One of the biggest difficulties of my professional life, thus far, is trying to score a big story that requires traveling to report. It stands as my main goal as a writer. That's mostly on me, however. If a writer doesn't pitch good stories, a writer doesn't get to write or travel. By that mark, my story ideas suck.
It's no surprise, then, that I love looking at photos by those who have traveled this planet. Friends and strangers have seen so much to wonder about. I often come across photographers like I do new music: from surfing. A testament to one's aptitude behind the lens--to me at least--are the images that don't involve surfing. Joe Curren and Chris Burkhard, each relatively popular names for their surf work, have a special touch with a camera regardless of the subject.
Another example is Shawn Parkin. I don't know shit about Parkin--only that his surfing pictures are popular. Besides that, he could be a diabetic Wikileaks financier with rosacia and one testicle. Who knows? All his blog profile says is, "I like to take photos. I also like to design stuff and create art." But his work is stellar. Below you'll find a link to Parkin's blog and Web site, as well as some of my favorite frames. Parkin has been to some incredibly cool places on this planet. I hope I'm as lucky--and can convey the awesomeness of my trips as keenly as Parkin. --- Each of these images comes from: http://www.sparkinphoto.com/Shawn_Parkin_Photography/home.html. For the more casual: http://shawnparkin.blogspot.com/ ---
It's electric Trestles (@Uppers), one of everyone's favorite SoCal spots Christian Wach sliding an alaia--a finless, flat wooden plank Eye tricks Blue Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey (Caption unnecessary) Spot the bird feed in mid air Dawn patrol somewhere when a surfer awoke to a reality far surpassing that of his dreams Lest we forget, all we're doing is crowding their lineup
*This was a post originally written for Patagonia's blog The Cleanest Line. It never ran.*
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I’ve worked at Patagonia’s Upper West Side store since last summer. The company’s reputation for spreading a message of environmental responsibility is alluring, and the annual Voice Your Choice campaign is one example of using stores as a platform.
The VYC gist is simple: customers cast their votes; the winner gets $2,500. Each store holds its own contest. Every autumn, three community environmental organizations provide in-store displays explaining their mission. Passersby choose their favorite. VYC was, explains Patagonia’s Web site, “conceived to encourage store customers to become better informed and more involved with environmental work in their communities.”
Our store’s 2009 top vote getter, Clean Ocean Action, has been cooperating with groups and activists to oppose a proposal by Atlantic Sea Island Group (ASIG) to erect an offshore, liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coasts of New York and New Jersey. ASIG applied for a license from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Maritime Administration in 2006 to build an artificial island called Safe Harbor Energy. ASIG claims it will be a "receiving, storage and regasification facility" for imported LNG. The station would emerge 13.5 miles south of Long Beach, NY, and 23 miles from the Ports of New York and New Jersey. The structure would sit like a rest stop along active East Coast shipping lanes. Two parallel pipelines—spanning almost 13 miles—would transport the LNG from Safe Harbor to an existing offshore pipeline near Long Beach, further industrializing this portion of coastline.
Now there’s good news: ASIG has withdrawn its application for the project. A company statement said it was “suspending the project until the political situation [in the Gulf] is cleared up…Everybody’s concerned about what’s going on." Yet, while this demonstrates that public opinion can mildly sway energy policy, it’s only one battle. ASIG may have backed down as a result of the horrendous Gulf oil spill, but plans for two other natural gas projects off New Jersey’s shores still linger (Excalibur’s Liberty Natural Gas near Asbury Park and ExxonMobil’s Blue Ocean Energy at Sea Girt). The outcome remains uncertain, given that NJ Governor Chris Christie opposes all three terminals, but Governor David Paterson approved of NY’s State Energy Plan, which recommends removing impediments to the plans.
As a result, COA has urged folks to voice their choice by signing petitions, contacting representatives, attending public hearings, beach protests, and surf paddle-outs. The opposition’s arguments range from the environmental—that the island will disturb the marine habitat, create chances for spills or leaks, and increase ship traffic—to the national security threat posed by having an energy target right in their backyard, as well as continued reliance on foreign fuel-suppliers and the hindrances it puts on energy independence and innovation. COA believes it’s your choice to make—and that the right one for our region is obvious. That the economic benefits Safe Harbor would produce wouldn’t be as permanent as the environmental punishment inflicted.
The ASIG development can, however, provide welcomed optimism and evidence that efforts by COA and the like can work. Gearing up for Patagonia’s next environmental push, Protect Your Break, I asked store environmental coordinator Colin Pile what he hoped customers, staff, and window-shoppers took from the initiatives. “Even in an environment as artificial as New York,” he mused, “residents can discover how to reincorporate the natural world into their daily routine.”
A few photos from the SEA Paddle around NYC--a benefit for water quality improvement & autism--on Fri, Aug 13, 2010:
Jodie Nelson, surfer & TV producer
"OneFin" slowly getting back his land-legs, post race.
Thomas Maximus (yes, what a name for the winner), being the first racer to finish. Victory.
Nearing the finish line--just past the Manhattan Bridge to underneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
Maximus maximizing the current, almost home.
Early on, super-grom (15 years-old) Slater Trout battling it out w/eventual third-place finisher, dude's name I can't recall. (Trout finished second.) Both eventually got smoked by Maximus around the mid-way part. The race was 28.6 miles.
The elite race gets underway, heading north on the Hudson, west of Manhattan, with Jersey City to their left.
Andrew Mencinsky, SEA Exec Director, corrals the racers for the start.
Although participating only in the casual paddle, not the elite race, surf legend Garret McNamara takes the early lead w/a power strokes.
Ceremonial circle w/all paddlers before the casuals embark; the racers followed about 45 minutes later.
Jodie Nelson & Fuel TV's Daily Habit/NBC's World of Adventure Sports host Pat Parnell, in town to paddle and cover the event for Fuel.
Onefin and Snaggle all smiles as the event gets underway.
Pat Parnell.
Casual paddlers begin, with Chelsea in the background.
Everyone getting into the water at Peir 40 in Chelsea.
Two Thursdays ago, at bottom of the first, short set of stairs of the Vernon-Jackson station, right before exiting through the turnstiles, someone had taken a dump and it somehow had been smeared on the platform. At first I thought, “Somebody just stepped in dog shit.” Then reality set in, when is the last time you saw a dog in a subway station, and was it shitting? Never, to both. I almost stepped in it. Not doing so was more gratifying after realizing a person just took a shit on an open train platform around 7pm, and not a seeing-eye dog.
It only got worse. Just beyond the turnstiles, Active Anus had left artifacts behind: one heavily used paper towel and a smeared pair of boxes, linking him to the scene of the crime. Quick maneuvering required.
As the night aged, I found myself free of both company and activity. The DVR's been recording a TV series called Vanguard, a journalism show on Current (started by Al Gore) that discusses interesting, often obscure, meaningful things in a non-patronizing way. So I watched the previous night's episode. (Preview is first video; full episode embedded at bottom.)
Shit. That’s how it begins. The host, Adam Yamaxfdre...or something like that, is talking to the camera as he holds a cup of human shit, barely suppressing the urge to vomit that he’s spent two weeks try to perfect. So far, so good. The next sixty minutes skip among different places in India and Indonesia where people crapping in the open has traumatized local water supplies—people bathing and cooking with water contaminated with human and animal excrement—and hastened death and disease. Host Adam floats down an Indian river of black so filled and toxic with untreated raw sewage it’s like sailing in God’s ink jar. A local activist explains the details in educated-outside-of-India English. It sounds disgusting. Adam wants to throw up; so do I. And he does, quickly once on land. There are onlookers in the field nearby as Adam hurls…they are shitting. (All true.)
The show explained, titled the "The World's Toilet Crisis," how toilets and simple sanitation help societies progress, help them evolve. They showed examples of success. Of why open defecation is messy. One Indonesian (?) town made installing a toilet a status symbol, locals cheering one older woman who’s home underwent the upgrade. It’s the type of weird thing that might surface in a dream later in the night. I don’t remember, but I’m not convinced poop didn’t show up in my head.
That should’ve been enough real and televised exposure to human feces. At least for a while. I went to work on Friday morning free of the thought. Ascending the stairs of the 7 train station beneath Bryant Park, I see what I’m hoping is not another shit. It is. It is human, but with Teen-wolf like size. I’m then past and on the sidewalk. That quickly.
But the questions have returned with each subway ride. I’ve been on the lookout for terds when entering and exiting each train station. Begun considering what types of economic, social, and psychological circumstances have to collide for someone to reach the point where taking a shit in a public space is the best option. Homeless person? Maybe, seen a few of them posting up in these stations, almost stepping in a piss river one morning while a shoeless man let it go during rush hour. Or was it some drunk yuppie asshole, bent enough to drop his drawers with no cleaning supplies? What if it was a legitimate emergency, and she just had to go? That’s kind of understandable. Do you refrain from getting pissed-off that she didn't clean it up when you accept that you wouldn’t either? Or, simply, why? Quandries.
That’s what has circulated through my head the last week. And it’s not yet over. What We Leave Behind is a book about how changing perceptions of our use of ‘waste’ will improve the planet. Only a few pages deep, the authors are still revealing their fascination with poop, and shitting outside to feed the slugs so the frogs will still croak (they eat slugs). When I again open the book, the next section will talk about the etymology of shit, which might have a Middle Eastern origin.
Guess shit will be on my mind for a while to come. Here is the Vanguard episode about poo:
I was lucky to gain press access to Taylor Steele's newest surf flick, Castles in the Sky. Not a bad movie. Heavy on the scenery, lighter on the hardcore surfing. The older I get, the more ok I am with that aspect of Steele's movies. A sense of place becomes as fascinating and satisfying as the waves that arrive there. And Castles certainly visits some very cool destinations--reminders of how exhilarating and splendid this planet often is.
Here is the link to my written interview with Steele for Eastern Surf Mag. Above the text, is a brief video from the event, held at the Tribeca Cinemas in lower Manhattan (sight of the film festival of the same name established by Robert De Niro and others). The mash-up tells the story of the night. Starting with the sunshine of the late afternoon, the set-ip of the event, the goings-on and all the night's characters. In the middle, you'll see a snippet of an additional interview w/ Taylor Steele and his film crew, Todd Heater from California and Alejandro Berger from Peru. (Heater and Berger began working with Steele on Sipping Jetstreams, to which Castles is a follow-up.) Again, I am the one interviewing these three, each of whom was incredibly pleasant and receptive.
This wasn't in the original plan, see. I'd emailed Steele's 'people' a list of questions that he promptly responded to. Only after a quick email exchange with one of the NY Surf Film Festival's founders, Tyler Bruer, did I arrange to actually sit down with Steele. Luckily, I had enough time for more research to put together another eight to ten fresh questions to get the conversation going. The video, also available (sans text) over at ESPN Surfing, was produced by Christian and Spencer Driggs of Driggs Bros. Productions. I interviewed these guys last year for a story, and by coincidence we met at 2009's NYSFF. This was our first project together--also a minor coincidence thanks to Nick as ESM. Good work, better people, all around.
The evening was fun, capped by a conversation with Dan Malloy. A name that's been on this blog and many others, many times. We have a common bond in that we both receive paychecks from outdoor sports outfitter Patagonia. Except, you know, Malloy gets to design boards and test wetsuits and I sell raincoats to the occasional Upper West Side rube. But Malloy was a solid chap, courteous and friendly. Confirming previous suspicions of one's quality character is always gratifying.
(Note: The Quicktime video is failing to upload. Unsure if it's a flaw with the file or because Blogger sucks ass.)
One of our own left today. Hobo--a name bestowed before we ever met her--was struck by a car, life leaving her while in the arms of a good friend. She once belonged to me--and a few others. Investors, in a sense. Several years ago, a roommate adopted Hobo at an event held by the Lost Dog Foundation, a no-kill shelter worthy of every donation it receives. He brought her into a house of four dudes with four unique schedules. An environment hampered by lazy communication ("Oh you already fed her? Woops") isn't ideal for a dog with an unclear, somewhat unfortunate, past who must now adapt to an unknown home. Still, it worked out. She was the only collectively adored resident of the Hobo House. (Hobo House being the moniker given to the Arlington, VA, house we rented where exterior appearance did not suggest occupants of enviable wealth. We were working professionals in our mid-to-late twenties; aesthetics suffered.)
We eventually all disbursed--some bound for new zip codes, others across town. While plans were discussed regarding Hobo's next relocation, uncertainty enveloped her future. Arlington landlords don't always fancy dogs. A New York City apartment is just unfair. And then Andrea, Dean's then-girlfriend-now-wife, spoke up. Andrea had taken Hobo home to Charlottesville once, where her sister Elaine ignited an instant connection with the quiet, rat-killing, tail-wagging K9. Hobo became a periodic fixture at the Ribando's ever since. So when it was time for us to again find Hobo a satisfactory home, Andrea stepped up, offering Hobo her kitchen floor to slide around on; her living room to spin "take me out I gotta pee" circles; her couch and bed sheets upon which Hobo could incessantly shed that part Swiss Mountain dog/part beagle/all mutt fur. Black, white, and brown abound. Andrea and Elaine: saving the day. (A wholly supported move, given Andrea's relative superiority as a person.)
After being removed from one home and onto a stint at Lost Dog's shelter, before falling into the hands of multiple proprietors, Hobo deserved familiar faces, regularity, and love. She got each. Hobo found people who wanted to live with her even after enduring a binge on unsecured cat food that escalated into a night of milk chocolaty-diarrhea violently splattered across white floors and walls with a degree of unintentional artistic acumen Jackson Pollack couldn't begin to fathom. She had people who wanted her to be around. To smirk at her natural aloofness; to roust her from hours of couch surfing to sniff trails at Great Falls leash-free; to give her a spot in bed to steal during a late night visit to the toilet. To let her know this is where she belonged. Because if Hobo had nowhere to go, nobody to want her, then whose Taco Bell take-out would she inhale, ashamed inside Hobo Cove? Whose lawn chairs would be entwined, not unlike a mummy, in rounds of cable connected to the collar of a dog wandering in circles across the front yard? Who would abduct Truman's toys? Upon whose torso would Zero splay?
I missed Hobo knowing she was a four-hour drive away--easy to visit for a quick walk when in town. Missed her guilty, yet unrepentant, eyes. Her abrupt departure flattens my shoulders. She was the first hound I'd ever cared for that didn't live in my parents house. They taught me how to treat pets with care and discipline and, most importantly, inclusion; neglect is a dog's worst fate. Many hands ran down Hobo's back, palms full of fun and fondness, erasing any residual misfortune. Her residential life was, at times, as stable as NBC's current late night TV lineup. Thankfully, before she passed, it got fixed for good. So, tonight, Annalisa, Ben, and I swallowed a shot for Hobo--with our friends in mind--toasting to the best circumstance of Hobo's too-brief tenure: here's to Hobo finding a home among people who cared about her.
Thanks especially to Dean and Andrea for keeping Hobo in our lives while bettering hers, and theirs; to Cheek for his attention, and footing of the bill when he did; Frigm for introducing us; and Annalisa, Stock, and TVH for pitching in and sparing due affection for her.
