Bustin' Down the Door is now available on netflix instant. We watched it last night.

^one of the best surfing movies ever made. I organized a screening for it at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica last summer and I got to do a Q&A with Shaun Tomson and Peter Townend after the film. Legends!
We go up onstage and I say "So Shaun... Edddie Rothman's a real nice guy huh?"

He just started laughing and told me that when he asked Eddie to be interviewed there was a long time before he got back to him. And when he did finally call him, he said "Shaun, I know why you want to put me in your film. Its because you need a villain." But apparently everything is cool between the two of them.

Peter Townend is the best ambassador for surfing that there is. He's so open and friendly and eager to talk about the sport. He knows everyone.

Worst Wipeouts - The Eddie - Waimea - Backed by Freedom Hawk tuneage! nothin like shameless promotion...enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6AzA4SvTY

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6AzA4SvTY&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Get the new album... out now!
http://www.smallstone.com/albuminfo.php?album=113

Hey...you Virginians surf?
"Hollow Caverns" has to be one of the best surf tunes I've heard in ages. If it's not, it translates pretty damn well.

Going to rip a huge binger, snap open an IPA or 3 and fire up the Netflix.
The wifey is out and I have a date with "Bustin down the Door"...

there's only one "the wedge" as far as I know. I grew up near there. Oh yeah, that looks real fun to be surfing at that crazy spot with that gnarly break and all those fuckin people.

We sure do - Outer Banks that is... our family lives in Oceanside and Costa Rica so we get there regularly..

Check out North Swell on the new one... more of an aggro surf stoner song... btw - the Hollow Caverns 2005 demo used to have "2 ft. overhead" instead of the version you have "6 ft. overhead"

Caveman, I just checked out your youtube channel, saw some Outer Banks footage with some Freedom Hawk.
Is there a video of some surfing somewhere with the North Swell aggro stoner surf song?
I love aggro stoner surf.
Ryno, after watching Bustin Down the Door the other night after my wife went to sleep I watched it again the next night with her and she loved it too.
Horns, great story of the movie screening in LA. Those guys must have some great stories.
I loved how the ending of Bustin Down the Door was just like Big Wednesday, with the 3 friends meeting up in their older age to go ride some waves together. Ian C even did some of the stunt riding in BW I believe.

I'll stick to the things I know. last thing I need is more psycho stalkers popping up when I don't know, they're all the same. hope they get ate by a shark that's how bad I hate psychos. nothing new.

It was no Wedge, but Manhattan Beach pier had a great face on it when the tide was reaching low yesterday afternoon. Fried my face because I wouldn't get out, best waves of this summer for me. I'm so used to my remote cove at Haggerty's that I'd forgotten what it's like to be a performer to all the looky-loos on the pier.

Little 9 year old blondie right next to me was solo and tearing it up, getting the closest of anyone to the pier pilings (lined with sharp mussels everywhere) while her parents watched from the shore, fully dressed, so they could never swim after her. I can't think that I've ever seen anything like that before, she didn't even have flippers or a handheld device, which is also very rare. She had no fear and was one of those kids who makes you think that humans are really built to be amphibious.

Fuck, does it feel good to get past some of my leg/back/hip pain this year and be able to bike 10 miles, bodysurf for hours, then bike 10 miles back in the heat (and pass out). I was starting to really feel old drinking & toking with no endurance sports to burn off the toxins. Plus, that beach path has thousands of women in bikinis, every ethnicity and body type on display in a rather hilarious mix of white beach culture and the people fleeing the heat from inland. I watched some pro women train with their coach for about 15 minutes in Hermosa, incredible bodies and they hit harder than 99% of the men. Sometimes, LA is actually worth the rest of the shit.

Sounds like a stoke, Stickman! The youngsters are incredible in the surf, when my local shorebreak goes off, there will be literally 30-50 kids from 10-18 cracking 3 second tubes on nasty closeout dumpers and will do it all day just bodysurfing or on boogers. A few oldfarts will go out, but I can only deal with being smacked around like that for half an hour or so!

I'd like to surf in SoCal some day, but I can imagine it's just like Sydney, but more crowded. At Manly and Bondi, they actually have signs up explaining the rules so the backpackers don't get harrassed/smacked when they drop in on people. The signs are actually wrong though, and cause more trouble than they prevent.

If there's more than 2 or 3 people on my little point, I don't take the board out, for whatever reason, I'm okay bodysurfing with a crowd, but on the board, I hate surfing near people. Probably embarrasment at being a fat old kook. I remember laughing at guys like me!

Big south swell out there right now. I'm sure horns is on it. It looked like a flea circus at Swami's yesterday afternoon with beautiful afternoon overhead sets rolling in one after the other.

But more importantly, check out what was going on at Teahupoo earlier in the week. It was too heavy for competition but it didn't stop the tow-in guys from getting some...

http://www.grindtv.com/surf/video/historic_surfing_in_tahiti/

Holy giant shitballs.

And here's the same wave during the competition in super slow-mo...

Its the swell of the year rolling in right now. I'm trying to muster up the gumption to go out....

Ugh. worked for two days straight before last nights 8 hours of sleep and I'm not looking forward to the hellacious beating I'm going to take on the inside this morning.

san diego yesterday:





story:
http://www.760kfmb.com/story/15376659/u ... -coastline

last time I surfed was awesome, I had my fun so then I went and sat on the beach and played my guitar, I'll remember how fun it was. figured I'd watch some other surfers but I got so into my guitar than i just watched my fretboard.

Lake Erie bro

Crazy out today, wish I had more energy and I would have hit a 3rd spot. I cruised Redondo and it was a huge swell, but a crappy shape. I picked a break and went out anyway because I wanted to at least feel the rips the lifeguards were warning about. Caught two waves but mostly it was just bobbing and dunking. So I figured I'd hit Manhattan pier. Ha! The waves were exploding almost at the end of the pier, no swimmers or boogie boards were even allowed out! They said 6-7', but I thought bigger.

So I backtracked to Hermosa pier and more big swell with no shape. I've seen Catalina Island affect surf forever, but it was like the island was dissecting this swell and channeling it at MB pier and points north. Had some near high speed misses with the ground, but avoided anything worse than the washing machine when I finally settled at mid-Hermosa as a compromise. Fun, but I'm exhausted.

El Porto today.


The Wedge

It took me two tries to get out to the line up the sets were so big and coming in so fast, My second attempt out I got shot down to the bottom and broke my toe on the reef.




five yeas ago i did the exact same thing and broke the same toe.

Ouch. I'm not that badly off, but I'm gobbling ibuprofen and my screaming shoulder is hooked up to an electro-pulse device so that I can lift my arm up straight again (hopefully soon enough to get back out there). Some pics from yesterday around SoCal:






for any non-bodysurfers, that dude has perfect form & placement in the wave for cutting across its face. That is 99% of catching a wave w/o any assistance from floaty thingies, getting to the base of a wave as it is about to break and letting it carry you to about 2/3-3/4 up the face (although I'm one of the few that don't like flippers either). But I prefer the distance and speed runs on waves, not cutting across the face at an angle, so I drop both arms below me and splay my fingers and it hydrofoils me a bit so I can get a breath or two during my ride - more like a boogie board run.

That is literally down the street from my house. I have been out there so many times just sitting and wondering what is swimming beneath.

Seriously sketches me out a bit. I mean, I know they're out there, but I usually don't think about them being IN THE FUCKING LINE UP!

Doesn't look much like a shark to me. More like a booger or bodysurfer rolling through the shoulder. Mind you, I've never seen a shark in the break. Plenty of dolphins though, and sometimes big fish of various types. You tend to be able to make out the body shape pretty clearly. Dunno about that one.

Saw on the news today someone got attacked by a great white in SW Western Australia, and a guy got bitten at my local break a year or so ago. The local attack was seen by "a shark expert" who confirmed it was " a juvenille Great White". The dude that got bitten later confirmed that it was a 3 foot carpet shark that he'd stepped on leaving the water. Sharks are around, but not as common as shark experts!

Haven't been out for a couple of weeks, had to go and house sit for a while away from the coast, and had my entire weekend eaten up by having to shoot a found object sculpture festival my girlfriend runs, and some other commitments. It was all blown out mush anyway.

One day I'll actually get around to hitting the water at 5am before work.

It was a young great white, there's been a few other credible sightings down there. Here's what shark dude thinks:

This year, water temperatures didn't warm until later in the summer, which might account for the spate of late-summer great white sightings, said marine biology professor Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach.

I've tried to imagine what being in the water with one would feel like, but can't. They chill me just seeing their shape under a boat. Honestly, we're maybe the first generation ever that doesn't just kill sharks on sight, but we'd wipe the few left pretty quickly if we did that now. Fuck it, I'd rather go out with my leg shredded by shark teeth than by dumbfuck 17 year old driving while texting.

Jesus Christ.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/shark ... 1jsz9.html

Hey, Ryno. You been out in that bio-luminescent red tide yet? Heard SD is getting a light show at night. Can't say I love swimming in that stuff, knowing it tweaks out some marine creatures, but the docs say the red tide is no big problem for peeps to swim in.

Got a few sets in Wed and Thurs afternoons, I hit one of those lateral rips yesterday that had me 200 yards down the beach after just a few waves. I never am comfortable when I can't hold my position, so I had to hoof do the southernmost part of the curve, right before the rocks, but then I caught about 20 great waves with no rip to them at all. Such a cold September though, i wonder how long until it's too cold for me and I quit for the year (I can't get comfortable bodysurfing in a wetsuit, the buoyancy really throws me off)?

Coldest summer ever in LA? Feels that way, but I'll have to see what the numbers say. Usually I can swim until early Nov, but I'll be shocked if I can this fall.

I have only body surfed, and used body boards.

I haven't been out in the water for this red tide. I did roll down to the bluffs to snap some pics the other night. These are pretty noisy pics...low light and long exposure. And apparently my sensor is filthy, but you can definitely see the water was glowing. It was pretty cool. The pics don't do it justice.