Body Glove’s first wetsuit size chart used this photographic diagram. Image courtesy of Body Glove/via Drift Surfing
Check out if you are someone like me who has a love/hate relationship with their suit.
Diver John Foster wears two of Bradner’s early neoprene wetsuit prototypes, circa 1952. Images courtesy of Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, UC San Diego Library.
New York City has long offered its inhabitants the opportunity to transform common spaces into something new. I’ve seen a shared apartment turned into a salon, read how a water-tower hosts a secret nightclub, and just last week a group of artists in Greenpoint showed their site-specific work within an old medical office for a group exhibit called “This Won’t Hurt a Bit”. Between the travel hosting service Airbnb and non-profit art organizations like No Longer Empty, it is increasingly considered both creatively hip and business savvy to envision the various ways a simple room quickly becomes a venue.
THIS IS STORY, a retail space on 10th Avenue and 19th Street in Lower Manhattan, entered the scene as a store meant to change every four to eight weeks. Describing itself as a magazine in the form of a retail space, founder Rachel Shechtman created THIS IS STORY as an opportunity for her to work across the board with different brands as a strategist in merchandising, business development and marketing. Some weeks the vibe of the store is based on a theme and other times based on a specific vendor or idea. What was once the Love Store has since become Chop-To-It, inspired by men’s products. For the next couple weeks one can stop by between the hours of 4-7 for a hot towel shave, free of charge. (RSVP HERE)
In a March interview with Shechtman she explains how creating a malleable store in Chelsea was an organic solution for finding an engaging and modern shopping experience that reflects online trends: “You have so many new business models online, and yet for physical retail, it’s still all about sales per square foot. It’s beyond archaic in my opinion.”
www.thisisstory.com
144 10th Ave. at 19th Street
New York, New York
Jesse Pearson, a longtime editor at Vice magazine, has a new project, called Apology. As he puts it, “Apology is a new magazine that contains literature, interviews, essays, reportage, humor, photography, and art. In other words: pretty much everything. It’s a general interest magazine for people whose general interests aren’t general. It’s a sophisticated alternative to sophomoric magazines; it’s a sophomoric alternative to sophisticated magazines. It’s a make-your-own-pithy-observation-that-goes-here magazine.”
Here’s a description of the first issue’s contents:
The debut issue of Apology contains over 250 colorful pages of literature and art. This includes but isn’t limited to: humor by Lesley Arfin and Chelsea Peretti; tragicomic memoirs by Sam McPheeters and Johnny Ryan; short fiction by Bill Callahan (the songwriter formerly known as Smog), Arthur jennifer aniston pokies Bradford, Gwendoline Riley, and Gus Visco; cult novelist/genius Frederick Exley’s real-life questions to Gloria Steinem; writer Rivka Galchen bravely baring her orphaned stories; lush photo essays by Ryan McGinley and Roe Ethridge; intimate conversations with John Ashbery (plus a poem!) and Aurel Schmidt (plus crayon drawings!); an examination of 1980s East Village sadomasochism by Johanna Fateman; a brutal attack on Wikipedia by Ian Svenonius; a detailed examination of a lost Robert Altman teen comedy by Hunter Stephenson; a loving, comprehensive tribute to the semicolon by Paul Maliszewski; and a massive interview with Tim and Eric by Jesse Pearson, along with portraits by Terry Richardson.
According to the site, the first issue is sold out, but you can still find it at certain New York retailers.
Albert York, Woman and Skeleton, 1964
“Albert York: A Loan Exhibition” at Davis & Langdale Company is certainly one of the best shows I’ve seen this year. Presentations of canvases by this painter’s painter are rare and tend to be coveted by admirers—including collectors Lauren Bacall and Jackie Onassis. For a standout read on York, see Calvin Tomkins’s 1995 essay from the New Yorker: “Artist Unknown“. The show is on view until June 21.
Andrew Nathanson, an ER doctor and avid waterman, is probably one of the few surfers who’s had a eureka moment thanks to the painful experience of stepping on a sea urchin. A medical student in LA at the time, Nathanson realized that “there wasn’t a whole lot of literature out there” on marine-based injuries. “It got me thinking, What are the risks of injuries in the sport? So I did a study first on windsurfing injuries and then got that published, and then I did some more studies on surfing injuries and all the while I was doing emergency medicine.”
One thing led to the next, and several years later, a colleague who was also a member of the wilderness medicine society approached him at a conference with the idea of writing a book for surfers. In collaborated with a third author, Mark Renneker, who’s a founder of the Surfers’ Medical Association—and one of the first guys to surf at Mavericks—they published, in 2011, Surf Survival: The Surfers’ Health Handbook. It covers things including: how to fix cuts, how to deal with infections and how to make splints with limited resources in remote locations. So how do you jerry-rig a sling? “Say you dislocated your shoulder. You can take the bottom of a T-shirt and put your arm across and take the end of your T-shirt towards your head and pin it up with a safety pin.”
Nathanson notes, there’s a lot of disinformation out there. “Urinating on a jellyfish sting”—for instance. “The only person that gets relief is the person providing the medical care.” And while he says the most common surfing injury is being hit on your head by your surfboard, there are a variety of other scenarios, and it’s especially helpful to be prepared in relation to where you’re surfing. “Each place has different potential hazards. In Hawaii you have to be more mindful about hitting a coral reef. Down in Nosara, stingray stings are quite common.”
With all of this research, Nathanson realized that beginner and expert surfers alike still have a lot to learn so in 2012, he started the Surf Survival Camp hosted at the Harmony Hotel to teach these skills to surfers who wanted to hone their waterman skills. The camp is for surfers of any level. “For beginners,” he says, “there’s a pretty steep learning curve in terms of understanding the marine environment: what the bottom is like, what the rip currents are, and how to get in and out of the water with a big shore break.” And more advanced surfers still can use lots of pointers. For instance, he noted, they can often still be reminded about “sanding off the sharp, trailing edges of the fins, and rounding off unnecessarily pointy surfboard tips.”
During the week-long session, Nathanson will be covering everything from basic preparedness to more complicated safety techniques. This will be the second year that Harmony Hotel’s hosted the camp, which involves a one-and-a-half-hour lecture every day, followed by a hands-on component where campers will be practicing what they’ve learned. Before class each day, Nathanson’s wife will lead a morning stretch, followed by surfing. And when lessons are done? The afternoon’s free, for the most part, for campers to surf and enjoy Nosara.
So what’s the worst injury Andrew Nathanson’s ever received? “I’ve had a couple of times where I got cuts on my face from my own surfboard right above my eyebrow, matching eyebrow wounds.” And twice, in pursuit of the surf, just before a hurricane swell, he’s been whacked in the head by his surfboard. “They weren’t that bad,” he says of the injuries. “I had my son glue them up with surgical adhesive, which is a supergluey kind of stuff—medical superglue, basically.”
For a chance to win a free spot at the Surf Survival Camp and a 7-night stay at the Harmony Hotel, tell us your best Surf Beat Down Story here.
We Think Alone is a new project from Miranda July, author, artist, and director of the films The Future and You and Me and Everyone We Know.
There aren’t a whole lot of details about what it is, other than a series of 20 e-mails “from the Sent mail folders” of various contributors, which you can receive in your Inbox for free if you sign up here.
The e-mails will begin July 1st, with the contributing authors ranging from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Catherine Opie. Who knows what the e-mails might contain, or seem to contain, devoid of any context? It’s free, and it’s bound to be interesting.
For the full list of contributors, and to sign up to receive the e-mails, head on over to We Think Alone.
Kassia Meador
Enjoy this fun video from 2008. An oldie, but still a goodie!
Yesterday the some of the famous shops, beaches and individuals that make up the west coast surfing community, as well as a revealing portrait of Fordham himself and how easily he falls into step with his wave-bound peers.
California road trip: surfing the perfect wave
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