an Historic Houses Trust blog
video Gary Crockett
Just back from the California/Hawaii odyssey/road trip stumbling across heaps of surfing sites, collections and characters. Here’s a bit of a surprise… a bunch of brave San Franciscans working the chilly left hander under the Golden Gate southern pier.
Get a grip on that tumescent triple stringer and gird those cashed up, superannuated boomer loins. This ain’t no beer, its an elixir of youth – all over again. Here’s to endless summers, uncrowded breaks, boyish dreams, nimble joints and dependable erections… cheers!
Longboard beer poster at the Watsons Bay Hotel.
Met Damion Fuller of Deus Ex Machina today and discussed angles, themes and options. Damion suggested the show might consider how surfing, surf culture and a love affair with the beach has given Sydney a distinctive social identity.
Crowd surfing from Sydney’s Big Day Out website
Certainly surfing has transformed culture in numerous ways, influencing fashion, advertising, literature, music, bands and to some extent a particular way of thinking about and carrying ourselves – typified in a kind of laconic individualism, self mockery, informality and iconoclasm.
Tony Edwards’ Goodvibes image from the amazing miles ago web site
Damion Fuller also runs the great Board Collector web site.
Here’s a twist on the early 60s board bans and clubbie/surfer biffo. Interesting article in today’s herald about signs put up by Manly council aimed to curb aggression and wise up hodads.
Herald image from this article
Nell Schofeild over on the Wax On exhibition blog posted this good example of an open invitation in the local press to sift out old boards and tales…
image courtesy of Wax On blog
Would be worth contacting Nell and Peter Sheil (shown here with early 70s Shane standard) to discuss potential loans.
might be worth keeping this format or feel in mind…
Perhaps a cool idea would be to display stuff as if strewn helter skelter within a series of ‘period’ bedrooms, complete with mementoes, mags, music, clothes, pics, boards and footage…?
Here’s an early stab at a surfboard history wishlist… (with plenty more to come)
1950s
tom blake hollow paddler
16′ toothpick racer
late 40s quigg/kivlin/rochlen ‘malibu’
foil shaped balsa gun (as demonstrated in ’56 by US lifesavers)
dillon (velzy style) gel coated pig
dave nuuhiwa noserider
woods hollow ockanui
1960s
bennett foam/glass mal
geoff cater’s 62 recessed stringer, hollow mal
dillon gun for queenscliff bombie
keyo balso hot dog ’63 (ie midget makaha)
hayden thin railed hot dogger ’64 (ie midget manly)
cabell model mal by mcdonagh ’64
dave nuuhiwa style noserider model
multi stringer phil edwards inspired model
woods ’64 island design mal
keyo mctavish ‘sam’ style ’66
woods involvement model ’67
mctavish gun style stubbie
greenough style spoon
vee bottom stubbie (wide tail)
stubbie pin tale
rounded pin
tracker/pocket rocket
1970s
lynch involvement model
super egg – double ender
rounded pin, down rails
twin fin ’71
fitzgerald speed model, worthington spray
shane/farrelly standard (white kite)
swallow tail
stinger, channelled, etc
thruster
Words of wisdom from Inara put me straight today. Focus, first of all, on what kind of stuff you think visitors are gonna want to see when they walk into the exhibition space, was her advice. So that’s what I’ve been working on – putting aside the cultural analysis, character development, technical histories and surfer biographies for the moment to think about the basic 3D install and the kind of ‘must-see’ objects that both surfers and non-surfers would anticipate in the show.
Well, this is where I’m at so far… the show will contain a core installation of beautiful, resonant boards (treasures, icons and design breakthroughs, favouring desirable, classy examples over gnarly, misshapen clunkers), high impact moving footage and interviews, breathtaking photography, nostalgic beachwares and surfing accessories, clothing, artefacts, magazines, etc and a large format interactive map of the Sydney coastline. Oh yeah…and an EH station wagon out front.
