Some new stuff I’ve been working on.
Chinese Wax Job II
art by Ed Fladung
John Esguerra’s epic, surf, art and surf-art zine Chinese Wax Job II is out at your favorite zine counter. You can order it online from Teeluxe.
CWJ2 features the art works of Patrick Griffin, Julia Chiang, Marcus Oakley, Jeff Canham, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Jay Guillmero, Stine Belden Roed, Ryan Tatar, Ty Williams, Dominick Volini, Tofer Chin, Daniel Piwowarczyk, Steve Green, Ed Fladung, Scott Massey, Paul Gallegos, Pat Conlon, Manny Pangilinan, Brock Potucek, Betsy Walton.
You can see a grip of my photos in the spread above. I’m stoked!
I really like the fine arty spreads and dig the vibe. i love the balance of different styles of art tipping towards abstraction – inspires me to get off this computer and create some paintbrush-to-paper art. I know he puts the zine out and all, but check out John Esguerra’s spread below. Totally sick! If that doesn’t inspire you, it’s been too long since you’ve been for a surf.
here are a few more wicked spreads:
art by John Esguerra
art by Scott Massey
art by Marcus Oakley
Concept Crafts
Ryan Lovelace of Point Concept Surfboards adds a chapter to the Santa Barbara shaping tradition.
Words: Chris Preston
Photos: Morgan Maassen
Art Direction: Ed Fladung
There’s a huge new feature up on Drift, Chris Preston interviews Ryan Lovelace. Morgan Maassen hook’d all the photos and I laced the Art Direction.
Ryan Lovelace makes beautiful boards, he’s been specializing lately in hull making. His hulls have been making a lot of waves, lately. Chris Preston did an amazing job on the interview, it’s in-depth, entertaining and really gets in to what Ryan is doing, and how different that is. Morgan Maassen’s photos speak for themselves (kid has skillzzzz). And well, me? I just tried to make everyone look their best, like a nice jacket and tie. The pull-quote color blobs are a derivative of Ryan’s shaper mark, that appears on all his boards.
After my hull sojourn, I spent the last two days back on the new fish. The height on yesterday’s waves required the nimble, lush curves of something of the twin keel variety. I know I say this periodically, but daaamn! if I didn’t have one of the best sessions of my life yesterday. no joke.
It was the kind of session filled with heavy drops, the ones where the lip breaks over your head on the way down and you shoot out of the forming tube, water in your eyes, only to find a big, huge face to carve on and right back at the foaming mouth. Who says you can’t thread-the-needle on a fish? Done. Inside section, walling up, crouch, to mini-tube? Boom!
Yesterday I felt like Superman. I could do anything. And that surreal feeling, knowing you’re having one of the best sessions of your life, was punctuated by one of the most beautiful sunsets, the kind I spend years trying to capture on camera.
You know when you love something so much and you just can’t let it go? It’s like when you’re a kid and you love the kitten so much, you squeeze it to death?
Today I went back out to home break, hoping for a redux. No such luck. Wave heights had dropped dramatically, the wait between sets was comical and the line-up way too crowded. I caught one wave, albeit a really nice ride with a few nice carves. But only one wave. I spent the rest of the time, jockeying for position and sliding down the backside of the smallish waves. So frustrating. Such a contrast to the day before.
Time is running, running and passing, passing and running….
If all boards are female and require a name, I’m calling her La Navaja (the razor), she’s sharp and she’s got crazy curves, you could say they’re almost French. Despite her template outline, she is definitely not a funboard.
Late last week some swell started to fill in our area and I was finally able to get the Liddle into the water. I had four days of back-to-back sessions, with Monday night’s sunset session the first of the incoming northwester that’s been pounding California all week. So basically, I had three days to get up and running on the hull, before some real waves pounded us. Riding the hull has been like learning to surf all over again, albeit with a real steep yet short learning curve.
My first session was humbling to the core, the first few drops, she literally bucked me. I spooned the nose into the water on another drop. and after I got the nack of getting up, my crude weight shifting (meant for rounder rails) would sink the bladed rails into the water and the board would slice through the backside of the wave as it went by. The lack of volume on the rails, combined with the board’s length, 7’4″, at first made the board seem really ridged.
After a few tries, I was finally able to make the drop and set the rail. People often talk about hulls having four gears. I’m pretty sure I was able to get her to at least the third gear, as I was hauling ass on a few waves, able to connect sections of my home break that are almost always un-makeable.
My skill level rose as my confidence rose and by the third session, I was starting to get the hang of the backside turn using the rail. Riding a hull, the movements are much more subtle than a normal board and instead of riding from the tail, you’re mostly using your toes and heels, to guide your weight from side to side.
The fourth session was the banger. A nice mellow swell starting to hit. Head to overhead sets. Those drops were a wholly new experience, as La Navaja has speed like I’ve never seen before, though I’m still unable to get her to really spray buckets. By this session, my legs were surer and I really felt the trim in the more walled up sections of the wave. I even got a head dip or two.
Once you get the drop and set the line, there’s a feeling to riding a hull that I can only compare to riding the nose of a longboard, except you’re not on the nose. Some people describe this as feeling as if you are surfing with the wave, as opposed to against it, like a shortboard. I definitely draw parallels to nose riding, it has a floating sensation. There is no need for pumping or trying to maintain speed, it feels as if you are in tune with the wave.
Hulls love walled up, flawless machine-like point breaks and admittedly, I’m not riding those. My home break is an a-framey Sunset Beach kinda break, but after four solid days of riding this thing, I can honestly say, I love it. I love the feeling it has and I love the newness of it all.
I’m looking forward to the next swell that should be hitting our shores this weekend. I’ll take La Navaja up to The Mexican Malibu to see if I can get her into fourth gear and to test the theory floated by the naysayers that say that hulls can’t get into barrels.
More videos here, here and here. These come from Greg Liddle’s site. I’ve been mesmerized by these hull riding videos for months now. Watching them over and over, studying the subtle movements, foot placements, rail digs and bottom turns.
Finally, they go up on the blog!
Oh and bonus trivia: for all you shufflers1, did you know that Miki Dora was a shuffler as well? now you know, Shufflers Unite!
Holy crapola it’s been a long time since I last posted. holy bad bloggerer. The last few months have been hectic. Lots of loose ends, clogging up the tubes in ol’ duders head. Let’s try to de-knot the filaments and come up with something reasonably organized. ok here goes….
Surfwise, my homie Marco (ATL Surfboards) hooked me up with a new twin keel fish and I’ve been rocking some really nice sessions with it. I surfed it for most of that giant ‘Eddie Aikau’ swell in early December. It’s ace. Our surf mosse has been on a leash-less kick lately, and my log is starting to feel the effects of being jammed into the rock headlands at my local break a few too many times. But it’s all in the name of communing with the ocean, wave and board slightly differently. You really do ride differently and almost more consciously, when not strapped to the board. I definitely observe the chest high rule though: if it’s above chest high, the leash goes back on.
Rob in the garage whipping up handplanes for xmas gifts (!)
JP at Moonlight
Rob + Maggie makin a da pizza
For the holidays, we went up to San Diego to spend Xmas with family and then on to Los Angeles, to hang with the old LA homies. Along the way I visited the surf mecca of Encinitas, stayed with Rob + Maggie and caught up with JP at Moonlight. I spent the weeks leading up to our trip jamming the internets looking for used hulls. I was all over swaylocks and spent nights on end reading through the infamous Post your Hull pictures Second Thread at last count I was on page 38. If you’re a hull/stubbie junky, this thread is a goldmine, beware it’s a total time suck.
After trolling swaylocks, craigslist and annoying the hell out of Graham with too many questions, I finally hooked up with a bloke from the OC who was unloading a 7’4″ Liddle KP in great condition for a great price. I snagged it. Yup, I’m submitting myself to the eerily lit world of hull fanatiks. We got back from LA on New Year’s Eve and since then the ocean has been dead. I haven’t even had a millichance to get the Liddle wet. So looking forward to a maiden voyage. I’d like to send a special shout-out and thank you to all the people who I talked with along the way on my adventure to acquire said hull: Ryan Lovelace, Mary Surf Sister, KP and a very cryptic Erin Ashley, all true and good quality peoples.
Meanwhile, Andrew has been down here on his mexican sabbatical for the past few months and his pet project has been shaping his first alaia. He bought a bunch of Perota planks and had them glued up. Perota is a dark mexican hardwood, which is a Koa substitute. I bought a plank too, but I’ve had too much going on, to get out there with the jig saw and we don’t have a planer so it’s all elbow grease. Andrew’s stick is shaping up, I suppose I’ll learn from his mistakes.
And in family life, Luca turned 11 months today. Last night was the first night of Operation Ferber. We’ve had sleeping issues with Luca since day one, on a good night he wakes up twice, on a bad night he wakes up 4 or 5 times. It’s been a rough 11 months. So last night we used the Ferber “cry it out” method. Little Man cried his face off for a full hour and fell asleep holding the bars of his crib. He proceeded to sleep for ten hours straight. no bottle, no midnight feeding. We haven’t slept ten hours in forever. And when he woke, he was the sweetest loving kid. It was a good night.
Lastly, I have a million photos stacked up in the ‘puter and nowhere near enough time to process them. one of these days i’ll bang ‘em out and post em here. until then..
… stay up.
Liquid Salt is a new online magazine of sorts, created by Glenn Sakamoto. The concept is simple: contact various artists, surfers, shapers, photographers, and filmÂmakers from all over the surf-stratosphere, give them compelling and inspirational questions, and let them have at it. The results are amazing. Sakamoto has, in a very short time, collected interviews from a stable of surfing’s most influential people by the likes of Paul Strauch, Gerry Lopez, David Nuuhiwa, Buttons Kaluhiokalani, Doc Paskowitz, Rabbit Kekai, Joe Curren, Rochelle Ballard, Bing Copeland, Jeff Divine, Matt Warshaw, Drew Kampion, Jason Baffa, Chris Burkard & Eric Sondequist, Chris Orwig, Mike Salisbury, Jamie Budge, Jaimal Yogis, John Smart, John Van Hamersveld, Thalia Surfshop, Juile Cox, Almond Surfboards, Jon Wegener, Surf Indian Gallery and more. The list is dumb impressive.
Though I harbor no false assumptions of being any kind of surf tastemaker, I am happy to have been interviewed on Liquid Salt recently, holdin’ it down for my little corner of Mexico. So go peep it, yall.
some recent and not so recent photos redone for a black and white printed format
A few more photos from one of the recent Roctober storm swells.
a shot from that Hurricane Patricia swell two weekends ago. Tzahui Poo charging it.
Yesterday afternoon Hurricane Patricia snuck up our backdoor and threw some nice huge storm swell our way this morning. I spent most of the day chasing swell with Tzahui and taking a ton of pics. I had the video camera with me and shot a few clips before the battery went dead, so murphy’s law. I strung a few together but they don’t do justice to the size of the larger sets that were coming in. This is mostly the smaller sets and shore dump. I had one minute of battery life. The outside sets were bananas, at one spot, a friend remarked that the tubes could fit jeeps tucked inside, after escaping the wicked shore dump.
I manned the camera for most of the day, but did manage to get about an hour in the water, at the tail end, mid-day after the wind was up. I couldn’t sack up and kept having visions of the closeout at the end of the ride. I scored one wave and headed for shore.
This swell was big, thick and Gnarlsely. photos to come.
Hi, my name is Ed. In my life I've lived in Philly, New York, Wisconsin, Berkeley and Los Angeles. That was then. Now I live in coastal Nayarit Mexico. I've been living here for 6 years now (!). In these pages I write about and photograph my daily experience which includes a lot of surfing and mexican beach town street life. I also post about things I find interesting: art, design, photography, music, tech, etc...