gypsy jacket is having a sale!!

Sarah, over at gypsy jacket hand-makes gorgeous and fun one-piece swimmers and surfboard covers.

She is going away for a few months (to Noosa and New Zealand no less!), so is having a sale. 

To find out more, check out her site for details, but leave some swimmers for me!!

Surfing online. No, really.

I have been a big fan of the blog, Tenpiggiesover for some time now. The posts by Alex Swanson about the surfing lives of him and his friends are fun and interesting and they make my rainy Brisbane days when I have been too long from the sea.

Now one of his surfing compadres, Erica, has begun her own tumblr called Semesters by the sea, so I can find even more images to keep me stoked online. Like these, for example;

The images I find on this site (and Tenpiggiesover) are far from glamourising surfing or wave-riding, but rather celebrate it along with all the things that surround it like boards, friends, surf checking, cars, joking around and trips away. These are things about surfing that I love too, and which are the things I miss when I think of my friends down south. I miss the post-surf coffee, the time spent deciding where to go, the hours spent talking shit and those spent making plans for trips to breaks up and down the coast.

And I guess this is the particularly cool thing about blogs and tumblrs, right. That they are written as personalised accounts of our lives. That they can present things without filtering it all through advertising obligations. That even though the authors can be scattered across the globe, I can find my own surfing world reflected in them, so that even when I am away I feel connected to the things I love about catching waves. Not the industry stuff, not the pro circuit, but the experiences, relationships and spaces. And sure, there are those which reflect also the more heinous, hideous, violent, exclusionary aspects of surfing too, but I can make choices to block them out, to find another site, to avoid adding to their readership. But the ones that I love, the ones that are thoughtful and optimistic and un-self-conscious, well, they keep me pretty stoked.

And for that, I thank them.

What's on the World Wide Web today?

Some days, when I look around the various blogs and websites that I like to check, there are certain images, ideas or videos that seem to be the flavour of the day. For example, this week on design blogs, everyone is posting about 'cabins'. Yes - log cabins. In forests. I know, weird. And kind of boring at this end of the week.

But surf blogs are not immune to such 'consistencies' either, and on surf blogs today, pretty much all you will find is this video, All I've Found by Greenough. I've seen it in so many places that it's almost hard to locate the original online source (FYI. It's here at Kordury.tv). But, if you haven't managed to stumble across it already today, and in the spirit of this being a blog about surfing then... here you go!

All I've Found (George Greenough) - Sea Movies from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.

Things that make my day

My friend Katie recently posted this clip on my Facebook wall with the accompanying message:

If people could be music videos, you would be this one xxx

And I'm happy to admit that if I could be a music video I would, indeed, choose to be this one. (Especially if it meant I got to rock those white and navy, red-belted swimmers!)

Things (not) to worry about

For some men, being a father to daughters is quite a burden. Some never quite seem to find their feet, insisting on remaining blind to the fact that one day their little girls will become women. Which they will. But I recently read this section of a letter from F.Scott Fitzgerald to his 11 year-old daughter, which suggests a father who is confident, open-minded and loving, willing his daughter to embrace the world and the life that is waiting for her. Clearly, he's still not entirely stoked about the potential 'boys' bit of all that, but otherwise, I think he seems pretty good about it all.

(via Lists of Note)

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love,

Daddy

The RA Girls Surf Show

WCT shortboard surfers, Rebecca Woods and Amee Donohoe, have taken on the daunting but wonderful task of organising and running a new surf event for women, The RA Girls Surf Show. This event will be running from 20-22nd January on Copcabana/McMaster's Beach on the Central Coast of NSW, so if you're in the vicinity head along.

The Brian Hilton RA Show aims to inspire, encourage and enable females to take on the world in a safe and fun environment. It also has aligned with environmental organisation Take 3 to bring awareness to preserving our amazing Ocean environment and protecting it from the many plastics and pollutants which enter our waterways. Take three for the Sea!

The RA Girls Surf Show with over $15 000 worth of cash (one of the only female events to offer cash in Australia) and ... aims to encourage more females to get a taste of the lifestyle that has provided them with the careers and opportunities they have enjoyed over the last decade. The event will also provide a fun and interactive mobile weekend of summer fun from Copacabana to Macmasters, with the local communities that have supported them so well.

The RA Girls Surf Show has eight major divisions ranging from under 12 Girls up to Master’s (over 38’s) as well as a Bodyboarding and Longboard division.

The weekend will provide plenty of the entertainment alongside the surfing event including market stalls, skateboarding clinics, beach games, surf lessons, Saturday and Sunday lawn/surfclub drinks, live music, morning yoga and a wrap up party presentation.

Organising and being responsible for events like this is no small task, so I'm really impressed by Rebecca and Amee's efforts and commitment to the RA Girls Surf Show. With withdrawn sponsorship for women's events leading to them being cancelled, the efforts of women like Rebecca and Amee are increasingly important for women's competitive surfing. The other consequence of this is that it creates opportunities for women to enter into more organisational and leadership roles within the competitive surfing community, allowing them to create and run surf comps in their own ways. Perhaps it will lead to women's events being separate and self-sustaining away from the men's, and with different kinds of sponsorship outside of the surf industry (eg. Beachley Classic) that are potentially, more sustainable.

Women like Rebecca Woods and Amee Donohoe are key to the ways that women's competitive surfing will continue to grow and develop, and even more importantly, create new opportunities for other women. Projects like RA are inspiring and deserve muchos support and congratulations.