future posts will be at hydrodynamica.wordpress.com

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Spirit of Akasha US Tour

Inside SoCal

From Nautilus Street to Wall Street...

Wall Street Journal picks Surf Craft as top six design book for the holiday gift season. Occupied.

Skoby Joe 5'6" TomoDynamica Mean Machine

Joe Skoby aka Flowby, smoothest surfer in La Jolla 'cept for Tom Ortner. Little nug at Windansea back in October on his 5'6" Golden Mean tri hand shaped by Daniel Thomson. Joe is always a pleasure to watch. Pics by RK.

Continuous Rhythm to be continued...

See Burch Go CLICK HERE

Ryan Thomas' recent edit of Ryan Burch.

 This one has been all over

 the usual surf sites for the past few weeks.

Since lot of the design work on these boards began

 right here on Hydrodynamica, I'm posting it too. 

With sponsorship from Volcom & Spy, expect to see 

plenty more mind blowing stuff of Burch in the future. 

I went to South America with RT and Burch in July...

the rhythm has not stopped, believe me. 

hand held shake n' bake.

Michelle shot this stuff of me and Daniel last week with a little T3I without a tripod. Music is by my brother, Peter Kenvin, doing a cover of Echo & the Bunnymen live here at the loft in 2007. Dan is riding a mat and a 5'2" Vader, I'm on a 5'8" x 20" x 2.75" Vanguard and a really thin finless paulownia   

alai a-inspired board made by Jon Wegener.

Won't get fooled again...

"The change, it had to come

We knew it all along

We were liberated from the fold, that's all

And the world looks just the same

And history ain't changed...

 ...there's nothing in the streets

Looks any different to me

And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye

And the parting on the left

Are now parting on the right

And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I'll get on my knees and pray

We don't get fooled again

Don't get fooled again

No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss…"

lyrics by Pete Townshend, 1971

mustn't overlook this...

Custom for Danny Torrance, Room 237.

Not yer grandma's shortboard...

Single fins &...

           

Painting by Peter Halasz, 2013                    

8000 BC (disputed)

National Geographic Volume 224 #6

December 2013

"Skis continue to evolve, 

with lighter and stronger materials

that increase speed and control."

do the math...

Terry Hendricks and Bob Simmons were mathematicians.

Hence the profound similarities between Terry's 1968 kneeboard and Bobs 1950 planing hull.

"We don't need darts" - Simmons

free your mind...

Martha Longenecker: May 18th, 1920 - October 29th, 2013

One day in the fall of 2006 I held the door for a distinguished looking woman who was exiting El Pescador Fish Market in La Jolla with a bag under each arm. As she thanked me for holding the door, I recognized her as Martha Longenecker from a small photo of Martha I had seen in a catalog of the Mingei Museum’s collection of artifacts. I rushed after her, introduced myself, and asked if she was indeed Martha Longenecker. She smiled, and said that she was. I quickly explained to her that I was researching a design paradigm in surfboards; that I had read the Unknown Craftsman, and that I felt that these surfboards were a compelling example of beauty and use in the context of Yanagi’s text. Martha was intrigued, and invited me to visit her at her home to further discuss surfboards and surfing in the context of mingei.

 A few weeks later I went to Martha’s house. Like most non-surfers (and many surfers, for that matter) she had some preconceptions about surfboards. ‘Aren’t they all made from molds out of plastic these days?” she asked. I explained that some were indeed made entirely of petro-chemicals, assembled in factories with no handcraftsmanship involved, wrapped in cellophane with garish product labels, and then sold cheaply on the floors of big box stores as “seasonal” items during the spring and summer months. Most, however, were still more or less hand shaped, hand laminated, and hand finished, though they too were made mostly from petro-chemical materials, and the blanks were usually 80% pre-shaped by a machine. But regardless of the materials used, as a production item of considerable volume made to meet a global demand, a remarkable amount of handcraftsmanship still goes into in the large scale manufacturing of surfboards. In fact, aside from the machined pre-shapes, the process of hand finishing a blank of surfboard foam and then laminating the finished design with resin and fiberglass had changed little for over fifty years.

In the Unknown Craftsman, Yanagi divided crafts into three broad categories:  

folk crafts, artist crafts, and industrial crafts. Folk crafts are pure mingei, anonymous objects hand made to be used in daily life. The alaias in the Bishop are examples of folk craft. Artist crafts are consciously made and signed, with considerable value placed on the cache’ associated with the individual craftsperson. A hand shaped, custom surfboard made by a famous shaper is an example of an artist craft. Industrial crafts are made under the industrial system by mechanical means. The “seasonal” boards sold at the big box stores are an example of industrial crafts. To a lesser extent, so are the branded, high volume production boards made under the “labels” of renowned “artist-craftsman” shapers. Discussing these divisions with Martha, it was clear that most surfboards built today were a blend of artist craft and industrial craft, to a greater or lesser degree. 

But the boards I was inspired to share with Martha didn’t come from a time or place of high volume production. In fact, many of them qualified as pure folk craft. Others were artist craft, but tempered heavily with the anonymous character of mingei due to the restraint, humility, and aesthetics projected by the people who made them. Those who made these boards, whether consciously or unconsciously, created their work in the true spirit of mingei. The fish kneeboard designs of Steve Lis, built in the garages of Point Loma and Ocean Beach during the late sixties, inspired me to take the first steps on a journey that had led me to the alaias in the Bishop Museum, and now to Martha Longenecker’s living room. Lis’s fish was a radical, progressive departure from the conventional board design school of its time. And yet, it revealed an ancestral path leading to much older designs, particularly the paipo boards of Hawaii, the hydrodynamic planing hulls of Bob Simmons, and finally to the traditional alaia boards of Hawaii.

These four types of surf craft are the major links in the design chain I had been following into the past. All of them were examples of mingei, hand made, unsigned, functional designs used for surfing. Steve Lis once told me that ‘The real history of surfing was never on film, and it was never in a magazine. It was just the guys on the beaches making boards, just going and doing it.” A fraternity of unknown craftsmen, building boards with their hands for themselves and their friends to ride. I brought two boards to Martha’s house that day, a Steve Lis fish, and a Simmons planing hull.

I showed them to Martha. I didn’t need to explain anything; she saw them and understood. The boards spoke for themselves of functional simplicity, of beauty and use, of shibui. As time went by I lost touch with Martha. A year or so passed, and then late one night my phone rang. It was Martha, she was in New York City. She told me she had been thinking about surfboards and surfing, and that she now saw them as one of the most compelling examples of the mingei philosophy in the realm of handcraftsmanship. ‘It really is such a beautiful thing, such a powerful example of craft.”

Martha’s words that night strengthened and affirmed my belief that Yanagi’s philosophy was a vital means of appreciating and understanding surfboard craft and design. Ultimately, it was Yanagi and his close friend, Shoji Hamada, who had inspired Martha directly to fulfill her own quest, which was bringing mingei to America. She had succeeded in her mission by founding a museum that collects, conserves and exhibits arts of daily use – by anonymous craftsmen of ancient times, from traditional cultures of past and present and by historical and contemporary designers. Her quest had united with Yanagi’s in Japan 60 years ago, and theirs in turn had intersected with my own when I found the Unknown Craftsman in the bookstore of her museum. After reading the Unknown Craftsman, I never saw surfboards the same way again. Now, like me, Martha couldn't either. Yanagi’s words had taught us both how to see.

Bitterer than death...

Poppies

Painted in England, 1890

by Princess Ka'iulani

October 16th, 1875- March 6, 1899

"Four years ago, at the request of Mr. Thurston, then a Hawaiian Cabinet Minister, I was sent away to England to be educated privately and fitted to the position which by the constitution of Hawaii I was to inherit. For all these years, I have patiently and in exile striven to fit myself for my return this year to my native country. I am now told that Mr. Thurston will be in Washington asking you to take away my flag and my throne. No one tells me even this officially. Have I done anything wrong that this wrong should be done to me and my people? I am coming to Washington to plead for my throne, my nation and my flag. Will not the great American people hear me?"

"Seventy years ago, Christian America sent over Christian men and women to give religion and civilization to Hawaii. Today, three of the sons of those missionaries are at your capitol asking you to undo their father’s work. Who sent them? Who gave them the authority to break the Constitution which they swore they would uphold? Today, I, a poor weak girl with not one of my people with me and all these ‘Hawaiian’ statesmen against me, have strength to stand up for the rights of my people. Even now I can hear their wail in my heart and it gives me strength and courage and I am strong - strong in the faith of God, strong in the knowledge that I am right, strong in the strength of seventy million people who in this free land will hear my cry and will refuse to let their flag cover dishonor to mine!"

"The world is changed. 

I feel it in the water.

I feel it in the earth.

I smell it in the air.

Much that once was, is lost,

for none now live who remember it.

And some things, that should not have been forgotten,

were lost.

History became legend,

legend became myth..."

DNA runs deep: Grandpa Mark & Jakey

Pluto is not a planet...

...'tis a platter.