HUCK Magazine The Tom Curren Issue (Digital Edition)

vol. 02 issue #010 made in the uk £3.75 TOM CURREN by SAM CHRISTMAS

TOM CURREN LEGEND

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Photo: Vincent Skoglund

©2008 Oakley, Inc.

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DUSTIN BARCA IN OIL RIG ™ OAKLEY.COM/BARCA 11

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contents. huck #010 48 TOM CURREN legend. interviewed.

58 JAKE BURTON you know the logo. now meet the man.

64 JENNY JONES from england, with love.

66 STACY PERALTA dogtown’s most switched-on offspring speaks out.

70 LEGENDARY BOOKS your shelf is nothing without them.

▼

74 TOMMY GUERRERO he’s got music on his mind.

76 GOD OF THUNDER spectral surf scenes, by thor jonsson.

82 BIG MOUNTAIN PRO helis, hikes and lethal lines.

86 IN SHADES OF RED exploring russia, with snowboards in tow.

92 OLD SKATER DUDES the coolest dads, ever.

THOR JONSSON

96 GROMS the future belongs to them.

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104 SUMMER’S COMING here are some goods to go with it.

106 CUBAN HIP HOP with style.

118 angela boatwright 120 music 122 film 124 dvds 126 games 128 books 130 zen of surfing

ANGELA boatwright

â–ź â–ź

sam christmas

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22 statues 24 jamie lynn 26 nat young 28 stevie williams 30 andre bach 32 endless summer 38 lisa andersen 40 david benedek 42 nuclear surf 44 inkie 46 helvetica

Editor

Vince Medeiros Global Editor

Creative Directors

Jamie Brisick

Associate Editor

Rob Longworth & Paul Willoughby

Andrea Kurland

www.thechurchoflondon.com Snow Editor

Skate Editor

Film Editor

Zoe Oksanen

Jay Riggio

Matt Bochenski

Translations Editor

Website Editor

Markus Grahlmann

Alex Capes

Marketing & Distribution

Advertising Director

Ed Andrews

Music Editor

Phil Hebblethwaite

Editorial Consultant

Michael Fordham

Steph Pomphrey

Advertising Manager

Dean Faulkner

European Director

Publisher

Claire Marshall

Danny Miller Text

Sarah Bentley, Simon Buck, James Dalziel, Russell Holt, Josh Jones, Nadia Kazolides, Miles Masterson, Jim Merrett, Niall O’Keeffe, Mike Regan, Jay Riggio, Alex Wade, Jonathan Williams Images

Jorik Blom, Chris Boadle, Angela Boatwright, Nate Bressler, Joe Brook, Amy Brown, Simon Buck, Wade Burdell, Sam Christmas, Jeff Curtes, Hans Herbig, John Isaac, Thor Jonsson, Jake McBride, Jess Mooney, Tom Oldham, Alex Schneider, Jorn Tomter, Barry Tuck, John Witzig, Tom Zimmerman, Mattia Zoppellaro

HUCK is published by HUCK LIMITED Studio 209 Curtain House 134-146 Curtain Road London EC2A 3AR United Kingdom 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: TOM CURREN BY SAM CHRISTMAS

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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 Mayhew McCrimmon www.mayhewprepress.co.uk 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.

Swiss made – www.swatch.com

Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968) surfing ambassador

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Fausto Vitello (1946-2006) Indy trucks, Thrasher mag

Craig Kelly (1966-2003) snowboarding’s spiritual leader

Statues AND BUSTS are a weird thing. More often than not, the dude (and it’s almost always a dude) is an abhorrent war criminal or a despotic president who drew on infantile national pride to rally the bewildered herd around some stupid flag or mythological symbol. Plus, the more people he killed, the bigger the statue. Seriously.

Rell Sunn (1950-1998) Queen of Makaha

Mark Twain (1835-1910) Huckleberry Finn writer

Miki Dora (1934-2002) surfing iconoclast

PAUL WILLOUGHBY

Here are the busts of men and women who did amazing things in their lives – and who killed no one in the process.

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Bringing heavy Back text Andrea Kurland photography tim zimmerman

My knee is every shade of black and blue. Tiny elbow-shaped bruises dent my upper arms. I’m tired, hanging, and it hurts like hell. It’s the best I’ve felt in years.

One night earlier, and things are getting heavy. Four guys on stage, leather-clad and hairy as fuck, are rousing something within this tight-knit crowd. The unexpected blow of a dude twice my size bashing me to the ground makes me smile ear to ear.

Sweat, beer, elbows, guitar – this sensory assault is courtesy of Kandi Coded, the Seattle band that boasts two remnants from another era: Jamie Lynn (snowboard enigma, vocals) and Jack Endino (architect of grunge, lead guitar), a couple of good guys at the cornerstones of history.

Throughout the early nineties, Jamie pushed progression in snowboarding’s infancy with his signature style. His tight-ass methods, super clean spins and commitment to charging solely for the soul would put today’s most talented riders to shame.

Jack, meanwhile, captured grunge at its undiluted best as producer of ‘Bleach’ (1989), Nirvana’s finest moment.

“When I started snowboarding there was no real industry,” says

Snowboard icon Jamie Lynn is resurrecting rock with Kandi Coded, his heavy ass band.

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Jamie. “Now kids are training like it’s soccer practice to try and become this professional Olympic rider, while for me it was just a positive outlet to get out of the small town I grew up in, get into the mountains and do an activity that made me feel good inside. It was very natural – there was a certain adolescence to it that was pure.”

“You talk about snowboarding the way I talk about grunge,” says Endino, relating to his loss. “Back when we started – before everybody got signed to a major label and the whole thing got exploited and money came into it and everybody got greedy and the art went downhill and people got into heroin and it all got stupid – before it became a big ‘scene’, it was very pure.”

But how do you keep purity alive – when sponsors and MTV come a knocking?

“There are periods when you detract yourself from it just to save the soul and spirit of why you started in the first place – to keep that fire smouldering,” says Jamie, who keeps coming back from a fabled retirement with killer video parts, like Volcom’s Escramble in 2006. “Now that I’ve had a chance to pull away, it’s given me a whole new appreciation.

It’s been a decade of that understanding being developed. I’ll continue riding as long as my legs can allow.”

“Sometimes you just gotta rock,” adds Jack.

And sometimes you’ve gotta savour the past – one bruise at a time. www.kandicoded.com

Turn on, Tune ouT, Drop In text Michael Fordham photography John Witzig

It’s December 1967, somewhere in the Hawaiian Islands. Last year Australian surfer Robert ‘Nat’ Young won the World Surf How Championships in Oceanside, California, and knocked the AUSTRALIA’S surfing world on its head.

Nat Young Preternaturally fleet-footed TRIGGERED guru of the nose-ride David a surfing Nuuhiwa had been expected revolution. to take the title hands down.

Nevertheless, paddling out on a self-shaped, shorter, thinner, blade-railed surfboard with a sweptback fin designed by hydrodynamic savant George Greenough, it was Nat Young who etched the future of wave riding. Rather than stalling and cross-stepping to the nose in perfect trim, he dropped to the bottom of the wave, carving a g-force-inducing bottom turn, before rising to the top of the wave and cutting back to the power source with both feet firmly planted across the board.

Nat’s riding that day was totally engaged in the dynamic of the curl, where the school of Californian nose-riding that reached its apogee with David Huuhiwa had been all about feigned nonchalance in the surf’s critical mass on heavy, voluminous boards around ten feet in length. Nat’s victory marked the birth of the ‘shortboard revolution’.

The victorious champion returned to Oz and hooked up with shaper Bob McTavish, who had begun to experiment with eightfoot long, square-tailed boards with deeply convex V-bottoms and the type of ‘high-aspect ratio’ fins that Greenough had pioneered

on his kneeboards. The following winter, Nat and McTavish, along with filmmaker Paul Witzig and his photographer brother John, took a quiver of these revolutionary designs to Hawaii, with the mission to document the dialectic. They experimented with the V-bottoms to mixed success on the North Shore of Oahu. But it took an epic swell in Maui’s Honolua Bay to prove to the Hawaiians once and for all that the new shortboards really did herald the future of surfing.

“The board Nat is carrying in this picture is the V-bottom that he rode in the epic session at Honolua Bay in Maui,” says John Witzig. “The picture must have been taken before Honolua, because Nat broke the nose off during the session and had to repair it.”

That session, probably one of the most influential in the history of surfing, was documented in the finale of Paul Witzig’s 1968 film Hot Generation, and sent echoes through surf culture. “The session at Honolua was important,” says John. “The experimental V-bottoms had spun out at Sunset, but at Honolua they truly worked.”

Over the following years surfers across the planet were hacking their longboards to bits. The length, volume and rail profile of board design went through a series of quantum leaps that reflected the seismic shifts in the wider culture. Surfers were turning on and dropping in to the new dynamic of the ridden wave, and becoming increasingly vocal in championing the counterculture. Nat Young was at the forefront of the new breed. “Just by going surfing,” he told Tracks magazine in 1970, “we’re supporting the revolution…”

Michael Fordham is author of The Book of Surfing: the killer guide to surf culture, published by Bantam Press www.bookofsurfing.com.

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Bad Boy For Life text Mike Regan

“You can take the kid out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the kid.” To most people, this old adage would Pro skater conjure up negative connotations, Stevie Williams but not when considering the example of professional is ghetto skateboarder Stevie Williams. through and Born and raised in through.

Philadelphia, Williams, who has been skateboarding for the last eighteen years, professionally for the last nine, has taken his urban lessons and is using them to steadily build an empire. At only twenty-eight years old, Williams is the owner of the skateboard company DGK, part owner of the skate distribution brand Kayo, has a skateboard shop, L&K Limited in Oceanside, California, has been featured in the last three Tony Hawk video games and has a sneaker line with Reebok, also dubbed DGK.

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An acronym for ‘Dirty Ghetto Kids’, DGK was a verbal assault once launched at Williams and his peers while growing up skating in Philadelphia.

Realising that he wasn’t alone in his experiences, Williams took that worldly connection and used it as the underlying concept of his brand. “Everybody can relate to a dirty ghetto kid,” explains Williams, “and I’m not the only dirty ghetto kid out there.”

Williams’ success has brought him all over the world – and left him where he now lives in Los Angeles: “The progression in my life at that time, it was just meant for me to be in Los Angeles to learn the business and just kind of find a new way of life. I took that challenge on and have been here ever since.”

With a second residence in Atlanta, Georgia, times sure have changed for this ‘dirty ghetto kid’. And yet, fame and fortune aside, Williams hasn’t forgotten his roots: “Philadelphia is my home. I always go back home.” www.skullcandy.com

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FOR MORE INFO: INFO@SOLETECHNOLOGY.EU

ERIC FLETCHER. BACK TAIL. ETNIESSKATE.COM

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wHo soars text Steph Pomphrey photography Jorn Tomter

Not content with simply leaping off cliff tops, Norway’s base jumper Andre Bach likes to add flair and audacity to his trade. With Jumping up his formative years spent honing his gymnastic skills and then (he’s a four-time champion, down down don’t you know), the Norwegian down with uses a mini-trampoline or bar Andre Bach. to launch himself into his first few seconds of freefall. Thanks to the extra lift, Bach doesn’t plummet towards Mother Earth so much as somersaults with perfect poise.

As with any sport rooted in a lack of rules, base jumping’s early days are rife with stories of mortality and injury. “When I first started in ’95 it was all about survival,” says Bach. “I jumped and was happy to survive. We had to figure it out by ourselves. But skills and experiences have evolved so much over the last decade.

Base jumping’s now a proper sport and you need both skill and thought to do it. You can choose to jump safe or with a higher ante, it’s up to you.”

Technology has also made things a bit safer. These days, meteorological conditions can be accurately gauged, equipment has significantly evolved and safety measures abound. For Bach,

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though, it seems that more than helping progress the sport it is being at one with nature that is his main drive. “Moments are shared with good friends in beautiful and wild nature, while the jump itself is considered a bonus,” he says. “All this makes up the sport for me, and it is harder and harder to flag one jump as better than the other.”

With his home territory of Romsdalen and Elkesdalen forming part of a trio of valleys that offer the perfect amphitheatre to base jump, Bach’s backyard has been crowned a Sweetspot as part of Nike ACG’s round-up of the best places to ride, fly, paddle, run or simply be.

Thrillseekers the world over may be flocking towards his playground, but where will Bach journey to in search of the ultimate hit? “In my next life I wish to become a musician and an astronaut − and a base jumper, of course. I will be the first human to jump into Vallis Marineris on the planet Mars. That’s a canyon on the equator which is 8,000 metres deep. There are also some nice spots on the moon of Uranus, Miranda, and on the planet Mercury.”

Not that far to go then.

To view Andre’s Sweetspot in full, go to www.huckmagazine.com.

All of Nike ACG’s Sweetspots can be found on www.nikeacg.com.

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interview Nadia Kazolides

Remember this image? Back in 1966, the epic representation of three beach bums silhouetted against psychedelic pink, orange and yellow turned art student John Van Hamersveld into a pop art icon at the age of twenty-one. The poster to Bruce Brown’s film The Endless Summer spoke to a free-spirited generation, whether you were jamming to Bob Marley, reciting poetry with Dylan or riding waves in Dana Point. Today, his memorable design continues to grace everything from museum walls to college dorm rooms.

He immortalised summer for generations to come. And he did it all by hand.

HUCK: How did you get involved in The Endless Summer project?

John Van Hamersveld: A friend of mine from Surfer magazine was promoting the film. I was still a student at CalArts Institute in Los Angeles and one day, right before my advertising and design class, I created the poster on my dining room table. It was published in 1964 as a high school lecture announcement poster for the film. By 1966, Martin Geisler, the ad agency’s designer, had started a personality posters business in the Village in New York. One year later he calls me to say he’s selling 30x40 Day-Glo

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posters in poster shops and college bookstores around the nation.

And it went on to become the cover for the album, right?

By this time I was working for Brown Meggs, of Capitol Records, who had signed the Beatles to the label three years earlier. I was finishing their Magical Mystery Tour album package and promo campaign when The Endless Summer soundtrack came out with my image on the cover. It was a major hit in the media and all my friends and classmates were astounded.

Describe your creative process.

It all starts with the thought process because the unconscious is so much a part of what comes natural in creation. I also like playing with people and travelling. Arenas create differences and displacement in the placeless market world. We tend to folly in moments that spark the slightest amount of inspiration.

Do you work in a studio?

My studio is in my head. The right side of my brain creates the ideas, and my hand interprets them into drawings. It is just like a computer without a mouse. My ideas are defined in macro analogue environments turned micro. Then I process them and it comes back out analogue. ▼

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ENDLESS SUMMER, John Van Hamersveld

DIGITAL INDIAN, John Van Hamersveld

Do you feel that artists have a social responsibility? Do you infuse your work with any particular kind of ethics?

I think being creative is a way of making a difference. Time is just a moment, an opportunity waiting to happen. Business-minded people who practice ordinary work do it to feel ordinary in their ordinary markets. For them, living is supposed to be safe, leaving risks to those without ethics. At this point, I ask myself, is life ordinary? No! The creative people live in a crazy world of risks where ordinary people judge them as unethical. But if people can understand the creative as something other than crazy, that’s when something happens.

Describe a highlight from your working career. What do you like most about your work?

Hmm… Let’s see… Oh, Chris Blackwell, who produced Bob Marley and U2, bought the restaurant chain Fatburger in 1990 and hired me to design the architecture, signage and campaign. I was pretty stoked.

But I’m most inspired when I teach at CalArts because it’s the way I learn more about everything. I went from being an art student to an instructor and then all of a sudden it had been twenty-one years. Some say I’m a part of the CalArts Mafia.

The digital age brought codes like Command X and Command V in the nineties and by 2000 it all seemed like a world of clip art. Punks Xeroxing at Kinko’s with their new king, ‘Cut and Paste’. 12x12 album covers, for example, are epic. But today’s digital world has transformed what used to be a sign of culture into a small square image any iTunes enthusiast can download for ninety cents.

How do you deal with that kind of change?

I’ve stopped trying to overcome the battles of technology and digital applications. Today it is just the standard. We are living the history of the ‘Information Age’. There is no boundary to what you can find on Google.

This referential lifestyle for culture is really just a memory trick. Everything is a memory of a memory. Either you weren’t old enough to remember, or the memory belongs to someone else. It doesn’t really matter because Google personalises it. Just like how you’re going to forget about this article as soon as it’s published because, if you ever need it again, Google will refresh your memory

.

John Van Hamersveld is currently writing three retrospectives about his career. www.johnvanhamersveld.com

What do you make of the way technology has changed the design process? Thanks to computers, illustrators and designers hardly have to pick up a pen.

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The Endless Summer poster can be found at the MoMA permanent collection. www.moma.org

WWW.FOXEUROPE.COM

TEL.+44 (0)191 487 6100

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text Andrea Kurland photography SAM CHRISTMAS

I’m not ready to meet her. Not just yet, anyway. Lisa Andersen is waiting for me to rock up, Dictaphone and hackneyed questions at the ready, and I’m stalling. As the first lady of surf, the thirty-nine-year-old inhabits a spot in our collective conscious reserved solely for those who make history. Icons, legends, paragons of talent – whatever the label, it’s intimidating stuff.

Just check the credentials.

Claiming four world titles and total ownership of the women’s tour between 1994 and 1997, Lisa was the only woman man enough to obliterate surfing’s monoculture of masculinity. As the poster child for Roxy, her saltwater prowess coupled with the brand’s pioneering boardshorts helped unite power and grit with sass and sex. In short (short shorts, in fact), Lisa Andersen made it okay to be a girl who surfs.

That’s gotta take some balls, right? “I grew up with brothers and was used to taking beatings,” says Lisa, too chilled to intimidate anyone. “I tried to learn from them and in turn got a lot of crap, but at the end of the day earned respect. Instead of rebelling against their views on women’s surfing I agreed with them, ‘Women’s surfing sucks!’ Deep inside I was pissed off, but that just drove me to do good.”

Believe that, and you’ll believe anything.

Lisa Andersen still surfs better than you.

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And do good she did, all the while proving that women’s surfing does indeed not suck. But what did the girls make of her killer instinct? “When I was younger a lot of the older girls told me I was cocky and unapproachable.

It’s tough when you’re travelling away from home, you don’t have any friends and you’re really competitive – it’s lonely out there. You wanna make sure that along the way of being world champion you don’t step on anyone’s toes.”

Having cleared a place for girls in the line-up, Lisa stood down from competitive surfing in 1998. A brief return in 2000 saw her defeat rival Layne Beachley one last time. Thing is, can a champion ever take that final bow?

“I’m forever looking at Kelly winning,” says the fellow Floridian. “He’s reminding me all the time that it’s so close – but kind of a long road to train and get all that back. When I finished I was in a good place. I wouldn’t wanna go and scar that up, try and make a comeback and completely fail.”

Today, Lisa’s name is firmly engrained in surfing’s DNA. Question is, does she wear the ‘legend’ label with ease?

“I get a little weird about it,” says Lisa. “But I was always a goaloriented person so it may have been in there somewhere that I wanted to be remembered. But I feel bad when little kids are afraid to say hi – you want to tell them you’re just as scared as they are.”

So there you have it. Legends, it seems, are people too. www.roxy.com For the full interview with Lisa, check out www.huckmagazine.com.

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text James Dalziel photography Alex Schneider

Twenty-eight-year-old Bavarian David Benedek isn’t just one of the world’s best snowboarders. His innovative approach to competition and filming has moulded David Benedek the very spirit of the sport.

Having spent his youth competing talks film, heavily, David shifted his focus to filming tricks and the importance and in the late nineties became involved with Robot Food productions. Introducing of doing something new. a narrative style to their movies, Robot Food revolutionised snowboard videos − which at the time were little more than snowboard pornography. “The progression back then was so huge that you could do that without becoming stale,” says Benedek. “But it’s not that creatively challenging just putting banger shots to music.”

Creating his own challenge, David and close friend Christoph WeberThorensen set out to build a jump that would follow the flight path of the rider and give longer airtime. After trialling their design in the backcountry they decided to set up a contest, and the Red Bull Gap Session was born.

The first weeklong Gap Session kicked off in 2006. In front of 4,000 fans David put down a double-corked 1260 – the first in history – while fellow German Christophe Schmidt went so big he spent over three seconds in the air.

Not content with his pioneering contest, David and brother Boris set up Blank Paper Productions in 2005 and began a film project that approached snowboard movies in a completely new manner.

Bucking the industry standard of producing a movie every season, Blank Paper took two seasons of footage and in October 2007 released In Short.

Consisting of five short films from completely different areas of snowboarding, the movie summed up Benedek’s ability to push boundaries and do the unexpected.

But the man is not a machine. “There’s only three of us that make the films,” says David. “It’s so much work that when we’re done it’s like, ‘Fuck it, we need a break.’ We decided that we’d rather reflect for a while, find a good idea, and not do it just because we have to.”

In the world of corporate demands and Olympic podiums, Benedek’s inventions are precisely the antidote we need.

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text Miles Masterson

South Africa exists somewhere between the third and first worlds. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current energy crunch, as rolling blackouts Remote waves have begun to drag the country back into the dark ages, a monumental overridden cock-up that has become an

by South embarrassing international joke and Africa’s need economic setback. for power.

Not even surfing has escaped unscathed. Untreated overflow from dormant coastal sewages spills into the line-ups of some the country’s most popular breaks during the frequent power cuts. In reaction to the crisis, energy parastatal Eskom has pledged to build five nuclear power stations in sparsely populated areas. These will eventually disrupt pristine environments and cut off access to, or destroy, at least five quality surf spots.

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Of the waves threatened, three – a sweet right and two good lefts – are on the West Coast north of Elands Bay. Another is a fun right-hand point on the East Coast in the Southern Cape, and the other is a beachbreak at Oyster Bay, near Cape St Francis’ Bruce’s Beauties.

Outcry from the public and conservationists has been loud but ineffective, and the general feeling is that Eskom will build these plants wherever they like, no matter what environmental impact assessments conclude.

Surfers have also tried to mobilise but their efforts so far have come to nothing. Late last year a local surfing magazine tried to instigate a petition to object but, in a country of at least 50,000 surfers, it has received less than 300 signatories to date. The sentiment of most seems to be that because these are semi-secret or fickle out-of-the-way spots, they are not worth becoming vocal about. This lack of political engagement is, of course, a shame, as we’ll surely mourn these breaks when they are gone.

SurfersPath.indd 12

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Kingpin Figure text Josh Jones photography Tom Oldham

Graffiti artist Inkie has been staining walls for over twenty-five years. He hails from Bristol, England, birthplace of some of the biggest names in street art, including a fella called Banksy (who you just may have heard of).

In 1989 Inkie was named a ‘kingpin’ figure after the UK’s largest graffiti bust, Operation Anderson, which saw the police round up over seventy writers.

Five years before that, he hooked up with a bunch of fellow Bristol boys, including 3D (from Massive Attack) and Nick Walker to hit the city walls as heavily as they could until the police swooped. After spending over £1 million documenting the street art as evidence, the police case fell apart when most of the work was painted over.

“All they managed to do was make us really professional portfolios which they had to give to us. I got a £100 fine to be paid off £3 a week,” laughs Inkie.

It wasn’t until he was asked to contribute to Jonathan Reiss’s forthcoming documentary Bomb It that Inkie realised just how far the graffiti movement had spread. “It opened my eyes quite a bit,” he says. “Reiss travelled the whole world, from favelas in Brazil to Switzerland and Japan. The film focuses on the fact advertisers use

Street artist Inkie is a wanted man.

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public space illegally but it’s the graf artists that get arrested for painting as they try to reclaim it.”

The scene has changed unrecognisably since Inkie started out, with bedroom artists posting work online instead of getting out onto the street. “Back then it was about getting your name up everywhere and showing you were the daddy,” he reminisces.

“Banksy was clever, he hit it with a military angle. He worked out where most people would see his stuff and painted there.”

Nowadays, graffiti artists are poster boys whose pieces reach hundreds of thousands of pounds. “It’s gone crazy, I don’t quite understand it,” says Inkie. “If you told me five years ago that graffiti would be this big, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

As creative director for a big computer games company, Inkie may not be hitting the streets as much as he used to – but he’s still churning out his signature style. “I kind of miss going out and painting trains,” he says. “But I get excited seeing other people’s art. If I see something that inspires me I have to rush home and do some drawing.”

Bomb It is out now on DVD. To see if it’s showing at a theatre near you, check out www.bombit-themovie.com. www.inkie.co.uk

Helvetica or Bust text ROB LONGWORTH

Manila airport is fucking rammed. The announcement booms: “PR 906 to Skagway is now ready for boarding at gate 14.” People panic, pile out an ode onto the tarmac, take a look around and, guided by the simple, clean to the lines of the Philippine Airlines logo, greatest spot their 747 of choice. font of Thank heavens for Helvetica. all time.

Used a million times over, Helvetica is indeed a global typeface, adorning bananas, fire extinguishers, Oral B toothbrushes and Totes slipper socks the world over.

The font we all love and recognise today was first pieced together

by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957. Their sans-serif creation originally went under the moniker Neue Haas Grotesk until it was suggested

by Linotype that it be renamed Helvetica as to honour the Latin name of its birthplace, Switzerland. It also sounded slightly better than ‘Grotesk’.

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Crisp, smooth and easy on the eye, much like the cabin crew on flight PR 906, Helvetica’s popularity makes perfect sense. It’s simply easy to read. So simple, in fact, that life without it would be very different indeed.

Would Neil Armstrong have bounced around on the moon if it weren’t for Max’s creation? What if the US Postal Service had chosen Times New Roman instead of Helvetica for their logo? Would Neil’s letter of acceptance to join his fellow spacemen have been lost forever in a daze of miscommunication? Even if Armstrong made it to the launch site, surely he’d fail to locate his shuttle if ‘Apollo 11’ were scribed in the desperately indiscernible Comic Sans as opposed to the wonderfully neutral Helvetica.

How different things could be. Fascinating, right?

Some call it “fucking boring”, others “a very harmonic font” and even “a celebrity typeface”. If Helvetica had limbs would it be dropping to its knees and slapping its sweaty palms into a slab of semi-wet Hollywood concrete a la Tom ‘Couch-Jumping’ Cruise? Graphic designer Michael Bierut kinda captures it best: “It’s like being asked what you think of an off-white paint, it’s just there.”

Got color?

for more colour visit skullcandy.eu

T E X T A P h o t o g r a p h y

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E X W A D E S A M C H R I S T M A S

With three world titles, a poetic surfing style imitated by many but bettered by none and a vast array of talents that include a soothing, minimalist approach to music, California’s Tom Curren is the very embodiment of artistry. His name, says Alex Wade, has become synonymous with the sport itself.

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The small beach town is even more awash with surfing imagery than usual thanks to the highestrated WQS event of the year, the Rip Curl Pro. Australia’s Shaun Cansdell is the man of the moment, having won the event by beating twenty-one-year-old Californian Dane Reynolds.

Cansdell pockets a cheque for $20,000 and, if he has yet to fulfil the promise that saw him crowned ASP Rookie of the Year in 2006, he has surfed well enough to remind the cognoscenti that he should be a contender in the coming years.

Whatever Cansdell’s fate, he looks a little more media friendly than his compatriots in the notorious Bra Boys film, which showed in Hossegor’s tiny beachside square on the contest’s last evening. The French audience seemed unsure of Sunny Abberton’s homage to the localism and testosterone endemic to the Sydney suburb of Maroubra, gasping with due reverence at the heaviest of oceanic hammerings courtesy of the Maroubra reef but greeting the film’s overt macho posturing with sang-froid – subtly enough, for this is France.

The Bra Boys might not have found a home from home in Hossegor, but a dark, almost swarthy forty-three-year-old Californian had. The man in question paced with such feline ease along the promenade on the morning after the film’s screening that, to the casual observer, he looked as if he owned the place. Or rather, he ambled so effortlessly as to suggest that ideas of ownership – of materialism of any kind – were of the utmost irrelevance. He was unhurried and calm, relaxed and lithe; the antithesis, you might say, of the avatars of aggression in Bra Boys.

Step forward, Tom Curren, arguably one of only three surfers to transcend surfing and etch his personality into mainstream consciousness.

The others are Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton, superheroes to contemporary surfing and men whose considerable wealth is matched by finely honed media awareness. Curren, though, is different. He’s from yesteryear. He’s famously reclusive. He once reputedly answered “Yeah” to every question put to him by a journalist.

And yet he’s still one of the most charismatic sportsmen on the planet. After all, how many people can say they’re paid just to be themselves?

“It feels good,” says Curren of his longstanding deal with Rip Curl to be, well, Tom

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Curren. We’re talking on the terrace of the Hotel de la Plage overlooking Hossegor beach on a sunny, hot morning. Curren has strolled along the seafront to meet me. He shakes my hand firmly and smiles as Frank, twelve, and Pat, ten – his two children from his second marriage to Makeira – wander by, boards under arms. Their father asks where they’re going for a surf, says he’ll see them later, and reveals that – perhaps curiously, given their father’s natural foot stance – they’re both goofy-footers.

“I think it’s from their skateboarding,” he says.

Curren himself used to skate – “both ramps and bowls,” he says, adding that “up until I was thirteen, I was more into skating than surfing. But from one day to the next, I stopped. I didn’t go further with it. I just surfed, more and more.” Curren was blessed in being brought up in Santa Barbara, home to a number of world-class right-hand pointbreaks, and almost as soon as the young teenager abandoned asphalt it became clear that skateboarding’s loss would be surfing’s gain. Whether on account of his genes, or his environment, or because of a mother’s vision for her son or maybe even thanks to a divine gift, it was obvious, from day one, that Tom Curren was special.

Day one of Curren’s

surfing life occurred some time during his sixth year. Born in July 1964 in Santa Barbara, the eldest of three children to Pat and Jeanine, he was given a surfboard by his father, himself a pioneer of big-wave surfing in Hawaii. Appropriately enough, Curren’s first surfing experience was during a visit to the west coast of Oahu. If skateboarding was a passion until he was thirteen, Curren nevertheless grew up surfing, inspired as much as anyone by his father. Pat Curren was one of the first men to surf Waimea Bay, and despite his abandoning the family when Tom was seventeen, his son has nothing but respect for him. He has previously said that his father is “one of the greatest men I’ve ever known,” and confirms that their relationship remains as strong as ever.

By the time Pat left Jeanine, herself a surfer and devout Christian, Tom Curren was already a winner. In 1978 he bagged the Boys’ U14s Western Surfing Association title, and the following year

became Boys’ National Champion. As Pat was heading down the coast to a new life in Mexico, his son, in 1980, won the World Amateur Junior Championship. He could have turned pro but retained his amateur status because he wanted to win the Men’s title. This he duly accomplished in 1982.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. Curren in his mid-teens did his fair share of drinking and smoking pot. But his mother, Jeanine – aware of his prodigious natural talent and determined both to nurture it and ensure that her son didn’t go off the rails – did two things for which he must be eternally grateful: she drove him up and down the West Coast to contest after contest, and instilled a deep Christian faith that persists to this day. This much is clear when we talk about big-wave surfing, something Curren is looking to pursue further, especially in France.

I tell him of a reply from John McCarthy, the Irish big-wave surfer and committed Christian, when I asked him about surfing Aileens, Ireland’s most formidable big-wave break. McCarthy – an eloquent and humble man – told me that surfing per se was “the most blissful experience you can have on this planet, a taste of heaven”. At Aileens, the bliss was off the scale.

“I can see where he’s coming from,” says Curren, as we sip our espressos. “Surfing those waves [at Aileens, beneath the towering Cliffs of Moher] would be a very religious experience.

When you surf big waves you learn to trust in God. It’s a situation where you’re fearful, where you’re aware that life is short, but where you’re reminded that only God knows how long you’ve got. You experience fear and faith at the same time.”

Curren’s emergence as a

pro surfer came in the early eighties, an era when the competition was as good as it gets. Three Australians – Mark Occhilupo, Gary Elkerton and Tom Carroll – were blazing their way around the pro circuit, and Martin Potter – South African or British, depending on which magazine you read – was redefining surfing with the sport’s first aerials. All save Elkerton would go on to win world titles, and Elkerton himself cemented his reputation with a Pipe Masters victory in 1989. But Tom Curren was always more revered,

more enigmatic, and more sought after than any of them – then and now.

The Californian’s three world titles – in 1985, 1986 and 1990 – help to explain his enduring appeal, but do not give the full story.

Not that Curren’s campaigns lacked drama. He won the first event he entered as a pro (the 1982 Marui World Surfing Pro in Japan), made a stand against apartheid in boycotting South African events and, with perennial nemesis Mark Occhilupo, went down in history as the unwitting cause of a riot. The scene was the 1986 Op Pro at Huntington Beach, California, a venue that was often kind to Curren. Not this time: despite Curren having taken an early lead in a preliminary heat, Occy first scored two great waves and then won a paddle battle in the dying minutes, forcing Curren to take an inferior wave. Though Occy was a popular surfer in America, the locals were not amused. In the ensuing riot – which saw a police car upended and set on fire – California’s cool surfing vibe acquired an image makeover of Bra Boys dimensions.

Curren, though, seemed immune both to the controversy and blandishments of fame.

He rode his Al Merrick-shaped boards with unique and mesmerizing grace, went surfing and won contests. Lots of them. He didn’t talk much and signed his fair share of autographs.

Then, with two world titles in the bag, he quit pro surfing. He married his first wife, Marie (with whom he has two well-known surfing offspring, Leanne and Nathan), and went to live on the Basque coast, in France. If his decision to take time out stunned the surfing world, it was nothing compared to his comeback in 1990. Curren had to surf as a triallist to have any hope – and did just that, winning an unprecedented seven events to earn his third world title.

By 1992 Curren had notched up the respect in Hawaiian surf that had been a sine qua non of his father’s life. He won the Wyland Galleries Pro in heavy conditions, garnering plaudits for big-wave surfing that had already come his way for his pioneering exploits at Todos Santos.

Curren was famous. He was loved. For every nuance of shyness and unease under the spotlight, the media and the public loved him all the more.

And then he did what so few sportsmen in any arena manage to do. He quit at the top. ▼

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The decision was no doubt

oiled by his contract with Rip Curl. All he had to do was surf with immaculate timing, fluidity, style and control – to be, in other words, Tom Curren.

The surfing had to be done in any number of idyllic locales, thanks to Rip Curl’s ‘The Search’ marketing campaign. When he wasn’t surfing, he could develop his other great passion – music.

It sounds too good to be true, and it was: Curren’s marriage to Marie soon foundered, perhaps a casualty of life on the road. While Al Merrick continued to shape his boards, there was an interlude during which he was sponsored

by The Realm. Now, though, his early twentyfirst century incarnation sees him back with Rip Curl. Although he has no plans ‘to do an Occy’ and make a serious return to the world tour, he does enter the occasional ASP event. He looks fit, healthy and composed. But what’s life for Tom Curren like today?

“I’m really involved in the coaching side of things,” he says. “I’m lucky to be able to surf and do a bit of work on the promotional side. I get to go to some great spots but I see my main value in coaching. There are some great young Rip Curl riders coming through now.” He names Australia’s Owen Wright as a prospect, and mentions England’s supergrom Jayce Robinson. “I spent time surfing with him in Chile during the Rip Curl Pro Search. He’s got a really good style, is a nice kid and could develop well. He just loves to surf and that’s the secret – the kids who are going to do well are the ones who are always in the water, trying to improve.”

At this juncture my wife, Karen, appears on the promenade beneath us, with my two sons, Harry and Elliot. They’re the same age as Curren’s boys, and like them they’re heading for the beach.

He asks if they surf, I say yes, and find myself hearing Curren suggest we rendezvous for a surf sometime over the next couple of days. “It’s great that you’ve got your family here,” he says.

“That’s cool.” He smiles broadly at Karen, and I can tell that something in him has downshifted.

It’s not that he’s been tense – far from it – but the customary Curren caution with the media has been present. Now it seems to have lifted, like a wisp of mist evaporating to reveal clean, threefoot waves on a slate-grey sea. I can’t help but wonder what the former world champion makes

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of British and Irish surfing.

“It’s really hardcore. The stoke is really visible.

There are a handful of guys who surf through the winter, come rain or shine. I’ve surfed in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the Hebrides, and they’re probably the most stoked surfers I’ve come across. The only other place I can think of where you seriously see stoke like that is on the east coast of the U.S. In places like New York and New Jersey you’ve got to be able to ignore the cold.”

Curren says that of the current crop of surfers, he most admires Kelly Slater (“obviously”) and Bruce Irons. He is complimentary about Dane Reynolds’ surfing, says he gets frustrated at crowded line-ups at his home breaks around Santa Barbara and wants to try big-wave tow-in surfing. I wonder if he ever found the perfect wave on any of the Rip Curl Search trips, and find that its whereabouts is just across the border, at the Spanish village of Mundaka. “It’s pretty damn close to perfect,” he says. “It looks as if the wave is static, like a painting, but then you look at it and realise it’s moving. It’s an amazing place.”

The use of art by way of an analogy for Mundaka is unsurprising in a man such as Curren.

Not only is his surfing the very embodiment of artistry, the still waters of his soul run deeper yet, to something even more intangible than surfing: music.

“Imagine if you were asked

to explain what surfing was to someone from another planet,” says Curren, his eyes transfixed on the distant horizon of the Atlantic, “the first thing you’d try and describe is the sound. The sound of the ocean is incredible. That’s just one of hundreds of similarities between music and surfing. Surfing a wave is comparable to a drummer who’s really fast and technical and in time; when that drummer loses the tempo, it’s the same as a surfer losing the wave or having to recover awkwardly. You need to be in the pocket, both in music and in surfing; if you’re not, the whole thing falls apart.”

Music has been an integral part of Curren’s life since he was fifteen. He began playing the drums and moved on to guitar and bass. He could, if he were the type (which he isn’t) justifiably lay ▼

“imagine if you were asked to explain what surfing was to someone from another planet. the first thing you’d try and describe is the sound. the sound of the ocean is incredible.”

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“i get a lot of what i need from duke ellington; my music has a jazzy feel and i’d love to play more of it.”

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claim to having invented the surf-soul/folksyblues zeitgeist long before Jack Johnson came along. In 1993, he completed a twenty-sevenstop American tour with his band Skipping Urchins. He released an eponymous CD in 2003 and before that an instrumental album, entitled Ocean Surf Aces. Both garnered critical acclaim, not least for their creator’s minimalist style.

Curren loves jazz (“I get a lot of what I need from Duke Ellington; my music has a jazzy feel and I’d love to play more jazz but am still learning how to go to those places”), classical music (“it gives a lot of good energy” in contrast to rock, which “drains you”), MC Solaar, The Who, Midnight Oil and African music. An eclectic mix by anyone’s standard, and it doesn’t stop there – he’s a fan of Ray Charles, old R ‘n’ B records from the fifties, the Beatles and Ry Cooder (“he’s a great ambassador of different sounds”). He likes another great musical minimalist, Miles Davis, too. As he talks about music, surfing is never far away, and soon enough the two things are directly compared again: “I love the combo of bass and drums in The Who’s music. Even though it might sound abandoned, the drummer’s appreciation of time is always there, keeping everything going, anticipating the next moment. A good surfer has that same timing and the ability to stop, slow down, then pick up again. Joel Parkinson does it on those long Gold Coast pointbreaks.

He’ll pull three or four big turns, cutback, then take a second or two to look down the line and really look. In a fraction of time he’s taking the opportunity to rest, physically, then get back in the pocket and put together the next series of moves. We have the same kind of waves in Santa Barbara and that’s what I like – the sense of flow and speed, of surfing really fast, in the pocket, with a little spontaneity.”

Many surfers will empathise with Curren’s sense of music being a kindred art form, but few will be so well-read. He can readily discuss two writers who were among the first to describe surfing, Mark Twain and Jack London, and enjoys Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck.

A recent discovery is Saul Bellow: “I found a really good bookshop in Panama recently.

It’s run by this old Greek guy and I picked up [Bellow’s] The Last Analysis there. It’s very

funny but has a lot of depth to it, too.” Curren says that he tries to read the established classics whenever he can: “I try to read literature that gives some enrichment. It’s a way of catching up on things I missed out on.”

The morning has slipped

away, and far from answering in monosyllables Curren has been, if not loquacious, engaging throughout. Our respective children reappear, and Curren reiterates the idea that we all hook up for a surf. I bemoan the crowded Hossegor line-up, and mention that I’ve been bodysurfing instead. Curren’s dark eyes flash.

“Bodysurfing – that’s something I’m really fascinated with,” he says. “Some of the best waves I’ve had have been through bodysurfing.

I love being inside the water, feeling how it moves differently underwater from the sense of riding a wave on its surface. It’s pretty hard to beat a good ride from bodysurfing.”

Curren speaks reflectively, pausing often between phrases as if to check where the sentence is going. He puts his competition success down to sheer drive, and says that while he was on the pro circuit he would eschew the party scene and sit alone in his hotel room, wholly absorbed in what he had to do to win.

He says he will continue to pop up at ASP events from time to time and enter as a triallist, and that he looks forward to riding some big surf off the Basque coast in the winter. His boys might join him, and their surfing, now, is crucial. “I’m really interested in seeing how they develop,” he says. “I want them to thrive and maintain their direction.”

The interview comes to a close, and we rejoin our families. As I’m walking along the Hossegor promenade I see a flyer for Bra Boys trodden into the pavement. I wonder whether Tom Curren has seen the film and what he made of it. And just then a refrain from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue enters my mind. It was inevitable, really – not just because Curren is to surfing what Davis is to jazz, but because of what the legendary trumpeter once said about the space between the notes. As he put it: “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” There is no finer summing up of the Curren way

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

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Interview Zoe Oksanen Photography Hans Herbig & Jeff Curtes

It happens very rarely. You sit down to write an introduction on someone and realise they actually don’t need one at all. They are so well known, so intrinsic to the very fabric of the sport, that it almost seems superfluous. Like I said, it is rare, but Jake Burton Carpenter is one of those unique few.

Jake is, of course, the mastermind behind Burton Snowboards, a company that has gone through a dramatic series of ups and downs to become the phenomenal entity it is today. But from humble beginnings in his Vermont barn to offices across the globe, it seems that Jake has never suffered delusions of grandeur, and would rather chase winter around the globe for a year with his family – strapping into over 100 days of powder – than cash in and retire in Aspen.

To the mere mortals who sit by and watch, Jake Burton’s life is the American Dream incarnate.

He is a prodigious businessman surrounded by more boy’s toys than you can bear to imagine, and truly lives the life he sells. Yet, although Jake sits at the helm of the very sport itself, when you have the privilege of meeting him, his modesty never fails to amaze. It is more than clear his love for

snowboarding is deep and genuine, and that its progression and soul are part of his life’s purpose.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow snowboarding aficionados, I know I said it wasn’t necessary, but I believe I have just introduced Jake Burton.

HUCK: I guess a good place to start would be the beginning. You weren’t the first to create some form of the modern snowboard, but you seem to be the first to have had the vision that it was going to take off. What gave you that confidence?

JAKE BURTON: As a young kid I skied but I never had an opportunity to surf. The concept of surfing always appealed to me – it was something I always wanted to do, but it just never happened.

Then a product called the Snurfer came out and it cost less than $10. All of my friends and I bought them, and even though I was only fourteen years old, the minute I got on a Snurfer and rode it I knew there was a sport there. The early Snurfers had no bindings, edges or p-tex bases, but when you got on them in powder you could definitely shred.

From that point on I always talked about the idea of starting a real snowboarding company and making it a sport. I was going to school at the time, and I expected that someone else would take the concept to the next level but it never happened, so shortly after graduating from university I set out to start Burton Snowboards.

What did the first board you make look like? How was it to ride, and do you still own it?

I modified Snurfers until 1977 when I started the company and built my first production prototype.

I was a complete loser in shop class in school, yet there I was, working out of a barn in Vermont, figuring out how to manufacture a snowboard.

There was no road map. I combined some skateboarding and a little bit of surfing experience with the Snurfer, then added some common sense – which is probably why it took so long to make a product that was rideable.

I made 100 prototypes before deciding on a production board. They were all made of entirely different constructions, from marine plywood, ▼

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“prior to resort riding, snowboarding was simply a backyard sport. we would find a hill or mountain to hike somewhere and just spend the whole day hiking and riding. our clothing sucked and we rode in basketball shoes, so after a day you were pretty much soaked.”

to fibreglass, to solid ash that I steamed and bent as if making a chair. I remember making a board in a furniture factory in upstate New York. Driving back to Vermont, I saw a massive highway embankment covered with a foot of snow. I parked the car on the side of the highway, pulled out the new board, hiked the embankment in my street shoes and just shredded down, having the time of my life. I finally settled on a skateboard construction for my production board, and in 1977 I made my first Burton snowboard in Londonderry, Vermont. And yes, I still have some of these first boards. One is hanging on the wall at Burton headquarters.

You ran into some debt pretty early on with your business. What did that teach you for the years to come?

Yes, there were some rough financial times in the early days. The first couple of years were so rough that when I bottomed out I was over $100,000 in the hole. Then we hit another obstacle ten years later when the bank that was lending us the money told us they didn’t want to lend us any more. They were convinced snowboarding was a fad that had run its course. That was a scary time. So, that said, I think what I’m proudest of in the whole thing is my perseverance. Looking back, all of these financial challenges really taught me to stick with what I believed was right, never give up, and try to avoid putting myself in a situation where a bank could dictate my future.

Everyone always talks about the ‘good ol’ days’ of snowboarding, when there were just a few outcasts out there doing it. How would you describe the spirit of that time?

Prior to resort riding, snowboarding was simply a backyard sport. We would find a hill or mountain to hike somewhere and just spend the whole day hiking and riding. If the weather was good, we would build a jump or banked turns. Our clothing sucked and we rode in basketball shoes, so after a day you were pretty much soaked.

Once we started getting on mountains the sport grew, but it still seemed that if I ever saw anybody with a snowboard I would know them

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one way or another. The sport was incredibly small, but the people involved were passionate about riding and making it happen.

The competition thing got going pretty early, and that played an important role in elevating the quality of riding and equipment. Initially the contests were all alpine oriented; they were either a straight shot down the hill or a few turns. This might sound lame in the context of what’s going on now, but at the time simply stopping or turning a snowboard on hard-packed snow was difficult, and timed races did a lot to develop the sport.

I always loved the straight shot races the most, which we called Downhills. It was so much fun to scare the shit out of yourself and watch you and your friends pull off some insane wipeouts.

As fierce as the competition was, we did all have this feeling that we were building something, and over time we learned to put the sport before everything else.

How would you compare that to snowboarding today, with its Olympic status, big brands and commercial sponsorships?

Of course it was very different back in the early days. I mean, snowboarders weren’t even allowed on chairlifts, so that gave it way more of an outcast kind of feel. But more than anything, the spirit of snowboarding is still the same. It’s about individual style and passion and living a lifestyle that you love. All the money, corporate sponsorships and Olympic gold medals in the world can’t change what snowboarding is really all about – having a great time on the hill with your friends.

You didn’t just create a brand but were actually instrumental in turning snowboarding into a bona fide sport. How hard was it back in the eighties trying to convince resorts to open up to snowboarders?

Initially it was a nightmare. It was a lot of hard work communicating with the resort owners. We just lobbied them and showed them what was going on. If there were issues, we’d try to talk them down and address the whole thing using common sense. We couldn’t have done it without the local support, but at the same time the local

kids needed somebody to come in and make a presentation. We did that at a lot of mountains.

I can remember making a presentation in Aspen and them telling us, “Sorry.” They didn’t want the snowboarders as the skiers complained. It was frustrating. But the sport had so much momentum at that point, it was like, “Your loss.” Now Aspen hosts the X Games.

Did you ever foresee a day when snowboarding would be one of the most popular winter Olympic sports?

By the time people started talking about the possibility of being in the Olympics, I didn’t really care. The sport was doing super well without Olympic exposure, and the image of the sport was in the hands of snowboarders.

When we were informed that snowboarding was going to be in the Olympics, we gave our riders the choice of participating or not.

I can remember the conversation I had with Terje when he decided he was not going to participate. He just had no real interest in going to the Olympics. Honestly, I thought he was making a mistake as he was clearly the favourite to win the halfpipe. Then, when I went to the first Olympics and they spelled the name of the sport wrong and proceeded to hold the halfpipe event in a driving rainstorm, I understood where Terje was coming from. Ever since then it’s been a battle, but I think that we have done a pretty good job of protecting the integrity of the sport and of freestyle riders.

It doesn’t surprise me that snowboarding has become a popular event. What would you rather watch: a solid halfpipe event or crosscountry skiers with guns?

Would you say that’s a positive progression for the sport?

I could lie and say that the Olympics are just another international event, but that’s simply not the case. At the same time, it’s not as big a deal as most people outside of our sport tend to believe. Snowboarding is not a sport that was ‘made’ by the Olympics, and it seems to have little impact on the core of the sport. ▼

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jeff curtes

“i can remember the conversation i had with terje when he decided he was not going to the olympics. i thought he was making a mistake as he was clearly the favourite to win the halfpipe. then, when i went to the games and they spelled the name of the sport wrong and proceeded to hold the halfpipe event in a driving rainstorm, i understood where terje was coming from.”

That said, what the Olympics do provide is a forum to present to the rest of the world what our sport is all about. Some of those people will never snowboard and some of them may come into our sport, but whether they’re future snowboarders or not, we certainly want to leave them with a good impression. Unfortunately along with this opportunity comes a complete loss of control over how it’s presented.

You are still personally involved in everything that happens with Burton. Have you never been tempted to hand over control and just sit back and enjoy the rewards?

My role at the company has changed a lot over the last ten years. Thanks to an incredibly capable management team led by our CEO Laurent Pot Devin, my involvement in day-to-day business is minimal. Consequently, I get to ride more than I ever have, and that enables me to immerse myself in the products we make and how we market our brand and sport more than ever. I don’t know if I could ever walk away entirely. I think that I have the best job in the world. I get to snowboard over 100 days a year, testing some insane product and having the opportunity to ride with some of the best riders in the world in some amazing places.

I am sure there will come a time to hand over the reins entirely, but hopefully that’s a long way away.

Burton is a ‘rider driven company’. How closely do you follow how individual team riders are doing and the decisions made in choosing or losing them?

We have an incredible team management crew that is always looking for the next talented kid.

They’re on the mountains year-round, checking out kids as young as four and scouting for new talent all over the world.

As far as the global team goes, some of them have become incredibly good friends as they have been around for a long time. I deeply trust their advice and thoughts on our products, our marketing philosophy and the sport in general.

As far as choosing who is on or off the team, I like to be involved, but once again I have to defer to team management as they have a much better

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feel for the value of a rider than I do. Obviously, there are times when we have to make room for new riders coming up on to the team, and this is one of the shittiest things about all of our jobs. The only thing that makes it better is when riders find other ways to extend their careers in the company or the industry. There are a lot of opportunities out there, and no one is more qualified than a former team rider to help manage the company and the sport. I wish more team riders thought about developing a future for themselves in the sport after their riding careers.

A while back you experienced what most of us can only ever dream of doing – travelling, and snowboarding, through six continents with your family. Did that change you as a person in any way?

Spending ten months following winter around the world with my family was clearly the best year of my life. I learned way more about the world, snowboarding, my family and myself than I ever expected. Our family got so close, it was insane.

Despite the fact that international feelings towards the US were at an all-time low, people everywhere accepted us for who we were. Travelling in the Third World was also very eye opening – it puts everything we have into perspective. So yes, the trip changed me in so many ways, and we got some great riding and surfing in along the way.

Snowboarders are the first to lament global warming and its effects on the snow season, and yet in many ways the sport contributes to it with snowmobiles, helicopters, materials, etc. Where do you stand on the issue of climate change?

We’re not kidding ourselves – we know that Burton manufactures a ton of different products, we ship stuff, we travel on airplanes all over the world, we drive to work. We also know that there are big and little ways we can reduce our impact on the environment both at work and outside of work. We’re just getting started with initiatives and we have a long way to go. But you have to start somewhere.

How do you manage to reconcile living

snowboarding’s freedom with the constraints and pressures of the business world?

Snowboarding is my job, so I really can’t complain too much. As the industry leader, there’s definitely a lot of pressure on us as a company to continue to grow and stay ahead of the trends. I really believe in high expectations in a very relaxed, mellow environment. I think people need a lot of flexibility to do their best, not being stressed about hours or bringing your dog to work or going riding if it’s a powder day. Riding is always a great way to keep things in perspective. When you’re on the hill, you get a true sense of what all of the hard work, long meetings, pressures and deadlines are for.

The Burton brand is now developing to encompass a wider range of products, including the purchase of Channel Islands Surfboards.

What was the drive behind the change?

At Burton there are so many people who are passionate about surfing, including me. We’ve always talked about getting into it, but obviously it would have never been with the Burton brand – which is all about snowboarding. The whole Channel Islands deal started as a simple discussion with Al [Merrick] about what they do and what we do. It was just very natural. We always felt if we got into surfing it would be with Channel Islands. There was no other brand that shared the same mindset and approach to developing product, making the sport better, and heavily involving the athletes – giving them a voice. Both Channel Islands and Burton are driven by the same thing: dedication to making the best product out there through rider feedback.

If you had one day left to snowboard, where would it be, and who would it be with?

It would definitely be right here at my home mountain in Stowe, Vermont. I would start the day with some tree runs and lift-access backcountry runs with my whole family and some friends. I would then do some park laps with the kids and have some fun scaring the shit out of myself. I would end the day hiking up the mountain with just my dogs and my iPod and enjoying a sweet soul run down www.burton.com

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You better believe it World class riding from a Brit!

text ED ANDREWS photography Mattia Zoppellaro

Legends often emerge in retrospect. But after the season Jenny Jones has just had, are we seeing one appear before our very eyes?

Placing seventh on the prestigious Ticket To Ride Snowboard World Tour with wins at both the New Zealand Open and Nippon Open in Japan, she’s fast becoming the first of her kind – a world class British snowboarder!

“When I first started, there were a few hang ups because I was British,” says the tiny blonde. “People just didn’t think the standard of UK riding was very high and so it’s great to now be competing at an international level with the likes of Torah Bright.”

Such an achievement can taint the ego of even the most down-to-earth person, but Jenny seems to be a genuine exception; she is disarmingly self-deprecating and chatty.

Nursing an injured tailbone from a heavy slam at the Roxy Chicken Jam in Mammoth Mountain, she jokes of the rubber ring she had to straddle on the plane over. “People must have thought I had piles!” she laughs.

It seems that the tight-knit community of British snowboarders helps to keep the rock star egos at bay: “If you start taking

yourself too seriously, someone you know will shoot you down and take the piss so it stops you getting a big head.”

Her easy-going nature also extends to her riding. As other pros prepare for contests with specialist diets and regimented training plans, Jenny seems more content to just take it as it comes: “I may eat a bit more pasta or fruit for energy levels when I’m competing but I still go out drinking and have a good time. I just have to pick and choose when I do it a bit more carefully – like not on the night before.”

With a few well-deserved months off, she’s set for a surf trip to Morocco and some freestyle coaching at a summer camp in Les Deux Alpes before heading down to New Zealand to kick off another season.

“I go there quite regularly,” she says.

“It is such a beautiful place, especially Lake Wanaka. It’s really mellow and has an oldschool vibe to it.”

And with some awesome riding to boot, we expect to see more of the same from Ms Jones next season

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www.billabong.com

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DOGTOWN LEGEND STACY PERALTA CAPTURED THE HISTORY OF SKATEBOARDING AND BIG-WAVE SURFING AND EDUCATED THE MASSES. NOW HIS CURIOUS EYE IS FIXED ON A WHOLE NEW SECT: AMERICA’S MOST NOTORIOUS GANGS.

TEXT JAY RIGGIO PHOTOGRAPHY NATE BRESSLER

Success came early to Stacy Peralta. The young Californian turned pro at age eleven, started what would become one of the biggest skateboard companies in the world at nineteen, and went on to assemble a team of riders who revolutionised skating as a whole, the seminal Bones Brigade. For a long time he seemed to be on top of his game as one of the skate industry’s high-powered elite. Then, without explanation or warning, he walked away from it all.

In 1992, Stacy left Powell Peralta and skateboarding altogether to launch a whole new career. Most thought he might be crazy, leaving behind years of hard work, sacrifice and unbelievable accomplishment to start from scratch. Battling self-doubt and the prevailing notion that he may have in fact “made a mistake,” he moved on, charging hard at what it was that fuelled his overall happiness: making films.

After making two highly successful

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documentaries – Dogtown and Z-Boys and Riding Giants – as well as the mainstream hit Lords of Dogtown, which he wrote the screenplay for, Peralta is now back in the spotlight. Having just turned fifty, Stacy has bravely stepped away from familiar ground to tackle a very different issue. His newest documentary, Made in America, set to release at the end of summer, focuses on the elaborate Crips and Bloods gang lineage throughout the greater South Los Angeles areas.

The process was a long, dangerous and incredibly brave journey on the part of Peralta, as he slowly befriended violent gang members from opposing sides. Having recently put the final touches on the film, Peralta took a break from marketing his new picture to speak to HUCK about skateboarding, filmmaking and subcultures. The resulting interview is a well-defined snail trail of inspiration left by a man who has made a career out of following his heart.

HUCK: What’s your take on the current state of skateboarding?

STACY PERALTA: I don’t really keep on it so much. And part of it is that I don’t find it all that interesting. And part of the reason I don’t find it all that interesting is, I don’t think there’s a lot of vision in the industry. There are a lot of people out there who just want to make money. I’ll tell you the one thing that does excite me about skateboarding today, and it really excites me, is the ethnic make-up of what a skateboarder is today. When I was growing up, a skateboarder was pretty much a surfer: white skin, blond hair, blue eyes. And that made up ninety-nine per cent of skateboarders. Nowadays, it’s become very urban and inner city. You’re seeing so many black kids and Mexican kids. In South LA, in the hood, if you ride a skateboard, that’s a pass, which means gangs won’t mess with you. And that to me is mind-blowing. ▼

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Really? What do you attribute that to?

Well, because they don’t know how to view these kids. They definitely know they’re not fighters, they’re doing something else. They leave them alone. They also think it’s cool. And also what’s beautiful about that is, those kids are the ones that have the least access to anything. But the one thing they have access to is concrete. It’s everywhere; a skateboard is not that expensive. So it’s saving their lives, it really is. To me they have defined what skateboarding really is. They are the true outcasts.

We all started as outcasts, but those kids are the true outcasts. It’s this thing that we discovered, and these kids have taken it and helped define it. And they’ve also kept it beautifully illegal. It’s got to stay illegal.

Why do you say that?

Because it keeps it honest. It keeps kids searching.

So you left skateboarding in 1991 and it seemed to me that you simply just disappeared. I didn’t hear your name again until Dogtown and Z-Boys surfaced years later. Where were you?

Producing and directing television. It was about a sixyear period and I discovered television as a creative straight jacket. They urge you to think outside the box and once you do, they stop you. So I quickly discovered that that’s not where I wanted to be.

Now after being so successful in the skate world, both as a company owner and above other things, a skate video maker, why did you leave?

I realised that I had reached the pinnacle of everything I had wanted to accomplish with skateboarding and I started getting bored. And I decided I didn’t want to do this for the rest of my life. I’ve done everything I could possibly do.

I created the best skateboard team in the world, best skateboard videos, the ads, the products – and I decided I had to do something else.

How was the transition?

What was hard was that I had to create a new identity for myself. I went from a guy who would walk down the street and see kids wearing shirts with my name emblazed on their chest, to somebody that was leaving that world completely and starting fresh where people didn’t know who I was. And I didn’t want them to look at me for the person I was, I wanted them to look at me as the person I was becoming. So there were some

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real lonely times there. Like, ‘Wow, did I make the wrong choice?’ I became, in a sense, a nobody and I had been somebody, someone who was quite important in that industry. When I went into the filmmaking industry I was a nobody again and I had to build that back up. And then there were people who did know who I was and they didn’t want to see me as a filmmaker. They were like, ‘No, you’re a skateboarder.’ So I had to change that.

Wow. Was there anything that you took from skateboarding that you were able to use as you approached this completely different facet of life?

Well, there are a lot of things. I learned so many things in skateboarding. I learned how industries work and politics. I learned how to sell an idea because we were always trying to do new things.

You know, I had a partner, George Powell, who was older than me and I had to sell him on a lot of stuff.

I had to sell my team on a lot of stuff. They wanted action shots of themselves in the ads; they didn’t want the kind of ads that we did until they started to see the effect they had. So I really learned how to sell ideas and also develop ideas from inception to completion. And I also learned how to do things by myself. So all those skills, I can’t overstate how important they were in starting out in the film business. Because when I came into the film business I could shoot, direct, produce and edit and I learned that through skateboarding. Everything I’ve learned has come through skateboarding.

Everything. I don’t know where I’d be without it.

I feel the same way. I am forever blessed and cursed with the ability to see everything around me as skateable.

It’s interesting because skateboarding opens your mind. You can’t skateboard well without having some sort of an open mind because the whole act of skateboarding is overcoming obstacles. For instance, the spot that you love the best is going to get shut down some day, and you’re going to have to adapt to a new spot and then you’re going to get kicked out of that spot. So you’re constantly searching for and assessing geometry, sidewalks, streets, pools, banks and surfaces and seeing what you can do on them. It forces you to be adaptable; you have to keep your mind open. I think that helped immensely in my upbringing. You know, parents tell me that their kids are skateboarding and that they’re a little bit concerned about it,

and I tell them, ‘You have everything to be thankful for, your kid’s going to develop a liberal mind.’

As the owner of one of the biggest skateboard companies in the world at the time, where did your interest in video making come into play?

We wanted to figure out a way that we could reach the people that rode our skateboards the way that magazines couldn’t. Magazines were onedimensional, so we thought of this idea to do a skateboard video which we thought we’d sell about a thousand of to stores and it would be something that a kid could come in and watch. So I hired a Hollywood crew to make the first video we did and I didn’t get along with them because they wouldn’t listen to me, so I fired them and a week later I got the equipment and started shooting myself. And after about six months I had enough material to start editing. I didn’t know how to edit. I didn’t think I ever could edit. But I tried it anyways and found that I had an ability to do it. And so almost eight months later, we had our first skateboard video, The Bones Brigade Video Show in 1984 and it just happened to coincide with the explosion of people buying VCRs. So where we thought we’d sell a thousand, we ended up selling 30,000 all over the world. Every shop and distributor that we sold our skateboards to said, ‘You have no idea what this video is doing for business.’ It raised the tide for everybody because it was showing kids all over the world what you could do on a skateboard. And from that point forward we realised it wasn’t just helping sell off products, it was a communication tool that fired this revolution that was going on. And we just kind of stumbled upon it. We kept making videos after that. And for the first five years we pretty much owned that market, the only other company that was doing it was Vision. And by the nineties, every company had an in-house production unit.

Your new film, Made In America, deals with some gnarly stuff. Where did your interest in gang culture come from and why make a film about it?

Los Angeles is the epicentre of modern gang culture. In the twenties it was Chicago with Al Capone, but that was a whole different type of gangster. Nowadays it’s the Crips and Bloods out of South LA. This gang problem has persisted over the past forty years, four decades. In my high school in Venice, we had gang problems. The week we started shooting Made In America, a kid was shot

“kids in the hood have defined what skateboarding really is. they are the true outcasts. and they’ve also kept it beautifully illegal.” and killed at my former high school. The reason I made this film is, I’ve known about this problem all my life as a Los Angeles resident and I asked myself the question one day, ‘If white kids were forming gangs and arming themselves with automatic assault rifles, would the government allow it to stand. Would the government allow it for four decades?’ And the answer I came up with is, ‘No, they wouldn’t.’ And why is it that when AfricanAmerican kids do it, it goes on for four decades and all they do is throw police at it? I wanted to find out if there was a human face behind this, if there was something that caused this problem to happen. So that was a germ seed for this film.

How did you go about talking to gang members?

The gang territory is a huge area, it’s a city unto itself with hundreds of neighbourhoods. And each neighbourhood exists as if it is a rival state, with its own history, its own folklore, its own historical figures and it’s either a Blood neighbourhood or a Crip neighbourhood. Each neighbourhood has what would be called a shot-caller or a Tony Soprano-type character. And my job was to go in there and find that Soprano-like character, get to know him, explain who I was, and say what my goal is, and what my intentions were. And once I did that I was able to build trust with these guys and they would then take me into their neighbourhoods and introduce me to various gang members who I wanted to put on film.

Were you on your own in doing this?

One person would lead me to another person and typically what I would do is, if I got a person’s number who commanded a neighbourhood I would call that person and explain who I was and say, ‘Look, I want to come to your neighbourhood and meet you without any cameras first. I just want to meet you and sit down with you.’ And when I did that I was showing them a lot of respect.

And a lot of them told me that they’d never been treated that way before. So when we came back with cameras, there was already a relationship established. It made a huge difference.

That sounds insanely dangerous.

Well, it was, but if you do it the right way it’s okay and if you’re respectful to them… They told me that a lot of people from Hollywood go in there all the time and all they want to do is film violence.

Film the bad stuff and then disappear. I told them from day one that that’s not what I’m interested in. I want to know why this is going on, I want to know what these kids think, I want to know if they want something else in their life.

I want to know if they want their children or their brothers or sisters to be doing this. So once they realised that I was for real and that I was also an LA resident, we became friends.

Were you and your crew’s lives in jeopardy at any point?

Just being there is dangerous. There are helicopters and police cars all the time going each and every way. You have to constantly turn the camera off because of sirens and stuff like that. And we also shot two Blood sets coming together to discuss a truce. That almost got out of hand, it got really scary. It looked as if it were going to be the shootout at the OK Corral. It was actually the very first thing we shot. When the day was done I thought, ‘Okay, I just made the biggest mistake of my life. I’m never going to pull this thing off, I was so naïve in thinking I could do this.’

It’s such a departure from your earlier work.

How was it going from familiar territory to a whole new world?

In one regard it’s very similar to what I’ve done because it’s all about tribes and it’s about outcasts.

Dogtown was about a subculture of outcasts.

Riding Giants, same thing. This is a subculture of outcasts, the only difference is, it’s a terribly violent one. And these kids are incredibly disenfranchised. So I had to walk on eggshells a lot. It was scary and at times I felt less like a director and more like an ambassador or diplomat.

I had to really explain myself continually and make sure I wasn’t doing the wrong thing, because the wrong thing could really get me in serious trouble, so that was worrisome. And also I was dealing with a subject that I had to deal with very carefully and it was much harder telling the story than the other two films, because it’s a life-and-death situation, and there was a lot of history involved, so I really had to do a lot of research because I didn’t know it as well as the other subjects.

I look at these films as a trilogy. They all start in California and the other two films represent two sides of the California dream, and Made In America represents the true California nightmare.

You have to realise, South LA is twenty minutes away from Beverly Hills.

Did you notice any similarities between skateboarders and surfers that may exist in the mindset of some of these gang members?

[Long pause] The similarities are a love of their own culture and the importance of identity. You know, when you’re a skateboarder that becomes part of your identity and that identity becomes who you are, it becomes where you get your direction in life and it’s the same with being a gang member. The colour you wear, the street you come from... it’s your heritage, it’s your DNA. The only difference is, economically these kids are hit in such a horrifying way. Almost all of them come from broken families, so many of their uncles and fathers are in jail or dead. In that regard, they are such outcasts that many of them see no way back. Well, at least with skateboarders and surfers, as much as they feel like outcasts, they still have an opportunity to become part of society and they do experience the good things about society. The ultimate thing I discovered in this movie is, these aren’t AfricanAmerican kids, these are American kids. They’re born on American soil, but somehow they’re not looked at as Americans. They’re Americans, man, and this is what happened to them because of the obstacles set in their way.

At the moment do you see your career going in any particular direction?

Some directors make films that are real important to them, and others make films that make a lot of money. And it’s a real temptation to chase the money. But I just decided that I’m going to make films that are important to me. Documentary filmmaking, unless you’re Michael Moore, you don’t make a lot of money. But I like the films I make.

They’re films I wanted to see. I want to continue exploring ideas that I’d like to understand or that are troubling or intriguing to me.

So as far as your legacy is concerned, how do you want to be remembered: pro skater, industry icon or documentarian?

That’s a hard question. I guess as somebody who followed their interests… with a skateboard in one hand and a camera in the other

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Made in America is out in the US this summer.

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Jenny SAville

by gagosian gallery rizzoli

the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain penguin classics

fear and loathing in las vegas by hunter s. thompson harper perennial

urban art photography

by JĂźrgen GroĂ&#x;e die gestalten verlag

penguin by design: A Cover Story 1935-2005

by phil baines penguin

animal farm

by george orwell penguin modern classics

graphis annual 73/74 by walter herdeg the graphis press

v8 boogie

guinness book of records (1973)

by axel bienert memoria pulp

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a pictorial guide to the lakeland fells: BOOK ONE, THE EASTERN FELLS

by norris and ross mcwhirter guinness by banksy century

by a. wainwright frances lincoln

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murakami

nineteen eighty-four

on the road

the catcher in the rye

manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media

leroy grannis: surf photography of the 1960s and 1970s

by paul schimmel rizzoli by jack kerouac penguin modern classics by edward S. herman and noam chomsky pantheon

bjork

by bjork bloomsbury

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by george orwell penguin modern classics by j.d. salinger penguin

by jim heimann, steve barilotti and leroy grannis taschen

no logo

by naomi klein picador

thrasher: insane terrain

by thrasher magazine universe

the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck penguin classics

one flew over the cuckoo’s nest by ken kesey penguin reds

beneath the roses

by gregory crewdson abrams

to find out more about these AND OTHER legendary books, check out www.huckmagazine.com

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MUSICALLY INCLINED

Skate legend Tommy Guerrero explores the sounds inside his mind.

text Jay Riggio photography Joe Brook

When I first discovered skateboarding, the issue of style had more or less gone right over my head. Early on, I was floored by the sheer insanity of the tricks performed while one rolled atop a wooden plank, and had failed to take note of the way in which they were done. OG, Bones Brigadier and street skating innovator Tommy Guerrero was the first skater to thoroughly introduce me to the notion of style.

His way of skating in the early Powell Peralta videos explored a flowing, free-form style that seemed to emulate the essence of skateboarding. He rode in a manner that to me expressed pure freedom and a sort of infinite possibility – that anything could happen between you and your board. As a young kid whose only option was street skating, I was beyond inspired by Guerrero’s style.

Aside from making a name for himself as one of the most influential pros in skateboarding history, Tommy also helped found the long-running Real Skateboards

before retiring from professional skating in ’94. Through the years, most only knew Tommy as a skateboarder, but all the while he was actually something much more.

“When I was about twelve or thirteen, me and my brother got into the punk scene.

Skating went hand in hand with the whole DIY ethic,” explains Guerrero. “It’s in our blood. My father’s side of the family is full of musicians. But we didn’t grow up with him so it has to be a genetic thing.”

It’s now been ten years since Tommy put out his first record and, without skipping a beat, he continues to blow minds with his blues- and funk-inspired grooves, drawing inspiration from a vast library of artists like Bad Brains, Bill Withers, The Cure, Santana and, believe it or not, Eric B and Rakim.

Splitting his duties as art director for Krooked Skateboards with creating songs and touring when he can, Tommy stays busier than most, working four days a week at his day job.

“I take Fridays off to work on music. I wish it

were the other way around,” he admits. “I spend very little time on music. It’s hard on the soul sitting in front of the computer all day.”

In addition to his solo project where he plays pretty much all the instruments – bass, guitar, keys, percussion – Tommy also devotes his time to Blktop Project, another musical venture featuring legendary skaters Matt Rodriguez, Chuck Treece and Ray Barbee.

“A new [Blktop Project] record just came out in Japan and should be out this summer in the States,” he says.

These days Tommy is far too busy with work, music and raising his four-year-old to skate as much as he’d like to, but does try and skate at least once a month. When asked about the link between creativity and skateboarding, Tommy is certain that the two go together like white bread and cheese. “If you skate then you’re creative,” stresses Guerrero. “Sometimes it just takes a while to find another vehicle to express yourself. And quite often, it actually finds you.”

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All over the world right now winds weak and strong are fanning billions of gallons of water across the ocean’s surface, sending them on a long and solitary journey towards land.

Thousands of miles later, when finally reaching the shore, these waves slow down, rise up, lunge forwards and finally collapse in a beautiful explosion of energy. The vast majority of these waves pass us by without us ever noticing them. A tiny fraction of them, however, encounter an eager dancing partner as they stage their swan song on the beach. Their partners are surfers: shades of movement in a fleeting final ballet with bands of energy from the sea.

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Helis, hikes and lethal lines A frontline report from O’Neill’s Big Mountain Pro. Text Jim Merrett ILLUSTRATION amy brown

“Just like ‘Nam,” a novice

journalist shouts above the whipping rotar blades. Being that close to a helicopter – close enough to have grit blown off the road and into your face – has triggered some collective Apocalypse Now flashback. This ain’t gonna be your average commute.

Short of kicking a panda in the nuts, there is no better way of sticking two fingers up at Mother Nature than riding in a helicopter. Yet to people round these parts, they’re as pedestrian as a bus – hence the two dudes caught smoking next to drums of kerosene. “After a few days, it’s pretty much like taking a car,” reigning Big Mountain Pro champion Xavier de le Rue sums it all up.

Someone please tell the young writer his ‘Nam reference is way out of place. Or is it? ▼

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Now in its second year

and absorbed into the Freeride World Tour, the O’Neill Big Mountain Pro is billed as a return to the source, an event that plucks fourteen of the most proficient riders – seven snowboarders, seven skiers – and takes them off-piste, out of the park and heli-lifted to the most demanding lines nature has to offer. We’re talking sheer faces the likes of which have rarely been tackled before. There’s a sense of purity and a back-to-basics attitude – though sponsorship helps, hence the chopper.

Event organiser Nicholas Hale-Woods puts it into context: “It started thirteen years ago at Verbier. People said that was too steep, but a few of us realised it was possible.

“The face we did yesterday would’ve certainly been considered too extreme ten or fifteen years ago. But we were attacking it fast – that’s the progression of the sport. Jeremy Jones describes freeriding very well; it should be fast and fluid, but controlled – that’s the key. You can hurt yourself, you can even kill yourself. People have died doing less. But this is the best venue to showcase what is possible with snowboarding.”

“It’s very technical,” adds pro snowboarder and trick-fiend David Benedek. “First, you have to sit at the bottom, take a photo and memorise the features. I’m not used to this dimension.”

Being heli-lifted to the very ceiling of the Alps is way beyond his comfort zone, and that’s probably the draw. “It took me a little longer to become interested in this riding. And it’s cool competing alongside skiers.”

Jeremy Jones rocks up to our table, sniffing out wireless with a standard-issue Apple laptop underarm. Despite his height – and it may come

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as a surprise how tiny some of these big-mountain riders are – he’s very much the man everyone here looks up to. Pipped to the prize last year, Jones is the favourite to win this time around. His eyes are fixed – calm but distant.

“Freeriding is as crazy as it sounds,” Jones says bluntly. “This is not a solo mission – you have to rely on riding partners. There’s very little attitude.

Last year, we forgot we were even in a contest.”

Jones cut his teeth carving up Alaska, but he thinks this is the place to be to get your kicks.

“If you wanna do something stupid, well, you can.”

If Jeremy Jones jumped off a cliff, would you?

The punctuality is testament to Swatch’s involvement. When they say the day starts at 5:30am, sadly they mean it. Conditions dictate that the whole day’s riding has to be over by noon, otherwise riders are likely to end up with an avalanche up their ass – not good.

Day one, and the first face is selected: a powdery 45-degree incline in the shadow of Mont Blanc, peppered with ominous-looking rocks and packed ice. For journalists, the chopper plants us four at a time on an adjacent plateau-cum-viewing platform. We huddle in relative comfort, lapping up the sunshine. The competitors are not so fortunate.

Legislation prevents the helicopter from landing in France, meaning the riders are deposited on the Swiss side of the border and forced to hike 400 metres with their kit even before tackling this snow-covered monster of rock. Some relish the bonus adventure: “A steep hike with huge cliffs makes for a full day,” Xavier de le Rue says later.

“It’s the total mountain experience.” Others aren’t

so keen. “The hike up was bigger than anything I’ve ever done in my life,” admits skier Craig Garbiel. “It drained all my adrenalin.”

In true exploratory spirit, we are afforded the honour of naming features. ‘Slippery Wall of Death’ was one suggestion. ‘Bruce Forsyth’s Chin’, another.

But from across the valley, the show is something of a flea circus – even with opera-style binoculars provided, take your eyes off the prize and you only have the whoops of fellow spectators to gauge what just went down. One thing is obvious, this is already turning into a two-horse race, with Jeremy Jones and Xavier de le Rue claiming some massive drops to pull away from the pack.

Looking good for the

camera is what this sport is all about. Not only is the footage from the helicopter broadcast online, it’s used to score each run. Come the end of the tournament, the competitors themselves decide on a winner. That effectively makes these riders judge, jury and – if you consider what they’re doing – potential executioner.

This year, there is talk of handing the marking over to Freeride World Tour officials. Xavier seems reluctant: “I don’t like the external judges. Riders judge themselves much better – they have a true idea of what it is like to go down that face. There’s never any doubt over who is best and you’re not going to argue. They know exactly what you’ve been through. If a rider doesn’t like you, they will still judge you on your line only. It’s really fair.”

“Our job is to make it look as good as possible, representing the riders in the best possible light,” says Ben Benson, who directs the

highlights show. “These guys know how to be in the right place at the right time.”

Snowboarder Stefan Gimpl

is taking a giant leap. Like Benedek, he’s better known for pulling off some mean tricks in the park.

But you can’t be a big fish in a small pond forever.

“The parks are full of eighteen-year-olds,” he says.

“I’m twenty-eight, so I can find it hard to relate.

It’s still cool to hang with them, though.”

“It’s a pretty grown-up scene compared to basic snowboarding,” Xavier adds. “Here, there’s not as much posing. You need experience – if you’re going to charge on a face, you can’t just turn up.

Riding lines is not the same.”

With that mature attitude comes a grown-up sense of understanding among the riders. “I don’t look at myself as a competitor,” says thirty-six-yearold skier Sverre Liliequist. “I’m just after that good feeling in my stomach I get from this – if it’s judged well, that’s a bonus. Riders are just stoked to be here, learning from other riders.”

The second competition

day turns out to be the last – it hasn’t snowed in a month, no matter where in the Alps we traipse.

This trip down le Rogneux, a sketchy 2km-long face in the Val de Bagnes, Switzerland, almost didn’t happen – if there’s any doubt over the conditions, the competitors are asked if they want to go through with it. After a stalemate, Hale-Woods casts the deciding vote and the ride goes ahead.

Tato Vasiuk is agitated by those who voted against the run; he’s come all the way from

Argentina to be here: “You represent all of us – you should try to think of everybody. Just to be here is so good for me, with a lot of experienced guys. I just want to be here and ski.”

To keep things running smoothly, the run is closed to press, leaving us to pick up secondhand news later. Riders speak of patchy snow, ice and little to play with for lines, but it seems unanimous that Jones blew away the competition.

Following lunch, all of us – competitors, journalists, organisers, the lot – are bundled into two buses bound for the depths of Switzerland.

“There’s a lot of media

here compared to other events,” Swede Sverre Liliequist remarks. I don’t think this is aimed at me personally but thanks to us hired geeks, the competitors’ day can be long. “You really have to dig deep to find out what to say. I usually express myself through my riding. Now I have to explain myself with words as well.”

But bonding isn’t difficult, and beer proves the perfect social lubricant. The buses give the event an almost rock tour quality, sadly lacking the groupies and debauchery. These are focused athletes, some with wives and kids, and the only powder they’re thinking about is hopefully up in the mountains. But with a rest day ahead of us, there’s a chance to let our hair down.

We end up in a two-shack town in Frenchspeaking Switzerland, populated by maybe five people and a massive St Bernard dog. The current plan is to spend the next day travelling to Italy in search of snow.

The evening slowly spirals out of control.

Bloodshot eyes the next morning speak of the damage. But the biggest concern as the buses trundle towards the Italian border is the whereabouts of skier Thomas Diet’s passport – somehow he left it in Chamonix.

He tries to piece together what happened to him last night. “There was this stupid card game and I lost so many times,” he reveals. “I finished on the hotel’s sofa. We came back to watch some cartoons and I fell asleep. I woke up with two tables on me – they’d buried me under all this furniture.”

When the judging comes

around, Jeremy Jones inevitably walks off with the prize for snowboarding, with de le Rue a close second. Kaj Zackrisson takes top skiing honours.

Jones’ acceptance speech is understated.

“It wasn’t my goal to win. I came here to ride fun lines and see what happened. To come out on top is an amazing feeling.”

He has grown up riding big mountains, and matured in the process, making an effort to move away from helicopters and lessen his impact on nature through his work with non-profit environmental organisation Protect Our Winters.

“I ride the mountain and I’m out of there,” he says.

“I don’t like to leave a mark.”

But somehow, it’s the words of Sverre Liliequist, the veteran who likes his skiing to do the talking, that rattle around my head. “It’s not just about going harder or faster, it’s about getting the best line,” he told me. “It’s like a painting. Every rider is looking over their shoulder to see their tracks.”

www.oneilleurope.com

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a . d life n i f o ing t a’ ard ssi bo Ruow w n ne e s ‘ e l e h ad th h t Bo t l i ris ve w Ch ra ve d t o an e rs in l d i e Br rd ly t Mc l oa ead Hoake b l d el y J owt’s ssaph n u s a R r xt og ro th Tehot y p P e ntr v Fi ou c

s e d In ha S f o

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JAKE MCBRIDE

By mid winter, Moscow is

a drab ten million strong megalopolis stretching to the horizon. Its inhabitants are entombed within a perpetual curtain of snow and cloud. It’s minus 20 degrees Celsius outside, and the city is every shade of grey, an appropriate metaphor for the crime and corruption for which Russia has been known in the post-Soviet era. Moscow makes it into the top five cities for murders per capita but ironically it also boasts more billionaire residents than any other city in the world.

Grim facts aside, the place drips with architectural glamour, its towering tented-roofed churches and sprawling parks and gardens making it absolutely unique. Add to that a culture that spans over a thousand years and this becomes a fascinating destination for anyone – snowboarder or not.

We’re here with an all-Australian cast of pros: Clint and Mitch Allan (two young kids from the boonies, aka the sticks), Chris McAlpine (our big-mountain ex-pat), Chris Boadle (the rail guy from Melbourne), Jake McBride (photographer) and myself (wordsmith). We all share the common goal of exploring the world on our snowboards, and Russia just happens to be the farthest place we could find.

Driving through Moscow’s

icy streets for the first time, deep snow is clearly making life hard for the locals but revealing a huge array of city snowboarding options for us.

Ledges, rails, stairs, drops, more rails and more ledges – it’s the perfect set up.

Moscow is a massive city drenched in riches from sixty-nine years of Soviet power. It’s obvious no expense was spared to make it the jewel in the empire’s crown. Evidence resides five stories below ground. The Metro is the beating heart of the city where fifty-year-old trains move like clockwork along the biggest subway network in the world. We never wait more than two minutes for a train, despite the millions of moving commuters absorbing us like a sponge.

Never-ending six-story escalators extend out of sight, while the shimmering marble hallways lie adorned with bronze statues of national heroes and symbols of socialist pride.

At our hotel, built for the 1980 Summer

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Olympics, we meet Max, our Russian guide.

His memory of the Games speaks of a very particular political climate: “I was nine at the time but unfortunately I didn’t get to see anything of the Olympics. All the children under sixteen were forced to attend a seven-week summer camp in the country. There were more than one million children sent away. The government didn’t want us to be influenced by the influx of outsiders that swarmed the city.”

Life here seems hard, and it’s visible on the faces of people around the city. To me, they seem downcast and dismal, and if I took the occasional tension in the air too literally, it’s easy to write them off as abrupt and unfriendly. But who are we to judge? After all, transition to free market capitalism – enthusiastically pushed by the West – has been anything but smooth.

“Russia has many troubles,” explains Max. “The people are not convinced about capitalism and its so-called democracy. For many people it has made life worse. It is especially hard for the older people who were given everything within the Soviet system and now are left to fend for themselves as old unemployable pensioners. We had a referendum about whether the government should change back to socialism and the poll was forty-nine per cent in favour.”

Two people enjoying the

new Russia are Moscow University students Dmitry and Dmitry, who gladly volunteered to be our additional guides. The two ‘Dimis’, eighteen and twenty-one, love snowboarding with such passion they rival the keenest grommet you could ever meet. “I’ve been snowboarding probably six or seven years,” explains Dimi number one.

“When we started there were only about ten freestyle riders in the whole country and only one magazine. Now I can’t count the exact number of freestyle riders, but just in our crew in Moscow we have twenty riders and there are many magazines.

There are also lots of cheap snowboards starting to appear in big supermarkets, so it’s not a problem to ride a snowboard.”

The growth of snowboarding is happening alongside the explosion of popular Western culture – but with a Russian flavour. “We have a huge crew of snowboarders, filmers and

photographers called ‘MfGang’ who work on different projects supporting young riders, competitions, websites,” adds Dimi number two.

“But I think our main goal is producing movies about Russian riders.”

Guiding us through their complex city night after night on urban riding missions, our new Russian mates share their passion for snowboarding and also their favourite party spots. One such spot is a secret nightclub in the centre of the city. Like something straight out of a Cold War novel, a hidden entrance door appears down a random dark alley, a hidden keypad used knowingly by the boys allows us inside. We enter and are greeted by a stairwell lined with CCTV cameras and barbed wire. “You can’t just buy membership to bars like this, it is very exclusive.

You have to be invited,” Max explains with pride, while his finger is scanned to release the last door into this underground warren of rooms and bars.

Talk about your epic venue.

CHRIS BOADLE

We choose to head to

Sochi and visit the resort of Krasnaya Polyana, which has recently come onto the snowboarding radar for its unique snow pack and steep terrain.

Two hours flight south of Moscow, Sochi sits on the edge of the Black Sea at the foot of the Caucasus mountain range. A much warmer climate greets us as we enter the tin shed posing as the Sochi International Airport terminal. Our welcoming committee is a troop of mountainsized security men draped with army uniforms and machine guns who look like they just walked in from the rebel frontlines of Chechnya and Georgia 200kms away. (Not that dissimilar from the immigration queues at Heathrow or any other London airport, by the way.)

One hour away in the Caucasus Mountains, Krasnaya Polyana, the locally famous ski resort, is something else. Four old two-seater chairs inch slowly to the top of the mountain 2,000 metres up. But what the resort lacks in infrastructure, it more than makes up for with incredible snowboarding terrain. The moisture-heavy snow blankets pillowy, steep terrain and the snow sticks to everything. It’s a snowboarder’s dream.

Over the next few days, we get in some amazing riding but have to battle the temperate ▼

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JAKE MCBRIDE

climate and frequent rain. So we follow some local advice and turn to Russian vodka, which promises to cure all kinds of cabin fever at just two bucks a bottle. The mountain, though, is not so cheap. Upon first showing our foreign faces at the ticket window we pay the ‘non-Russian’ price of $35 a day, which escalates to $50 the following day when the ticket guy suddenly decides to change the price.

It’s strange to imagine this resort as host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, but it is going to happen. President Putin made it his personal mission to win the rights and somehow pulled it off. Billions of dollars have now been promised towards developing Sochi and the ski resort, which is creating huge excitement with the locals. Surrounding areas like Georgia will also benefit from the investment in South Russia.

But the consequences for the mountain and the snowboarders have yet to be seen as Dmitry explained over some vodka: “I don’t like that idea. Krasnaya Polyana is a unique reservation park with unique habitat and climate, so any small mistake could disrupt the thin natural balance.”

There is more than the environment to consider for the Olympic organisers. Dmitry tells us that the levels of corruption in rural areas such as Sochi are a major concern. It seems to come down to a lack of governmental funding and support for local police, who are losing their jobs or supplementing their small incomes by shaking down tourists.

We had heard stories of extortion, but seen none of it, so when our group is targeted by a group of police at Sochi airport it’s both disappointing and frustrating. After paying our $200 ‘donation’, one of the Dmitrys summed up the situation thus: “I feel embarrassed that you are subject to such corruption – everyone knows it happens, even the president, and nothing is done to stop it.”

Russia is a country pulling itself out of a hugely abrupt transition from socialism to the savages of capitalism. It’s trying to grasp its new identity while maintaining its stature and pride.

For us the road was shaky but it sure made for one hell of a ride. Thanks to some incredible snow, we fulfilled our goal of adventuring through another world with snowboards in tow. And, in the end, that’s what it’s all about

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HUCK is also available at Borders, Waterstone’s, Somerfield*, Presse Tabac, Relais H, Barnes & Noble, Selfridges, Harrods, Zavvi and select newsagents across Europe and North America. (*select stores) Want to stock HUCK? HUCK? Please contact ed@huckmagazine.com 91

Old dudes take to the bowl.

Text Alex Photography Darren 92 www.HUCKmagazine.com

Wade Burdell

stef harkon, still ripping.

Built to Grind, published in 2004, celebrated twenty-five years of hardcore skateboarding thanks to the Independent Truck Company. Indy trucks first hit the coping at Northern California’s Newark Pro Bowl contest in 1978, and Built to Grind, if wholly unheralded by the mainstream press, perfectly distils the total commitment to skating shown by Independent and its riders over the next quarter century.

The Independent Truck Company has become an institution. As pro skater Colin McKay

puts it: “Indy symbolises longevity. It’s the most hardcore skateboard company in existence today.” Or, as Tony Alva says in signature straightup style: “Indy riders have fuckin’ pride, man.

Doesn’t matter what board, wheels or bearings you have; if you have a set of Indy trucks, your shit is 100 per cent.”

Alva, whose presence in skateboarding history is as iconic as Independent’s, has made the cover of countless skate magazines over the years. A typical shot is that on Issue 14 of

Skateboard!, which appeared in summer 1977. The Dogtown bad boy is pictured halfway through a trademark frontside air, with the inside feature devoted to the “one week’s lunacy” that was Alva’s first UK tour. But also sharing front cover billing, a year before Independent made its commercial debut, was a fifteen-year-old British skater, Stefan Harkon. If ever there was a skater who defines hardcore, it’s this man, described by Skateboard! as a “crack Liverpool stylist” and, at forty-four, still tearing it up. ▼

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“we call it alzheimer skating, we carve around but forget where we’re going after a while.”

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Harkon is one of the skaters who never stopped. Many of us gave up, either because of injury or because we succumbed to the forces of convention. For me, it was injury. I dislocated my right shoulder five times thanks to various street-skating misadventures. You never forget your worst slams but what hurts me now, as I recall the last time the shoulder popped out, is that I hurled (with my good arm) my Vision Gator across a park in traumatised frustration. By the time I got back from the hospital, it had vanished.

A Gator deck would be worth a small fortune now.

That was when I was twenty-three. The years have rolled by and though I’ve always had a skateboard, I haven’t skated seriously for years.

But Harkon – whom I meet at the super-slick skate park in Hayle, Cornwall – is not the type to let a few injuries put him off. As he says: “Skating’s like a full-contact sport. You have to be ready to pay in pain.”

To watch Harkon skate the bowls of Cornwall is to see blistering speed allied with the fluidity that Tom Curren brought to surfing.

Harkon – a lifeguard for over twenty years – is as adept in the water as he is on concrete. But a number of other skaters are also here, and they, like Harkon, are ripping. Smack in the zone for a middle-aged crisis, they blitz the local bowls and command the respect of skaters half their age.

There’s a relaxed, chilled-out feel to their sessions. It’s tempting, indeed, to wonder whether this crew is immune from such prosaic problems as mid-life crises, precisely because they skate, never stopped skating, and never will. But how have they managed to keep the faith so long?

After all, skateboarding is still perceived by many as an activity that children grow out of at the onset of puberty.

An answer lies in the form of Mark ‘Trawler’ Lawer, who has driven to Hayle from his hometown of Plymouth for an evening skate. Trawler is also forty-four but, since he started skating in 1976, has only taken time out because of illness. Quite a serious illness, in fact: “I got leukaemia in 1995 and had to stop skating. I’m proud to say I kicked it in the ass. I came back to skating in 1997 and it’s the best stress buster around. Sure it used to be perceived as a kids’ sport but I think it’s become more accepted as the industry has matured.”

Trawler drops in to the bowl. As I watch him carve smooth lines on a Santa Cruz Eric Dressen deck with – you guessed right – Indy trucks, one of Harkon’s original Liverpool crew, Dave Davies, offers his take on skateboarding and longevity.

“We call it Alzheimer skating,” says the forty-fiveyear-old local. “We carve around but forget where we’re going after a while.” Davies’ self-deprecation is belied by an extensive repertoire of lip tricks

including a move he calls ’Keep On Trucking’, one that not every skater would wish to replicate.

For Davies, who works at a contemporary art gallery, stress relief is a factor in his ongoing fidelity to skating.

“Concrete is never forgiving but after a stressful day there’s nothing better than to come here and take it out on the bowl,” he says. There’s more, though, as he explains: “Skating is an individuality thing. It’s a form of self-expression. As well as that, I grew up with great skaters like Stef, Trevor Pritchard and Neil Danns, and skating has been one way that we’ve always kept in touch.”

Davies also surfs and snowboards, and stopped skating for “about five years” when he moved to Cornwall. He is joined by local skater Paul Sampson, forty-two, an IT consultant. “I never stopped,” says Sampson. “That’s one of the great things about Cornwall – there’s a board-riding tradition here and skating is more accepted than many places in the UK.” As I’ve been chatting, Harkon has been pushing the limits in the main bowl at Hayle.

There’s an overhanging cradle section, some twelve feet off the ground, but Harkon effortlessly finds the line for a powerful frontside grind.

I shake my head in disbelief that someone who is in his mid-forties skates harder than the bowl’s contingent of teenage tricksters. Inside Lusty Skates, the archetypal local skate store, the owner, Oz, shares my admiration. “Stef just rips,” he says simply.

Harkon himself looks at me quizzically when I ask if he ever stopped skating. “Why would I want to do that?” he asks. It transpires that he skated with Jay Adams, Shogo Kubo and other members of the Dogtown crew when he was just fifteen, and that his life has revolved around two dual, inter-relating identities: “From an early age I always wanted to be a surfer, but before that I was a pro skater. The two things define me. I’ll do them both until the day I die.”

A couple of weeks later I find myself in Lusty Skates. It’s as if a mysterious force has pulled me back and, before I know it, I’ve emerged with an old-school set-up, as close to my Vision Gator as I can get. I’m doubting the wisdom of this – I’m not sure how much I want to pay in pain – but just then Harkon appears. He drops in to the bowl and I hear a beautiful sound, the crunch of a frontside grind. I remember one last question.

“What trucks are you using?”

“Indys,” he replies.

I should have known

.

The author swears by www.originalskateboards.com.

Check out www.timesonline.co.uk/surfnation to see him hit tarmac at 30mph on one.

s m o r g Ngs To THEm. o L E B E r U T U F E H T

In the valley of a thousand hills, just outside Durban, South Africa, a young black skater drops into a mini ramp and stylishly smith grinds the entire coping.

Aptly named sixteen-year-old skater Talent Biyala is the protégé of one of South Africa’s most committed skateboarders, Dallas Oberholzer. From his skate shop at the public skate park on the Durban beachfront, Oberholzer has given many rural and urban kids a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak existence.

Talent’s story is a perfect example. A homeless kid whose mother died when he was young, he once aimlessly roamed downtown Durban sniffing glue, until he was introduced to surfing by some locals, and through it met Dallas in 2002.

Since then, he has become one of the most promising young skaters in the area. His deep trick bag makes Talent one to watch at any session, be it at the concrete park – where he sometimes sleeps – or on urban terrain. “I like the park and ramps,” says Talent, who hopes to one day turn pro. “But I prefer skating street, where you have freedom and you can do what you want.”

The future challenges facing Talent are huge. But with such a good support network and talent to spare, his dream of becoming one of the first black kids from South Africa to earn a living from skating may just come true. Miles Masterson For more on Talent check out www.lovedistribution.at.

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BARRY TUCK

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“On a recent trip to Australia, I got bumped off my board by a three-metre bull shark. I’ve never been so scared,” says fifteen-year-old Toby Donachie with a nervous laugh.

As an up-and-coming surfer on the UK scene and with a reputation for a smooth yet aggressive style, he has been quick to make an impression in just four years. As well as being picked for the GB team at the European Surf Championships in Portugal, Toby’s gained sponsorship from Nike 6.0, making him part of their thirty-seven strong team in their drive to nurture junior sporting talent across a whole host of extreme sports.

Living by the sea in St Merryn, Cornwall, is useful for an aspiring pro surfer, but having a dad who is renowned surfboard shaper Adrian Phillips – owner of the surfboard company Fluid Juice – is pretty much perfect. When not in the water, he is following his dad’s lead, shaping surfboards and designing the graphics: “I just sit down with a piece of paper and scribble and sometimes they just come together but other times they can look absolutely horrible. It’s definitely trial and error.”

Modesty aside, he’s coming to terms with his potential to make it big: “I’m still young so I’m just realising that I can actually make a go of surfing; I’ve got the drive and determination to really go for it but only because I love the sport so much. I definitely want to do it as a full-time job.” Ed Andrews www.nike.com/nke6

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In 2006, an unassuming skater kid named Gabe was pulled out of his everyday teenage life in Portland, Oregon, by megastar director Gus Van Sant to take the lead in Paranoid Park. Fresh-faced and having never acted before, he took the experience of working on a major production with one of the world’s most respected film-makers in his stride: “It was so cool, but the whole time I was filming, I was like, ‘Wow, I thought this was going to be way harder.’ When we came to do it, I was just really surprised at how easy it was.

Gus had a lot to do with that.”

Nevins gained the critics’ respect in the role of teenage skater Alex. Which, incidentally, is precisely what he does when not acting or going to school. “I’ve been skating for quite a few years now, it’s pretty much my main hobby,” he says.

No wonder then that Nevins is often found dropping big spins and tre flips (his favourite trick) around his hometown. “The scene here is really good, especially downtown, it’s pretty retro,” says Gabe. “There’s a group down here called the Z-bombers. Every Sunday, they dress up in clown outfits, and ride these tiny bicycles down the freeway. I love that about Portland.”

Still just sixteen, Nevins is back in school and, in classic Portland style, still “considering his options”. The quiet and unassuming boy who planned to turn up to the premiere of Paranoid Park in his skater clothes, before Van Sant found out and lent him a suit, knows he could have a big career ahead of him on screen. He’s just not sure he wants it. Jonathan Williams

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jess mooney

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Alexis Roland first appeared in my consciousness when I was checking out a friend’s YouTube snowboard video. Right there was a link to this wee little girl on a snowboard, nailing one rail after another with relentless force, pulling off everything from frontside boardslides to switch rail slides and nose presses.

I had to watch it again because the crazy skills of this little six-year-old just blew me away.

Alexis Roland, now eight, is from Bloomington, Minnesota. She first got the snowboarding bug when she was five, and was hitting giant rainbow rails by six. Clearly the kid has some natural talent. “My dad is a good coach,” she says. “I think I have a talent and I’m also able to conquer my fears.

And of course I practise a lot.”

Like a lot of child prodigies, Alexis has certainly had a helping hand from her parents, with dad Shawn Roland going as far as setting up a snow machine in their back yard when nature fails to do its job. “They take me snowboarding every day,” the mini shredder explains. “My dad helps me work through my fears.”

So far Alexis has racked up several professional snowboard contracts, has film parts in Ro Sham Bo and Frozen Assets, and has been taking out girls twice her size and age in contests.

Remind you of a little red-haired boy several years ago threatening to take out all the competition? His name was Shaun White and he now rules the world.

Alexis may very well be on that path too. Zoe Oksanen

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REYNIER wears belt O’Neill

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PHotoGrAPHY BaBaK salari teXt AnD stYlinG saraH Bentley

Cuba’s underground rappers are a dying breed, producing hip hop for love rather than money. Only ten crews are recognised by the state Rap Agency and receive the standard musician’s salary. The rest, a community of over 300 rappers, are making socially conscious music in rudimentary home studios motivated by the prospect of generating change rather than cash. This is hip hop, Cubana style. ▼

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danny wears shorts éS shirt éS

“I’ve been doing this since 2001. Hip hop is in my soul. I have to do it. We sell our CDs direct to fans for a few dollars. Technically it’s illegal but how else can we get our music out there?”

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ETIEN wears T-shirt Howies hat Kangol

“From the first time I heard Vico C [Puerto Rican rapper] when I was eight years old I wanted to rap. I could have done rumba, salsa, conga, but when you say something like, ‘Man, don’t hit your woman’, the message hits so much stronger in rap than it does sung.”

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REYNIER wears T-SHIRT 55DSL

“We’re lucky, because of our father’s job we have a PC and Internet at home.

We want to sell our music to foreigners on the Internet because there’s not much of a local market. No one can afford to buy music unless it’s bootleg.”

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ETIEN wears HAT NEW ERA

“There were four of us in the group but one by one the others fell in love with foreigners, got married, and moved abroad. Some day I hope I will perform with my boys again… I guess I’m waiting for my girl.”

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Etien wears T-shirt Howies flat cap EK by New Era

Danny wears T-shirt Boxfresh

Johaned wears vest Lee shorts Nikita necklace Just Trade

REYNIER wears shirt Carhartt

“Cuban hip hop lyrics are deep. We address social problems. It’s not like US hip hop or Reggaeton where people party to tracks about shootings and drug deals. I don’t understand that. At some Cuban hip hop gigs people don’t even dance, they sit down to concentrate on the lyrics.” – Etien

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Johaned wears HAT EMERICA

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Havana’s hip hop cognoscenti are working the crowd like their lives depend on it. As they drop line after line of socially conscious flow, the listening crowd murmurs its approval. Rapper Danny receives a whoop for his vent on the underlying racism within Cuban society towards Afro-Cubans, as does Etien when he spouts demands for economic change: “I want to better myself without relying on friends and family abroad. I’m a man, let me be one.”

Etien’s words sum up the realities of life in Cuba, a small island whose economy has been crippled by a forty-six-year trade embargo by the United States. While the country provides excellent health care and basic needs, it leaves many of its people reliant on friends and family abroad for everything else.

The majority of contemporary hip hop acts are not officially recognised by the government Rap Agency so receive no state pay, are banned from selling their music in stores and ignored by state media (except the sporadically published hip hop magazine Movimientos). Without performing for free, these groups would essentially be invisible. “We perform for the award of applause alone,” says Etien. “And for our music to influence change. That is what motivates nearly all Cuban rappers to do what they do.”

Cuba’s rap fraternity are the epitome of dedication. With little scope to make money from their art – other than from the sale of home-burned CDs to foreigners – they do it for the love. Even recording music to give away is a mission. Blank CDs, computer memory sticks, software and Internet access are only available in CUC, the currency supposed to only be used by foreigners. A memory stick costs twenty CUC, yet the monthly salary for a doctor is only thirty.

The current crop of Cuban rappers grew up listening to Puerto Rican rapper Vico C, Panamanian reggae artist El General and US rappers Snoop Dog, Mobb Deep and Mos Def. Illegal radio antennas were tuned into hip hop stations broadcasting from Florida and mixtapes were sent from family abroad. US influences aside, Cuban hip hop has its own unique sound with rumba, salsa, conga, trova and Afro-Cuban percussion weaved in. Compared to the bulk of mainstream hip pop, the lyrical content is highbrow with a noticeable absence of guns, girls and ganja.

This is no doubt because Cuba’s standard of education is exceptionally high with little room for people slipping through the educational net. And although many rappers live in poor neighbourhoods, their communities aren’t ghettoised. Etien lives in Alamar, a residential area 20km outside of Havana made up entirely of mass-housing blocks. Were this community orbiting London, New York or Paris, it may well have an edgy reputation for violence and drugs. But Alamar’s population looks to be in rude health, all taut limbs and rippling muscles with not a beer gut, crack pipe or spliff in sight. “Alamar is peaceful, boring even,” says Etien. “The only thing to do is sports.”

And herein lies the ironic essence of Cuban hip hop. Trapped inside a struggling and often oppressive regime – at odds with the world market, threatened by the world’s superpower and hurt by decades-long sanctions – Cuban rappers have plenty of issues to wax lyrical about. Yet due to this same regime, they are educated, healthy and gun, gang and drug-free. But how long the scene will remain like this is anybody’s guess. As more foreign money flows into Cuba, and the younger generation replace hip hop with Reggaeton, all the booty-popping, label-flashing and booze-fuelled partying that goes with it is coming too.

.

“Where is the thinking of the young people of our society?” asks Danny. “All they want to do is party, wear designer clothes and listen to Reggaeton. Cuban rap has never been like that.

There are many changes I’d like to see in this country, but I hope hip hop, at least the heart of hip hop, remains the same.”

Assistant Ulises quintana de armas Translator Maria Teresa Ortega Driver Mario Models Hip hop artists Danny, REYNIER, Johaned and Etien

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COME VISIT US IN THE SPORT & STREET AREA, HALL 4, BOOTH S9.01.5 AT THE BREAD AND BUTTER TRADE SHOW, 2-4 JULY 2008.

ANGELA BOATWRIGHT SUMMER TUNES GONE BABY GONE MIKI DORA SURFING ZEN A VERY YOUNG BRANDON WESTGATE,

BY ANGELA BOATWRIGHT. 117

WILL SHE EVER ?

P U W GRO PHOTOGRAPHER ANGELA BOATWRIGHT KNOWS THE KIDS ARE WHERE IT’S AT. Growing up sucks. Shitty things called bills and responsibility and expectations and, oh my god, mortgages, jump up to bite you in the ass and suddenly you realise: being fifteen rocked.

Music sounded better, sadness felt, well, sadder and simple things like seeing your favourite band could consume your mind for an entire month.

Thirty-two-year-old Angela Boatwright has a deep appreciation of this fact. And her photography is doing wonders to remind others just how awesome adolescence can be. From kids at heavy metal shows to Rhode Island’s homegrown bands, Angela’s images speak to anyone who has ever lived and breathed their subculture of choice.

“I was that kid,” says Angela, whose Ohio upbringing was infused with heavy metal and teenage ennui. “Photographers shoot what they’re trying to understand and shooting all these kids is me re-relating to myself when I was younger.”

Sixteen-year-old Angela, it seems, was not all that different from her modern-day counterpart. Snapping away on a point ‘n’ shoot camera from the local drugstore, and printing the outcome in her mom’s darkroom, Angela was sold on a life behind the lens

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by sixteen. She wasn’t, however, quite so taken with spending it in Ohio and moved to New York to make things happen.

With a stack of successful art shows under her belt, heaps of credible commissions and every magazine worth its salt in street cred knocking at her door, Angela Boatwright has definitely made it.

Question is, has she grown up? “I’m old and cynical now,” she says, sounding anything but. “It’s good to refresh your energy and find kids out there doing incredible things for the right reasons. That’s why I love Rhode Island. There isn’t really a generation gap and everyone just hangs out. My friends are in their mid-twenties, their parents are in their fifties, and we hang out with kids in bands like Rhodekill who are seventeen.

Everyone relates. It’s kind of unique.”

So there you have it. If you’ve gotta grow up, make sure you do it right. ANDREA KURLAND Look out for Angela’s forthcoming black and white ’zine Six Pack of Sorrows published by mt.st.mtn. www.mtstmtn.com

METAL KID OUTSIDE DARK REALM RECORD STORE IN LOS ANGELES.

RYAN WEIBUST, LEAD SINGER OF DEMASSEK, IN JAMESTOWN, RHODE ISLAND.

ETHAN FLYNN, LEAD SINGER OF RHODEKILL, GROWING TALLER EVERY DAY.

DUSTIN DOLLIN ON A ROOFTOP ON CANAL STREET, MANHATTAN.

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S M U B L A THE SHORTWAVE SET

Replica Sun Machine, Wall of Sound London’s soft-psych popsters The Shortwave Set had almost finished recording this second album, then Danger Mouse called and asked them out to Los Angeles to do the whole thing again. The Velvet Underground’s John Cale and Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks got involved too, with extraordinary results. Those three super-cheeses have naturally left their stamp, but hear also this lyric from the album’s lead single, ‘No Social’: “Everyone knows that a dog dressed in clothes is still a dog.” In the case of The Shortwave Set, that dog writes great songs that sit clinically and perfectly together. There isn’t a wasted second on this album, let alone a duff track, and it’s tinged with dreamy Californian soul throughout. They may be a highly backward-looking band but this is a modern classic.

Definitely the pick of the billion projects Mr Mouse has been working on recently. PHIL HEBBLETHWAITE

CRYSTAL CASTLES

Crystal Castles, Last Gang Live, Crystal Castles’ singer Alice Glass holds the attention, but generally it’s machines man Ethan Kath who calls the shots. However, instead of filling their debut LP with winning blasts of Alice-led electro punk, they’ve revealed a passion for meandering instrumental sections and murmuring, chopped-up vocals. A bland, boring album that confirms them as the fashionista Faithless. NIALL O’KEEFFE

DAGHA

The Divorce, Lewis Skits from films and TV shows, A Tribe Called Quest-like jazzy productions cooked up by DJ Real and that easy, round rhyming style... The Divorce is a real early nineties-style second album and it’s a real fine one. General theme: the trials of love or “takin’ bitches out to eat”. He got divorced, he got upset, he wrote some rhymes, he did good. PH

DAVID KARSTEN DANIELS Fear of Flying, Fat Cat

A talented songwriter who largely escapes being po-faced because he always has something to say. Early albums were bitty, found-sound affairs – a lo-fi approach he rejected with his last record and finally destroys here. It’s a very serious and brave LP, full of grand pronouncements and soaring arrangements. But stick a pencil in my eye if he doesn’t grate the shit out of you by the end of it. PH

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EL PERRO DEL MAR

From The Valley To The Stars, Memphis Industries Lykke Li seems to have stolen the kooky Swedish gal crown recently, but forget ye not that El Perro Del Mar came first and she far out-weirds young Lykke. The first El Perro LP was about a dog. That’s right, a freakin’ dog. This one is “a personal reflection on heaven”. Whatever! But you’ve gotta give it to this crack-pot, she makes you want to jump into bed with her songs. PH

MOSHI MOSHI RECORDS Singles, Moshi Moshi

If it’s twee, it’s on Moshi Moshi. Sort of. There are plenty of tweekers on their roster (Slow Club, Matt & Kim), but, as this fantastic comp proves, there’s a lot more to Moshi than knitted jumpers and cowbells.

Late Of The Pier, The Wave Pictures, Danananaykroyd etc. all get a look in on what’s a very varied collection of great music. PH

NO AGE

Nouns, Sub Pop A duo from LA for Sonic Youth fans and those who like their rock to be semi-experimental and mostly designed for the head. Of course this new record sounds like it was recorded in a toilet, but it’s a good romp. There’s a decent riff on track three that ironically ends up being the LP’s downfall. Come the end you’re screaming for something else for your gut and cock. PH

PUERTO MUERTO I Was A Swallow, Fire

Puerto Muerto are finally over their obsession with writing imaginary ‘punk folk’ scores for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. New album, their fourth, sees this odd couple step up the intimacy, scale and depth. Super pure and wondrous music that’s almost impossible to tire of listening to. A highly underrated and special band gone extra gggggothic. PH

SANTOGOLD

Santogold, Atlantic Santogold’s bangin’ debut single, ‘Creator’, suggested she was ripe to become some kind of MIA-female-SpankRock hybrid. Her debut album finds her dilly-dallying in a far broader prism of sounds – reggae, rock, soul, pop – with varied results. Can’t blame a girl for trying, but you can hate a girl for trying too hard. As it stands, ‘Creator’ remains her greatest achievement so far. PH

VETIVER

Thing Of The Past, Fat Cat Everyone’s doing cover albums at the moment and here’s one to go with Cat Power’s latest. It’s always 1969 in Vetiver’s world and so it proves again. Hawkwind, Ian Matthews, Loudon Wainwright III and others less wellknown get the gently, gently California folk treatment here with impressive results. Sweet album, cut cleaner than their usual stuff and just in time for summer. PH

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MOVIES

GONE BABY GONE Director: Ben Affleck

Hands up everybody who expected Ben Affleck to reinvent himself as a sensitive and astute director with his debut film? Yeah, thought not. But he has, thanks to Gone Baby Gone, a devastating account of a child abduction that has both moral clarity and a shocking resonance in light of Britain’s ongoing Madeleine McCann debacle.

Well scripted, tightly plotted and finely performed, this is a class act all the way through to its blockbuster final scenes. MATT BOCHENSKI

TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE Director: Alex Gibney

So there you are, driving your cab in Afghanistan, when a squad of local militiamen hand you over to the Americans on trumped-up charges, and five days later you’ve been beaten to death in your cell. That was the fate of Dilawar, and it’s the starting point for Alex Gibney’s exposé of torture tactics in America’s War on Terror. With exhaustive exposition allied to a fine sense of moral outrage, this is another important addition to the canon of modern war docs. MB

KILLER OF SHEEP

Director: Charles Burnett Charles Burnett’s 1977 neorealist-inspired tale of a black slaughterhouse worker drifting through his own ‘private hell’ represents the birth of socially conscious black filmmaking in America. Shot entirely on location in LA, at weekends, featuring a cast of friends and family, Burnett’s film is an oblique portrait, perhaps more a tone poem, of a time and place in the hinterlands of America’s struggle for civil rights. MB

THE EDGE OF LOVE

Director: John Maybury

Don’t think of this as a Keira Knightley film. Because it’s not. Or a Sienna Miller film. Because it’s not that either. Think of it as former avant-garde legend John Maybury’s take on the myth of bohemia, as examined through the wartime life of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. With a finely honed sense of fin-de-siècle decadence, Maybury examines Thomas’s scabrous life with his two lovers (one of whom was married), holed up in a tiny Welsh village. Featuring gorgeous photography layered with memory and refraction, The Edge of Love represents its female leads’ best work. MB

THE VISITOR

Director: Tom McCarthy If ever there was an unsung hero of American filmmaking, Tom McCarthy is it. Combining acting gigs in the likes of Syriana with a striking directorial debut in The Station Agent, he now returns with an equally humane and gorgeously composed follow up, The Visitor. Channelling post-9/11 angst through the tale of a stuffy professor who falls in love with the mother of an illegal immigrant squatting in his NYC flat, it’s a powerful metaphor for how all of us need to open our eyes and stop building walls. Sounds trite? Yeah, well, it’s not. It’s amazing. MB

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S D V D

THE BAND’S VISIT Director: Eran Kolirin

Overlooked as Israel’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars – ostensibly because too much of the dialogue is in English, but more probably because of its deeply humanist approach to the Middle East crisis – The Band’s Visit is a warm-hearted comedy about the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra’s disastrous visit to Israel to play a goodwill concert. Stranded in a border town and at first treated with suspicion by the locals, these Arab interlopers nevertheless effect a delicate rapprochement over the course of one long night. Gorgeous, subtle and generous in its study of the ties that bind, The Band’s Visit is a richly rewarding film. MATT BOCHENSKI

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

In its construction of a new cinematic vocabulary, PT Anderson’s film has been compared to Citizen Kane, and indeed Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, has more than a whiff of Charles Foster: unassailable, unknowable, monolithic, a monster from the Before Times resurrected.

In tandem with Anderson’s own intricate craftsmanship, Day-Lewis raises There Will Be Blood out of the landscape like a colossus – awe inspiring, mesmerising and unforgettable. MB

WATER LILIES

Director: Céline Sciamma

The story of three young friends coming to terms with love and desire against the backdrop of a swimming club in a Parisian suburb might not sound like fertile dramatic territory, but Céline Sciamma imbues it with rare insight, sensitively handling the sexual maturity of teenage girls without patronising the pain of their awakening. The underwater scenes add an air of dislocation to this urban landscape, suggesting a glimpse into a forbidden and alien world. Add Sciamma to the dog-eared list marked ‘Ones To Watch’. MB

THE TERRENCE DAVIES TRILOGY Director: Terrence Davies

There are many reasons to be embarrassed about the British film industry but surely the most toe-curling reason of all is the fact that Terrence Davies struggles to make films in this country. The director of Distant Voices and Still Lives, Davies is a man whose pain, heartbreak, hope and sorrow have led to the kind of truth and beauty that would have caused an artistic revolution if we weren’t all too damn busy mistaking Lock Stock for cinema. So do the right thing: get out there, get discovering. MB

RAMBO

Director: Sylvester Stallone

So let’s see: you live in a country whose military junta have just led a brutal crackdown, imprisoning monks and torturing political opponents. And you’ve got 100,000 bloated corpses lying in flooded fields, just lying there, unburied.

Tell you what you don’t need: you don’t need fucking Sly Stallone returning as Rambo, setting a film in your country, reducing your historical circumstances to good guys versus bad guys, then blowing the shit out of your countrymen in an orgy of violence. The Burmese don’t deserve that – and neither do we. MB

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GAMES

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV ***** Xbox 360, PS3

The seminal crime series has finally arrived on nextgen. Action takes place in Liberty City – a faithful recreation of the five boroughs of New York – and features an Eastern European immigrant, Nico Bellic, as the main underworld protagonist. No longer following the classic gangster tale of rags to riches, Nico simply has to survive the attention of blackmailing cops, his cousin’s less-than-friendly associates and his own shadowy past.

Liberty City itself is gigantic. Every block is smothered in painstakingly etched-out detail and littered with an array of characters smoking, eating and bitching about their lives. Everything from being chased by the police to disposing of petty crooks has been approached with a methodical intelligence that strikes a near-perfect balance of realism and playability; the combat system is intuitive and precise and the cars, bikes and trucks you drive feel reassuringly weighty. A nifty new addition is the use of a mobile phone and internet cafe (the brilliantly named Tw@!) with which you can summon Rastafarian arms dealers and hotshot lawyers alike.

With distinctly non-linear gameplay and often over-lapping missions, it’s as if you’re merely leading Nico around his daily business in this living metropolis.

If this is the future of gaming, should we be scared?

Perhaps. Impressed? Definitely. ED ANDREWS

LEGO INDIANA JONES ***

Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, DS, PSP

While the geriatric Harrison Ford is resurrected for the latest film instalment, us gamers are spared such a sight as Dr Jones has gone all Lego. Despite not being the most taxing gameplay, all the whip-cracking, boulder-dodging and goodie-hording gives it enough charm to keep you indoors on those hot summer days.

Just keep Indy away from those snakes! ED A

HAZE **** PS3

Playing a mercenary contracted to kill communists or the like in South America, you go a bit mental and turn the war back on the man! This first-person shooter adds psychotropic drugs into the mix letting you spike your enemies into a frenzied overdose and turn them into suicidal psychos (drugs, eh?!). Relying heavily on such tactics along with awesome firepower and some fancy melee combat, killing crackheads has never been so much fun.

But remember, kids, just say no! ED A

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GifYc\d1 K_\ :Xc`]fie`X :fe[fi `j ^f`e^ \ok`eZk% Jfclk`fe1 K_\ :Xc`]fie`X :fe[fi j_flc[ _Xm\ dfi\ j\o% This may strike the rest of the animal kingdom as a no-brainer, but it’s going to take a little more than encouraged fornication to save endangered species from the brink of extinction. While the problems facing our planet are great, the power we hold as humans to reverse them is even more so.

Part of the solution is for companies to use their financial clout to protect our natural resources. 1% For The Planet is a growing alliance of businesses around the world that become part of the solution by pledging

one percent of their sales to nonprofit organizations that support the environment.

Becoming a member of 1% For The Planet promises that your company is making a positive impact on the planet where we do business. Supporting members of 1% means that the purchases you make are changing the world we live in. For a complete list of member-companies you can support, or to find out more about how your company can keep Earth in business, visit onepercentfortheplanet.org.

S K BOO THE BOOK OF SURFING

Michael Fordham, Bantam Press

Original things, that’s what it’s all about, right? Enter writer and journalist Michael Fordham, who has punched through the thin layer of profit-driven pastiche to come up with something radically new: a book about surfing culture for the everyday man. So far so seen it before, but Fordham does it differently.

For starters, the book’s broken down into six discrete sections – ‘The Surfing Planet’, ‘The Ride’, ‘The Vision’, ‘Surf Legends’, ‘The Search’ and ‘Surf Culture’ – which allows you to dip in and out of key moments with ease, making for an oblique, fun and non-linear read. For example, you can kick it with Nat Young for a solid ten minutes, deep within the legends section, then paddle back to a spread that explains the ‘perfect wave’, right before you ride on over to Australia to surf the wave-making machine that is Superbank on the Gold Coast. Cool, huh? The attractive art direction, backed by beautiful how-to illustrations and never-before-seen photos, make this back-and-forth journey a veritable pleasure. And, best of all, Fordham delivers it all with an addictively readable voice, deconstructing key historical moments in a way that’s sure to appeal to old salts and new surfers alike. VINCE MEDEIROS

DORA LIVES: THE AUTHORISED STORY OF MIKI DORA C.R. Stecyk and Drew Kampion, T. Adler Books

There are a number of books right now bearing his name, and rumours of a film epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio are doing the rounds. What Miki, who passed away in 2002, would have made of the hype is unsure, because Dora himself was a mess of dichotomies, something made all too clear in Dora Lives. Authored by influential scribes C.R. Stecyk and Drew Kampion, and illustrated with many candid portraits and action shots, the book sucks you into Dora’s contradictory life. He was a son of privilege, a dirty rebel, a Hollywood player, a petty thief and jailbird, who both revelled in and abhorred his fame. Featuring luminous interviews and convoluted articles penned by the man himself, Dora Lives is a worthy summation of one of surfing’s most iconic characters. MILES MASTERSON

28 DAY WINTER: A SNOWBOARDING NARRATIVE

Jeff Curtes, Dean Blotto Gray, Adam Moran, powerHouse Books

In August 2006, the Burton crew journeyed southward to Chile and New Zealand seeking an antidote to snowless summer days. Taking talented lensmen Curtes, Blotto and Moran along for the ride, the tribe’s antics were captured and duly documented in this beautiful photographic narrative. Crisp, glossy and suitably action-packed, it’s enough to make anyone want to head south this summer, carbonheavy airfare and all. ANDREA KURLAND

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A MEDITATION ON THE POWER OF STOKE BY

MILES MASTERSON ippie surfers will say there is something special about surfing; that surfers are all lip-synched with the song of nature, that the residue of the ocean’s cosmic energy pervades our being and makes us different to the average non-surfing Joe. That the act of surfing is like Zen, man.

But I’ve always wondered: can surfers really come close to this?

Or is surfing Zen just a state we consciously strive for but can never attain – smell but never taste? Most modern surfers are urban fringe-dwellers or at worst aqua jocks without the slightest meditative inclination anyway.

For most of us – those who can’t spend endless days in deserted tropical surf, practising yoga under the palms – even getting a wave in the packed-out, pollution-clogged line-ups of the world is hard enough, let alone attaining some sort of self-awareness and inner peace à la Gerry Lopez or Dave Rastovich.

Think about it. Your average surf session at a crowded beach is

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a supremely selfish endeavour. And by competing as frenetically as we do for waves, are we not moving away from any Zen aspirations rather than towards them? You try telling a hungry pack of urban after-work surfers that only through truly selfless altruism – placing the needs of all sentient beings above one’s own – will they find true enlightenment. They’ll probably laugh at you and snake you on the next wave.

Is most recreational and competitive surfing not really then the anti-Zen? How can it be a shortcut to a higher level when we’re out there hassling one another and jostling for position, cash and ratings points, in this one?

I guess most of us can just hope that when we go surfing, we will find a good wave among the maddening crowd, and for a fleeting moment the ocean, planet, universe and our insignificant soul becomes inexplicably intertwined.

It might not quite be a state of Zen, but perhaps feeling stoked is still good enough.