A short and fairly meaningless piece of criticism........

[crooked]

I enjoyed Nicks story- thanks to steve for stirring the pot

[marcus]

surf magazines are currently on an improvement cycle. But what the hell. Most of you, so convinced of yourselves about their supposedly parlous and worthless state, will never read 'em.

I would like to buy them Nick, I like reading magasines for the articles just like the ones you have placed here, but the magasines have treated the surfing masses as fools.
If i could pay to read just the good bits, without all the wankery that comes in a surf magasine, i would.
My opinion is they really should stop treating wave riding readers as teenage pro wannabees.
Reading your stories makes me feel i have missed out on something, how many other gems have i missed by scoffing at a surfing magasine on the shelf?

Perhaps surfing magasines could employ a system of purchasing online credit, and you only pay for the articles you want to read. and dismiss the ones like the board buyers guides, asp rundowns etc.

I used to love reading that little section called "surfers dreams" in one of the yank mags.

[steve shearer]

In the not too distant future, and believe me there are some heavy hitters in the media industry staking alot of money on this: websites will have pay-walls (OK IT geeks maybe I have used the wrong term) and a system of micro payments will be used to deliver content tailored to an individuals tastes.
So a piece from Carroll might be worth 50cents, a piece from Peely would be worth ...ummm....actually he'd probably offer a week at his resort if you read his latest.
And so on and so forth.
I just hope Carroll hasn't damaged his earning potential in this grand new marketplace of ideas and surf writing by giving it away for free.

[daryl]

^ that's called marketing?

[oldman]

I just hope Carroll hasn't damaged his earning potential in this grand new marketplace of ideas and surf writing by giving it away for free.

That's how they get you in Steve!

mmmwwwhhahhahhahahhhahhahhahha

[Davros]

Tracks have been including "Back Tracks"

[alakaboo]

In the not too distant future, and believe me there are some heavy hitters in the media industry staking alot of money on this: websites will have pay-walls (OK IT geeks maybe I have used the wrong term) and a system of micro payments will be used to deliver content tailored to an individuals tastes.

that sounds ridiculous!
surely there's some way we could keep the costs down? maybe we could sell advertising space, fair few of the journos seem to be bald, and the rest are probably sporting waxed chests...

[Nick Carroll]

I just hope Carroll hasn't damaged his earning potential in this grand new marketplace of ideas and surf writing by giving it away for free.

Oh don't worry...I am a bottomless pit full of rubbish like the stuff you all just read.

My main problem is remembering it later.

[jimmy]

I just hope Carroll hasn't damaged his earning potential in this grand new marketplace of ideas and surf writing by giving it away for free.

Oh don't worry...I am a bottomless pit full of rubbish like the stuff you all just read.

My main problem is remembering it later.

Nick do you remember writing piece for Tracks (i think) back in the 80's about the "Bad Surf Blues"? I need to read it again cause I'm in one of those ruts and consequently drink too much beer and posting stupid shit on here!

[PeepeelaPew]

...

[Nick Carroll]

Nick do you remember writing piece for Tracks (i think) back in the 80's about the "Bad Surf Blues"? I need to read it again cause I'm in one of those ruts and consequently drink too much beer and posting stupid shit on here!

Yes! About when you're surfing like shit and can't seem to do anything about it.

Pretty much all you CAN do is keep surfing and trust that in the effort, something changes. I think in that article it was something external that changed -- change of seasons at the end of a long dull winter. Lightened the heart and enlivened the imagination.

[offshore1]

sort of like when a single bloke is having a particularly bad run of outs with the ladies. Fucking a fat ugly chick, breaks the drought.

that's it! that's it in a nutshell dino! the exact image nick was going for.
elegant prose is elegant prose, no matter who you are.

[Skipper]

sort of like when a single bloke is having a particularly bad run of outs with the ladies. Fucking a fat ugly chick, breaks the drought.

damn Dino , you go all intelectual on us again.

Just as I was winding up a spray on the spurious post modern notion of the death and subsequent rebirth of the author that Nick alludes to. Citing my view that the furniture/existentialist model of understanding as a more apt exegisis on the eternal dilema that plagues all who pursue this beatiful and pointless activity we call surfing.

[ajohnsen]

You know, on one hand, it's kind of a shame that Nick felt he had to justify himself by posting his writing but, on the other hand, I got to read 'em. Nice work. I stopped buying surfing mags in the 80s. Primarily due to the lack of Nick's kind of stuff.

I do remember, however, one great line from Surfing World, '74 I think: Surfers performing ballets of balance upon thin fibreglass slabs. I've forgotten a lot in my time but, for some reason, that sticks like sh1t to a blanket.

[Nick Carroll]

^^^Well a, that's exactly my point.

You say you stopped buying surf magazines in the 80s because of a lack of this sort of journalism. Yet the pieces I dropped into this thread all appeared in surf magazines in the past five years -- at a time when most older judges of surf magazines would say the quality of the product had gone dramatically DOWNHILL from the 1980s.

I used my pieces to make the point 'cause I have easy-to-access electronic copies of 'em. And they're only a fairly small percentage of the pieces I've contributed on my own to the mags in the past decade. If you racked up what Tim Baker, Evan Slater, Nathan Myers, Steve Barilotti, Sean Doherty, Kidman, DC Green, Jimmy O'Keefe and numerous others have written for the mags in the same period -- to say nothing of the more recent crop of writers like Jed Smith and Stuey Cornuelle, or Fred Pawle, who might work for the Oz but is still a surf journalist whether he likes it or not -- then you'd have a mass of work that puts my own input in the shade.

You've got a line in your head from a SW in '74. Imagine how many other memorable things have appeared in the interim?

[Beanpole]

Looks like there could be a market for a compilation out there.
Can you make it in large print for the mature market

[ajohnsen]

I don't doubt you for a second. However, I find it hard to justify the cost of a surf mag when the stuff that interests me makes up such a small percentage of the mag.

I like looking at pics of waves - who doesn't - but I've got access to them online.

Board reviews are a bit interesting, but I like to talk to a shaper rather than rely on reviews.

Wettie reviews? Fcuk, I don't need to read a review about an E-Bomb or Fireskin or what have you to know that if I spend several hundred bucks I'm better off than the combination of a long john with a 1000mm l/s vest over the top and half a jar of Vaso under each armpit and still come out looking like I've been through a meat grinder.

Competition results and the circuit? Never really done it for me. When I was a teenager I loved following my favourites - Mike Purpus, Peter Townend, Reno, MR - but, these days, I don't know a Bede from a Taj.

Any kind of deeper cultural insight is interesting - as is the case in everything from crop rotation in the West Honduras to the reason that toddlers' clothes have pockets - but it's not on my radar because I'm no longer engaging with the medium that delivers it - magazines. What I don't know about toddler's clothes could fit on a pin.

There's also a lot of deeply cynical writing that is being passed off as journalism - Stab comes to mind. It's a one-trick pony that's funny for a minute but, ultimately, has the shelf life of an oyster in Oodnadatta. Mid-summer. In a heat wave. But hell, that's just my opinion.

[Roy_Stewart]

Surfing magazine editors are always limp wristed brown nosing glad handers of the first order. . . if they were not they wouldn't get within a mile of the job.

They are not journalists at all they are just commercial copy writers, as a breed they also have a tendency to tell lies.

The world would be a better place if everyone declined to buy surfing magazines, and their editors did something productive instead.


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