Tuesday (Texting not driving)

Text # 1
"Scarey surf by myself yesterday at W Head. Tiny wave on The Point"

Text # 2
"A good question. I don't think you would like the answer"

Text # 3
"Accident on O St gridlock. We are stuck near R. Start walking. We have not moved for 10 minutes"

Text # 4
"Gave K the mat. She says thanks and chucks ya a couple of shuckers!"

Motivation

Get out.

Get wet.

Don't get too wrecked.

Have a great weekend.

Guitar Weekend

This weekend the Vintage Amp and Guitar Show is on in our part of the island. So I'll be mooching around with my camera soaking up the vibes of those who can actually knock out a respectable cover or a tune of their own.

Fortunately, I have my old mate Tony to explain the nuances. That's him above on the road somewhere. We don't catch up enough but when we do, the decades seem to evaporate as our conversation swings from tube amps to catching tadpoles together in Year 2 to new music worth mentioning to unmentionable (here), yet hilarious adventures from the road or beach or campsite. Mate, this note's for you.

3rd fro from the sun

What better way to start guitar week than with some surf music? This morning's blog infused with the innovative spirit of James Marshall Hendrix and his 1967 tune "3rd Stone from the Sun".

"and you'll never hear surf music again"

from "3rd  Stone from the Sun"  by Jimi Hendrix 1967

Brine Brothers

Monogoofy x Bush

Sometimes the vastly different images (both in physical location and point in time) I want to use for making multiple exposures make it impossible to do in camera. While in camera work is a lot of fun (hoping for the best or being surprised by an unexpected crazy looking result), modern software enables anybody with imagination to take two (or more) old analogue transparencies and layer them together to generate a new image. This one called - "Thinking about surfing while doing the gardening."

Retro Bowl

January 1978 - a couple of Aussie teenagers lean over the railing at Huntington Beach Pier. One of them is shooting the surfing action with a Fufica ST801 manual focus 35mm camera, a roll of Kodachrome 64 film inside and a Hanimex 28mm wide angle lens on the outside. Three decades later one of the exposures finds its way into a coffee table book called Switchfoot II. This is it.

This post is for Mike Moir - one of the best shooters from the analogue era. Your legendary images of the OC continue to inspire.

Retro Left

Retro wetsuit. Retro board. No leggie. Left. Uncrowded (maybe). Cleanish. Morning light. Has to be Tallows Beach around the corner from the Byron Bay LIghthouse up the road from Casa Greenough.

Or is it the north side of Huntington Beach Pier on a winter afternoon in 1978?

530am

Brinetopia Autumn 2009

530 am Eastern Standard Time, woke up from a dream about my workplace with a few lines from Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row playing in my head. There’s over a 100 lines of verse in that 11 minute beast first found on his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. The one's that were stuck in a loop between my ears were:

“you would not think to look at him

but he was famous a long time ago”

L-R Simon Anderson, Joe Larkin and Peter Townend Noosa 2010

As I walk out onto the back deck a few kookaburras start laughing from under a blanket of pre-dawn clouds skidding from west to east as fruit bats fly in the opposite direction. What does it mean? Portents of rain? Earthquake? Crisp offshores? 

Noosa Autumn 2010

First time I saw Dylan (the Zimmerman) live, I was a teenager with a few rolls of Kodachrome at a place now demolished before I acquired a few stories of my own and a ton of adult responsibility.

Huntington Winter 1978

I go to the kitchen computer that doubles as my darkroom these days and hunt down Desolation Row on iToons. There's a dull roar in the distance. Peak "hour" has already started as I start making my lunch totake on the bus. There's Bob hiding on the hard drive in between Department of Youth by Alice Cooper  (never seen him) and Devil Got My Woman, an old Skip James blues cover by Bonnie Rait who supported Dylan the second time I saw him with GfG and Tony at the no-cameas-allowed-venue.  

Brinetopia 1977

Headphones on. Family's still asleep. Responsibility is at least one album and a commute away as Bob sings me a surrealistic tale of carnies, crazies and clowns and those lines that could apply equally to ageing shapers.

“you would not think to look at him

but he was famous a long time ago”

Bob Dylan Desolation Row 1965

Swell's Back

The surf is up 

as my Uncle would say. 

Jump off The Pier.

Jump off the rocks at the end of The Point. 

Jump off the back of a mate's boat

.

But bring a strong board - that custom one, 

the one made with love 

and care by the local legend shaper, 

(ie not one mass produced 

in a third world factory).

Kin Kin x Tiggy

Happy birthday to my awesome sister Tiggy.

Above, on the road between Tiggy's farm and Noosa.

Who said there were no logs at Noosa in the 1980's?

Larkin on left. Shane on right.

A lazy five at the HB Pier.

The birthday girl at Kirra,
shot by Hughie back in the 1960's.

I notice you have ditched the cap now sis!

International Goofy Week

I christen this week, International Goofy Week in honour of my goofy mate, Gazza who shouted the bar all night on the weekend to celebrate a big birthday. Thanks Champ!

One of our floorless (and flawless) camping surfari's when it was OK to drill a hole in your fin to attach a rubber rope. My pintail flyer on the far left. Gaz's orange Jim Pollard adjacent to the foam esky. Classy!

One night we were cruising around Mooloolaba being teenagers and nothing to do during the iron fisted reign of the Bjelkie-Petersen regime, checking out the surf shops, when we saw the keys to Jim Pollard's surf shop still in the door. Of course we rang him up and waited until he picked them up. Our reward, a poster each. I think mine was a crystalline backlit Pipeline. Whatever happened to Jim???

Sex Pistols x Ken Kesey

It's not all hippie music (Ash!) and blues here in the Brinecave. Now and then some old skool punk kicks our ear drums with it's Anti-Everything, do-it-yourself, no-talent-required arrogance. And who better to promote the demise of bland, safe, radio-friendly music and Prog Rock then the Sex Pistols and the their classic 12" vinyl single of 1977 Pretty Vacant.

Buses and music. (It's part of my daily ritual on the 333 to Brineville and back.) And remember the white punk tees with the high contrast monochromatic buses with the destinations "Boredom" and "Nowhere"? Haven't we seen them somewhere before? Hint: Legend authors Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady and Tom Wolfe?

A couple of Sex Pistols era Californian punks, gouging Huntington winter 1978.

Ken Kesey had a 1939 International Harvester school bus with the destination "Further", which he remodeled inside and out for a psychedelic excursion across the country with his Merry Pranksters on board. Beat legend Neal Cassady (featured in Jack Keouac's novel On the Road) was the driver of the famous bus on its original trip to New York for the publication of Kesey's new book, Sometimes a Great Notion. 

Other Further trips included an anti-Vietnam war rally in 1966 and Woodstock in 1969 (without Kesey). Check out the adventures of the Merry Pranksters on Further in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. Oh and if you don't like punk music, try The Who's 1968 hit Magic Bus.

GfG and I rode our own magic bus. Destination "Honolulu.

Captain Logan's Californian Dream

Here are a couple of images for my MO Bro Team Captain Mr Logan, goofy footer from the western hills and organiser of MOvember fund raisers. A little wet run through the Huntington Pier and below a dry run in a big car through middle California.

Remembering to Movember

Look closely at these two 70's surfers and you'll note that they are both natural footers - one cranking a backhand bottom turn at Huntington Pier and one jamming on a 12 string. Look a lot closer and you'll notice they're sporting a "mo" or moustache.

This month is MOvember in Brineland and many blokes like myself and Goofyfoot Stephen will be adopting the 70's look and growing the "mo" to raise money for prostate cancer research and depression - two largely taboo subjects among the male surfing community. So get with the "mo" and raise some dough or donate on line.

MOVEMBER web is at:  http://au.movember.com/mospace/114215/

Slide Night

Huntington Beach pier. No auto focus. No motor drive. No bayonet mount. No tripod. Basically a recipe for visual disaster. Luckily I had my good friend Mr Kodachrome inside the little black Fujica ST801 - my first camera with auto exposure.

This one was a favourite when we ran slide nights for surfer friends - especially the goofies. A magazine page or a blog screen just  doesn't do this image justice. It's just not the same as sitting with a group of surfers looking at a projected transparency that's 10 foot across!

Winter 1978

One California Day . . . Last Millenium

Huntington Beach Pier, late afternoon, late winter, early in my adventures with celluloid. Kodachrome slide film in a manual everything type camera.

Winter 1978