SWELL DECAY
Absence in the face of abundance, time overflows when we are vanished of our collective vice. We muddle in the pithy of relentless sun, drip into a vast abyss of exhaustion only to eventually surrender, at night, under the latent heat of a corroded tin roof, an adhesive between our sand caked skin and any [...]
OPEN
Through the squalls of downpours, mold spores, website making, photo flurries, porous roofs and an insurmountable quantity of rolled paint, we bring a surf shop to Esterillos Oeste, Costa Rica. A town that has produced arguably the best surfers Costa Rica has on offer in the present. Kids who grew up and now surf Pipe, [...]
ABOVE YOUTH, OVER CEMENT
We swoon for the youth that we had and still possess, although now smaller and hushed over by the adult that wants to smother the fun, the playtime and the reckless abandon we once had. I remember skateboarding when I was 12, my dad had built this mini ramp with a transition that my older [...]
BENEATH THE SUBLIME SKY
9 degree north. Expatriots gone awry, long period swell and a damp atmosphere that projects us towards hedonism, an area where the abject movement towards objective destinations tends to only see the ashes from which it originates, a substantial distance from the flame. Either way, participant or non participant, the world has it’s moral obligation [...]
UNDER FIRE WE SWIM
Under fire we swim and into the ocean we dream, when the casual nature of our being ushers us into a world where concerns melt into the air in which we exist. A sunset, often commodified, sets over the Pacific Ocean, while the wind of the day ceases and the water transforms into a placid [...]
AND WE BEGIN
After a few months of the cyclical torrential rain that huddles over us for an insurgence of time, and with mosquito born illnesses making a decline, the concept of shooting from the formerly sodden beach began to take on a much more positive sentiment. However in the odd nature that seems to inhabit all planned [...]
MINDFUL DESTINY
We pass upon time, perhaps a mindful destiny or the invisible hand of trade. If the stories were to be told, I would listen. photos by I Ozzie Hoppe
NEW YORK CITY BY THE SEA
We fly over time zones with haphazard ease, leaving our insular realities for other far different circumstances. Within hours we are deposited into areas that defy our origins, away from the tropics, on the other side of our terrestrial definition. A world of monochromatic concrete and black clothing that moves swiftly over sidewalks that have [...]
OCTOBER SKIES
After a week of unrelenting shuffle into shrieking subways, musty hangouts, delirium late night walkabouts and fog shrouded mornings, there was a break within the forecast, a prognostication that could unravel a sense of savor, a timeless rendition of our childhood playtime that has gone lost in the world of serious adults. Slides replace stairs, [...]
ASIDE FROM THE STIR
Tarnished skin, faded palms and a ensemble of aquatic rewards. We must have garnered some sort of karma aided delivery in the form of finely shaped sandbars mixed with a groomed swell. No torment, no current, nothing of fearful calamity to impose upon our egos, just a habitant-less space in a crowded world. An ocean [...]
FAR FROM THE REACHES
A few hours over spinning wheels, a border crossing and an upward trajectory into the mountains reveal an environment that defies all that is found near the coast. The humidity is lost in the altitude and a cosmic blend of people descend upon town, underneath a surreal tropical mist. Artifacts of occupation, traditions transposed over [...]
WINTER OF ARTIFICE
A dark mass of chiseled stone motions forward in chaotic alignment, over it a bulbous column of grey and white moisture plumes reach vertically into the motionless atmosphere high above. Spidery veins of lighting hug the underbelly of the rain soiled clouds like a static sweater pulled off a warm body in the night, it’s [...]
SPLENDOR IN THE SEA
Before commerce wakes in its ritual cycle; while the motors of post war vehicles idle in front of rotating vertical light shafts that swing methodically over an intersection, reds, yellows and greens switch in symmetry as a gas pedal is pressed onto a rubber floor mat beginning the descent into the urbanized world, we wake [...]
BACKYARD STORMS IN PLAYA HERMOSA
Early morning came with clarity and a surprise swell, columns of waves stacked up in succession peeling over shallow sand banks with machine like uniformity. This was the morning, later in the day for the Backyard Bar contest in Playa Hermosa, the lumpy swell mixed with torrential rains and brown water floating northward with the [...]
THE GOOD SOUTHWEST
A big Southwest swell approached Costa Rica this past week. Rumors mentioned it was the same swell that Kelly Slater rode for his Teahupo’o contest win before it passed us and swooned Southern California into a frenzy. The Adrift Surfline surf report was chock full with evidence of outrageous waves. Esterillos became a washing machine of [...]
A CLASSIC STYLE TWIN FIN
Somehow history seems to inherently repeat itself in all facets available for its actualization, from politics to music. Samples from antiquated vinyl transpose themselves between digitally shuffled beats and the inspiration of the masters seem to imbue it’s presence in subtle ways through all forms of contemporary visual art. Surfing partakes in it’s borrowing of [...]
AUSTRALIA WE LOVE YOU
Prior to arrival, the expectation was a Hollywood bludgeoned image of scarce dry country side, sand dusted human inhabitants with leather hats wrestling prehistoric animals while spinning incomprehensible local jargon in mid motion. Untrue, to a large extent. Instead there were quiet trains that would be the envy of the NYC subway system and a [...]
THE LUXURY OF SURFING
Midday on a nameless street in San Jose, pedestrian traffic shuffles over a heavily trodden intersection, gravel mixed into a paved road, craters pitting it’s contours, cars collide and diesel smoke settles over humid skin. Eyes burning and searching, a weave of organized daily patterns intersecting into chaos. A banana republic in the depths of [...]
A SHAPER AND HIS CRAFT
This week we visited the factory of Mauricio from Tule Surfboards in Manuel Antonio. When I was a miniscule youth and used to play around with the surf in the area I had a photographic memory and hypersensitive focus on everything related to surfing, this was in the early 90′s and I can remember sitting [...]
THIS IS COSTA RICA – PICS & FRAME GRABS
Sixty minutes within one day and one location. This is Costa Rica, a medley of ridiculous talent infused surfing from a handful of locals and the odd visitor. For a tiny country the size of the entire population of San Diego in a not so stimulated economy, there is a surge of new school kids [...]
