Making Friends With The Neighbours

If you're bored and need someone to laugh at/obsessively watch, then this is the web-cam for you! It's set up in front of the Duke Kahanamoku statue at Waikiki Beach and allows people to stand in front of it and organise for their loved ones to watch them do so. Intriguing to say the very least. When I was there, folk would stand in front of the camera while talking to their girlfriends on their mobile phones; "Can you see me? I'm waving! No, no, I'm in a blue T-shirt..." And if you get bored of this one, then go to the link that takes you to other Honolulu web-cams including the ever interesting 'Live City Council Meetings' camera and 'Traffic Hot Spots'. Hours of fun for everyone!

A few weeks ago, I was in a busy (and expensive!) café in Byron, waiting to meet friends for lunch. I was on my own, but I’d purposely arrived early to have a coffee and write down a couple of things I’d been thinking about. So I pulled out my slightly dog-eared notebook and, pen in hand, scrawled across the pages. The waitress eventually came along with my coffee and, as she put it down on the table, had the unfortunate urge to speak… “Is that ‘Dear Diary’ or are you doing work?” I took a breath and slowly raised my eyes to give her a deeply patronising look over the rim of my glasses. I also raised one eyebrow and pursed my lips. She retreated. The inference that dripped off her tongue (along with the sarcasm) was that one reason for my writing would have been acceptable and the other one, lame. Why exactly? Why would one be better than the other? Why is it ok to work in public but not to write for pleasure? Work, I suppose (and this, I admit, is conject...

Gracious me, I love books! And call me romantic, but I love them even more when they're old and scabby and need to be read again so that their purpose can once more be fulfilled and they can be brought back to life and you can remember why they spoke to you the first time around. "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it is high time to get to the sea as soon as I can." Yo dat , Herman Melville. Yo dat .

I left my place early on Saturday morning, tied my board to the roof and headed towards the ocean. I was feeling shitty and tired and cranky and wanted, nay, needed to find a wave. Any wave. I checked a couple of places on the way down and bumped into a friend who confirmed the tiny swell-status of the day and sent me off to the last bastion - into town... I pulled up at Wategos and silently screamed - my last stop was small, lumpy and on-shore. I sat and stared and stared and decided to go out anyway because there wasn't a single person out there. That's right, empty Wategos, not a soul to be seen. It was crap, but at least I wouldn't be competing for crap. I paddled out and (surprise, surprise ) started to feel better. The water was clear and warm- ish , the sun was beating down and the wind wasn't too bad actually. There was a big pod of dolphins feeding and leaping about and a huge turtle was lurking about underneath me. And, as it happened, I got wave, after...

Some points to note pre-viewing: 1. Turn the sound down. This music makes me want to destroy my inner-ear. 2. Inspiration for swimwear options or what!! High waist, low cut leg... oooh yeah. I really shoulda been a lady in the 60s and 70s.

Gladiate this!

So... My has friend led me down the dark path of watching entire series (yes, plural) of Beverly Hills 90210 on DVD. Don't judge me. I have now dragged a few other friends along with me by feeding them small tid -bits that I have singled out as highlights and have since been spending many happy hours following the lives of Brenda, Brandon, Dylan, Kelly, Donna, Steve, Andrea ( SUCKERman ) and David Silver. It's rad. How does this link? Well, first of all, if you have any sense of humour, you should go out and watch episode 2, season 1 - The Green Room. It's pretty much the best thing ever. Ever. Here are some indicators... Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha . Ha. Ha. Ha. Dylan drives this AMAZING Porsche that gets him more chicks than any other car on earth and I know I shouldn't say that but my god... it's true. He also wears denim overalls with one shoulder undone and hanging down, coupled with a white t-shirt and 16-hole cherry Docs. I'd hit it. Small, but you get...

The sense of relief I feel in knowing that I am not the only one who hates these things is immense. It's such a big issue (in my world) that it could almost be made into a 'two-types-of-people' category where never the twain shall meet. Families could be broken up and star-crossed love thwarted in a Romeo and Juliet style, family feud event. Love the plant - truly, I do - but the sticker/car-seat cover/ rear-vision mirror decoration/tattoo, they all have to go. Lames-village.

I’m staring to get the feeling that I might be one of the most privileged surfing women in Australia … I come from a town where surfing is a large part of the community identity and never questioned as being a worthwhile pursuit. I get to surf at some of the most beautiful point breaks around, which break long and clean and consistently, and most of the time there are any number of women out in the lineup. In fact, on occasion women almost equal the number of guys in the water. I am not saying I live in a surfing nirvana – there are problems and bullying and bastards - but I feel that I am in a privileged position where I am accepted and even encouraged at the breaks I frequent. Until recently, however, I didn’t really understand how privileged. A friend recently challenged my blissful ignorance and slammed home the realisation that the surfing life that I enjoy is not the norm. In fact, it is not even real. In fact, I am rejected repressed, scorned, objectified and barely ...

I swim up through the remnants of whitewater and pull on my legrope to find my board. I grab it and get back on, paddling immediately back out towards the break. A few seconds in, I remember how strong the rip is and start to pull harder through the water… My arms are already burning and I’m trying to use my stomach muscles and lower back to paddle. Argh! This sucks. I want to be strong, I want to be fast through the water and I curse my pathetic arms, my small shoulders and my weak stomach. I curse my body that remains, and will always remain, so new to surfing, to this action of moving through the ocean water and currents. A youth spent dancing and walking and travelling and reading has built and conditioned my mind and my legs, but my surfing body feels weak and small and not up to the task. Fuck this! I go in and walk back around. I walk through the waves until there’s a break in the set and I jump back on my board and paddle hard. I struggle to keep my mi...

I had fun attending the Oceanic Popular Cultures Association conference in Honolulu earlier this year. This is a copy of the paper I presented there... Citizens of Surfing It is touching to hear writers talk about graffiti and the immensely powerful role it has played in their lives. At times, it almost sounds as if they are talking about an old friend, someone who has stepped in and stuck with them through good times and bad (Macdonald, 2001: 179). Because surfing is commonly described by many non-surfers as simply a playful activity, there appears to be some trepidation in imagining what potential it has beyond people’s personal lives (Fiske, 1989 a : 49; Ford & Brown, 2006: 67). However, there’s great potential for social and cultural change in ways that don’t include shouting for it from the rooftops (Fiske, 1989 a : 187). Sometimes the development of social and cultural understanding and negotiation is implicit in the enactment of a culture, where actions ma...

Well, considering that I last posted in AUGUST LAST YEAR, I can report that a lot has occurred... I finished my thesis and that is all done and dusted - marks back, graduation in a week and the horror of an Honours year safely behind me. After taking a fairly significant amount of time away from even considering the things that I wrote about last year, I am back. I am going to start back with this blog and re-establish exactly what it is about surfing culture that keeps me so passionate and intrigued. My thesis work raised more questions and idea that it ever sufficiently answered, but that is the nature of thought and study and that is what keeps us driving forward and discovering new possibilities. Stay tuned...

I am writing a thesis exploring the idea that surf culture acts as a catalyst for inter-cultural connections. But who am I writing about? This needs more work, but here’s a little summary… For many people, surfing is not just a lifestyle or a stereotype – it’s their identity and their culture. If we use a definition of culture as the process and framework by which we give meaning to our world, then we can see the significance this distinction has. Stereotypes and imposed ideas have haunted surfing and surfers for a long time. In the 70s, competitions were started partly in order to validate surfing as a sport and as an activity. However now, there is a move away from the commercial, commodified side of surfing, and a growing interest in the history, people, styles and myths (within and beyond of competitive surfing) that have shaped and defined surfing until today. There is even a change in the way people are choosing their boards and developing their quiver, with an in...

I am writing a thesis about surf culture and a large part of that is about the community of surfing – local, national and global (see last post). I’ve been focussing my thoughts quite heavily on the local community aspect of surfing and trying (with great difficulty) to locate it in some concrete sense. There is a community in the water, but it can be fleeting, and the community on land is often based around competition. I know the community I seek is there, but I am having trouble nailing it down. Perusing the still photography of magazines, books and posters, I am struck by the absence of people in the pictures. It’s rare that surf photography includes the masses that group at a break, instead choosing to reflect on either the wave in isolation, or on one surfer on one wave. The photographs that include the groups of people waiting at the break are to make a point or to show a more realistic landscape, but they are few and far between, and certainly almost extinct from...

I've been doing a bit of revision of my (incomplete) notes from Vin D'Cruz and William Steele's book, ' Australia 's Ambivalence Towards Asia' (2006, Monash Asia Institute). Part of the book discusses the difference in cultures creating a continuum with abstract (individual) at one end and concrete (community) at the other. The idea is that cultures fit on various places on this continuum, with western cultures tending toward the abstract, while asian cultures are located closer to the concrete end. Neither is completely one or the other. Obviously, this is an arbitrary analysis. I am discussing the ways that surf culture helps to create inter-cultural connections by providing a starting point of sameness from which to explore differences. As part of this, I want to be able to discuss surfing as a culture in its own right - as a culture that ( to some degree) crosses national cultural boundaries and to explore the possibilities that this provides. I am arguing t...

Looking over the first chapters of the work of Nick Ford and David Brown in ‘ Surfing and Social Theory : Experience, embodiment and narrative of the dream glide ’... An important part of exploring cultures includes examining the locations in which cultural relations take place. It could be a town, a café, a school, a village, a hut, a park. The location may set the context in which the rules, norms and relationships are understood and the ways in which they are conducted. When we consider surfing as a culture, we must consider the ocean as a cultural location, which shapes and defines the ways that surfers relate to one another. However, the ocean itself is not necessarily ‘cultured’. The beach has previously been discussed as a cultural location. It has mainly been framed as a place where nature meets culture; as a liminal space that is neither merely nature nor culture but somewhere in between. Liminal spaces have their own rules that do not belong to the wor...