Byron bay surf festival

[el rancho]

anybody watch the new short ryan burch indo clip?

his experiments and time logged in indo is paying off big time, really impressive stuff in some deceivingly sketchy looking big long lefts

[steve shearer]

thats the shitt right now.

Saw Ryan at the Byron Surf festival last year, didn't seem him this year.

[steve shearer]

Well fcuk me ... and I thought it was Alby Falzon's little gem MOTE that started it all, way back in 1971.

There's plenty to say about the influence of that film. God, what a topic.

I think the big diff is that MOTE moreorless captured the zeitgeist of Australian surfing, overlaid of course with Alby's loving vision of what could be and some of the more unsavoury elements airbrushed out of the frame.

Whereas Litmus couldn't have been more at odds and contrary to the prevailing surf culture at the time: the height of Slater, commercialism, a surf industry rampant, boards that didn't suit, a media that was in thrall to base commercial realities etc etc.

It was a truly brave and revolutionary move for Kidman to offer a total and convincing counterpoint to that.

Litmus was the great correction.

[crabmeat thompson]

birch had bought a few boards to my shaper when I was last there. His boards are something else, seems like a nice guy too.

got a link to his indo stuff el rancho?

[el rancho]

thats the shitt right now.

Saw Ryan at the Byron Surf festival last year, didn't seem him this year.

i didn't rate his earlier asymms, didn't seem to go as well as a standard thruster, but they're looking good now. he shapes like a couple of hundred a year, all for personal testing.

birch had bought a few boards to my shaper when I was last there. His boards are something else, seems like a nice guy too.

got a link to his indo stuff el rancho?

http://www.surfingmagazine.com/video/ry ... nesia-525/

[Cranked]

Might be this one http://www.driftsurfing.eu/index.php/archives/15093. If not its good anyway

[Nick Carroll]

Yeah well I think what changed was the demographics. Culture just gets dragged along in its wake. The people who watched Morning of the Earth when it came out in 1972 took it on board in a different way than did the people who watched Litmus and all its follow-ups in the late 1990s and everything played out differently for them. Like I was one of the kids who watched Alby's movie at the very start of my surfing life and it just made me want to do new shit, there wasn't any nostalgia wrapped up in it. I didn't really know at the time what I was watching to be honest, it just went straight in.

and shearer I don't really think that I have to engage the harsh critic in me on sight at every turn. Like what can I know really about Byron Bay on the basis of a hurried 24 hour visit? Not enough to pass a range of acute judgements, hey. I mean if that's one thing writing TC taught me - that you're barely even qualified to judge your own life much less others' - then it's a good thing I reckon.

I would hesitate to erect a gravestone on the typical high performance short surfboard btw, oddly enough it is still the highest selling type of board in Australia today, one of those awkward facts that defy cultural criticism really.

[steve shearer]

I would hesitate to erect a gravestone on the typical high performance short surfboard btw, oddly enough it is still the highest selling type of board in Australia today, one of those awkward facts that defy cultural criticism really.

no doubt, but what does that phrase: "typical high performance short surfboard" even mean now?

It's as much a Tomo Vanguard as a DHD pointy nose anorexic Fanning Model -and even that has been heavily modified to suit the trend away from "pure performance".

On Tomo: I've seen his entire evolution since he was a Kid.

If it wasn't for Litmus making Fishes acceptable, and then the whole re-emergence of that San Diego phenomena via Richard Kenvin and his aborted HydroDynamic project Tomo would still be riding standard thrusters.
Tomo is a direct consequence of the Litmus correction and his emergence as a designer of note has been huge. It's blown away all the stereotypes and false dichotomies between Retro and Performance.

[Nick Carroll]

well I bet I'm the only cnut on here who actually has a Tomo quiver

and I also bet that Tomo would not be making Vanguards and Evos etc if he wasn't fundamentally a modern super high performance style of surfer, drawing directly from the pool of skill and technique and experience developed by all the cadre of high level ripping Australian surfers of the past 40 years. Who I tell ya what didn't develop modern style on a Fish.

I've got to say though that the more I see of things like board design etc I feel as if it's a very tangled web and not easily devolved to direct lines from one thing to another.

But my own nature is to be drawn to fresh things, new ways of seeing boards and new ways of riding them. I can't do airs other than lame chop-hops coming out of barrels, but I am fascinated by kids who are really good at air moves and love watching them surf from the water where you can see and feel the dynamics better. And I'm much more enlivened by riding things like Evos or MC's concaves or even one of the newer breed of high performance boards, the slightly cut down yet v refined 5'7" x 183/4" x 2 and whatever" little super craft that seem to be arising now from the CAD work of recent times, than by anything trying to hark back to clunky early 70s designs.

S'pose age has caused me to accept that trend more though, rather than just mocking it every chance I get. I'm gonna spend the next 20 years mocking old kooks.

[Nick Carroll]

and oh yeah I think it was much more Tom Curren making Fishes acceptable with his sessions at Bawa and JBay, not Litmus.

[steve shearer]

well I bet I'm the only cnut on here who actually has a Tomo quiver

and I also bet that Tomo would not be making Vanguards and Evos etc if he wasn't fundamentally a modern super high performance style of surfer, drawing directly from the pool of skill and technique and experience developed by all the cadre of high level ripping Australian surfers of the past 40 years. Who I tell ya what didn't develop modern style on a Fish.

It's a chicken and egg argument for sure....but I was there the day Kenvin showed up and handed Dan a San Diego fish. Straight away it transformed his surfing and lines ......both good and bad. A fish has trim, a modern thruster does not. You could see that as plain as balls on a dog at a Pointbreak like the Ox.
He developed the Modern Planing Hulls as he took the basic design principles of those boards and bought them into the modern era.

So I guess the point is not going back and making clunky 70's remakes, which to me is just pure hipster fashion with an attendant price premium attached, but the incorporation of design tangents and concepts that might have been waylaid or forgotten in that headlong rush, energised by Professionalism in Surfing in the late 70/80's which required performance of a certain ilk.

A lot was gained, but a lot was also lost, especially in the early/mid nineties period when anorexic surfboards cruelled the surfing experience for a generation of recreational surfers worldwide.

Now look at Tomo and what Burch is doing. It's energising people. The lines are fresh.

Of course Curren's sessions at Bawa were groundbreaking. He took new lines on different equipment in real waves. It was also the first time the mainstream surf media took notice.

[Beanpole]

and oh yeah I think it was much more Tom Curren making Fishes acceptable with his sessions at Bawa and JBay, not Litmus.

Agreed on that for sure.

Re: MOTE. It was a bit more confusing if you saw it on the Gold Coast. It elevated MP into the next level of surf star and anyone who paddled out at Kirra was well aware that it wasn't all peace and love...or country soul for that matter.

[el rancho]

Get that outta here sucka

[Beanpole]

Does that mean we know heaps of stuff about heaps of stuff?