You Want Me to Hate You...

but the answer is NO!

It Would Be Cooler If You Did...

Searchin' for the Light

This time of year is probably my favorite time of year, mainly because of the amount daylight that's available. Are there better times of year swell-wise? Yes, but any time you can be in the water at 5:00am and there is actually enough light to see, that's pretty rad. It's a weird feeling to be on the road at quarter to five in the morning, but a lot of times, it can be worth it.

Unfortunately, Friday was not one of those mornings. Surfing before work means your on borrowed time. One more spot check, one more step that you forgot to take care of the night before means minutes shaved off what could already be a short session. Upon checking my first go-to,pre-work, spot, and it looked like tiny junk. Uh-oh. Immediately, my mind began to race as to what do to: Head home, drive around, paddle out anyway? All had their positives and negatives. No waves, lost time, lost sleep were all factors, but I bolted for the north end.

I avoid the North End in most instances, mainly in the months of may to september. Better waves, sure, but I hate dealing with crowds, bros and the inevitable pissing contests that usually occur down there. I realize that maybe I'm just being a baby, but I hate sitting in a line up and look to shore and see one, two or even three guys making their way out to the water. Total buzzkill. The wave quality to crowd debate is always a delicate one to me, but I guess for me, I'll take quantity of quality.

But whatever, the clock was ticking and I was hoping to get something decent, somewhere on the island. Checked one spot, no good. Checked another and it was lining up good enough to justify paddling out and that's exactly what I did. The waves were junky, but they were larger (relatively) and lining up better than anywhere else I had seen.

Despite it being 5:00am, I had the place to myself for a total of fifteen minutes.
In the end, there were only two other guys, it was a fun session and it was good to make an unexpected trip to the North. The building in the first photo is a dead giveaway as to what street.


Sunrise on shoreburbia.

Save My Soul

Ended up in the Lehigh Valley yesterday unexpectedly, and on my way out of town I stopped by my old college to snag this shot. It's a little off kilter, but it's got a nice fire & brimstone feel to it.

While I love my college, I consider my experience to a cultural cess pool. My fault.

Fuck

There is no Ink & Dagger without this man, but I will be there to see the cover band. Beleedat.

Typed Out Setlist

It's been a while since I did any eBay auctions. It's the type of thing that you can get easily addicted to if you let it. Sometimes I find the most random items in the garage, the shed or my closet and find myself thinking about how much money I can get for it on the 'Bay. In most cases, the records are never missed, but in some cases, those moments where you realize that 97a shirt your looking for was sold makes it a dicey undertaking.
The whole eBay thing reminds me of my buddy and I going through our collections in the 90s, scrounging to find a couple CDs or 7 inches to trade in at Double Decker. To think of the good music we let go to take a chance of some stupid record that had a write up in the Very Distro catalog makes me sick, but luckily, we're now in an age where nobody asks me "Where do you HEAR of these bands?" anymore (A pretty common question years ago).
I don't expect the stuff that's going up to go for much, but whatever. I feel like I'm getting to the point where I am wearing less and less hardcore shirts. It's not an adult crash type of thing, just, I have my favorites and find myself wearing those same 5-10 shirts more than the fiftysome sitting in the closet. So this is the process of the weeding out:

DEATH TENS DOES EBAY

PS- The title of this post is in reference to a song that fits my eBay experiences perfectly.

Safe In a Crowd

Back from a shallow grave with a new name and the same old bullshit. As random as it gets and updates whenever I feel like it.

Ended up catching Breakdown at the Barbary this weekend. Pretty much played wallflower the entire time...but here were the highlights:

-Caught the end of Dead End Path. Sounded tight.
-Skull Crusher had a good set and preferred Fiji bottled water.
-Truth and Rights deciding to end their set with "Rise and Fall".
-Seeing a kid in a studded vest hide his ice tea bottle behind a pole outside.
-Noticing a number of hardcore hall-of-famers in attendance.
-Getting an Unlearn demo CD.
-Breakdown destroying.
-Scooping up this shirt:


Pretty much a perfect set in my book. There's always the cyber-mosh:

Breakdown (Full Set) from hate5six productions on Vimeo.