joy to nail the perfect kickflip et al and so massively extending its shelf life. The game also features a customisable MySpot allowing you to create your own skatepark. Nice. ED A

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SNOW & MUSIC FESTIVAL

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Ski Tanner Hall (US) E) Jacob Wester (SW Jon Olsson (SWE) Colby West (US) K) Paddy Graham (U(NOR) Andreas Hatveit Joe Tyler (UK) Sammy Carlson (US) Plus loads more confirmed - see website for full line up

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RUMINATIONS ON TIMOTHY LEARY, HUMAN EVOLUTION AND THE ELEMENTAL NATURE OF WALTZING IN THE SEA. All week I had been tracking the development of a deep low, spinning and tightening off the coast of Nova Scotia, which then settled somewhere south of Greenland. The digital runes were predicting ten-foot waves with a period of fifteen seconds, with little or no coastal wind to speak of. A whole host of fickle corners, reefs and points were going to be lighting up what had been dormant all summer. It was the holy month of September and the surfing dilettantes had flown back to their workstations. I should have been working too, and struggled with the usual weighing up of responsibility and desire. I chose, in the end, to rise before the dawn and head to the sea. I knew I would gain nothing from this endeavour, and that I would just burn some petrol and burn some calories. In the half consciousness of the dawn patrol, the shipping forecast confirmed the position of the low and the direction of the wind. As I listened to its soothing litany I remembered what acid guru and Harvard Professor of Psychology Timothy Leary said about surfers. According to Leary, the destiny of mankind as a species was to evolve toward an entirely aesthetic realm, a realm dedicated to the dance. Leary saw surfers as the living, breathing embodiment of a sector of human society dedicated purely to the dance, and as such that they were the throw-aheads of human evolution.

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The dance was, in the very earliest days of human history, no less than the creation of the ‘Now’. The moment of the dance was the instant that a truthful, unmediated being came into existence. The dance was beautifully symbolic therefore, of the moment mankind transcended the animal necessities of food, shelter and protection that humans have been perennially burdened by. The image of the surfer riding close to the curl, at the point where the energy of the wave is exploding, resonated with Leary as symbolic of the complete, joyful immersion in the present. Whilst riding a wave, he said, the past is exploding into nothingness behind you, and the future is unwinding and unfurling in front of you, begging to be created. For Leary, being dedicated to the search for these ﬂeeting moments rather than acquiring the trappings of ‘success’, the surfer achieved merely moments in the ever-present, but in so doing tapped into a part of the human soul accessed rarely by the mass of men. Through a kind of evolutionary wrongfootedness, rather than placing that life-aﬃrming dance at the centre of his existence, early man put the will toward accumulation in its place, and built entire cultures dedicated to the kind of material accumulation that created the world around us. Early mankind made a grave error. He fucked up, dude. I crossed the moor and reached the apex of the headland and caught my breath as I saw lines of swell stacked to the horizon, and smooth, evenly spaced sets wheeling and peeling into the bay. I parked, pulled on the neoprene and submerged myself in the everpresent once again. Within minutes I was dancing. And nothing else seemed to matter any more. MICHAEL FORDHAM

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