Instagram: @alex__swanson

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Cody

Halloween/ Pickle

Today me and Erica cruised up to surf Cardiff and skim Thalia. We stopped by Thalia St. Surf shop to check out the new boards, we happened to meet Tyler Warren there, who was getting ready for his art show next door. We talked about his One Fin Pin, his art, and logs in general. A really nice guy, although he did have on some make up, which I really hope was from a costume party. Later me, Trevor, and Erica went to the Gato shop in Capo Beach but without any luck. We kinda had the general location, but wandered around some sketchy alley and asked an old guy who was glassing some boards where Gato Heroi was, to which he replied, "Oh, that Robbie Kendal guy?"... needless to say, we couldnt find Robbie and drove back to down to San Diego.

Photo credit: Nolan Hall

Photo credit: Capt. Fin

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Max Rollins

Max is a pretty gnarly guy. I met him through Trevor; he charges Wedge on a regular basis. He's not half bad at surfing either.

Photo Credit: Trevor Jones

Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Photography is not like painting," Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative," he said. "Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Radness

Tudor+Malibu Carl "gimme a dolla"= RADNESS

Tomorrows Tulips

Trevor told me about Alex Knost starting a new band (narcissism is so hip these days) really, one band wasnt enough? I thought you actually had to be "big" before you went solo. Whatever, he's a sick surfer, a dirty dresser, and a decent singer. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Tomorrows Tulips. (Welcome to the Alex Knost show)

Members: alex knost- guitar,vocals,noise
christina kee- drums
Genre: minimal-izm?
Record Label: : )

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Photobomb

IliketophotobombpicturesatUCIparties

Canon Canonet 28

I scored this Canon rangefinder at the swapmeet the other day. I went to find some cheap spraypaint and came across this camera. So stoked on it. Can't wait to see how the photos turn out (this is the first rangefinder I've ever used)

ROLAND REINER TIANGCO










Saturday, October 24, 2009

H1N1


Point Concept Surfboards

Ryan up in Santa Barbara is doing some pretty rad things with his PC surfboards. Here is a 6'9 Dreadnought... He does every thing from hulls, to mini simmons, to spoons. He's even completed a mix between a hull and a spoon. Super sick stuff. Check his blog out at pcprogress.blogspot.com or his site at pointconceptsurf.com.
And here is the hull/spoon aka the big black nothing

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Fishy fish

"In case you hadn't noticed, surfera are indulging in a pretentious orgy of retro-fascination. For us, it's all about seventies soul; that epoch of acid-soaked summers. long, sun-bleached hair, broad brown backs thrown stiffly Into soul arches and empty points ripe for an eruption of twin-fin speed.

. Ride a fish for any decent period and your soft legs will atrophy, your turns will become soft and puny and you'll forget about hunting tubes - but, man, what speed! What a rush!And the surfboard of choice is The Fish. And when we say, The Fish, we don't mean wide versions of 6'2" thrusters, "but short (around 5'6"), wide (at least 20") twin-fins strangely reminiscent of a kneeboard. Here's what it's all about...

San Diego kneeboarder Steve Lis is the hip cat who turned the world onto this style of board. Lis wanted more speed than was being created by craft in the mid-sixties so he used elements from an old design called the Superboard (by Bear Mirandon) that featured a split-tail (we call it a swallow) and twin fins. Lis' new board, a 4'8", was wide, fast and featured a flat rocker. You want speed, dirty hippy? You got it. Hang on, why aren't you in Nam shooting up the yella man??

A few years later, Lis and his stand-up mates are hanging out beachside when Jeff Ching decides to surf, stand-up, on Lis' kneelo. Everyone's jaws drop. The thing is a rocket. Remember, this is when all the other fags were dripping digits off the nose of their suddenly superceded longboards.

Its performance proven, Lis starts making em for his friends at $21 a shot. Another friend, Larry Gephart, discovers that sanding a foil into laminated birch creates lighter and more flexible fins than the fibreglass fins Lis is using. The Lis fish/ Gephart fin combo becomes the gold standard.

Hawaiian Reno Abellira, later a convicted drug dealer and fugitive from the FBI bless his heart, rocks up to Australia in 1975 for the Coke contest and rides his twinny Fish. Mark Richards sees the speed generated in the shitty waves, builds his own version, and dominates the tour in a manner not matched until the arrival of Slater.

It all goes quiet on the Fish front (mainly cause of a mildly-influential invention called The Thruster) until 1993 when eccentric three-time world champion, Tom Curren, surfs a heat in France on a 5'5", four-inch-thick twin-fin he bought at a garage sale in New York. He demolishes 22-year-old Matt Hoy, rated eighth in the world at the time.

One year later, Tom rides a hybrid version of the fish shaped by Michael Peterson's little brother, Tom, in 10-foot Sumatran waves: covers and glowing tributes follow. The board, called a Fireball Fish, is a whacked-out design: step-tail, thin narrow nose, three-fins. Still, it's enough to generate a career for the little-known shaper.

Californian shaper Matt Biolos hears about Curren surfing Log Cabins circa '94 on a Fish, Intrigued, he checks out a few twin-fins then builds a 5'5" x 19 1/4" wide, round-nose swallow tail. The following year, ...Lost teamriders, Cory Lopez and Chris Ward, ride the little boards to great effect in the woefully under appreciated flick, 5'5" x 19 1/4". To this day, the Biolos twinnies (with plugs for a third fin if you can't handle the drive and looseness) represent the modern era's best retort to the Lis fish."

-Stab Magazine

Meow

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Invisible Monsters

Pickle

Sunday, October 18, 2009

I thought you were trying to be a pterodactyl for a second... Nope, just hiccuping.

Earlier today me and Ashley paddled out to Subs, the mushy little right at Sunset Cliffs. It looked ok, maybe 2-3 ft sets. But once we got there, after a 20 min lull, the place went off (kinda). 4-5 ft peaky little sets started "pumping" through, started out slowly but picked up on the inside. There was this guy killing it Dropknee on an Alaia, I started talking to him and found out that he used to go to Point Loma. I asked him if he was riding a Wegner Alaia, but this one was something that he shaped himself. After 10 min of talking, I found out that Jon Wegner (Tom Wegners little brother) actually went to Point Loma with this guy out at Subs. For those of you who dont know who the Wegners are, well they are pretty much the guys that brought Alaias back to life. Now Alaias are all the rage. It was pretty cool to think of the history that goes on at Sunset: Steve Lis developed the Fish at Newbreak, Skip Frye still surfs Subs regularly, and the Wegners have a direct connection with Sunset Cliffs. This is a pretty special place...

Biggie would roll over in his grave

Saturday, October 17, 2009

This past weekend, me, Erica, Cole, and Trevor hit up A st on Balboa for the Oktoberfest skim contest. Paulo Prietto, Brad Domke, and all those other pros were there killing it. Here are a couple photos of the contest....





Man on the Moon

Friday, October 16, 2009

Blackies 10-16-09

We showed up to Blackies at 6:15 in the morning, we didnt think about when the sun was going to rise (which was 7:00). So we went to Doughboys and got some donuts to buy us some time. The fog was really thick that morning, you couldnt even see the waves breaking. We went out anyways, and had a really sick time. 3-4 ft peaky sets, and super glassy.


Thursday, October 15, 2009

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

"Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a.k.a Lewis Carroll, was a mathematician at Oxford University, a writer of children's literature, and a passionate photographer. He met Alice Liddell, the daughter of an associate at Oxford, when she was 5 years old. She inspired the tale of Wonderland, published in 1865, and, along with many other young girls, was the subject of many of his photos. Largely because of his images, there has long been speculation that Carrolls interest in Alice was sexual in nature. The ambiguous nature of the photographs often invites such debate; people have layered onto Carrolls images facts about the man himself- he was single and shy and suffered from epilepsy- to arrive at conclusions that have not and ultimately cannot be proven..."

-American Photo Magazine

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Relaxing


Monday, October 12, 2009

I think I died a little inside

MacxRetnaxRVCA Mural

A mural on the side of the RVCA warehouse in Costa Mesa


Young Hall

I found this picture on my schools website. It's me and my roommate Cody heading out to surf Sunset Cliffs. I dont remember signing any consent form...



7 Seconds

Wow, I forgot about these guys until tonight. I guess I used to listen to 7 Seconds a couple years ago. Pretty funny. "If we can walk together, why can't we rock together?"

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Mr. Greg Swanson

My brother Greg has been progressively better at shooting photos. Here are three from his last roll. He shot a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 in the middle of the day. They turned out pretty darn good.




Trevor and his Knost Model

My friend Trevor cruised down to Point Loma to visit and surf this weekend. Too bad it was a lake. We drove around looking for anything and eventually surfed Sunset Cliffs 30 min before the sun went down. I borrowed his board for a couple waves and was really surprised at how responsive it is for how big the board is. It's a 9'7 with a massive tail block. I can't wait to try it out on more sectioned waves so I can get a good nose ride on it.

Friday, October 09, 2009

Horse the Band Biography


Hello. We are the coolest band in the world. Everything you have ever heard about us is true. We are fucking crazy and we are very brave. We booked a 45-country, 3-month world tour by ourselves and we didn't die, although we almost did a bunch of times. We have played in fucking China, and Serbia, and we are the first American band to play in Belarus in 5 years (the band before us was Cannibal Corpse) and we had to sneak into the country on a World War II cargo plane. In fact, all the shows were fucking awesome except Turkey, Italy, the UK, and Scandinavia. We party harder than any other band in the world and still play our parts perfectly every single night. Oh yeah did I mention Nathan broke his shoulder with 10 days left on the tour and played 8 shows with a broken shoulder and no treatment except alcohol? I think when other bands' singers break their shoulders they just cancel the tour and fly home. Oh wait I think that is also what they do if they have a vocal polyp or gas costs $4 a gallon. Oh shit! $4! Actually I am sure of it because other bands are pussies. At least those singers have neck tattoos though and ask the question "How the FUCK are you guys doing tonight?" twice in a row after their second song is over. We spent $60,000 to do EARTH TOUR by maxing out 5 credit cards and bought 27 flights each for 7 people. We don't have parents and we are from the future. We went to 45 countries, played 73 shows in 36 of them, and only three shows fell through during the whole tour, because Nazis burned down the venue in Greece and we got turned away by the Moldovan army from entering "Europe's Black Hole", Transnistria. Wikipedia it. We weren't pussies though we were fully intending to drive through the world's largest rogue-nation manufacturer of black market weapons so we could get to our show in Ukraine on the shore of the Black Sea on time. We videotaped and photographed the whole tour and have signed an agreement with a reality TV production company, just because we felt like getting a reality TV show. It was no problem for us. We are also making the most inspirational 2-volume DVD and photo book ever. We made $60,942 on the tour in 3 months ROFL. That is a profit of $942. Our record label dropped us free and clear so they could sign In Flames and Hatebreed and also because they didn't see financial viability in EARTH TOUR. We hated them anyway because they don't care about art, which, besides survival, is the most important aspect of LIF. It shouldn't be a problem since we have 8 other record labels worldwide that we got by ourselves. We rejected a sponsorship from Affliction Clothing. No bands in the US let us tour with them because it depresses them to see how much more fun we have than them. At least they get to spend a lot of time on their laptops and live a transient lifestyle with all the benefits of a 9-5 corporate office job. But the truth is we love bands, and we love people, and we love playing basement shows, hall shows, small venue shows, mid-sized venue shows, and large venue shows including summer festival tours (which we love most of all) in either A, B, or C-markets. I guess you could say we're purists, we just love playing music! Actually, some of the bands we have toured with love us and we are friends with them. So I wish tour managers who met us and got their egos damaged would stop trying to ruin our reputation. :_( We hate tour managers. Because tour managers are useless fat losers who think they should be in charge of something but really they couldn't even get a real management job like Payless Shoe Source so they pretend to control band dudes. EVERYBODY knows that tour managers never get laid and are wack scum trick bitch trolls, and when you look in their eyes you see a void, a chaotic vacuum filled only with JEALOUSY, feelings of INFERIORITY, and PURE FEAR. Except for our tour managers. We are the most DIY band ever. Our manager is a fucking psychopath. (See what I did there?) His name is Tim Smith and last weekend he totaled his rental car on purpose. He had a child. The only reason we haven't fired him like we have done to the rest of our staff is because he is maybe crazier than us. We talk a lot of shit, I know it hurts, but that is because it is all true. We are all really ugly and dress horribly. We have horrible haircuts. We are ugly and dress horribly in a more endearing way than the bands you like.

If you are researching our myspace to interview us please know that our wikipedia was written by one fan who is like 15 years old and you could find better stuff to talk about than any of that if you were meant to be a real journalist. Obviously though if you are interviewing us your career is in pretty bad shape anyway. So I guess never mind.

Things that I find funny