year of the polaroid 1

Foulweather #3: The Urban Wilderness

NYC by Pete

I'm actively seeking submissions for Foulweather #3 and have already had a few people contact me about somepotentially interesting contributions. At the moment, I'm thinking, the end of August for a submission deadline, with the goal to get it printed in early 2009. I know that seems slow but last time was too much of a last minute rush.

The theme is going to be The Urban Wilderness but I'm pretty flexible with what people want to write about. I'm going to focus on 'reinterpretations of the urban environment,' The main thesis of FW #3 is going to be, that the more we are isolated from nature, the more people are seeking adventure within the urban realm and that there is a innate human desire/ need to get wild (or in touch with our primeval selves) even if we are trapped inside the concrete maze. I hope that doesn't sound too pretentious but that is sort of what I'm aiming for.

I'm looking for stories, photos and art that concern anything and everything from the politics of public space (including urban theory, architecture), to graffiti and public art, to skateboarding and cycling to urban exploration, parkour, Situationism ('drifting' and 'detournemount') and so on...

Surfing Sucks

The Azores, Atlantic Eden or "Shitty little islands where people watch Al-Jazeera?"
Photo from The Guardian.

I will sometimes sneak off from work to read magazines at Powell's or Rich's during my work day. I'll usually pick up a mag with lots of luscious visuals, to set me off day-dreaming about where I'd like to travel. Yesterday, I picked up a Transworld Surf, not something I usually purchase but they have their own unique approach to the mainstream surf market, I suppose. Good photography, at the least.

Anyway, it was the travel issue. It was pretty idiotically set-up. 'First trip,' 'Best trip' and 'Worst trip.' Fair enough for mindless reading, perhaps. Most of the responses from several young pro-surfers were predictable. Best Trip was an Indo boat trip. Of course it would be, all expenses paid, every need catered to, isolated from the local populace on a fancy boat and taken directly to perfect surf for a week or so. But one response for 'Worst-trip' flabbergasted me. Cheyne Magnussen, son of 80s skate pro Tony Magnussen, said the Azores were his worst trip. He called them 'shitty little islands' with no surf, nothing to do and where everyone watched Al-Jazeera.

Unbelievable. Spoilt fucking child.

I've long thought, that travel is not more profound the further you travel but how you travel and how you choose to interact with a new environment and peoples, whether it is the town half an hour a way or an 'exotic' country half way around the world (exotic is so subjective, right?)

Well, there is no need to rant about Magnussen's narrow minded approach. I suppose it should not be that surprising. The way I see it, surfing can be lense in which to see the world. Sure, it can be a narrow focus but it is a focus. And sometimes, you can see a lot more with a finely tuned focus, than if you try and take in the whole thing. If there are perfect waves along the way, bonus. If not, you should be able to inspire yourself anway. Otherwise, stay home and cry about your sponsorship deals.

Random cell phone photo update

You can shop here but please don't have any fun here. Lincoln City Outlet Mall is stinkier than my armpit (which is currently festering at the moment with some bizarre puss-ridden rash) .

Foulweather issue #2 on the Zine shelf in Powell's. Check it out! Still selling steady and the feedback has been encouraging. Big Fucking Deal, indeed.

Aaaaah, after a week long migraine, I snuck off to the coast last night. First I stopped at the new Cannon Beach skatepark. After being mostly bed-ridden and in a daze for a week, I probably should not have attempted to skate. Tight trannies + brand spanking new concrete + one decrepit old skateboarder with a current lack of balance = plenty of head first dives to the flat bottom. After one particular slam that resulted in a lovely 'swellbow,' I was over it. Looking at my elbow, it looked as though, someone surgically inserted a ping pong ball under my skin. I hoped the cold Pacific would ease the swelling a bit. But no, the water had to be warm, didn't it?

Anyway, best surf session in a long time. Fast hollow lefts, mostly to myself. Tried to pull in backside a few times, which never seems as consequential when the water warms up. Crazy angled take offs aided by my quad fin that lets me get away with such malarkey. Beer on the beach and back home to the family, who are starting to suggest I ease up falling off my skateboard...

So yeah, apart from a migraine that had me wishing for death and that was only curable with a combination of acupuncture, cranial manipulation, massages and mad doses of chinese herbs, a puss-ridden arm pit rash and a giant swellbow, things are just dandy.

Core

A beastly dark primitive takes out the encroaching white-short, bleach blonde civilized nightmare and then steal his wallet on the beach.

I never really cared about 'surf culture' until I started to learn about the life and legend of surfing's original antihero, Miki Dora. I was content to just surf and ignore all the other bullshit that surf 'culture' represented. Infact I pretty much closed my mind to surf history as a result. I identified as a skateboarder who liked to ride waves. Then I began to understand the role of Miki Dora in the wider scheme of things and how his life and fame became not only a metaphor for surfing's expulsion from eden and subsequent commercialization but a wider metaphor for the beginning of the end of California's Utopic appeal and the commodification of youth, alternative, drop out and radical subcultures in general.

I'm excited that his legend is getting so much attention but like the paradoxes and contradictions he wallowed in while he was alive, this struggle over his legend looks set to continue to propagate the eternal struggle between purity and profit.

At one point in his life, Dora was on the lam for an extended period. Some of which was spent in South Africa, surfing of course, but also looking for diamonds in the Namib desert. He was guided by bushmen and relished in their primitive existence while he sought to get rich off little fragments of the earth's core. While, I was reading about this, I realized that Dora really is the personification of civilization versus nature, and he was not a walking paradox after all. He could not have taken any other path. He was thrown into an historical, time, setting and arena that led us to our current struggle. How to survive in this current system while satisfying our primal urges. How to remain human, as we become ever more entangled in this removed, distant, techno-centric, symbolic existence.

This shit plagues me daily and it was the impetus behind Foulweather #2. I can only hope I have made a small contribution to making contemporary sense of the meaning of Miki Dora's life.

WebCam Rothko

Last month a certain webcam went out of focus in the evening light. I saved a few of its best Rothkoesque beachscapes. Beauty from the filth.

Thanks to everyone for all the orders for Foulweather #2 so far. I will be sending out a batch of review copies soon.

Now, FW#2 is finally out there, I'm hoping to focus on some new projects, mainly Confessions of a Guilty Expat, more short stories and Foulweather #3 for early 2009... perhaps...

I've also been stepping up my photography efforts and have invested in a new camera (well it was invested for me, thanks Alison, Kath and Tony (and Stiv for the input)) but at the moment I've been too obsessed with my Polaroid camera to knuckle down and figure out how to use my fancy new digital SLR. As I'm sure some of you have heard, Polaroid is going to discontinue making their wondrous instant film. I'm hoping to get some of them scanned soon. (Anyone got a scanner I can use?) Until then check out this magnificent collection of Polaroids.