I Know By Now You Think I Should Have Straightened Myself Out...Thank you, Drop Dead

Even though Morrissey's Years of Refusal comes out this month, I think most people have heard it by now. If you haven't, go get it.

What Awaits Us

Rojos Tacos is closed until March 2nd. To combat my burrito-depression, I thought I'd post a picture of the mural inside the shop that I took in December.

http://www.octacos.com/


Here's one of the custom tables inside Rojo's made by Jamie Kelly. Check out his other stuff:

http://jksurfart.blogspot.com/

We Are the Snowmans

Surfing in the wintertime means walking around all day feeling like this:
Yesterday's snow didn't amount to much and didn't last very long, but we tried to make the best of it.

Pre-Teenagers from Mars

It's not too often that the worlds of punk rock and elementary school collide, so imagine my surprise when I see a fifth grader sporting a crimson ghost t-shirt the other day. I was so pysched that I had to grab a picture of him rocking his Misfits shirt:

Hand in Glove

There were waves yesterday...well sort of. The forecasts were showing a small bump, but the cameras were showing what looked to be less than that and with the air temperature and lack of daylight, it was one of those days where I was really on the fence. I knew that if I didn't go, I wouldn't be missing much, if anything at all; but at the same time, I hadn't been out as much as I'd like, so I ended up grabbing my gear and headed over the bridge.

Although the days are starting to get longer, daylight is still at a premium, so its a race against sunset in the afernoons during the winter. After checking one spot and seeing how tiny it was, I drove around until I found a spot that still tiny but at least ridable. It was cold, but nothing too bad. Little wind, the air and water were probably both in the thirties. As I paddled out I suddenly felt a rush of water in one of my gloves...not good. This was the first time I used my thicker winter mittens to surf and it was very apparent that there was a hole somewhere in it. Each time I went to paddle, the glove would fill with icy salt water slowly numbing my hand and crawling up the sleeve of my wetsuit to chill my arm. Sitting out in the line-up, I studied the glove to find a nice puncture hole in the palm of the glove making the 5mm glove pretty much worthless. I surfed for about forty five minutes, which wasn't bad considering my hand was slowly turning into a claw. With the tide coming in, it looked as if the waves were inproving slightly, but my hand could take no more. Here is a post-session shot of the claw:

Falling Asleep on Lincoln Drive

A shot of Maeve and me (and Foofa from Yo Gabba Gabba too) before heading up to the Lehigh Valley this weekend. Notice I said before. Only a jackass would take a picture while driving...which I considered on the drive home after passing a car on the Schuykill Expressway with a "PWN3D" liscense plate. Back to the beach for some waves today hopefully.

Twin Killing

Since I headed to the Lehigh Valley this weekend, I made the pilgrimage again to Double Decker. It's been said before, but I'll say it again: hands down the best record store on the East Coast. I spent a solid hour digging through piles, stacks and crates of records found inside Double Decker. I didn't go in with the plan to pick up much, but ended up finding a bunch of stuff I wanted including a copy of Chain of Strength's True 'Til Death seven inch in my purchases. It never ceases to amaze what records are instore or just passed through the crates of DD. Not only did I get to check out an Agnostic Front United Blood ep and a Minor Threat In My Eyes seven inch(in the picture below), but Jamie had told me that he just sold the Antidote seven inch just as quickly as it came in. The price tag for just those three records alone was $1,000 dollars easily (AF- $400, MT- $200, Antidote- $400). Needless to say, a photograph of those two records was all I could afford. Thanks to Jamie for letting me take the picture.

Offshore Style

My neighbor Jim lent me his copy of the Offshore Longboard Club's DVD filmed by Paul Aspenberger. Runs about fifteen or twenty minutes and features the usual suspects in a variety of locations in Ocean City and beyond riding mosty singlefin longboards. Very fun to watch. Now I just need to figure out how to burn a copy...

Adult Crash

I finally got my copy of Adult Crash, Dave Brown's photobook from different hardcore shows over the years. Included with the book was the record below featuring Cloak/Dagger, Slumlords, Down to Nothing and Kill Your Idols.

The book is what it is. I like the fact that Brown explains at the onset of the book that he is not a photographer, just someone who takes photos. Rather than be an artistic collection, Brown says he published the book to document what he saw at shows over the years. The photos are for the most from the RVA scene and stretches to outlying locations as well. The pictures tend to be heavy on bands that are from or play Richmond regularly. That being said, the pictures are great, particularly the earliest pictures of shows from the late eighties (Release, Chain, etc.). The book is well work picking up if you have been on board the recent hardcore goes literary movement that has sprung up in the past couple years.

The record itself was a really pleasant surprise. If you are familiar with the bands on the record, you know what you are getting, but the surprise is, they do covers. I really dug the Kill Your Idols cover, but Down to Nothing doing Four Walls Falling was probably my favorite of the record.

http://vcrecs.blogspot.com/2008/10/ordering-info-finally.html

The Road to Hell

I have been meaning to get a picture of this road sign for some time now and last weekend, I finally got it. Located back in the wooded wilds where Atlantic and Cape May county meet is the blackest road in all of New Jersey.


Just to prove there's no photoshopping involved:


I feel confident that if Danzig ever moves south, I know where he would live.

There is a Black Hole in the Shadow of....

A picture from early fall:

Break Down the Walls

Big day today...



I love this photo.

Ripped Off

Some more artistic contributions. The "Go Fish" Painting is a poorly done copy I did of the Andy Davis one that was used in Thomas Campbell's Sprout movie. It's kind of lame that I ripped off his work, but its just sitting in my garage and I always really liked that painting. The others are pretty forgettable with the exception of the green dish. My neighbor had given me some old olive green square plastic plates, so I sprayed a bunch up and drew on them with paint pens. I really like the way that one turned out.

No Rules

Always liked Dutchland Diesel a lot.

Cordell Miller

I had written a bunch of shapers about ten years ago about a board. I thought it was so rad that Cordell Miller took the time to write me back that I saved his postcard that he sent:

Flashback: The Young and the Useless Zine

When I was in high school, I didn't have a whole lot of money week to week to go out and buy records. This made things tough, because without the internet, you were left with word of mouth or reading the description of the record in the Very Distro catalog to decide whether or not to pull the trigger on purchasing a particular album. That being said, it meant that more often and not, you were stuck with a few clunker CDs, 7 inches and LPs that weren't exactly the greatest.

My friend Dave and I used to grab at least five or six of these from our collections and go to trade them in at Double Decker Records in Allentown for what we hoped would be the equivalent of one CD. I cringe when I think of the amount of stuff that the two of us got rid of just to feed our appetite for new music. There are many a record that I wished I hadn't traded in, but at the time if it wasn't youthcrewstraightedgehardcore, chances are I wasn't interested.

To make a long winded point even longer, one of schemes that Dave and I concocted was to create our own zine. We figured that if we were to have our own zine, record labels would be looking to flood our mailboxes with CDs and records for us to review. Free music right? Idiots. We ended up doing one issue of a ska themed zine a year or two back from the one posted below and ended getting one or two free CDs from Moon Records (Maybe why they went bankrupt?), but not much else. A year or two later, I tried to ressurect the zine into a one page format in a second futile attempt to gain free music. It was called The Young and the Useless and had columns written by yours truly on the front and music reviews also done by me on the back. It was terrible and I cannot believe that Jamie Holmes even let me leave them at Double Decker. At least it was free.

I have been meaning to post this for a while, but reading the reviews and the columns in really pretty painful. My opinions and views have changed a lot over the years and to go back and read what I have to say makes me say to myself, "What the hell was I thinking?!?!" in some instances. Some of the music reviews are down right hysterical to me. Maybe if I get the courage, I will actually post the FRONT of the zine which includes the most lame columns ever written. For now here are my music reviews circa '97. Click on the page to enlarge:

Meat is Murder

After doing about thirty seconds of searching on youtube, I found this great video of Scott Platt aka Meatstick surfing, well of all places, Surf Road. Here's to warmer temps:

PA Kooks

My sister and I waiting to go shred on her raft in Ocean City New Jersey circa 1983. Good times.

New Slab of Fresh Meat

Just got this record in the mail the other day from Breathing Problem Productions. Fresh Meat features members from a bunch of other bands,but don't really sound like any of their previous projects. It doesn't really matter anyway because this record is really good on its own. Initially, I had gotten a hold of their "Summer Blowout" demo and really liked what I heard. This record pretty much picks up where that left off. If you are into Brainbombs, Pissed Jeans or Drunkdriver you should be really into this. A side has "Sweat Her" and the B side track in entitled "Man or Woman" and both songs clock in around three to four minutes. BPP describes it as disgusting and negative music, but trust me, its in a really good way. This is one of the bands that I hope to see live this year.


My copy came with a cassette as well...part of the pre-order package and it wasn't even broken!

Record Shop

I was watching the movie "Rockers" over the weekend. Besides having an amazing soundtrack, its actually a pretty entertaining film. If you know anything about the movie, you know that the lead character, Horsemouth, takes a job in the record distribution business at the start. After buying his motorcycle he can be seen driving from record shop to record shop pushing 200 copies of the "45" that he picked up from the plant.

I grabbed this picture of Horsemouth just outside one of the local record shops. How great would it be to be able to run a viable business out of a place like that? I wonder if they have a copy of the "Age of Quarrel" lp for me?

Windows

A shot of Atlantic City from last night. Somehow, in what was supposed to be dinner down the street, ended up with us in AC. Insert "Let it Ride" reference right here.

I went to bed last night with crossed fingers, hoping that things would be decent enough this morning to warrant paddling out finally for my first session of the New Year. It is pretty pathetic that there are almost two full weeks of 2009 in and I am just getting in the water today. Anyway, here is a shot from the beach this morning toward the south end of Ocean City. About waist high, very clean and very windy. It was a lot of fun, but within the hour, the wind had beaten it down and it was in the process of becoming flat. Luckily, I was able to take advantage of the small swell window and get some fun ones.

Clocked In

Most commuters leave in the morning with a briefcase, travel mug of coffee and maybe the morning paper. In Maeve's case, she has all the essentials: Blanket, Tootee from Yo Gabba Gabba, her binky, and lastly her little toy Ming Ming from Wonder Pets. All set for a hard day's work.

Iron Cross

Another collections of summer scraps sitting in my garage. Pretty random assortment of surfboards, skulls, faces, waves...you get the idea. The center piece of the surfer with his arms in a cross position was drawn off of the photo of Alex Knost that Nolan Hall did and graced the cover of Surfrider's Making Waves magazine. Everything was done once again with spray paint and paint pens this summer with the exception of the piece behind the skulls, which I did about six years ago.

Feeding Frenzy

While the sign clearly offers a once in a lifetime opportunity, I rarely see this place open, let alone people actually checking it out. I would really love to get my picture taken inside those jaws.

Two Things At Once

The Marshalls are two of my favorite surfers to watch these days. Maybe its their love of the eighties or their affinty for graffiti, but I like the fact that they do their own thing rather than worrying about what people will think. Or it could be they just kill it every time I see a clip of them at Malibu. Either way, they do their own thing, don't really worry about being a surfer/hipster and do some crazy things with longboards.

The following clips are great surfing-wise, but I must warn you, you could do permanent damage to your ears by listening the Sublime-inspired frat band or the Puddle of Mudd wannabes in the each clip. If the Marshalls had selected the music for these they would have chosen New Order, the Stone Roses or something rad like that. I suggest muting the volume on youtube and putting on Career Suicide or Annihilation Time.

Sit Back and Relax

A bunch of recent releases have popped up that are worth talking about in the coming weeks. The above in the actual cover for tile's seven inch on Limited Appeal Records. It was originally released in a "rejected press" format with just the record, but the pressing was done officially now as well. These are/were limited to 100 while the rejected press was around 96 I think. Heavy, loud, noisey and so good. They have a one-sided LP on the way with an etching done by McStyles aka Eric DeJesus on the other side. I cannot wait to hear it.

www.myspace.com/limitedappealrecords

www.tilenoise.com

Here Where Nothing Grows

This is about as close to a surf picture as I've got for the past week or so. The thing I hate about winter is the window for swell is so tiny before the winds just blow everything out. Yesterday was pretty warm, sunny and...completely flat. I haven't been in the water for almost a week and missed two opportunities after assuming nothing would be going on. Note to self: When the wind is cranking to almost 30 mph, there may still be a chance to paddle out!

Here is the welcome mat, minus the "E" in Strathmere:

Lost out on a Carpenter Ant test press on eBay yesterday too!

Phantom Limbs

Snowblind

These shots were taken by Captain Klunk a few years ago mid-winter. Hopefully, we'll get a little more snow this year than the few minutes of flurries we had yesterday.

Doom Patrol

Old flyer advertising Dead Guy playing in the LV. It's a shame Doc Hopper got top billing.

Where Cold Winds Blow

We headed out with Maeve and my niece and nephew for first night in Ocean City. The wind was blowing at least 25 mph and it was unbelievably cold, but it was New Years so we had to do something.




The approach to Ocean City High School. The golden dome gives it a real Notre Dame feel.


The kids chowing down. There were at least three restaurants set up with a buffet just outside the cafeteria. Very fun. Maeve is still working on how to smile without looking like her entire face is cramping up.


Amy and Maeve making the walk up to the rides. At this point we were walking with the wind.


The Ferris Wheel at Wonderland. Although it looks awesome, they were not running it, which was probably a good idea. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be on top of that thing with the wind cranking like it was.


The view atop of Wonderland. If you factor out how warmly everyone is dressed, you would think it was the middle of summer. Where did all these people come from??


Amy and her niece, Meghan, getting ready to ride the train.


Sound advice:


The Smiths at the civic center. Moonbounces, slides, music and hotdogs with sauerkraut.


The cousins in the moonbounce. There was a wizard on the outside that Maeve thought was Santa Claus.

Roman crushing a soft pretzel.


The next day we hit the beach for about fifteen minutes before the extreme cold sent us running for the car. The view from the boardwalk:





All in all, a great start to 2009!