o:::

pulled up to queens for dawn patrol today, all stoked about the morning swell...
but quickly realized i wasn't the only one.


























damn jellies.

the slick

IF you've ever had trouble adjusting your LokBox fins so that they sit flush to the board, I've recently discovered the remedy to cure this. First be sure that both the fin and the fin box are free of sand, wax, your gfk tapes, whatever. Find some dish soap, eco-friendly dish soap that is, and evenly apply it to the entire surface of the plastic base of the fin. Set the fin in the box and tighten down using a flathead screwdriver that fits the screw snugly so that you don't strip it. Once it's tightened properly, grasp the fin like the grip of your burner and rock it back and forth while applying downward force. This step is crucial as it drives the fin down deeper into the box. After this step, you will see that the screw can be tightened some more. Repeat this step as needed and you're stoked.

sliding liberia

depot

dubbs J and I scooped up dp last night and hit up home depot off of Hamilton. Had to pick up some stain for the broadway bully deck I chopped up this weekend, and mouse traps (they ate my hot dog buns this week!) Home Depot will mix up to 68 custom minwax colors. Snapped this picture right next door:

Beer Department Open to Public

dpV.t

I started my blank this weekend. The template was inspired by the classic pool shape (flat tail rounded nose) and it measured up at 32" x 9.25". I felt 9.25 was just too wide for me to throw around so i decided to trim an 1/2 inch all around. Freshmode OG dp did the bulk of this work. Using his primo drafting skills, he took off an inch and evened up the template. You can see in the photos his technique: squared line down the middle then he measures every few inches to make sure its dead on ball even. Then we hit it with the band saw and it was ready to sand.

Special thanks to dp. This deck is as much his creation as it is mine for all his help. I had a chance to table sand it and finish sanding it by hand Sunday. Next up is stain/graphics.

(entire deck templated out)

(detail of the tail, dp is precise)

(nose detail mothafuckin tone one cruiser 31"x 8 1/4")

(additional detail)

(deck after we hit it with the band saw)

the accidental rebel

A terrific piece in the Times yesterday by Bk native Paul Auster. He captures the true spirit of patriotism and draws subtle parallels of the past to Nam II.



Art courtesy of Paul Hoppe

The New York Times - 23-Apr-08
The Accidental Rebel
by Paul Auster

IT was the year of years, the year of craziness, the year of fire, blood and death. I had just turned 21, and I was as crazy as everyone else.

There were half a million American soldiers in Vietnam, Martin Luther King had just been assassinated, cities were burning across America, and the world seemed headed for an apocalyptic breakdown.

Being crazy struck me as a perfectly sane response to the hand I had been dealt — the hand that all young men had been dealt in 1968. The instant I graduated from college, I would be drafted to fight in a war I despised to the depths of my being, and because I had already made up my mind to refuse to fight in that war, I knew that my future held only two options: prison or exile.

read more here //

om

happiness, clockwise from top left:
- family hammock on back lanai
- mingling wave/love at pipe
- pet dove at dawn on bedroom lanai (he lives in the eave, and now has a wifey... spring time baby baby)
- peace and lava

pretty toney vs. zooyork

my cousin pretty toney, aka toney starks, ironman, ghostface killah, teamed up with zoo york to promote his latest album the big doe rehab. These decks were limited to 500 and not sold to the public, but thanks to eBay you can score one for the low low price of a buck fifty, or at least thats what the last one sold for. You have six days to cop this:

// i wonder if under that benjo are all singles like my cousin vinny

nope, no way...

I get these ads on my gmail, advertising all types of crazy shit. Sometimes they are news headlines, maybe a recipe for spam quesadillas whatever. Today i got one for Skate Study House. These dudes read a few architectural magazines and make modern furniture and home pieces out of skateboards, then charge top dolla. Make your own opinion:

Lamp: 8 hundy

chair: 15 hundy

bittersweet

dude so my friend leendog just calls and says something like, "yo i just joined a kickball team and it's omg you'd totally love it...mccarren park good people kick ass" then i'm like dude forreal i'd totally love that. then i get to thinking, fuck i miss new york. dayaaam... you know the feeling, trying to recollect the potent moments of your most prized addiction, all crammed jungle style into one single memory. it comes in murmurs. one minute i'm splayed out in the sun listening to the north shore barrels catapult into the sand, thinking every word i can imagine that is some derivative of the word "happiness"... then i'm surfing diamond head, feeling colors swirl beneath me that i'd only seen in dreams or hallucinations, not thinking at all... just being being being // when all the sudden it pounds me in the chest- the memory of new york- and all my efforts to stop cursing get f%&$ed. but just for a blink till i see i'm inhabiting my dream of dreams of dreams of dreams

l'amour

during my last trip to the national zoo, i stopped into the "think tank"- a newer exhibit devoted to analyzing the thinking patterns of animals. there, i found great inspiration in the following quote by henry beston, a renowned animal scientist:

"we patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. and therein we err, and greatly err. for the animal shall not be measured by man. in a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. they are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time..."




above is an evocative clip from microcosmos, a documentary about the lives of small animals too often skimmed over, entitled l'amour d'escargots. enjoi-