I’m no surfer. I tried it once—on tiny waves in Hawaii, the summer of 2006, while on vacation with a porn star. Vacationing with a porn star should be a whole other blog…but a vacation in which I managed to ride a few tiny waves is what you get now. Doesn’t matter if the waves were small, surfing them was exhilarating.
Closest you can get to surfing is skating, and I skated when I was a kid. A lot…on the street, in homemade, wooden half-pipes and in Phoenix’s one skate park — Highroller. I even recall skating at this weird, temporary skatepark that was made out of blue, fiberglass pieces that were assembled and disassembled as the park moved from place to place. I’ve only suffered one broken bone in my life, and it happened in Highroller’s concrete half pipe. Which is about the time I called it quits.
It didn’t take long to realize I liked the culture of skating more than I actually liked to skate. Tony Alva and Jay Adams. The idea of trespassing into someone’s back yard to skate their empty pool (no empties where I grew up in Arizona…and if so, would I have had the balls to trespass?). Skateboarder Magazine. Punk rock. Dogtown and Badlands. Stacey Peralta and The Logan family. 360’s and hand stands. Memories of begging my dad for plywood and two-by-fours from the homes he built, so my friends and I could build our own half-pipe (he finally said yes!). Oh — and Big Brother!
All things I love to this day. And I love The Surfer’s Journal. It’s my only magazine subscription. Mainly because it’s one of those rare magazines that still feels like something. Embossed cover. Thick, toothy paper. It’s a quarterly, so it’s substantial. Gorgeous photography. Layouts I want to linger over. Flipping through an issue of Surfer’s Journal reminds me of why I love books and printed matter in the first place: the experience of the object. It’s very tangible…which, to me, is a thing.
The writing’s good, too. Lifestyle stories, mainly. Beautiful photography. When I read TSJ, it makes me want to surf.
In fact, in my next life I shall surf.
