Once again, I loved it! A few sacred craft reflections for anyone who cares to read ‘em…

I spent a lot of time at my booth but when I did run around the hall I was pretty amazed and sometimes even amused. As an industry it seems we are in a bit of a schizophrenic mood… in a good way, if that’s possible.

 So if I had brought a camera I’d show you everything from Peruvian rafts and every shape of wooden replica to modern "tech" stuff and tomo twinfin airplane wings with physic equations written all over em. There’d be a picture of me listening to wingnut explain his love of the longboard and her peculiarities. A photo of me stuck in my booth as people repeatedly walked up and tried to sell me something like canvas grocery bags or tell me about their failed romantic situations. There would be photos of long haired kids with Halloween-like goodies bags and huge smiles, people eating fair food corn dogs and expensive budweisers.

There were wicked glass jobs and also the clear sleeper beauties. i saw spencer kellog and spoke with him while he was strolling with hands behind his back around searching for these sneakers…he told me the airbrush and tints take away from the shape and really bug him. classic.

Just seeing all the craftsman (vs. salesmen) there and getting to see what they do is what makes going so f-ing great. Moonlight glassing in bonzerville was amazing as usual. They really set the bar the past few years and we owe them a thanks. I was stoked to see old friends jack sykes, john wegener, fletcher chouinard all showing off the beautiful work in completely different ways. And I have made new friends by attending these events like michel junod, ward coffey, Ashley Lloyd and paul from primo beer! Good times. And the many after parties that spun off into the night…. Tequila hangovers and sleeping in my car by the railroad tracks next to the Patagonia house….thanks fletch, I think. Ha.

I shared a booth with ryk kluver who has been making the tom blake style boards for years and storing them across the beams of his living room. It was fun to see him get to show them off and finally feel part of a comraderie of builders instead of hiding his work hostage in the hills of Cayucos.

There were the odd far east made boards too…and I am just not sure what is so sacred about having boards made overseas and diesel-ing them across the pacific in cargo ships for maximum profit and, sometimes, minimum quality. Are they still sacred craft? Up to the customer to decide I guess…

In any case, this show represented a real surfboard diversity and the people trying to make in the business and I was stoked to be a prt of it. all in all, it was inspiring as hell. So a big thanks to scott for doing this. Where else can you have access to so many great craftsmen and design twiddlers and surf legends?

 Not everyone realizes that the modern explosion of home-recording may be built upon a deep legacy of frustrated songwriters who had to save up for recording dates to be put out on 78's. It only occurred to me because I have proof of one such person in my family tree and suspect that there are other stories out there.

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William Manis was my great-grandfather on my mother's side. I never met the man but I did come to own the three 78's of songs that he wrote in the 1930's. Nowadays, the original records are only half in the world. They've been through a lot: sat in boxes for family moves, warped in shipping containers, scratched themselves in storage units, and finally made their way into my hands under the pretense that I should digitize them and thus preserve them for the family annals. The vinyl had patina-ed in some spots filling in the grooves with some apathetic mineral. One of them, I assume it was a wax master copy or something since it had a different look than the others, is ruined and simply shines like an old metal Frisbee except for a few chunks of recorded grooves hanging there next to the Hollywood Recording Studios title label stating "Caliente Nights by William J Manis". What a charged little disc it is to me…. I mean, there it is—the last remnants of my ancestor's life just hanging there poised to flake off onto the floor. One day, all three of these records will turn into useless circles, devoid of any other attribute.

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A friend of mine collects Gramophones so I took the records over to play them with some new needles that looked like toothpicks from a Chinese restaurant. We all know that popcorn noise of old records but these project a more violent popcorn hailstorm and unless you really arch your ear into the storm you can't hear the body of the song. But when you do, you can imagine the old studio in Hollywood with my great grandfather hidden in the corner wringing his hands. You see the hired male singer in his pinstriped suit, slick haired and singing in the high voice of a romantic car salesman. There is the 30's era piano player exhibiting all the chordal gymnastics and pop conventions of his day. He is breezing through the changes and the singer stays with him.

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I recorded the sounds coming out of the Gramophone with the only mic I had at the time, a sm57 going into an RNP and a G4 laptop. "Caliente Nights", "Starlit Rendezvous", "So What", and "What Good Am I?" are all beautiful and well-crafted…pop songs—I guess in name only since they never became popular. According to my grandmother, nothing ever came of his efforts. They were poor Okie transplants living in 30's California trying to make it and whenever "Papa" got any money he'd start talking about going back to the studio to try again. The way that she remembers is that they charged him 60$ a day, which they flat out could not afford. Obviously, this was a major point of contention with his wife, who was a piano player herself but always a wife and mother first.

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He died relatively young and his small family moved from their Fullerton, California home. Unfortunately, all that his wife and daughter saved of his musical endeavors were the records since no one had the energy to retrieve the collection of song sketches and lyrics in a box in the attic.

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Hearing his records during my teen years pushed me to get a guitar and, soon after a Tascam Portastudio 4 track. I have a picture of him up in my home studio. It reminds me that it doesn't matter whether or not any of my songs "make it" as long as I record my ideas, record my friends, and generally just record, record, record. Its important for us to appreciate every project we work on as the mirror and the sound of the soul because we don't know what effects our creations will have on future generations of kinfolk and strangers alike. And if our wives or want to kill us because we secretly purchase a microphone we can't afford, then we'll put all that drama into a song. What is it we do anyway but express our moments alive on earth in the fashion of our time? This is our philosophy of spirit-- we break into song, we dedicate our lives to instruments and we record our fragile moments onto tape or hard drive with our learned technological know-how. We are of a tribe who find joy in capturing the sound of human souls and we are lucky as hell to have so many amazing tools within our reach.

you can hear a track of his @ www.shanestoneman.com

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BUYING SURFBOARDS FROM CHINA, IS LIKE BUYING SNOW FROM AFRICA (rant dedicated to the surfboard shaper)

its a bad idea. I am not an economist, no marketing director, not a moral superior-- but I am a concerned citizen of the surfing world that realizes we are in a philosophical dark ages in which we have to redefine ourselves before the giant corporations do it for us. what follows is a rant regarding the trend toward homogenized surfboards and the proliferation of far-east-knock-offs. 

watching this new retailing trend is scary when you think about what it says about our artform. instead of handmade , shaper tested designs, the shops are filling up with plasticized clones of our tools born in overseas sweatshops and sent by the container full to American ports. how did it happen? how did the stores get fooled into thinking this is the way to finally make a margin on surfboards? the industry is in danger of transforming itself into an unapologetic pop culture walmart-ism, fueled by consumers who will buy what the advertisements tell them to.

now its true that none of this is entirely new--but I expected more out of a tribe descended from kings. can you imagine the horror that the great Duke would feel if he had been alive to see the sport of kings reduced to a profit margin mentality? isn't this what the retailers are saying when they support the exportation of our craft into far east factories? isn't that what we are saying when we accept snowboard corporations as our surfboard parent companies? its just business , you say, and now surfing is BIG business.

(CARTOON PICTURE OF THE DUKE PREPLEXED HOLDING A DORK TECH IN WAL-MART(not available online) )

as surfers in the industry, we all create lives so that we can make money from living closer to our art....so now we have to hustle like mad. and maybe this is a good thing--to re-define our goals and prove our worth in a brave new world of computer designed replicas of handmade products.

there is usually one or more great shaper in every surf town i have ever been in. as real representatives of our art, shapers are on the frontlines of the battle and there are two fronts: the surfshop and the shaping room. apparently, we haven't been doing our job well enough. whether it is undercutting retailers or not being social enough to deal with the customers effectively enough to create return clients, i am seeing more and more homogenous big- brands in our area, brands that are made by advertising dollars and sold at high cost to buyers who like the fact that it is a computer replica that a thousand other people have.

there is no "everyman" board. so hopefully, we will see a backlash to these trends. we must attract these ad-driven consumers by designing for custom conditions and locations, by offering long term relationships that start from a first board and get better and better for that person specifically.

as survivors of the apocalypse, we must offer good tools for the pure and creative surfing experience, invented and re-invented everyday by the artist and creators who work in relative anonymity behind the main stage. its time for some passion and artistic integrity to be put back into surfboards. its time for drastic designs and shaper/surfers who can surf them. its time for courageous shop owners who still water the seeds of their own soul surfing. and its time for hard core surfers to start using the surf shops to buy all their wares and demand that they keep some integrity up their on the shelf next to the wax.

....ok, i feel better now.........