Take 5: West Coast Cool

Chances are that nobody but my Dad will read this post all the way to the end, but if a few of you do and it gets into your ears, then it's been worthwhile posting.
It's a shame how sometimes it takes the passing of a great artist in order for their work to be thrust back into the view of mainstream audiences.  Dave Brubeck passed away a few days ago, on December 5th, one day before his 92nd birthday.  He was a jazz pianist and composer, a figurehead of the "west coast cool" scene and considered to be one of the foremost proponents of "progressive jazz".

Through my late teenage years, in my Dad's house dinner times were often announced by the sound of a cork popping from a bottle of wine and a jazz cd starting up.  It was never something that I paid a great deal of attention to; the music wasn't there to be listened to intently (as with most modern 3 minute thirty second songs) but more of a background layer, a decoration, something that you could dip in and out of as and when you pleased.  Over time I absorbed a lot of classic albums, and have a healthy respect for jazz as an art form.  I grew up playing the drums; jazz is difficult beyond words, it is another level of musicianship that just ties knots in my "4/4" trained brain.

Brubeck led the charge of West Coast Californian jazz musicians in the 1950's, helping to sign musicians such as Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan to Fantasy Records before then moving onto the Columbia label.  His life didn't feature any of the headline grabbing tragedy that characterised the biographies of many of his contemporaries who suffered under the needle and the bottle, it was simply driven by musical curiosity and a strong work ethic.  Take a listen to "Take Five" in the video above, and if you dig, then dig a little deeper.   

Blue

Image: Mat Arney.

Marcus Shelby, performing with his trio at Pearls, San Francisco, December 2007.  

Image: Mat Arney.

2.8 Litres of Muscle

Talk about a photoshoot that's been a long time coming.  This is my friend Dave's Ford Capri; 2.8 litres of fuel injected-fury that his twin brother Mike restored back in the winter of 2008.  I've mentioned Dave and his mean motor on here before (The Car Whisperers), and have been hanging out for over a year now since that last shoot for us to get the thing sideways with the tyres screaming in front of my camera.  The problem was that just after the last shoot that we did, on his way to a classic car show, some moron managed to reverse their camper van along the entire length of the passenger door and rear wing in a pitiful attempt at reverse parking.  The Capri spent the spring and summer having it's near-side panels knocked out and resprayed to restore it to it's former glory, and is now back on the road....and up for sale.  Dave's selling his pride and joy to fund his motorsport project, so a couple of weekends ago I agreed to take some photographs for advertising purposes if we also got to have some fun with the car.  You can't have a massive muscle car with a bulge on the bonnet (to accomodate the huge engine) and which looks like it should be in a 1970's cop-car chase, and not want to wheel-spin away from a standing start.  Every single time.    

We headed up to a nearby disused airfield on a damp Sunday afternoon and opened the Capri up for a few goes along the runway, and Dave pushed the rear-wheel drive Ford hard around a few corners.

Kicking up some spray exiting a fast corner

Dab of oppo' at the end of the runway

I don't think my car's ever seen a chamois leather, but then my car doesn't look like it belongs in a 1970's detective film.

The Capri is for sale on carandclassic and pistonheads, click through to view the adverts if you're in the market for a styling set of wheels.  It's one well looked after car and needs a home as good as the one that it's leaving.

Fun Is Free: Skimming Stones

To hell with computer games and smartphone apps: there aren't many better ways to keep a kid occupied than skimming stones.  I used to spend such a long time when I was little on the beach at Port Isaac hunting out good flat stones to skim.  Probably more time than I actually spent hurling them across the surface of the harbour and trying to get them to skip over the little waves.  I don't know what my PB ever was, but seven seems to spring to mind for good average throw using the slate pebbles that I'd pick up in Port Isaac.  
Turns out that there's a bit of a science to it though and the BBC even produced an infographic with detailed instructions for "successful skimming" when American Russell Byars broke the world record with 51 bounces.  An angle of incidence of 10-20 degrees is apparently key for those of you who aren't interested enough to click through to the BBC, but hopefully you'll remember that next time you're walking on a pebbly patch of beach or river bank and you spot a good skimming stone.  

I'd almost forgotten about how much fun skimming stones is until this summer when I walked down to the pub in Port Gaverne one evening to see this father and son moment happening on the shoreline.  It made me smile and ever since, when I'm out walking, I'll often pause to pick up a nice, flat, palm sized stone and slip it into my pocket ready to see how many bounces I can get when I come across a calm patch of water later on.  It's a good excuse for achieving a moment of distraction, if nothing else.  

Swimming in the Sea

Swimming in the sea is one of life's great pleasures.  I've banged on about the joys of bodysurfing and the benefits of negative ions on here before (No Surfboard?  No Problem, and Negative Ions = Positive Humans), but bear with me.  I was fortunate enough to hitch a ride down to Hossegor back in September and, as usual, I stuck a handplane and swim fins in my bag.  

We pulled into Hossegor late in the day, with about an hour of light left. By the time we'd sorted the keys for our accomodation and parked the car, it was already starting to get dark.  No time to unpack boardbags, screw in fins and rummage around for a leash; wetsuit on, handplane and fins out and in we got.  Half an hour of getting properly whomped in the shorebreak at La Graviere was plenty to wash off the feeling of having been sat in a car for almost twelve hours, and a good introduction to the new swell starting to fill in.

Now let's be clear, when given a choice, I choose to surf.  Bodysurfing is just another way that I enjoy the ocean, and the fact that it's not my main aquatic focus was bought sharply into focus the following morning when I discovered that there was a bodysurfing contest taking place right where we'd been swimming around the evening before.  Some of France's best torpedo-men were swimming themselves into the heaving shorebreak, throwing themselves headfirst over the ledge in a suicidal search for judges points.  The waves were un-surfable here; overhead and with thick lips, detonating into little more than waist deep water.  These guys were revelling in it though.    

Every evening for the next two weeks, having spent the day surfing and driving the coast searching for good sandbanks, we'd get back and jump in at La Grav for a bodysurf.  Not with the intention of filling our wetsuits with sand ready for the following day, but to actually swim in the sea, engaging every limb and immersing ourselves fully in the Atlantic rather than floating on it.  An aquatic cool-down.

 The bodysurfer on the right, under the lip, is rolling down the face before trying to get barrelled.  Skills.

 The judges truck, with a rare make-able left in the background.

All images and the short movie by Mat Arney.

Handplane featured is the "Hand Baggage" model produced by Otter Surfboards.  Check them out here.

As usual, please take care when bodysurfing.  Be aware of your limitations and protect your head and neck.  Getting drilled head-first into the sand in shallow water can have awful consequences so exercise caution.

Sea + Surfer + Sky = Surf Photo(?)

I sometimes worry that surf photos can be a little bit boring.  Straight to the point in a pretty one dimensional sort of way, far too often a surf photo is just a surfer on a blue wave with a blue sky behind them.  Sometimes the sea is a bit bluer or a bit greener.  Sometimes the sky is more grey or it has some clouds in it maybe.  
White surfboard.  Black wetsuit.  You know what I mean?

But it's difficult to capture something different when, at the end of the day, it is a surf photo after all.  The focus has to be the wave and the person riding it.  There's not a whole lot of scope for creative lighting, props, or a second chance at a wave or a shot.  Foreground, background and a creative angle is all that most of us ever get to work with.  But the extra bit of the equation is an important one to keep your eyes peeled for.

Beach umbrella, sand, supertubos and some lucky guy snaking his way through a lefthand sand-bottom barrel.
Peniche, Portugal.  October 2012.



 

Gettin' All Good And Gatsby

My friend Gideon agreed to paddle out in a top hat and tails with a walking cane clenched in his teeth for part of this photo shoot.  No mean feat, considering he had to surf a traditional heavy single fin without a leash.  

This is Gideon getting all Gatsby, and doing a damn good job of it.  

Images from this series were recently featured in the latest edition of "Kook" surfing newspaper, a brilliant pink publication put together by Dan Crockett for no good reason other than to share and spread some of the special moments from "the other side" of surfing.  You can get a copy here.

The Good Knife

"Excuse me Sir, do you happen to have a knife in your luggage?"

It's 5am in St Pancras Station and I'm going through security, about to board the Eurostar to France.  Of course I've got a knife in my bag; I'm going on a surf trip.  But on Eurostar there's no "checked luggage" and "hand luggage"; you haul everything onto the train yourself so it all counts as "hand luggage".  Which means that if they see a knife at the bottom of your surfboard bag on the x-ray machine, then you get pulled up.

"I'm afraid Sir, that you can't take your knife onto the train, and furthermore it's an illegal offensive weapon and has to be destroyed."  

News to me.  An "illegal, offensive weapon"?  It's my pocket knife; the knife that my Dad gave to me when I was ten years old to take on cub-scout camp for a weekend.  It's not even that big.  And, counting it up, it's been on in-excess of thirty-five international flights (in my checked luggage of course).  But no, into the big yellow funnel it went.  And to add insult to injury, it fell into a big, clear-perspex fronted bin, so that everybody else can see what's not allowed on the train and what happens to the those things if they find them.
Maybe having a knife with you means something different in the Big Smoke.  In fact, I know it does.  But to me, having a knife in your pocket is kind of normal; many of my friends and colleagues carry a pocket knife as standard, like a mobile phone or car keys.  What happens when you want to sharpen a pencil?  Or cut up an apple at lunch time, cut some string, gut a fish or tweak a bit of glass or sea-urchin spine out of the sole of your bare foot?  Each time, I'd reach for my pocket knife.

I replaced my old, well worn, lock knife with a multi-knife; one of those red ones with a bottle opener on it (you know the ones), but sand gets in it and it grinds horribly when I open it, and I and I also got myself a short, square nosed thing in an ankle-sheath for ocean-bourne occasions.  However I miss having a simple, small, sharp knife somewhere close by for those little jobs that, if it weren't for that knife, I'd spend hours trying to find the right tool for the job. 

"Hello Trouble", a short advert created for Gerber by Chris Malloy and the guys at The Farm League.

**DISCLAIMER**

Clearly, this blog post is about the usefulness of carrying with you, when it's sensible and useful to do so, an effective, multi-purpose tool.  Knives are dangerous things and should be treated with and handled with the utmost respect and care.  If you're camping, adventuring outside, or in a workshop then cool.  If you're walking around town, not so.  Be sensible.  Don't be an idiot.