HUCK Magazine The Kelly Slater Issue (Digital Edition)

SURF SKATE SNOW PEOPLE MUSIC FILM ART FASHION

MORE THAN JUST THE RIDE

TONY ALVA

BEN HARPER

RONALDINHO

THE MALLOYS

SHEPARD FAIREY

JOEL PARKINSON

CHRISTIAN HOSOI

GRETCHEN BLEILER

KELLY

VOL. 01 ISSUE #002 OCT/NOV 2006 made in the uk £2.95 KELLY SLATER by SPENCER MURPHY

THE FREAKISHLY TALENTED ISSUE

SLATER EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW BY JAMIE BRISICK

THE LET´S GET PHYSICAL COMPILATION ALBUM Featuring The Glimmers, Timbuktu & Chords, Black Ghosts, Doomington, Sara Love and many more.

Available on iTunes worldwide.

STAND FIRM IN OUR BELIEF THAT INDIVIDUAL TALENT CAN WITHSTAND THE ALL-CONSUMING MARCH TOWARDS A PLANETARY MONOCULTURE. ALL HAIL THE GENIUSES! KELLY SLATER. BEN HARPER. TONY ALVA. RONALDINHO. SHEPARD FAIREY. ZINEDINE ZIDANE. SUPERIOR ACTS ON THE MONOTONOUS HIGH STREET THEATRE, THEY GIVE HOPE THAT MAN CAN DO BETTER THAN SIMPLY PARROT, COPY AND CLONE.

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the big stories contents. huck #002

42 KELLY SLATER in an exclusive interview. by jamie brisick.

50 midnight mountain davos after dark. by richie hopson.

56 HOSOI and ALVA between heaven and hell.

62 ben harper on music, politics and skateboarding.

68 TAHITI H20 an underwater odyssey. by carlos pinto.

74 CONSUMER PSYCHO shopping with integrity. but shopping all the same.

76 RONALDINHO ball genius on sex, surfing and dancing the samba.

▼

84 TRAVIS PARKER showing you his latest invention, the ‘bikecar’.

88 SHEPARD FAIREY man on a mission.

94 fields of gold a bit of fashion, why not?

98 crime scene evidence collection.

102 falling slowly autumnal threads.

13

â–ź

â–ź

the front 116 summer slopes 118 gratitude 119 895 miles 120 times online 121 riding the magic carpet 122 music 124 films 126 dvds 128 games 130 techno tubes

18 the collection 20 joel parkinson 22 jussi oksanen 24 the malloys 28 the game 30 bamboo apparel 32 surfboard foam 34 the bleakleys 38 I, hooligan 40 zinedine zidane

the back contents. huck #002

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ALL GIRL SNOWBOARD SLOPESTYLE

30.000 Prize Purse

Fri-14.12.07 Qualifier • Sat-15.12.07 Mainsession Finals

vol. 01 issue 002 HUCK MAGAZINE

September/October 2006 www.huckmagazine.com

Editor

Vince Medeiros Global Editor

Art Direction and Design

Jamie Brisick

Rob Longworth

www.thechurchoflondon.com

Snow Editor

Skate Editor

Editorial Consultant

Michael Fordham

Film Editor

Zoe Oksanen

Matt Bochenski

Advertising, Products and Marketing

Translations Editor

Sami Seppala

Managing Director

Kenny McLeish

Muriel Zsiga

Markus Grahlmann

Publisher

European Director

Claire Marshall

Danny Miller

Music Editor

Phil Hebblethwaite

US Director

Mark Patel

Sub Editor

Andrea Kurland Text

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HUCK is published by HUCK LIMITED Minstrel House 2 Chapel Place Rivington Street London EC2A 3DQ United Kingdom

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ON THE COVER: KELLY SLATER BY SPENCER MURPHY

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The CollectioN THROW A WRENCH iNto THe SYSTEM AND say: you’re not the boss of me now!

power to tHe people text zoe oksanen photography robert gallagher

What do you do when competing on the national team limits you from running your career exactly how you want to? You set up your own team, obviously. And that’s precisely what a handful of top US snowboarders did when they created The Collection – the first rider-controlled team to exist in snowboarding.

Olympic superpipe gold medalist Ross Powers came up with the idea of establishing an athletecentric team operating on its own dictates, rather than on those of the US National Team – a body which is governed by the US Ski and Snowboard Association. For Ross, the idea was quite simple: “To have a team where we have a say in what we do and who we work with.” Along with Andy Finch, Kelly Clark and Gretchen Bleiler – a powergroup of Olympians and X Games medalists – he created a totally new concept within snowboarding.

Unlike the US Team, where snowboarders have no say over sponsorship or what happens with the money, The Collection not only have the weight to pull in heavy sponsorship from the likes of Snickers and Yamaha, but more importantly, they determine where that money will be spent. For the team, this means that extensive travel expenses are funded.

Add to this the freedom to choose their own coach, team manager and physiotherapist, as well as creating a forum of guidance and athlete promotion, and it seems they may just have bagged a winner.

The team has grown since its 2004 start, with teen talents Luke Mitrani and Mason Aguirre now also on board. Today, with four of The Collection’s six members competing at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games, their line-up is stronger and more competitive than ever.

Much more than in most other fields, snowboarding remains a truly individualistic sport.

But with the success of The Collection, we might see an increasing number of riders pooling their talents to create their own teams. As Ross sums it up, “The concept works, and we’re here to prove that.” www.the-collection.us

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Free

as a Dog text MATT BOCHENSKI

IT’S A DOG’S LIFE FOR PARKO in his new surf flick.

He’s got it pretty sweet, Joel Parkinson.

Catch the first few minutes of his new movie, Free As A Dog, and you’ll see why. There’s the swanky home, set back from the silvery surf of Coolangatta. A monster 4x4 sits in the garage, all sparkling chrome and buffed-up alloys. Around the walls, a stack of surfboards are lined up as if in an art gallery. Inside, the flat screen TV shows highlights of Parko’s rise to fame while a beautiful kid and his beautiful mother kick back and relax. So yeah, even if he won’t admit it, life is most definitely going a-okay.

Not just your average surf flick, Free As A Dog came about after Billabong hooked Parko up with legendary filmmaker Jack McCoy. The two of them were shooting some local spots when Jack noticed Parko’s ever-present boxer, Trey. As Parko recalls, “Jack was filming and he sort of said, ‘Your dog’s a superstar!’”

The end result is a movie balanced somewhere between genius and insanity – a road trip narrated in gruff Aussie voiceover by Trey the dog, starring Parko the surfer and a couple of chick-chasing groms as they tear into some killer spots in between bouts of Marx Brothers-style comedy mayhem. The whole thing has a goofball charm, partly because, despite the fact it took nearly two years to make and is anchored by one of surfing’s top talents, it feels like it was pasted together by a bunch of mates who got stoned and thought their dog was funny. But in a good way.

That doesn’t mean that making the movie was easy, especially when you’re hitting a bunch of secret spots with a camera in hand. Says Parko, “We went to one place and we had to pay the locals – we gave them a couple of crates of beer and some jackets and all this stuff – just so we could surf their break.” But he’s got some sympathy for their plight: “No one had ever been there. Now the whole world sees it and all of a sudden it’s the new hot spot.”

Does that excuse the kind of line-up thuggery often seen in some of the more competitive breaks? “I don’t know. I think a lot of it is about how you treat people. Some guys you surf with might be like, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ then try and steal every wave and you think, ‘What the fuck?’ You learn a lot about guys in the water.”

That’s right, Parko, some of them are dogs.

Free As A Dog is out on DVD in October. For more info, go to www.jackmccoy.com.

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JUSSI OKSANEN IS GETTING ready to jump... jump!

finnish ‘sisu’ text zoe jeal photography jeremy jones

There are snowboarders, and then there are snowboarders who define an era.

Jussi Oksanen, Finnish kid with a strange name, is one of the latter.

Sheer determination took him to second place in the Junior Worlds way back in 1997 – and got him much-needed recognition by the big boys in the States.

“I didn’t like pipe riding and my home resort didn’t even have one,” he says, “but I knew what I had to do to get my name out there.”

Icy hills had fine-tuned him as a park whiz, and it wasn’t long before he was taking over the US contest scene, walking the gold in the X Games, US Open, Sims World Championships and throwing it down in the Olympics.

Known as the switch master, all he had to do was lay down his then unique switch backside nine and no one could touch him.

But his true dream was to film with one of the big movie companies, and by 1999 he wasn’t only doing that for Standard Films, but doing it well enough to be crowned with ‘Best Movie Part of the Year’. The next year he was the first snowboarder to ever land a switch backside 1080 on film – that’s six years before anyone landed it in a contest.

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Things haven’t changed much. This year, Jussi was the first rider to stomp a switch backside 1080 in powder (you’ll see it in his part in Mack Dawg Production’s Follow Me Around this autumn), and took first place in slopestyle for the Abominable Snowjam Contest in Mt Hood.

Right now, the Finnish ‘Sisu’ (which means ‘inner strength’ in his native tongue) is getting ready to soar again. Jumping With Jussi, his new ‘how-to’ flick, comes out this September. “It has given me a chance to give something back,” he says. “I cover all my sixteen favourite tricks on the film.”

So what’s changed? ”Well, I’m no longer the money-burning young bachelor living on booze and hotdogs I used to be! Now I’m married, actually go to the gym and am about to become a dad. That’s my new motivation in all this.”

Jumping With Jussi, by Mack Dawg Productions, is available this September.

Mack Dawg’s Follow Me Around is also out in September. To learn more about both projects, check out www.mackdawgproductions.com.

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lanos e es: downtown

g l on a skateboard text Vince Medeiros photography seu trinh

Try as they might, not even the cops could stop them. 1st and Hope IS The new film from The Malloys.

“Even if you just go on the curb on the other side of the street they threaten to arrest you,” Brendan Malloy says, describing the location for the first sequence in 1st and Hope.

Makers of Hollywood snowboarding flick Out Cold and music video directors for the likes of Jack Johnson and The White Stripes, The Malloys (Brendan and Emmett) have teamed up with Brian Lotti and Elwood Clothing to produce a skate film of rare beauty: fast-paced yet full of artistic flow; action-packed yet beautiful enough to provoke cathartic emotions across the board.

“We hope that people get a more realistic take on what might happen on a summer afternoon in downtown Los Angeles,” says Brendan. “We want people to be entertained, and for people who don’t skate to see something that’s just as fun as for those that do skate.” ▼

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25

The film’s title, you might want to know, refers to the intersection in downtown LA where the run starts in the beginning of the film. “It’s one of the highest points downtown and it looks down to where the run ends at the Staples Center,” he says.

“It’s where we would always meet before shooting.”

In production for over a year and shot on 16mm stock, the film stars Kenny Anderson and codirector Lotti, as well as a heap of talented guys from past and present. In many ways, 1st and Hope bridges the gap between some of the originators of modern street skating (Eric Dressen, Matt Hensley, Ray Barbee and Brian Lotti) and a bunch of the most creative and innovative talents of recent years (Kenny Anderson, Mike Carroll, Shiloh Greathouse and Paul Rodriguez).

“Kenny makes everything look so smooth and easy,” says Brendan. “And Brian is very perceptive and believes skateboarding is a good thing. He is not afraid to take the time to stop and explain to a security guard that skateboarding is a great form of exercise and in Europe architects design buildings that you can skate. If more people thought like him, downtown LA would be a much better place.”

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The music on 1st and Hope is courtesy of Beck, which can only be a good thing. One of the tracks, ‘Nausea’, is typical Beck slacker rock, distinctly capturing the different moods and looks of a richly diverse area. “We have never done one of his videos,” Brendan admits, “but it’s probably good because we like him and wouldn’t want to mess one up.”

Which brings us to this: what was it like making 1st and Hope as opposed to the music stuff? “Videos are in and out the door in, like, two weeks, whereas we’ve been making the film for a lot longer. But we were lucky enough to work with such great skaters that all we had to do is point a camera in their direction and we got some good stuff.”

They enjoyed making it, then. But that doesn’t mean The Malloys don’t find time to create another music video here and there. Or even commercials.

“We just did a video for Wolfmother with the guys from Jackass,” says Brendan, “and an ad for chewing gum.”

1st and Hope is out this autumn and is available in skate and music stores. The film is the first installment of The Way Back When Project, a series of films that showcase the history of street skating and its global progression. For more info, go to www.elwoodclothing.com.

game text vince medeiros photography les walker

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on

Brad Gerlach thinks surfing should be a team sport.

“Don’t agonise. Organise,” said civil rights era feminist Florynce Kennedy. Now while Brad Gerlach’s National Surf League (NSL) has little to do with radical politics, it does show that surfers can organise a game of their own if they happen to be in the mood for it.

A big-wave surfer and former number two in the world, Gerlach launched the League six years ago.

Rebelling against surfing’s traditional one-on-one format, the NSL has been trying to turn waveriding – an often individualistic, profoundly hierarchical activity – into something of a team sport. Here, cooperation and group ethics can trump individual talent; collective agency can beat independent work. And so far, the whole thing’s been a success.

“I’m really passionate about it,” says League Commissioner Gerlach. “I believe it’s the way surfing needs to be watched and experienced. It’s competitive – team surfing makes more sense and is more natural than individual surfing. In surfing, when you get in the water or go on a trip, you usually go with friends. It’s much easier to relate to.”

How exactly does the NSL work? More or less like this: The League recreates competitive surfing by operating through a team sport-based format that Gerlach calls ‘The Game’. The Game pits two opposing teams in an environment that promotes cooperation, tactics and intense participation from fans on the beach. Like most team sports, games last between two to three hours and each team comes complete with uniforms, subs and their own coaching staff.

After starting out with ‘single-match’ events involving teams from Orange County and San Diego, The Game has now been introduced to the Californian school system and has become the standard format for the budding California Cup. “We’ve got teams from LA, San Diego, Orange County, Ventura and Santa Cruz,” he says. “The OC Octopus are the two-time defending champs.”

And it looks as though Gerlach’s beginning to spread his NSL tentacles across America and around the world.

Besides getting play in most relevant niche magazines, The Game is a regular feature in the global mediascape through ESPN’s very own X Games.

Says Gerlach: “It’s a performance-based event and people love it. The X Games contest goes out to 168 million homes worldwide.”

A bit like ‘organise and conquer’, it appears. Gerlach seems to agree: “We’ve only just started and we’ve got the single largest surf event in the world.”

Understanding The game Two teams Sixteen surfers (eight starters, eight subs) per team One head coach, one assistant coach and one water coach per team Four quarters You surf each quarter as a team Four surfers from one team go out, then four surfers from the other team go out, etc.

Each surfer is responsible for one best wave score Best scores are added together for a total team score Each team is allotted three timeouts per half to use during long lulls or paddle outs Three-hour game in total Team with the most points wins

For more info, go to www.nslgame.com

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Save

our planet: wear bamboo text ANDREA KURLAND

illustration ROB LONGWORTH

planetfriendly threads are all the rage.

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California’s Arbor snowboards have discovered a stylish way to minimise their footprint on the planet. Since 1995, the company have been committed to green design, creating their very own ‘fibrelab’ think-tank to seek out ecofriendly materials for use in their snowboards and skate decks.

The latest in their green revolution is a clothing line made from bamboo. As one of the fastest-growing plants on earth, and requiring no irrigation or synthetic chemicals to produce, bamboo is considered a renewable, sustainable and super-green material.

In contrast, conventional cotton farming uses nearly twenty-five per cent of the world’s insecticides and more than ten per cent of the pesticides. This toxic process can contaminate an entire farming region, endangering the people and wildlife around it.

“As people who ride this planet we can testify to the effects of pollution,” says Arbor President Bob Carlson. “There’s nothing worse than surfing in polluted waters, snowboarding a mountain that’s been decimated by logging or skateboarding somewhere that’s choked out by fumes. It’s up to us to do our bit.”

To get your hands on a guilt-free bamboo T-shirt, check out www.arborsports.com this autumn and Snow and Rock stores across the UK, www.snowandrock.com.

c9H6n2o2 text ChrIs guelpa illustration rob longworth

Every surfer knows that Clark Foam, the world’s leading supplier of surfboard blanks, went out of business last year. As it turns out, a bizarre smattering of numerals and vowels known as 2,4 Toluene Diisocyanate (TDI) was largely responsible for its closure. But what do we really know about TDI? For starters, TDI is the catalyst used to make the polyurethane foam blanks that sit inside most fibreglass surfboards the world over. The thing is a liquid, ranging in colour from clear through yellow to almost black. It has a pungent odour and is most commonly used in the production of polyurethane foams and coatings.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cites that exposure to high levels of TDI via inhalation results in severe irritation of the skin, eyes and nose, and causes nausea and vomiting. In addition, a report filed by the Air Toxicology and Epidemiology Section of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment refers to “TDI induced tumors” in lab experiments carried out on mice and rats.

So how will TDI and its health implications affect surfers? Sean Smith, executive director of the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association, says that alternative materials (epoxy, advanced composites, etc.) are likely to become increasingly available. Says Smith: “Ultimately, the consumer will begin to see a larger variety of boards, and technology will finally allow greater experimentation for stronger, lighter and better boards.”

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A biT of CheMiSTRY foR A ChANGe.

meet the Bleakleys text ALEX WADE photography AL MAcKINNON

surfing: it’s all about the jazz.

It’s early evening in a thatched house overlooking Sennen Cove, on the far west coast of Cornwall. Sam Bleakley, professional surfer, Cambridge graduate and writer, is talking surfing with his father, Alan ‘Fuz’ Bleakley, who has not long been in from work. The respect the pair have for one another is tangible, and all the more impressive when they disagree. This is a rare occurrence, but opposing views are apparent when they discuss the language of surfing.

“There’s a very male kind of surfing, and it’s often reflected in the language used to describe what, to me, is less about ‘slash and burn’ shortboarding and much more to do with flow,” says Fuz, fifty-seven, who started surfing in Newquay in the mid-1960s. “Terms like ‘hacking,’ ‘slashing’ and ‘gouging’ are emblematic of a male worldview, a desire to dominate and control the environment.” His son, twenty-seven, is not so sure. “A certain level of aggression is necessary for a surfer,” says Sam. “The terminology replicates the way in which surfers pump themselves up. As surfing keeps progressing, the language used by surfers is a way of trying to keep up with its development.”

Fuz disagrees. He is currently heading up an inter-disciplinary research project by Exeter and Plymouth universities, the premise of which is that a culture of prescription-for-profit has become institutionalised in the medical profession, thanks to the major pharmaceutical companies. As he puts it: “We live in a world where Prozac is now prescribed for kids. We continually seek to desensitise ourselves from our environment.” Reality should be experienced, not prettified or avoided, and as such, Fuz feels strongly that metaphors are important. “They shape the way we look at the world,” he says, “and they influence children. If you ignore the importance of metaphor, there is a danger that you become dull to the world, as the drug companies seem to want us to live our lives.”

Sam listens to this carefully, and nods his appreciation of the point made by his father. Theirs is a relationship founded on an intelligent openness that has helped mould Sam into one of the best surfers of his generation. Twice the European Longboard Champion, and sponsored by Oxbow, Sam began surfing at Sennen Cove as a child, and despite a surfing CV that has seen him travel to thirty-two countries to date, he still rates his home break as his favourite: “I love coming back here, to my roots, and just walking down the cliff path and paddling out. This is still the best surf spot in the world.” ▼

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It is hard to argue, looking down at clean lines rolling into Sennen Cove, as the sun slowly sets out to sea. Tucked into the southeast corner of Whitesand Bay, Sennen Cove is a wild and rugged place with sundry weather-beaten houses hatched into the hills surrounding its pristine waters. Dolphins and seals are regular visitors to the lineup, and last winter, one of the Cove’s outer reefs was the scene of tow-in surfing by two of the UK’s foremost shortboarders, Sam Lamiroy and Dan ‘Mole’ Joel. Though admiring of their and other shortboarders’ achievements, for the Bleakleys, the raison d’etre of surfing is something different.

“I call it ‘joined-up surfing,’” says Fuz, who published the seminal Surf Insight magazine in the mid-1970s. “Surfing is about flow, not about zapping. Surfing well is akin to the way a jazz musician plays just behind the beat. A good surfer understands how to tolerate this feeling, how to embrace an ambiguous state of giving oneself over to the wave. Surfing, then, becomes ‘joined-up’ – it’s what I see from the moment Sam takes off to the moment he kicks out. The wave becomes one whole piece.”

But there is also a competitive side to Sam. No one could win two European titles without having plenty of inner drive, as he admits: “People think I’m just cruising when I surf, but to acquire the style I’m after I have to push myself as hard as any other surfer.” Indeed, as the last surfers in the line-up head in, Sam’s focus moves to the Fat Face Night Surf at Lusty Glaze three days away. The Night Surf will host one of the British Professional Surfing Association’s longboard events, and Sam is keen to get a win under his belt.

The Bleakleys are joined by Sam’s mother, Susan, an installation artist whose work has been exhibited around the world. Susan’s effervescence and her artwork, not to mention her commitment to Russian orthodoxy, explain more about how Sam has become the grounded, reflective and likeable man that he is. As I leave the Bleakley house at the end of the day, I reflect on the way in which a bohemian upbringing by parents who put a premium on creative individuality has produced arguably the best contemporary longboarder in Europe, a surfer who embodies grace and poise as if they were second nature. And who is yet feisty enough to declare, three days later when he won the Night Surf: “I’ve never won a BPSA event before – this result is fantastic. I’m so stoked.”

Susan Bleakley’s latest installation – ‘80% of Birdsong is Non-Functional’ – will run at the Plymouth Art Centre from 15 September.

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I, Hooligan text zachary drake illustration paul willoughby

confessions of a teenage hoolie.

My name is Zack and I was a football hooligan. There, I’ve said it. Well, at least I dressed like one.

They called them the ‘under fives’ because they were the young’uns. Little toe-rags to a man. I wasn’t part of the core clique but I knew all the faces. I did a lot of milling around with them. I went to the same pubs and clubs as them and made sure I was in their vicinity when big events went down. Most importantly, I dressed like them. I spent many a train journey late on a Saturday evening recounting my part in certain exaggerated skirmishes and recalling what I had been wearing at the time. At Parson’s Green in my Tacchini tracksuit with the Armani V-neck over the top: our entire tube train is bushwacked by Chelsea. We fight them off and run them back to the Fulham Road. At Leicester in the quilted Aquascutum jacket and Lois jeans: a small group of us are jumped by a crew of Babes before the match. We fight them off, outnumbered at least three-to-one.

People would accuse us of not being ‘real football fans’. Bollocks. Being a football hooligan was, when I was growing up and where I was growing up, an aspirational thing. I believed in who I was because of where I was from and which football team I supported. Perhaps it was stupid but I don’t regret it. Not for a second.

It’s a hackneyed story, the divisive pull between classes and within the working class of Thatcher’s Britain. You’ve heard it all before and a lot of it was true. Football casuals were agents of a twist in the nation’s cultural history. For the first time, working class teenagers had proper money. We were the cutting edge of the consumer revolution swathed in Italian sportswear and loving it. And we travelled around the nation crusading the Thatcherite creed.

You might have heard that old story before. But you haven’t heard the tales of imagination, the tales of drama, the tales of the sheer hilarious, adventurous, exploratory buzz that would accompany the hooligan legions on our travels through the blighted lands. You probably haven’t heard about the gladiatorial mystique with which the Top Boys where imbued. They were the elite, possessed to a man of a flamboyant swagger that was attainable, and all the more compelling because of the fact. All you had to do was talk the right talk, wear the right gear, attend the right games on the right trains and be swept along in the wake of it all. You too could be anointed by the Top Boys’ juice. But there was one thing about the Top Boys that forever barred my mates and I from their ranks. It was simple. Most of them were psychopaths.

But despite the excesses of the wielders of the Stanley blade and canisters of CS gas, and despite the tragic terrace disasters that plagued football throughout the eighties, there’s an unwritten history buried beneath the layers of moral panic that’s nowhere near as ugly as it seems on the surface. It’s not surprising that history remains hidden when all that pokes up above the media ramparts these days are gaggles of Burberry-rocking lardasses reeking of Meal Deals and Bacardi Breezers. You will never hear how the dreams and imaginations of another generation were wrought in Deerstalkers and Borg Elites, how a multicultural cadre of hoolie nutters of each club-based battalion was populated by mixed-raced kids from care and junior City Boys; souped-up Soho mincers and displaced pikeys from the edges of the fens; scouse shoplifters who ran with the department store-storming pack and Borough lads who could never afford the clobber but were mad for it anyway; how this rag-tag army of demonised likely lads made us proud, for a few misguided, youthful moments to be young, fearless and to be what? English? Fuck that.

Not one film or documentary about football violence has managed to capture its iconoclastic grandeur, and not one has made its protagonists look anything other than idiotic and puerile and two dimensional, usually with the most atrocious fake mockerney accents this side of Dick van Dyke. And the other link that is barely hinted at is this essential fact: a bunch of London-based football hooligans went to Ibiza in the summer of 1987 and came back with bags full of little pills they had nicked from some Italian DJs. A year later back in London it was all swept away in a loved-up, pieeyed, dungaree-clad, sweaty mass. The Top Boys who had plotted to knife one another on the underground networks and railway stations of the nation were hugging each other in warehouses just off the M25. I fucking love you, you Chelsea caaant!

Until that ridiculous moment, football hooliganism was all about the buzz – togged-up teenage kicks for a generation. It was all about identity, belonging and, funnily enough, it was a real fucking laugh.

39

Dirty Pretty thing

text MATT BOCHENSKI

Zinedine Zidane: Athlete, artist and cultural touchstone.

NOW ON FILM.

July 12, 1998. Over one million people throng the Champs Elysées in a delirious street party. France have beaten Brazil 3-1 to become World Champions for the first time in their history – and it feels like the whole country has turned out to celebrate.

The architect and icon of this victory is Zinedine Zidane, a firstgeneration Algerian immigrant from the mean streets of Marseille.

To some, Zidane will never be more than a football player.

But to others – not least to two nations, France and Algeria – he represents a living, breathing symbol of Europe and the ragged dissipation of the twentieth century.

France’s colonial past weighed heavily on its present, the memory of a war in Algeria still bitterly preserved. But now, at last, times were changing and Zidane was the proof. This was a France that Jean-Marie Le Pen, that far-right agitator of the political scene, claimed “cannot recognise itself in the national side”, for Les Bleus had become Les Blacks, Blancs et Beurs – black, white and Arab. Football had become a multicultural melting pot that fomented the country’s newfound racial integration.

Who other than Zidane, the cultural totem, could have brought together Turner Prize-winner and filmmaker Douglas Gordon and French artist Philippe Parreno? Under the supervision of cinematographer Darius Khondji (a favourite of the likes of David Fincher and Chris Cunningham) they trained seventeen cameras on Zidane in an ordinary game for Real Madrid against Villarreal one Saturday afternoon in April, 2005. The result, Zidane, Un Portrait du 21ème Siècle, is a remarkable insight into Zidane’s

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personal experience of the game, but also a provocative meditation on the ephemeral nature of football’s global appeal.

Zidane stalks the pitch like a prizefighter, his lidded brows and Gallic sneer fixed like a caricature beneath that shaved head.

We see the loneliness, the artistry, the sweat and frustration. The image and construction that is Zidane fall away in the concentrated exertion of an ordinary man going about his job. And then, the inevitable happens: a scuffle at the end of the match sees Zidane receive a red card for an act of stupid violence. The film tilts giddily on its axis, and reality wades straight back in.

There are those who claim that he is driven by the anger that comes from displacement – that he is not Arab enough for the Algerians, not white enough to be French. But many in France see it differently. Bernard-Henri Levy, the country’s most popular contemporary philosopher, says Zidane’s streak of violence is a testament to his humanity, that he is not “a demigod or some idiotic hologram”. Far from destroying his reputation, that now seminal headbutt in the 2006 World Cup final cemented his position as the only true icon of this generation of footballers, the last individual.

Despite all the riches, fame and adulation, with the last breath of his career Zidane confirmed that in the banlieues of Marseille he was imbued with the ferocity and hunger of a footballing street-fighter and he, of all people, would never forget where he came from.

Zidane, Un Portrait du 21ème Siècle is out on limited release on 29 September.

Passion.

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Passion.

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Achieving something no one’s achieved puts you in this place that’s kind of lonely but at the same time really exciting.

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l∑

Swinging From The Stars, Prancing Upon The Planets, and Falling Back To Earth: An Interview With Kelly Slater. text jamie brisick photography juliana morais

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Enquiring, unoriginal minds want to know: will Kelly Slater go for an unprecedented eighth world title? And I’m here to tell you: I’m not the guy to deliver this news. In fact, I find it repulsive when magazines run these cheeseball shots of multiple world champions showing however many fingers for however many titles. It undermines what to me is the bigger story: the knowledge gained along the journey, surfing as a conduit to higher self. When Kelly Slater first came on the scene in the early nineties he was a small-town-Florida boy with big ambition and otherworldly talent.

He took surfing to places it had never been before, both as an athlete and an ambassador. Today, he’s the living embodiment of realised potential and fulfilled dreams. Look deep into his eyes and you can see he’s been places most mortals have not. ‘Luminous’ is a word that comes to mind. As well as ‘incandescent’ and ‘thoroughly fucking inspiring’. And so when I sat down to chat with Mr. Slater in front of a Whole Foods supermarket on San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood, California – a hop, skip and jump away from the house where Marilyn Monroe took her final breath, incidentally – I wasn’t interested in finding out his goals for the 2006 contest season. I wanted to know what he’d learned along the way, what comes on the other side of finding your inner groove and following it to the further reaches of the surfing cosmos, how it enriches, how it depletes, and how it complicates...

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HUCK: Because your life has expanded and you’re juggling all kinds of different things, do you ever find it difficult to distill everything down to those thirty-minute heats and just focus?

KELLY SLATER: Not really, it’s actually quite easy to focus on that period of time. You look at it and just go: all I have to do is ride two waves, which may take twenty or twenty-five seconds, and I’ve done my job. That’s the really cold way of looking at it. But I think any sport can be compared to games of chess, and there’s a move against a move. Jiu-jitsu’s like that, and boxing or baseball or football; it’s like one move has to balance another move and when that gets imbalanced somebody controls the game. As you learn who you’re surfing against and what their strengths and weaknesses are and how they deal with different situations and how to put pressure on them, that’s when you get to a deeper level of competition. Andy Irons – guy’s in the lead and no one can touch him – you get ahead and put pressure on him, you beat him. But the thing is, not many people get ahead of him in the first place, so it’s a rare thing to happen.

You seem to have a lot going on at once. How do you normally spend time between events?

Haven’t been doing a whole lot of anything lately. I was playing a lot of golf at the start of the year. I’ve been playing a lot of music lately. It’s weird because I’m super busy and then I’m on down time.

There’s no sort of mid ground.

What have you been listening to?

I’ve been listening to a lot of that

new Pearl Jam.

I was listening to this kid Xavier Rudd from Australia and I always listen to Jack Johnson. But I really haven’t updated my music in the last year. I play a lot more music than I listen to. I’ve been playing a lot of John Cruz covers. His album, Acoustic Soul, is one of my favourites.

What about fitness? Have you been training like a motherfucker?

I’m not very fit right now. As far as being on tour, I’m probably the least fit I’ve ever been. To start the year I was all right, but the last couple months I’ve just been slacking. It’s a strange year. You know, I’m having one of the best years I’ve ever had as far as results go, but I really haven’t been all that focused until I get in the water and I haven’t been doing much free surfing between contests at all. But then I get into my heats and get into the swing of things and start feeling it. And as the contest goes on, I start getting more focused and into it... I’ve always believed you can get better not by surfing, but by watching and thinking about it, or by dreaming about it. I feel like I’ve improved a lot by just imagining it and feeling it in my body.

Do you do a lot of reading?

I read a lot of magazines on planes. A lot of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and Discovery and this magazine called Nexus.

I love that magazine! It’s alternative medicine and science and conspiracies and UFOs and all sorts of fringe things. I end up linking myself into all sorts of health and dietary things through this, how things work naturally as opposed to medicinally.

One of the things I find interesting is how much the sport’s grown in the last decade and a half. Where surfing was once provincial and almost small townish and sometimes redneck, it’s now spread and cross-pollinated with many other walks of life.

What’s your take on this?

Surfing has sort of infiltrated fashion and music with the individuals that are part of it. It’s made a cultural impact in a lot of different industries, and I think people are intrigued by surfing and the lifestyle, and they’re much more educated as to what it is now.

You’ve been living out of a suitcase for quite a while now. Does it ever take its toll, do you ever wonder where home is?

It’s got its good stuff and its bad stuff. Lately I’ve been a little bit lost. I do so many things and go so many places that I’ve become kind of scattered and fragmented to the point where it’s really ▼

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become kind of an issue for me. So now I’m trying to figure where I’m going to go when I finish my contest and where I’m going to go when I stop surfing contests and I think, in the future, it will be kind of half in Hawaii and half in Australia. I like being peaceful and having my space but I like having that energy too. I’m sure as I get older and have a partner that will change and I’ll be more settled.

Is it a geographical place that represents home for you, or is it more a mental place?

I think it’s more a mental, emotional place because there have been years where I’ve felt so at home everywhere I’m at and there are periods where I feel lost in my own home. I guess it’s a matter of knowing what you want.

Let me ask you this: do you feel like big achievements bring you closer to that peace of mind?

They probably get me further from that place. You know, I had this awakening about three years ago on tour where I was having such success at that period but at the same time it was taking such a toll on me spiritually. I find that almost all my friends are much more balanced than me day to day and much more stable in their lives but they don’t have the highs I have and probably don’t have the lows I have and it’s something to be aware of. Like, last year, I was doing really well and got on this high, like the highest high anyone can ever have naturally for months at a time, but I knew there would be a down side, that I’d have to fall...

What does it feel like when you’re experiencing those highs?

Achieving something no one’s achieved puts you in this place that’s kind of lonely but at the same time really exciting. I don’t know how to compare it to something else because I’m trying to capture this thing that hasn’t been done.

When you imagine yourself there, is it something that happens exclusively in the surf. Like, are you imagining yourself riding a wave or is it a mental plane where you see yourself weaving through all aspects of life?

Weaving through life, it’s been all these different facets – personal, professional, surfing... I went through periods of trying to get the best boards, knowing the breaks better than anyone, knowing my competitors better than anyone, and by doing all those things you increase your odds.

Fame? Is it all that it’s cracked up to be?

Fame has 46 www.HUCKmagazine.com

enabled me to meet all my heroes in different worlds and know them on a personal level. Like Eddie Vedder, to get to know him and play songs with him and go on surf trips with him... I’m on a permanent Make A Wish Foundation trip and it’s so incredible.

And so many people have a love for surfing; surfing’s sort of this magical thing for a lot of people and having acknowledgement through surfing has allowed me to meet a lot of people.

What about the down side. Everyone wanting a piece of you?

It’s all part of the same equation. Doing press and media is sort of why people know me.

What about inspirations? Does it still come from your fellow surfers or is it broader than that?

I don’t get it so much from surfing now. In a special session I will, like at Pipeline or Teahupoo, where there’s so much energy in the water, but lately that thing of connecting with people in different walks of life gives it to me.

“

There have been years where I’ve felt so at home everywhere I’m at and there are periods where I feel lost in my own home.

“

I’ve heard you’re interested in wave pools. Can you tell me a bit about that?

This guy from Florida made the technology for this wave pool.

I saw this model of it that completely freaked me out. I realised it was the right way to make a man-made wave. So it’s basically a donut-shaped pool, and the energy comes off the outer wall toward the inner wall and you’re winding that energy into a tighter circumference and that energy is coming from hydraulic pumps and you could literally ride the wave indefinitely. You can change the speed, the shape, the energy. I believe so much in technology that I got some people to back me and we bought the rights to the technology for it. My vision is to create these sort of green surfing

communities anywhere in the world where people want to surf. Like a golf course. You have your country club, you have your surf club.

There’s enough revenue from people who really care about surfing to make this happen. I could see us having a tour in wave pools.

You could say you’re surfing at 1:05pm today and you’d be standing up at exactly that time. Not to mention how easy you could teach people to surf in something like this. You could turn the power down and make it perfect for learning. It would be a tremendous help.

.

Sounds pretty revolutionary. And what about right now, what are you doing for the rest of the day?

Golf. Heading over to LA Country Club for a round of golf

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Chop Wood, Carry Water, Ride Wave text and photography jamie brisick

There are little league parents in Southern California who force-feed surfing to their children, brokering lucrative sponsorship deals, and rubbing their hands together at the thought of early retirement. And then there are Fijian kids like Jone Sobosobo (pictured) whose initiation could not happen more naturally.

Think of it along the lines of eighties coming-of-age film The Blue Lagoon. The shipwrecked and pre-pubescent Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields live in Garden of Eden-like isolation on a tropical island. They are innocent and pure and uncomplicated.

Then one day they wake up and discover sprouting pubic hairs and stirring loins. A lustful gaze leads to a thrashing grope and the next thing you know they are fornicating like wild cats.

This is how it will likely go for young Jone, who lives on the tiny, heart-shaped island of Tavarua. Only instead of Brooke Shields to summon his manhood he has the sexy curves and seething orifices of Restaurants and Cloudbreak. And while The Blue Lagoon kids had no pornography to inspire their athletics, Jone has prodigious visitors like Kelly Slater and Shane Dorian to show him the lines, not to mention the annual Globe WCT event, which is what brought me to Tavarua.

When I encountered Jone in this cemetery of broken boards, he was in what you might call the ‘playing doctor’ stage. There was curiosity and titillation, but he lacked the requisite skills to take things much further (his mother told me he was still learning to swim). But if he’s like his tribal elders – most notably Chief Druku, who’s regarded as the first Fijian surfer – he’ll eventually become a lifeguard and a boatman, and surfing will be something that just sort of happens to him.

This is how it went for Druku, and this is how it went for Druku’s son, Aca, whom I met moments after he’d been announced the winner of the Fijian trials. Now normally you’d find a beaming smile and a cocksure glint in the eye of the local boy who’d just earned himself a wildcard into a major international surfing tournament, but not so in the case of Aca. He was humble. He was shy. He was even kind of blasé about the whole thing. To draw another movie analogy, he was like the tomboy cab driver in Night On Earth who turns down the offer to become a movie star. In other words, she’s happy right where she is. In other words, Aca’s praying to a different god.

Which is what’s so refreshing about Fiji: surfing didn’t come as some packaged lifestyle, it came pure and undiluted. Chop wood, carry water, ride wave To learn more about the 2006 Globe WCT Fiji, go to www.globefiji.com.

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davos, the alps, switzerland.

Once a year, Davos is host to the World Economic Forum.

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MIDNIGHT MOUNTAIN

photography richie hopson

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The masters-of-the-universe event draws business and government leaders from around the world to debate the future of global capitalism in alpine seclusion.

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Bill Gates and Bill Clinton are regular speakers at the Forum. The bosses of ‘friendly’ corporations such as BP, Shell, HP, Nestlé, Pfizer among others also rock up to the party.

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Trumpeting the bizarre notion that Western democracies represent some idyllic Fukuyama-inspired paradise of progress and peace, most rich men who flock to Davos stand diametrically opposed to what these powdery runs embody: the pure, virginal and unadulterated freedom of riding on snow.

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CHRISTIAN HOSOI, TONY ALVA, AND THE ETERNAL PERSPEcTIVE interview Sami Seppala photography KENNY HI-REs

Life started in the water, and slowly man crawled onto land and rolled into the distance. In the beginning Tony Alva took the sidewalks, dirty pipes and ditches of the seventies, carving out a revolutionary future alongside the Zephyr boys.

Hosoi took over from Alva and flew higher than anybody in the eighties – both on and off the board – and changed the face of skateboarding forever. Both men had their own companies – they still do. Hosoi holds a hammerhead board with handcrafted hammerhead wheels. Alva’s board looks like bullet-proof metal.

They both have big wheels and wide trucks. TA talks fast like ▼

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a machine gun. Hosoi is an articulate man whose rhythmic speech is punctuated by the verbal equivalent of inverted commas, which he carefully places on key words.

Today, the two freakishly talented legends of their eras are talking to Huck.

Instead of a rancid skate park, the setting is a post-cool Soho restaurant bar, and the table is cluttered with the usual Tabasco, ketchup and mustard fare. Three glasses of water sit erect, drops of condensation dancing down to the base.

Gainsborough’s ‘Je t’aime’ plays in the background. The decoration: shiny curtains, faux golden chairs and a few ugly paintings.

TA is looking a bit rough, like he might have just rolled out of bed. Hosoi looks pumped up, friendly and eager to talk. He’s done his push-ups. He’s done his time.

Soon enough, that’s precisely what we’re talking about.

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HUCK: How long were you on the inside?

CHRISTIAN HOSOI: About five years.

It obviously had a huge impact on you.

How long did it take till you started to change?

CH: For me it was, like, immediate. Before I went to prison, my wife’s friend almost OD’d in our house. We were doing drugs together. Crystal meth. And she said, “I’m quitting doing drugs, Christian. I’m going to church.” I said, “Wow, I’m going with you.” And she’s like, “No, you won’t.” And I went, “Yeah, I will.” I end up going with her once, but then I get arrested right after that.

Never went to church in my life. The first time I go and I get arrested.

And you were looking at ten years, right?

CH: Yes, ten long years. First day that I’m in prison my wife tells me to get a Bible. I was, like, everything else but a Christian, you know – like most people. But I got a Bible, and that night I went into my room and I said, “I need help.” I started reading, and it was like God speaking directly at me and immediately I was like, “This is it.

This is the truth. This is why I was created.

This is where true love is. It’s in God.” I suddenly realised there was more to this life than this life. There’s an eternal perspective that all of a sudden came in, and that night I just said: “God, help, I’m in a place where I need help.”

Hosoi with a signature layback.

And… CH: He spoke to me and said, “You know what, you put yourself in here because of the choices you made. But I’m gonna go through it with you and after this you’re gonna live for me.” And three weeks later I gave my life to the Lord. I asked Jesus Christ to be my saviour, and that was it. I spent five years studying the Bible. That was it for me. I knew that this was my purpose in life: spread the good news, preach the gospel – and hopefully open people’s eyes to see that there is a God and there is a heaven and just try to save as many souls as I can while I’m here.

TONY ALVA: Being a surfer, for me the spiritual part is meditation first thing in the morning. Even if the waves aren’t good, I get up in the morning, stretch and get out there and surf. And even if I don’t catch the best waves in the world, it doesn’t matter.

I’m still with my higher power. My higher power basically is everything around me – it

makes me feel small and humble. That’s my meditation and that’s my deal. To me, as a surfer, you actually have the gift to almost walk on water again, like Jesus Christ did.

Christian, when you got out, how did you find getting back into skateboarding?

CH: It’s amazing how much support I got even through my incarceration. I was able to turn my life around immediately while I was in prison and then, people who thought that I was just a waste of time, just a hasbeen, they saw that there was something coming out of it. All of a sudden they were like, “Wow, Christian has changed.” People just supported me when I was in there and then, when I got out, it was just open arms, full of love and acceptance. That was such a blessing. After all, I had gone to prison for drug trafficking with possession of over a pound of crystal methamphetamine. I’d been addicted for almost eight years, kinda running around the streets of Huntington just going from party to party, totally putting skateboarding and friends and family aside.

People were stoked for me.

How was it to actually get on the board?

CH: It was awesome. It was overwhelming coming out after five years and finally spending time with my wife. We honeymooned for a day, but the next day I set up a board and went to a skate park and, you know, set the board down, stepped on it and it felt like I’d never left. All of a sudden time was so quick that my five years seemed like it was just a snap. I wasn’t, like, missing it. I was looking forward to this day.

And I was so much more appreciative of the fact that I had so much more to come. And when I got on it I just started rolling around and it was almost like I never left, you know, did my first layback, made it. And I was like, “This is insane,” ‘cause I thought that maybe I wouldn’t be able to skate anymore – maybe I would suck [laughs]. It was… you can’t explain the feeling.

TA: Skateboarding to us is a bit like martial arts. You develop a technique. And that technique works not only for life but it’s part of something that becomes a natural ability – like riding a bike. If you look at someone like Bruce Lee, he had a technique that nobody else had. I think that’s what Christian has. ▼

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What have you learned from it all?

TA: In life, we needed to learn from our mistakes. A lot of the time our mistakes were geared around drugs and alcohol and influences that are hard to avoid sometimes.

And eventually when you make those mistakes you gotta be a fucking retard to go and make the same mistakes over again.

And if you continue to do that, then you’ll continue having problems in your life. But if you step up and become a responsible adult, especially to your kid and all the other kids that you are a role model to and take it in a positive direction, things are gonna change and they are gonna change for the better.

How do you become a ‘responsible adult’?

TA: You’re not gonna learn that overnight.

You gotta live your entire life going in that direction. That’s something that I’ve learned too and I’ve learned the hard way. I could have easily ended up in prison. People look at me and say, “How old are you?” They think I’m, like, thirty-five, and I tell ‘em I’m forty-eight years old. They call me a liar.

There’s no fucking way I’m fifty in two years and still hopefully surfing and skating. That is what my life is. That’s the reward. It’s a gift from God. If you keep pushing and have a good day, skateboarding is like a fountain of youth.

Do you believe in that?

TA: We’re gonna stay young because we are vibrant.

CH: Progressive. Productive. Just hungry for life.

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Do you think that if you were a kid today the process of getting into skateboarding would be any different?

TA: Not really because the reason I started skateboarding was because I was a sidewalk surfer to begin with. I see it as taking it from one medium to the next. Starting out in the water, paddling and getting fit and doing your thing in the morning, then you do school or work or whatever during the day, and as soon as you’re done with your responsibilities your freedom is to just roll – and skateboarding gives me that. There’s no limit to what you can do on a skateboard, it’s freedom, it’s independence, it’s acceleration, and it’s that thing that burns inside you. It’s something like the cleanest, purest form of high that you can get. I think I would still do it if I was a kid.

CH: Yeah, that’s the beauty of my era and Tony’s era; there wasn’t as much pressure.

We were just creating and innovating the sport as it was growing.

TA: We were who we were. It was spontaneous. We didn’t know what we were doing.

CH: My kid is eight and they (our kids) just see us as examples. That’s a rare example you are looking at. Somebody who’s been there and done that. Kids who come up with parents who’ve never skated, they just gotta go to the magazine, and go to the industry, and go to the skate park to see what’s happening, and what you see is kids with video cameras hanging out. You have to be, like, some video guy, be the man, and suddenly there are so many expectations for a skateboarder to be good, instead of just having fun.

TA: I don’t tell my kid what to do. I just let him enjoy it on his own level and progress naturally. I let him learn from his mistakes, and the thing with skateboarding is, if you’re not falling you’re not learning, man. If I see a guy throwing his board and yelling I’m like, “Dude, take a break, you’re not having a good day.”

photo d.j. farley

TA, indy high above the coping at forty-eight.

Couldn’t that be said about you at the time?

TA: Jay [Adams] was more like that. But my aggression and my attitude towards skateboarding was an outlet to my anger and frustration. And I still use it as that.

So definitely my personality was very aggressive. And I always had, like, a total sense of self-accomplishment and it shows in my ego and people can criticise me for that. But you know what, it was like that.

They called me the Mad Dog. Stacy was the clean-cut, the groovy, nice guy. I was the fucking bad-ass. Jay was the little brother.

And everybody took different roads in life.

As I matured, I gained a bit of wisdom and chilled out, but when I was young, fuck yeah, man, you get on my face, you fuck with me, you’re gonna get the beat down.

That’s the way it was. And that’s the way it still is, but at this point in life I don’t have to do that because I get mad respect not only from the skate industry but from the

music industry, fashion, surfing, from any path of life that I’ve come down.

CH: I think Tony paved the way for people to be themselves. Tony wasn’t changing his attitude or his personality or his character for other people. He was my idol as a kid.

When kids call me their idol, I can feel what he is feeling is almost, like, pressure to act in a certain way, and I was always myself, and I think Tony helped me to stay true to myself. He wasn’t changing to try to conform to whatever was cool or hip at the time. No, we were just being ourselves; we were true and down to earth.

TA: Society tries to put us down constantly.

We’re always labelled as pirates and outlaws. You know, we accept that. Go ahead and label us. But you know what, you really can’t. Because we’re not like you.

We’re not civilians, we’re soldiers

.

Alva and Hosoi were in England to judge the Snickers Bowl contest and ride the bowl at the Download Festival, Donington, www.downloadfestival.co.uk/snickers.

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interview VINCE MEDEIROS photography SAM CHRISTMAS

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YOU KNOW THE MAN - HE MAKES SOME SERIOUSLY GOOD MUSIC. OH, AND HE ALSO skates, snowboards and surfs.

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Ben Harper plays slide guitar with as much power and passion as he discusses the state of American politics or contemplates the delights of riding a skateboard around town. Outspoken, serious and deeply engaging, Ben spoke to Huck while in Germany during a five-week European tour of his new album, Both Sides of the Gun.

HUCK: Both Sides of the Gun is a double album: one CD has plenty of blues-funk-rock and the other has some of the most beautiful singer-songwriter ballads you’ll ever hear. How do you move between your two musical styles?

BEN HARPER: It’s such an organic process, and I can’t explain that to you. It’s just who I am. It’s how I perceive and embrace different ideas that hit me on a daily basis and I don’t even think twice about it.

This record’s also really political. Would you say you are more vocal on this album than in your previous work?

I think Both Sides of the Gun is equally as political. Politics has always been a component in stuff I’ve put out. You could say that ‘Black Rain’ is a political song, but is it any more political than ‘Oppression’ or is ‘Oppression’ more so than ‘With My Own Two Hands’, you know what I mean? It depends on your perspective and what you’re listening for at the moment.

I heard that you put together ‘Black Rain’ during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Like, you wrote a song about it as events were unfolding. Is that true?

True, that song was written on the spot, in the eye of the storm.

Speaking of which, how can musicians make a difference these days? Can music change things at all?

What is change? For me, change is the forward momentum and uplifting

of a culture’s collective consciousness.

That’s how I define change – a culture collectively moving forward through the uplifting of consciousness and awareness.

So therefore, anyone who can contribute to that, whether you’re a doctor or a lawyer or an auto mechanic or a teacher or a musician… See, I don’t fall into that trap of ‘can artists make a difference’? It’s not up to artists to make a difference; it’s up to everyone to make a difference if you care enough to try to do so.

My take is, that challenge of making a difference is a big tree and, like Bob Marley said, I’m a small axe.

A few years ago, when ‘Steal My Kisses’ came out, you were all over the radio. How do you engage with fame?

Being on the radio means that the music’s starting to reach people that it wouldn’t otherwise. I remain appreciative of that. But I am so immersed in the process of creating music consistently that I don’t really look back on that type of thing. I just don’t get caught up in it.

This issue of Huck is largely about individual talent. How do you remain individual in an age of capitalist monoculture? How does Ben Harper retain his own style and not sell out?

You gotta be prepared to earn it, you gotta be prepared to stand behind it. When ‘Steal My Kisses’ hit, the next record could have very easily been a whole record full of ‘Steal My Kisses’. When I saw the formula in front of my face, I had the opportunity to pretty much do that all the time. That sort of strong pattern, the hit thing, it was there, but that’s just of no interest to me. As much as I write the song, life is writing me. The world is my muse and you gotta live it to express it.

Speaking of hits, what do you make of Jack Johnson’s meteoric rise to fame? You kind of influenced him when he started out, didn’t you?

If I influenced him then I’m doing real good. I’m his biggest fan. I love his music. It’s got the thickest groove going. It’s great. I love what he does, I think it’s extremely different. ▼

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Do you know each other?

We know each other quite well. We’ve never rushed our friendship, it’s just something that’s grown organically, it’s got roots…

What’s it like to live in Los Angeles?

I grew up east of Hollywood towards the desert region of California and I have a place out there, so I split my time between the desert and Los Angeles. LA is not like London and New York where you can land and take a cab into the centre of town and then you’re in the thick of it. In LA it all depends on who shows it to you. You’re not just going to stumble on a great place like Laguna Beach. And then when you get to Malibu, it’s deceptive, it’s a few miles stretch but there’s no real city centre to any of LA, it gets tricky.

Where do you surf these days?

I get out all over the place, from Ventura to Laguna, Malibu, Venice, Santa Monica…

And where do you skate?

I mainly street skate. There’s a park in Claremont, my hometown, that’s got some half pipes and bowls. I’m not that good. I just skate ‘cause I love to skate. Longboards, Sector 9 boards, stuff like that.

Is it true that you own a skateboard that’s also a guitar?

A genius builder from Australia named Brad Clark came up with a lap steel skateboard. It really is a functional electric guitar as well as a functional get-around-town skateboard. You can’t do kickflips

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and ollies but you can skate the hell out of it. It’ll get you where you’re going.

Back to politics. What’s your take on the current state of the US administration and the war in Iraq?

War is certainly not a question. It’s a debate, a discussion, and I’d hate to answer it in question form and not get to the heart of the issue ‘cause you don’t wanna just scratch the surface on that. I just think this particular process is very awkward.

Is there enough space in the public sphere for this discussion to take place?

I find the only way you get an intelligent perspective is through intelligent questioning. There was an awkwardly unfinished attempt at a war in Iraq with the father… is it really a coincidence that we stormed back with the son?

And the media have failed in their role of challenging power…

The media are a lost method of justice, it’s so unfortunate.

On that note, did you ever fear a rightwing backlash against your work along the lines of what happened to the Dixie Chicks, for example?

The Dixie Chicks fans leave if they talk politics; my fans leave if I don’t

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Both Sides of the Gun is out now on Virgin.

ALL GIRL SNOWBOARD SLOPESTYLE

30.000 Prize Purse

Fri-14.12.07 Qualifier • Sat-15.12.07 Mainsession Finals

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photography CARLOS PINTO

beneath the breaks.

www.oneilleurope.com/themission

Thing is, we’ve decided to show it a bit differently this time. While surfers fought it out like pirates on the surface, we asked photographer Carlos Pinto to turn his lens on to what lay beneath. And what did he find? Beautiful, blissful, aquamarine H20. There’s often more to great waves than meets the eye.

Who won, who lost, who punched the judges, stole the show and ran away with the kitty? Loath of monotonous blow-by-blow accounts, we’ll give it to you in one sentence: Ian led the pack and nabbed the 25k, followed by Winter, who bagged a nice $6,500 for his troubles.

Over here, you want great waves, you get great waves. And that’s what the six selected surfers – Ian Walsh (USA), Russell Winter (GBR), Ry Craike (AUS), Bernardo Miranda (BRA), Aritz Aranburu (ESP), Luke Munro (AUS), Hugo Savalli (FRA) and Noi Kaulukukui (USA) – got when they boarded the luxurious Haumana in search of idyllic surf and the $25,000 prize money for whoever emerged on top.

Problem is: Nirvana, baby, is often far away and comes with a high price tag. Aware of that, the good folk at O’Neill Europe took it upon themselves to organise the first ever O’Neill The Mission, The Ultimate Freesurf Challenge, in Tahiti and Moorea, in the French Polynesia.

surfers, however, good is simply not enough.

The more talented amongst us require a bit more grunt and spit than your average three-foot cylinder out there. They want great waves. They want the best waves.

Good surfers dig good waves. For great

ahit 0

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The ocean covers 71 per cent of the surface of the earth, and contains 97 per cent of the total amount of water found on our planet. About 2.5 per cent of the remaining fresh water is locked in ice caps and glaciers, leaving just 0.5 per cent for all our needs.

2

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There are more organisms in seven cubic centimetres of seafloor sediment than there are people on Earth – around seven billion to be precise. And less than 10 per cent of the ocean’s depths have been explored by humans.

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japan’s ama divers, who are famous for collecting pearls, can spend up to five minutes under water and have been known to reach depths of up to 150 feet. Most of these free divers are women, who seem able to withstand the cold temperatures more than men.

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The chemical make-up of coral is so close to that of human bone that it has been used in bone graft operations to aid the healing of fractures.

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There are fears that the oceans are becoming acidic due to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Ocean water is naturally alkaline, but when CO2 dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid. Nearly half of the CO2 produced by human activity over the past two hundred years have been absorbed by the oceans.

Consumer Psychosis text ZACHARY DRAKE

The Testament Of A Soothsayer In An Age Of The Unenlightened.

Surfboards are sacred objects. I own two custom-made examples inspired by the creativity that peaked in the shaping bays of California around the end of the sixties. One was mowed by the Skil 100 power plane of Seal Beach-master-shaper Rich Harbour. The other comes from the retro-progressive stable of John Isaac’s Cornwall-based Corduroy label.

The Harbour is my small-wave board, a 10'2" cruiser. It works in anything from ankle-slappers to shoulder-high punch, and in the mush it’s the ultimate section connector. The Corduroy, on the other hand, is a sleek pintail with a pulled-in nose modeled on the Bing/Nuuhiwa template from around 1967, just before the barricades went up in the shortboard revolution. It flies in bigger, hollower waves. The pintail has beautiful bite in steeper sections and its turn transition is poetry in motion.

I know personally the people who created these boards for me and I love them. I know which skilled hands shaped the foam, laid up the fin, glassed the decks, and tinted the resin. The boards are the end result of an intricate collaborative process. They are so beautiful to me that my heart aches with yearning when my gills are too long dry. The pop-out-riding masses don’t understand. There’s something timelessly beautiful about a slowly ageing, handmade surfboard.

I try to avoid labels on my clothing. In fact, I prefer the obscurantist agitprop favoured by many denizens of the Hoxton Squares of the developed world. But when I do, I choose companies that source their materials from as natural and sustainable sources as possible. HOWIES, the third biggest clothing company in West Wales’s Cardigan Bay, produce schmutter of supreme niceness. You can sweat into their merino-base-layer longsleeves (hewn from the wool of the happiest sheep in New Zealand) for days on end and they still whiff like roses. Their ‘8 Miler’ jacket will keep you dry, warm, cool or sweat-free year round depending on the atmospheric conditions.

And their waterproof ‘17 Second’ jacket packs down to the size of a tennis ball in the space of time it takes a lardy teenager to run a hundred metres, and then deploys back to wrinkle-free wearability at Olympian pace.

Its hood, meanwhile, is a masterpiece of design that lets rainwater run free and away from your eyes whilst you cycle through the storm.

Public transport. No. I ride around 150k per week on a fixed-gear, steel-framed bicycle made by the aficionados of road racing at CONDOR bikes in London. Apart from the joyous sensation of direct drive and the compliance and feedback offered by the Dedacciai tubed frame, I dig the classic feel, the transcendent flavour of the values it represents. Technology has pushed so far, and cheap labour in the far east is so abundant, that for a couple of hundred bucks these days you can get a 27-speed, chrommoly-framed monstrosity with full suspension and hydraulic disc brakes to ride five miles to your marketing job. Ridiculous. Strip it down, dude. No need for a drive train. Especially when you ride over flat tarmac a few miles per sunny day. And how about those fluorescent gilets? They make me physically gag. I’d rather be crushed by a left-hand turning skip lorry than make myself look like an idiot in neon.

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Consumption is our defining moment. And if I am defined by the products I consume, I’m going to define myself by quality. Without this discerning take on things, you are a victim. Destroy compromise. Buy quality things

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Ball genius Ronaldinho opens up about surfing, sex and the inherent relationship between playing football and dancing the samba.

ronaldo

de assis moreira Interview Cassiano Elek Machado photography Pep Avila and ronaldinho’s personal archive

Ronaldinho is bigger than football. He’s on TV, on your

videogame and on roadside billboards; selling ice cream, flogging soft drinks and telling you to eat a certain brand of crisps. These days, the beautiful game’s most notable artist is even producing music.

I first spoke to Ronaldo de Assis Moreira what seems like eons before global stardom knocked on the door. He was merely nineteen (he’s now twenty-six) and played for Grêmio, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The interview took place at the majestic Olimpico Monumental stadium, a place he’d frequented since the age of seven, when he joined Grêmio’s competitive youth team. “This is basically my home,” he told me then. “I know every nook and cranny around this place and absolutely everyone here – from the president to the doorman.”

Months before our chat, he had impressed that very president – as well as the whole stadium, the country and the world – during the final match of the 1999 Gaucho Championship against local rivals Internacional. Besides scoring the title-winning goal, Ronaldinho made history by humiliating 1990 Brazil World Cup skipper and current manager Dunga with a magical and physics-defying heel-nutmeg-combo dribble that left the bewildered captain in a state of shock (check it out on YouTube.com, it’s well worth it).

Ronaldinho, after all, is a genius – and a happy genius at that, with his protruding teeth, wide smile and long black tresses. To those lucky enough to have seen him play, the experience can be sublime. His touch is light, easy, seamless – the ball a mere extension of his feet. His capacity for improvisation is akin to that of the superior musician. He can tear through rigid defensive systems by instantly creating new plays when absolutely no one’s expecting it. He can pass a ball forward whilst facing backwards; apply an ‘elastic’ dribble – the ball glued to his boot – and send his opponent crashing to the ground. Ronaldo de Assis Moreira is helping re-invent the way football is played – and we’re just lucky to be here to watch it.

But (thankfully for us) not everything in life revolves around the jogo bonito. Right now, Ronaldinho’s taking some time off to speak with Huck. In a casual and unusually intimate interview, the world’s greatest footballer will tell us about producing records, meeting girls, and playing PlayStation as himself. “I’m a bit of a fraud,” he admits, “but that dude from the videogame, he’s a total legend.”

Bigger than football, indeed. Vince Medeiros

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if i stand still i fall asleep. i don’t like to just sit down. it makes me nervous.

HUCK: You and your family are really into samba. In fact, when you’re dribbling the

ball it looks a bit like you’re samba-ing your way around the opponent. How does music influence your game?

RONALDINHO: I was born listening to samba and playing football. My family’s always been really involved in both. All of my uncles played football.

And they always played pagode [a popular form of samba] after the games. Every Sunday was the same thing: the family played football, then music and then we had a barbecue. When the grown-ups finished their game, me and the other kids hit the pitch. And the grown-ups would go straight into samba mode. It all happened at the same time. I was always waiting for the adults to finish their game so I could go out and play. And then I played football to the sound of them playing music.

Do the Moreiras still play football?

Yes, but now that I live in Barcelona I can’t follow their games anymore. Before I moved out, it was always frantic with everyone phoning each other and going, “You gotta be there, we need you.”

And whoever missed the Sunday game had to sit on the beach the following weekend. The team had its own rules.

Whenever you score a goal you throw out a shaka sign, with the thumb and pinkie sticking out.

Where does that come from?

I got that from the choreography by this samba group called Molejo. I started doing it when I was still experimenting with different ways of celebrating whenever I scored a goal for Brazil. Then when I got to Paris Saint-Germain I kept doing the same thing after I scored a goal [throws out a shaka], and it just became my thing over time. I did it on a weekend and then the next game the whole stadium was doing it. When I came to Barcelona, the whole city was doing it already – they even sell gloves with the thumb and pinkie sticking out.

The shaka sign is very popular with surfers.

Have you ever been on a surfboard?

I’ve tried [laughs], and I loved it. Before moving to Paris I spent five months in Rio. I’d always spend time on the beach and watch the kids surf. I tried a few times but it was really hard. I couldn’t even stand up. You gotta be really strong.

Today you’re much stronger than in those days though. Might wanna give it a try again...

True, true [laughs]. I’d like to. Though I guess sitting on the beach and listening to samba is more my thing. I quite like just watching the kids surf – but from the beach, near the kiosk.

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Besides the shaka thing, another one of your trademarks is the broad smile. In fact, Maradona went as far as to say that you are the world’s happiest man when you’re playing. Do you smile just as much off the pitch?

I’m kind of always smiling. As bad as things might be, you can always look at the bright side of things, otherwise life’s too hard. I’m very happy. I have health, my family has health, I do something I love for a living, there’s no reason not to smile.

What makes you unhappy, besides having to speak to boring journalists once in a while?

[Laughs] If someone I love – friends or family – is feeling sad, that makes me sad as well.

You once made a TV commercial for a mobile phone

company where you were having bad dreams.

The bad dreams showed you playing for Portugal, Mexico and Spain instead of Brazil. In real life, do you ever have bad dreams? And what are they?

I don’t really have nightmares, but there are certainly things I like and things I don’t like. I don’t like flying on airplanes, for example. It’s the one thing that, once I’m onboard, I think, “There’s no way back now – all I can do is sit and wait.”

Have you ever feared hitting the pitch and suddenly realising that you were no longer able to play football?

[Laughs] I’ve never thought about that. Never... never... And I’d never want that to go through my head... ever.

Do you kick the ball around even when you have time off?

Not always. But I’ll have a kick about if my nephew, Diego, happens to be in the house. He’s totally into it.

He wants to play the whole time, “Look, uncle, check out this trick!” That motivates me to play a bit – you just want to teach him the tricks you know.

Do you think Diego is gonna play professionally?

He could – he has the skills. Has a nice touch too. He’s strong. But there’s no pressure – it’s totally up to him.

Do you play as Ronaldinho when you’re playing football on your PlayStation?

It varies a lot. I play each time with a different team and different players. Sometimes I play as myself, sometimes as other players.

And the Ronaldinho from PlayStation, is he any good?

That dude’s awesome [laughs]! I’m a bit of a fraud, but that dude from the videogame, he’s a total legend.

Have you ever played as Argentina?

I have. I like it, with the rivalry and all, it’s fun. If I’m ▼

Early professional days at Gremio; backyard play in Porto Alegre; at Olimpico stadium with brother Assis; the Moreira family.

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god likes everything that’s right. i believe that football is right. i do think god likes football.

playing against another Brazilian friend I sometimes play as Argentina – and I play to win.

Do you have an iPod? I love it. It’s one of my biggest pastimes. I’ve got almost 10,000 tunes on mine. Whenever I have time, I’m always on it. I’ve been downloading a lot of rap lately. I’ve always liked a bit of funk and hip-hop.

Whenever my brother came back home [Ronaldinho’s older brother Assis is a former international footballer], he’d bring some of the latest hip-hop with him. Later, the guys who played with me in Paris got me into it as well.

I’ve heard that you’re into sweets, is that right? Do you watch what you eat at all?

No, I eat whatever I want. Feijoada [Brazilian black bean-based dish], rabada [Brazilian ox tail dish], black beans with rice, sweets. Thank God I don’t put on weight that easily. I eat and do not put on weight.

And when I’m on holidays and am not playing I even manage to lose weight.

A Brazilian newspaper, Zero Hora, recently did a story on you and mentioned you have a barbecue made out of a big garbage can cut in half. Why do you not own a proper barbecue?

They’re not really used to having barbecues in Spain, they don’t even use espetos [type of spit used to skewer the meat in a typical Brazilian barbecue].

We improvise at home and use a big barrel cut in half. Then we have a barbecue our own way. It’s much better.

Do you drink mate [typical tea commonly drunk in southern Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay]?

I don’t drink it every day. But when someone’s having it and it’s just sitting there on the table, I might drink it a bit. But I’m not like Messi [Argentinean international and fellow Barcelona player] and the other Argentineans – they drink mate like it’s going out of style. It’s not my cup of tea.

Messi and the other Argentineans, as well as many other European players, have long hair. You also grew long hair when you moved here. What’s next, hair-wise?

I already mess with my hair a bunch [laughs]. Long hair gives you loads of options. You can tie it up, wear hats, do little pigtails. I have a lot of fun with it.

In the past, you’ve said that you’re “ugly yet charming, fragrant and happy”.

Are you vain?

I like it, don’t I [laughs]? A bit of gel, nice clothes, a bit of cologne...

Do women like an “ugly yet charming, fragrant and happy” man?

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Totally, they’re always saying I smell good [laughs].

I like it... It’s great to have someone say you smell nice... [Silence] Is there anything better than that?

Are Spanish women shy or quite outgoing?

[Laughs and then silence] Oh, man, it’s nice... [more silence] It’s quite different [silence].

Argentinean girls, for example, are known for being hard to get. Are Spanish women a bit more easy going?

[Silence then whispers] Dude, it’s all quite normal.

There are so many tourists here. There are a lot of universities. There’s lots of cultural exchange all the time. You go somewhere and hear English, then Dutch, then Russian, Spanish. It’s mad. All the time there’s lots of people speaking every language you can think of. You go to a restaurant and address someone in one language and they reply in another.

When you were a bit younger and played at GrÊmio you mentioned once that women are even better than football. Do you still think that?

[Laughs] Oh, there’s a place and time for everything.

When I’m playing football, the ball is where it’s at. When I’m doing the other thing, then there’s nothing better. They are not comparable. They’re the two best things. They are.

You’ve mentioned you like to stay casual. Do you not like long-term relationships?

I’ve had them. But I don’t like to discuss them.

Are you dating at the moment?

No, not now.

Do you like older or younger women?

I used to hang out with older women more. It’s natural when you’re a bit younger to like women that are a bit older, more experienced. But when you’re nearing thirty you want younger women – they catch your eye a bit more, that kinda thing.

Opposites attract, no way around it.

But the more experienced know more, right?

When they’re thirty and a bit they really like it, don’t they?

Chico Buarque [iconic Brazilian singer] met you recently when shooting a documentary about him...

[Interrupts] A great guy, a legend, a genius...

Chico gave an interview to Trip magazine recently and said that “every man has failed to get it up at least once”. Do you agree with him?

[Silence] Man... [silence] noooo. Not yet, not yet ▼

Samba time with Assis; post-match interviews at Gremio; backyard juggling in Porto Alegre.

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[laughs]. But I’m sure it happens to the best of us.

But so far so good.

Have you voted since you moved to Europe?

Nah, man, I haven’t really been able to.

When you were younger you used to say you wanted to get married and have seven kids. You have a son, but he doesn’t live with you. Do you want to have many more Ronaldinhos?

I’ve always wanted to. I still want to have a bunch of kids. I’ve always wanted to have a full house, which is how I grew up, with two more siblings, neighbours, friends. I love a full house.

Do you follow what’s going on in the world of politics?

I do. I have family there, so at home everyone follows it. I watch Brazilian TV all the time. I try to follow everything that’s going on.

What’s your first childhood memory?

It’s always tied to playing football. My gifts have always had to do with football. I have a photo of me when I was really, really small, and I’m striking a pose and around me there’s a football and a tambourine.

You stopped going to school when you were fourteen to pursue a career in football. Do you like to read at all?

I’m not really into reading. I like being active – if I stand still I fall asleep. I don’t like to just sit down or stand still. It makes me nervous. Ever since I was small I had a hard time just standing still. At school I used to sit right by the window, which faced an indoor football court. All the other kids from the other years did PE right outside. It was torture. I felt like the world outside was always inviting me to join in and play.

there are people who think that because they are not abusing me personally, i’m not a victim of racism.

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You have a crucifix on your chest. Do you not read the Bible?

I’m a Catholic. I don’t go to church much but am religious in my own personal way.

Is God into football at all?

God likes everything that’s right. I believe that football is right. I do think God likes football.

As an athlete, do you think drinking alcohol is compatible with playing football at a high level?

It depends on the person. It has a lot to do with your metabolism, your culture. There are people who drink one day and spend the whole week with a hangover. There are people who drink wine during lunch and dinner. There are players here who smoke and who run a lot more than those who don’t smoke.

What are your thoughts on Lula [Brazil’s leftist president who’s running for re-election in 2006]?

I’m a positive guy. I’m hoping for him to do better, that he can do things that’ll make the Brazilian people happier. But since I’m always on the road I find it hard to keep up with what’s actually going on. Once in a while I hear about a scandal here and there. With or without problems, I just hope he can do the best he can.

One particular ‘scandal’ in football is racism.

Eto’o, your fellow Barcelona player from Cameroon, has been the victim of racism in Spain...

[Interrupting] When they verbally abuse him they are abusing me as well. There are people who think that because they are not abusing me personally, I’m not a victim of racism. When they call him things they are personally offending me as well. It is absolutely shocking that this is still taking place in the twenty-first century. That hurts Eto’o a lot. He always mentions it to me...

and Barcelona, you’re something of a king here. Would you ever leave to play somewhere else?

If it’s up to me I want to stay here for quite a while.

There’s everything here. The club really looks after me. It’s my kind of city – there’s a beach. I live on the hills but it’s five minutes from the ocean. It’s great.

Can you walk around town okay?

Sure, I do whatever and go wherever I want. You know people will recognise you and ask for an autograph, a photo, but that doesn’t stop me.

Are you shy?

At first I always am. But I do loosen up over time. I start cackling and then it’s all good.

How about you, do you drink?

No, I’m not really into it. On special occasions, maybe. Over New Year’s I like a bit of champagne.

When I win a title, for example.

Do you have any plans for when you hang up your boots?

I’ve never thought about it. I still want to play for a long, long time. These days, ‘cause I’m so into music and computers and mixing in the studio, maybe I’d want to do that, to produce music. That’s something I’d be really into. So there, I think I’ll become a producer

There are presidential elections this year in Brazil.

Special thanks to the talented Giuliano Cedroni at Trip magazine, www.trip.com.br.

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SOMETHING ABOUT

T ravi∫ Travi∫ traVis parKer has oFten WaDeD aGainst the FLoW. not that it’s an

intentional separation from the rest of the world, but travis always manages to end up doing things slightly differently to the rest of us. he parted ways with his highpaying corporate sponsor to ride for a small, independent brand. he set up his own company offering the long-forgotten snowboard leash. and he recently built what he calls a ‘bikecar’, pedalling his way through the pacific northwest with three friends onboard.

There’s no question that Texas-born Travis is a pro snowboarder with a difference. His style has even been described as “schizocreative performance art” by teammate Todd Richards. More importantly, Travis has paved his own path more than most of us would have the guts to even consider.

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He started out on the usual road of snowboard success with his first video part in Standard Film’s TB7 back in 1997. After a while though, he realised he could offer a “different point of view of snowboarding through film” and, along with fellow pros Jussi Oksanen, David Benedek and others, came up with the idea of creating his own movie company: Robot Food. For Travis, it didn’t just turn out to be a “crazy-ass compromise and a huge learning experience,” but it also gave him a new forum of expression. “I didn’t feel I had much of a career left in the boundaries of what snowboarding was,” he says.

“But I still had a lot to give.”

It is widely acknowledged that Robot Food brought “the fun back into snowboarding”. A bunch of the world’s best riders were shown taking themselves infinitely less seriously on and off the hill while still managing to pull off the most insane snowboarding you could want to watch. Travis has a slightly different take on the whole situation: “I think it’s funny that people say we made snowboarding fun again. Snowboarding is an activity that has always been fun.” This may be true, but sometimes it takes someone like Travis to help people see it, and when he describes the whole movie-making process as “off-axis rotational carcass hucks mixed with blood, sweat and tears in snowy mountains on boards, shredding the globe – it was awesome”, who wouldn’t want a piece of it? ▼

∫

HE SNOWBOARDS LIKE A MADMAN. BUT RIGHT NOW, HE JUST WANTS TO SHOW YOU HIS LATEST CREATION: THE ‘BIKECAR’.

text ZOE OKSANEN photography CHRIS OWEN

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Fun it may be, and when you watch Robot Food’s Lame from 2003 you will see Travis’ part devoid of the giant kickers and rails that typify your usual video, standing testament to his commitment to keeping it this way. However, just to make sure you know he is still a snowboarder to contend with, he throws in a backside 1080 rodeo in his final shot – the first snowboarder ever to pull this off in powder. Never mistake Travis’ absolute skill on a snowboard.

But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

Parker’s unorthodox worldview has thrown down several stumbling blocks along the way, including the end of a profitable sponsorship deal. He says: “Whether my actions were wrong or right, I still don’t know. All I know is that I made an emotional decision and it bit me in the ass. It was a drastic step, and I felt the repercussions big time. I didn’t realise at the time how important sponsorship for an athlete was.” Although he got “pretty depressed on life for a while there”, it also served as a “wake-up call”.

Soon enough though, Travis was back on his feet. In 2002 he launched his own company, Airblaster. At first, no one quite knew what to make of it. Was it just another quirky Parker idea or was this a bona fide business venture? After all, no one had really used snowboard leashes for years, and the fluorescent colours were an incredibly risky throwback to the old-school days. But Travis had a plan: “We want to make top-shelf product and we want to have a good time doing it.

So we try to be light-hearted and non-serious with the leashes, but at the same time we want to be taken seriously.” Suffice to say, they have now been taken seriously enough to boast a product range that encompasses everything from

outerwear, goggles, soft goods, long underwear and, of course, the notorious ‘legbags’, with plans to expand even further.

But if business keeps improving, would he ever go fully corporate on us? “Our ideal situation was to keep our sew shop in Portland, Oregon, and support local business, like American Apparel does. But my business partners were getting sweaty trying to make it happen, and I was getting sweaty, stressing out from shelling out my backbreaking savings. One way or another somebody sweats. Life isn’t fair, but our goal is to be as fair as possible while making firstclass products.”

Next up came the most innovative of all his creations: the ‘bikecar’. Travis and friends Scotty Whitlake and Louie Fountain pioneered the way for a vehicle run on nothing but the pedal power of the aforementioned, complete with a snowboard gear-laden trailer. Fresh back from thirty-four days on the road, they ‘bikecared’ from mountain to mountain through Idaho, Washington and Oregon, covering 866 miles in a masterpiece of transportation that could win Travis the ‘Environmentalist of the Year’ award.

Why did they do it? “We had the resources and the will, so we did it.”

With all this going on, you might question when Travis and his never-ending flow of novel ideas are going to slow down. Apparently not just yet as his plans include “successful businesses and non-profits, music, a good attitude, skiing, a pilot’s license, and a formal education.” But he reflects that this will only happen if he’s “really lucky, hard working, cool, calm, collected, ambitious, and a lot of other adjectives that ultimately explain that it’s not entirely up to me to decide what my future is”.

.

Something about Travis, though, suggests that however obscure his visions may be, it’s just a matter of time until we see something new and crazy all over again www.bikecarmovie.com www.myairblaster.com www.snowdaysfoundation.org

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shepard fairey: man on a mission text ANDREA KURLAND photography paul willoughby

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the summer of ’89. A budding Rhode Island art student, moonlighting as a skate shop assistant, is practising his craft. From a random newspaper cutting he stencils the image of a man’s face. It will be the focus of his subculture’s purest form of creative expression: a skate sticker. Freshly pasted, the masterpiece is finally ready for its grand unveiling.

“Dude, that’s stupid,” is one friend’s critique. Plastered to the wall, in all its greyscale glory, is a monolithic cutout of Andre the Giant: wrestler, actor and 520-pound goliath. With a knowing smile, the artist prophetically hits back: “You’ll see. Andre’s posse is the new shit.”

Today, the iconic Giant face litters urban landscapes across the

globe. From Providence, Rhode Island, to Hackney, London, stickers on stop signs indicate the global spread of a cultural phenomenon that has fuelled one skater’s leap from anonymity to notoriety.

Shepard Fairey – stealth street bomber, counterculture rebel and creator of the Obey Giant street art campaign – has come a long way since that first artistic impulse seventeen years ago. ▼

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“I’m not a proponent of anarchy. But a lot of laws that don’t benefit anyone get slipped in as a form of control. I just think people should be more pro-active in taking advantage of democracy and paying attention to what’s going on.”

“The Obey campaign is about not being blindly obedient: you have to look at things and think about what really applies to how you want your life to be.” Slapping a poster on a wall in London’s East End, Shepard Fairey is shedding some light on this damp afternoon. “I guess it’s a question-everything philosophy I’m trying to put across,” he adds.

When a national article came out questioning the meaning behind the ‘Andre the Giant has a Posse’ stickers, Shepard experienced his own enlightenment. “The whole thing opened my eyes up to the fact that most public space is controlled by advertisers and the government,” he says. “You’re going out there and saying, ‘I’m going to communicate, whether it’s against the law

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or not. I’m a taxpayer so I can seize the public space.’”

The stickers evoked mixed reactions: a symbol of youthful defiance to the anti-establishment rebel; a form of subversive propaganda to the paranoid conservative. “I liked the idea of creating something from nothing – the coup of this absurd thing taking on any meaning the public projected onto it,” says Shepard, fascinated by the wave of curiosity that swept through communities bombed by Andre the Giant. Today, more than two-and-a-half million stickers and forty-five thousand posters have been avidly dispensed around the world.

Unknowingly, Shepard had created his own sociological experiment – what he calls an ‘experiment in phenomenology,’

described by the campaign’s manifesto as ‘the process of letting things manifest themselves’. Devoid of meaning, the sticker forces people to question their surroundings and the thousands of commercial images they are bombarded with daily.

“It’s kind of like a Rorschach test,” explains Shepard, referring to the vague inkblot cards that psychologists use to delve into your subconscious. “How people react to the sticker is a reflection of their personality.” But just as you begin to think the man may be the next Freud, he sniggers: “Manipulating the public in this way was simply a funny concept to me.”

The stickers semantically evolved into posters that read ‘Obey Giant’ – what Shepard sees as his “counterculture version of Big

Brother.” The rebel stamp of a skateboarding punk had become the political vent of a thinking man. “The Giant stuff was just meant to be a Dada, semiotic, fuck-you kind of a thing,” explains Shepard.

“But I morphed it into a social or political commentary about how people are obedient.

“I’m not a proponent of anarchy,” he continues. “But a lot of laws that don’t benefit anyone get slipped in as a form of control. I just think people should be more pro-active in taking advantage of democracy and paying attention to what’s going on.”

But as Shepard soon discovered, having a political opinion is not always good for business. When a line of anti-Bush posters hit, twenty-five per cent of Shepard’s online customers immediately ▼

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“The Giant stuff was just meant to be a Dada, semiotic, fuck-you kind of a thing.

But I morphed it into a social or political commentary about how people are obedient.”

unsubscribed. “Since 9/11 people are making bad decisions because they’re scared,” he says. “And right now – especially in the United States – I feel a counterargument needs to be made.”

With a client list that includes Coca-Cola and Sony, Shepard has predictably been labelled with the ‘sell-out’ tag. But how does he explain his schizophrenic approach to consumer culture? “I’m not a paternalist. Customers need to consume with more discretion and not be mindless sheep. If I have to tell you that a caffeinated soft drink is bad, you deserve bad health and it’s natural selection that

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your rapid demise would better the world.”

Shepard seems clearly at ease with his stamp on the world. “It’s all about understanding supply-and-demand economics and using it to your advantage rather than getting used by it,” he smiles.

“You’ve gotta understand your position within the Zeitgeist.”

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Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey is a massive 360-page retrospective that chronicles seventeen years of street art and graphic design, out now on Gingko Press, £45. For more, go to www.obeygiant.com or www.obeyclothing.co.uk.

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alice wears dress by wesc necklaces stylist’s own sandals stylist’s own chaps by timberland

fields of gold PHOTOGRAPHY: KENNY hi-res STYLING: andrea kurland

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alice wears reversible check hoody by franklin marshall bow patterned v-neck by markus lupfer blue pinafore by insight grey tights by topshop white lace tights (worn underneath) by urban outfitters belt by fenchurch shoes by converse necklaces, fingerless gloves and badges stylist’s own

alex wears check shirt by kickers waistcoat by and i knitted cardigan by oliver spencer jeans by seal kay belt by dvs hat by wesc fingerless gloves by fenchurch scarf stylist’s own shoes by creative recreation

Hair and make-up: Taro @ www.RYUTARO.co.uk models: Alice and Alex @ Bookings www.bookingsmodels.co.uk Photographer assisted by: Wendy Kurland art directed by paul willoughby

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CRIME SCENE: EVIDENCE COLLECTION (STAINS, HAIR, FIBRE, THREADS) photography ROB ‘THE DOG’ LONGWORTH styling ANDREA KURLAND

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RAGWEAR women’s jacket

EASTPAK bag

SALOMON trousers

ELWOOD jumper

HOWIES shirt

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O’NEILL shirt

OAKLEY purse

NIKE 6.0 skate shoe

DVS snow shoe

NIXON watch

OLYMPUS MIU 720 sw digital camera

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EZeKIEL jacket

LORD OF MESS book

NIKITA jacket

KULTE dress-top

ETNIES plimsole

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Falling Slowly Photography: Matt Hind Styling: Sally-Anne Argyle

Camisole – Rokit

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left

Cardigan – H&M Skirt (worn underneath) – Urban Outfitters Vest (worn underneath) – Splendid

below

Jumper – Paul Smith

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Denim shorts – Joseph Jumper – Ella Moss

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below

Jumper dress – WESC Bra – Princess Tam Tam

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right

Shirt – Filippa K Knickers – American Apparel Necklace – Wright and Teague

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Jumper – Paul Smith Knickers – Princess Tam Tam

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Hair and Makeup: Mel Arter using Stila Photographer assisted by: Simon Tang Stylist assisted by: Fiona Downie Model: Georgia Steed at Storm

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ALL THE GREAT STUFF THAT COULDN’T FIT ANYWHERE ELSE. CAN INDOOR RIDING EVER BE COOL? SCRAWLS, PAINTINGS, MOVING IMAGE, YEAH. FOR THE LITERATE AMONGST US. THE VILEST MOVIE YOU’LL EVER SEE. SURFING’S LATEST NOVEL. NEW ALBUM REVIEWED.

Text: Chris Guelpa

I once told a friend I was going snowboarding on carpet in Scotland. After a pause, and an arched eyebrow, he responded, “Why?” And honestly, I couldn’t answer. I’ve always thought of carpeted runs – and indoor snow slopes – as perversions of nature; a manifestation of man’s arrogance and manipulation of the world. If a 22,500-square-metre indoor ski slope in the middle of Dubai isn’t the epitome of man’s excesses, then I don’t know what is. But I’m from Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, and criticising the topographically-challenged is easy when you’ve always had a mountain at your fingertips.

So I decided to check out the SNO!zone indoor slope (which has snow, not carpet!) at the Xscape Leisure Centre in Milton Keynes, England, to see if my assertions were right. When I first saw the monolith cylinder half buried at an angle, like a tent peg driven into the ground, I launched into an internal diatribe about man’s faults.

Once inside, the thing looked like a gigantic mall. Complete with movie theatre, every outdoor shop known to man, cafes and restaurants, I wondered whether there was actually a snow slope here or whether it was a clever ploy to get people through the door. Another diatribe.

So I paid my £21 to ride for an hour, strapped on my board and jumped on the towrope to the top of the 170-metrelong run. The snow was heavier than real snow, somewhere between the consistency of constantly warmed and cooled spring snow and the October wet snow in the Pacific Northwest.

I headed down the hill making three turns before taking a little jump off one of the rollers, then three more turns to the second roller; three more turns and I was at the bottom – grinning like a idiot.

And that’s when I started thinking about it. Nowhere did SNO!zone claim to be better than a mountain in, say, Switzerland. It only ever claimed to be a great place to learn to ski or board before a trip to a mountain, and an easy place to maintain your turns in the off-season.

Chris Moran, former British snowboard champion, recently told me about his early days riding the dry slopes in Manchester. “They were cool,” he says. “They’d let us turn a wheel barrel upside down, put a big sheet of plywood down, slap a thing of lino on, and you’ve got yourself a big kicker. Not much in the way of health and safety, but it was just what we needed.”

And, after all, we build carpeted football courts in the middle of cities so people can play football. Is a snow slope really that bad?

For more information on the Xscape Leisure Centre at Milton Keynes, check out www.xscape.co.uk

TEXT: VINCE MEDEIROS

So it happened at last. Following decades of embarrassing, painfullystereotypical coverage, the mainstream media have finally caught on to the fact that surfers, God love them, can actually read.

And who best to pioneer the field than one of the world’s oldest newspapers? Led by talented journalist, media lawyer (and surfer!)

Alex Wade, The Times of London have launched Surf Nation, a daily blog for everyone and anyone who might want to read some quality prose about the exciting world of surfing.

“I thought it was about time that a newspaper covered the sport properly,” says Wade. “Far too often the nationals run pieces about surfing in which it’s clear that the journalist knows absolutely nothing about it.”

The goal, Wade says, is to offer knowledgeable and well-informed news and commentary whilst keeping it broad, accessible and inclusive. ”With Surf Nation I want to bridge the gap between the full-on surf media,” he says, “and the growing masses of people who might be no better than average surfers, or beginners, or just plain interested in the sport.”

Wade, who is currently working on a book of the same name, wants to have the creme de la creme of surf journalists and writers contributing on a regular basis. Surf intellectual Sam Bleakley and writing sensation Andy Cox have already penned insightful entries, with more hard-hitting names yet to come.

“In my view surfing has been poorly served by the written word for too long,” he says. “The blog will be full of good writing, to be enjoyed by anyone who loves the sea, good writing and surfing.”

Surf Nation (both blog and book) reflects Wade’s own belief that surfing is emblematic of a fundamental drive to the ocean in many of us: “I’m no better than an average surfer but I love surfing and everything that it stands for – freedom, flow, soul, the wild… As Conrad said in Lord Jim: ‘In the destructive element immerse…’ Critics have pondered what he meant by this, but I reckon he was trying to say: ‘Everyone should surf.’” http://timesonline.typepad.com/surf_nation

TEXT: VINCE MEDEIROS PHOTOGRAPHY: KENNY HI-RES

It was lonely. It was rainy. And by day ten his right heel had copped a searing first-degree burn caused by the skin-shredding friction of asphalt on feet. And yet, despite it all, Swansea local Dave Cornthwaite pushed on. And on and on and on until he finally reached the southern tip of Cornwall, England, completing a record-breaking 895-mile journey atop a skateboard.

Quite a feat. Which shouldn’t stop us from asking the following question: er… why? “I’d broken up with a long-term girlfriend, was sick of my job and the boss was a wanker.”

Right… “So I just wanted to get on the road. When I first got a skateboard it was incredible – my whole perspective of my hometown changed. Suddenly hills I’d been walking on became skateboarding territory.

I was just happy for the first time in ages. I had to go do something special with all this.”

So off he went, making sure to push his skateboard for a good cause along the way. Founded

by Cornthwaite, ‘BoardFree’ wants to raise £50,000 for three children’s charities: Link Community Development, The Lowe Trust, and Sailability Australia.

Gotta dig that. But before we move on, why don’t you tell us about that burn on your feet… “On the Scottish Highlands, the foot dragging down, it wore my sole out, so I needed to change shoes. One day of new shoes, 42 miles, blisters… wore off three layers of skin on my heel. It was like a first-degree burn on my heel. I pushed the last 550 miles on those blisters.

The bad weather started and my foot got infected.”

Shit, was it painful? “Excruciating. Every push was horrible. I was screaming across the Cumbrian Hills. I was living for downhills.”

Now you might wanna know that Dave’s original plan was to actually ride from Wales to China. And why didn’t he? “It was gonna be from Swansea to Beijing, but a month’s worth of research revealed that there’s a 2,000-kilometre stretch of road where there is no tarmac. That was it for those plans.”

Soft… Anyway, so what’s next for this philanthropist-on-wheels? “Last May I was at a mate’s house and a Lonely Planet to Oz fell out, landing on my pushing foot. The rest is history. I just looked at the map, Perth to Brisbane, let’s do it!” www.boardfree.co.uk

TEXT: ANNA GREENLAND

Gratitude brings together scrawls, paintings, moving image and photography by Daniel Crockett, John Eldridge and Neil Erskine.

Composed into a single installation, the output is collectively inspired by nature and the natural world. The exhibition poses important questions about men’s treatment of the natural environment.

Weaving together a series of short stories, Gratitude visually illustrates the importance of time in understanding the impact of surfers on the planet.

Imagine this: “Endless lines drawn and a thousand pathways walked, courses through the rock pools and foot-falls across the fingers of the reef, laughter and cat-calls reflected in the lines and wrinkles: hair sodden, ecstatic, travelling faster, lingers and stalls, finds peace.

Calcified, limbs now frozen stiff, never (in this incarnation) fit to soar and rise again. Old man of endless lines, old man with silence. Lines on the face now, walling lefts and rights peel away from eyes alight.

Watching the smitten newcomers from the old bench, feeling energy and uncommon joy, savouring the faces that flash past on their way to water. They melt as they merge with the waves, visible to the old man only as the lines they draw.

Some cause him pleasure. In others he sees friends past and it’ll bring a tear to his eye. Sometimes he is there too, stealing a glimpse from them, guiding them, and dancing with them amongst the peaks and troughs.

Then it comes to the end of the day, the sun begins to slink below the western horizon and it is time to walk slowly back up the track, he is weary once more. Old man conjoined with the sky, old man a part of the sand.”

With typewritten poetry and prose, Gratitude’s aesthetic experience draws heavily on the tactile look of words on paper. Stories such as the one above are surrounded by a miasma of images from the surfing world, shot on a range of vintage Polaroid, lomographic and 35mm film. Throw eclectic artwork and stunning super 8 into the mix, and you’ve got plenty to feast your eyes on.

Says Crockett, “Gratitude is a representation of the beauty we see around us every day… a beauty that is changing.

Of course change is inevitable, but change in the right way, that’s what we are trying to inspire here.”

Gratitude is an ongoing exhibition of creative output launching on 23 September in Cornwall. For more info, contact danielcrockett@gmail.com

TEXT: ALEX WADE

Books on surfing tend to take one of two forms. Either they are guidebooks, suitably illustrated with jawdropping line-up shots, or they are photo-histories, suitably illustrated with jaw-dropping line-up, action and portrait shots. Exceptions, where the prose is left to do the talking, are few and far between.

Cynics might be inclined to suggest that this literary void is a consequence of surfers’ sun-bleached brains, but the truth is probably more to do with the inescapably indefinable nature of surfing. As the old catch-line goes, “Only a surfer knows the feeling,” but the ineffability of the sport (or is it an art?), as well as the fact that it means so many different things, depending on ability and experience, mean that the surfer/writer is looking at the literary equivalent of paddling out at Pipeline.

The latest to have a go is Welsh surfer Tom Anderson, whose Riding the Magic Carpet recounts his odyssey to surf the perfect rights of Jeffrey’s Bay. Anderson decided that his life’s purpose was to surf J-Bay at the age of twelve, having seen footage of Tom Curren at the spot in The Search series of videos. His single-mindedness is admirable, so too the surfer’s eye he lends to the travel-writing genre. His descriptions of trips to France, Scotland, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Central America will strike chords with everyone who has ever been on an overseas surf trip, and Anderson is on especially good form when he finds himself surfing barely-ridden waves in the Orkneys.

Occasionally, however, the very drive that animated his quest makes for prose that stays too rigidly within its parameters. Subtleties are often unexplored, as Anderson sticks relentlessly to the purpose he formed as a boy.

In the end, the writer eventually gets to J-Bay, but does he surf its fabled waves? It’s well worth finding out, and Anderson’s book – fresh, ingenuous and honest – will inspire the urge to explore in every surfer.

Riding the Magic Carpet is published by Summersdale, £7.99.

REVIEWS: PHIL HEBBLETHWAITE The Rapture

Pieces Of The People We Love Vertigo/Mercury The Rapture always came across as being a deeply annoying band, and not just because of that Robert Smith-like shrill voice of Luke’s. They seemed too serious and shockingly disloyal. The punk funk sound they made their name on was a direct result of the DFA production duo turning them into a far more interesting band than they were, yet as soon as the major labels came sniffing they went straight for the honey. This new album (featuring songs produced by Paul Epworth, Danger Mouse and Ewan Pearson) finds the band toning down the Cure influence, but still unable to hide how much they’ve stolen from post punk and psych rock. At times you forgive them because they display genuine musical intelligence and passion (the three openers are great); elsewhere they end up sounding worryingly like U2. Obviously you’d do better to go straight to their sources, but this is a respectable sophomore effort and, quite against the odds, some songs suggest the band might have personality after all.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy The Letting Go Domino

Another quality offering from the prolific and charismatic Will Oldham, easily the most gifted of the so-called ‘lo-fi’ folky dudes. This was recorded in Iceland with a local string section and Dawn McCarty from Faun Fables sharing vocal duties. It’s not gonna turn the party out, but it’s acutely intriguing and real.

The Black Keys Magic Potion V2

Ohio’s Black Keys are still working to an ‘if it ain’t broke...’ blues rock formula and they’re still coming up with strong results. As with their three previous albums, this is rough-cut and rooted music that totally lacks pretension and makes no concessions to fashion.

Good for them. And, for a two-piece, they’re noisy as hell too.

Beenie Man

Undisputed Virgin As expected from a majorleague dancehall star, there are loads of hideous R&B touches across this record, but get over them and there’s a lot to enjoy.

It remains almost impossible to understand what Beenie’s saying, but he’s still got amazing vocal dexterity and, when he’s not trying to produce a single, he can still cut a jam.

Ice Cube

Laugh Now, Cry Later Virgin

Dr. Octagon

The Return of Dr. Octagon Casual Certainly not the best Dr. Octagon album, but so much better than you might have expected after such a long time. Production comes from the One Watt Sun trio and they do a concrete job. As for the good doctor – Kool Keith – well, he’s as bonkers as ever, but he’s never boring to listen to. Bow down, the man’s a legend.

The Young Knives

Voices Of Animals And Men Transgressive Solid debut from a tweed- and corduroy-clad trio that have worked their arses off over the last couple of years and, against the odds, look set to break through. It’s more punk revival stuff, but the Knives mix in classic English songwriting and wit. Best of all, they just don’t seem to take themselves especially seriously.

Basement Jaxx Crazy Itch Radio XL

Perfectly fine if you like the Jaxx’s brand of zany dance pop. As odious and repulsive as anything they ever did if you too are distrustful of their attempts at cross-genre and cross-continent ‘soul’. Yo, stop hating, it’s just party music! It’s not, though, is it? Not when it makes you want to be sick.

Embarrassingly weak album from the mighty Cube, yet somehow you can’t help but like it. He’s a mega-star now, but he’s still doing songs called things like ‘Smoke Some Weed’. Yes! Elsewhere he claims that Martha Stewart had lesbian sex in prison. Funny shit all told, if not nearly as gangsta as Cube still thinks he is.

The Meligrove Band Planets Conspire V2

Triumphant and epic third album from a Canadian four-piece that have taken time to find their stride but are now capable of competing with the many other brilliant Toronto-based bands. These songs, which are often piano-led and work more like movements than individual songs, are huge.

As an album? Impressive.

Sebastien Tellier Universe Lucky Number

Building on the underground success of Tellier’s euphoric track ‘La Ritournelle’ comes this: an album of odds and sods culled from a France-only acoustic LP and some of his soundtrack work. It reeks of cashing in, but the material is worthy. Tellier, a Parisian, may be a loon but there’s no denying his talent.

An Inconvenient Truth

Director: Davis Guggenheim Here’s the deal: cut back on your CO2 emissions or else we’re all doomed to a life of endless droughts, freak hurricanes and oven-hot summers that will kill more fat people across Europe than a permanent diet of pie and chips. So says Al Gore in a highly-engaging hour-and-a-half multimedia presentation about the science of climate change. That said, you can’t help but notice the glaring irony that is Gore riding in posh cars and flying in airplanes en route to his speeches. Plus, he never questions the systemic imperative that has been a major cause of global warming in the first place – an economic framework that relies on greed and permanent growth. Still, the message is abundantly clear: the world’s being fucked and it’s up to us to clean up our act. An Inconvenient Truth should be mandatory viewing for all who care about the survival of the species. Go see it now. Vince Medeiros

The Sentinel

Director: Clark Johnson The Sentinel is bursting at the seams with potential: the pace, the cast, the sharpness and the speed at which events are machine-gunned into the plot are all expertly handled – until the whole lot just fizzles out like a rain-soaked firework. The formulaic screenplay makes for an all-too-predictable ending, and as for Eva Longoria – the one tiny thread that the film desperately hangs onto – she barely even takes off her jacket. Monisha Rajesh

Dirty Sanchez: The Movie

Director: Jim Hickey Have you ever watched an episode of MTV’s Dirty Sanchez and thought, ‘Shit, man, I’d love to see another hour of this stuff’? If the answer’s ‘yes’, then a) you’re crazy, and b) your time has come. Dirty Sanchez: The Movie sees the four jackasses dispatched on a world tour to experience the Seven Deadly Sins in as graphic and sickening a fashion as possible. This is one genuinely fucked-up film. No stomach is left unturned and no orifice unexplored in the quest for the most extreme experience imaginable.

Bodies are mutilated, shit is eaten, tongues are stapled, and mothers are seduced by sons – all in the name of good, solid, riotously unclean fun.

If you can keep your shit together, you might even enjoy it. Matt Bochenski

Eros

Directors: Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh, Michelangelo Antonioni Three short films, three celebrated directors, and the most tantalising of subjects: eroticism. Wong Kar Wai’s The Hand is an affecting tragedy about a young tailor’s obsessive love for a courtesan, set against the sumptuous backdrop of thirties Hong Kong. Soderbergh’s Equilibrium is a verbose comedy starring Robert Downey Jr as a stressed-out fifties ad exec visiting a psychiatrist (Alan Arkin) to discuss a recurring erotic dream. Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Dangerous Thread of Things is a ponderous, self-important thirty minutes unworthy of one of cinema’s most influential directors in which an unhappily married Italian couple parrot empty epithets at each other, and have even emptier sex. Obsessive followers or Kar Wai, Soderbergh, and Antonioni have a curio to put among their collection.

Everyone else will soon forget Eros. David Mattin

You like magazines. You like music. And you like to keep your head warm. Right? We knew it. So here’s the deal: subscribe to HUCK (5 issues for £12) and win an attractive Mactbeth beanie, an abundantly cool Atticus i-Pod case* and a copy of Horse Play+, an absolutely classic photo book by WESC. Deal of the year – no doubt. Read, rock out and stay warm. You know it makes sense.

Please send cheque with name and address to: Huck Magazine Subscriptions Department Minstrel House 2 Chapel Place Rivington Street London EC2A 3DQ UK All cheques made payable to HUCK Limited. *Offer limited to the first 50 people to subscribe. + Offer limited to the first 10 people to subscribe.

(For European editions, use 25 Euros)

Love + Hate

Director: Dominic Savage Two young lovers divided by warring factions in a town full of tensions: Dominic Savage’s first feature brings a hint of Shakespearian tragedy and a dollop of Lucas’ American Graffiti to a racially divided northern England town. A story full of holes and some weak acting from the older cast members is overshadowed by brilliant performances from the young stars on both sides of the divide. Love + Hate avoids grim northern stereotypes to portray something altogether more delicate and real. Lee Jones

Election

Director: Johnny To Guns don’t kill people, triads do. And when it comes to well-known Hong Kong gangster flicks, they usually do it two-fisted, guns blazing, bullets as ballet. Prepare to have your blood lust disappointed, then, as Election is more interested in the internal politics of the Triad society than it is in super slo-mo carnage. Johnny To’s movie deftly side steps old conventions to become a thoughtful meditation on Hong Kong society, and a bracing metaphor for its post-handover hangover. Adrian Sandiford

The Devil And Daniel Johnston

Director: Jeff Feuerzeig Jeff Feuerzeig’s biopic of the Texan musician and artist explores the life of a gifted young man. Splicing home movie footage with interviews of family, friends and collaborators, this film not only looks at Johnston’s creative output but also the bi-polar disorder which defined his life. At best, his illness was a fount of creative energy; at worst it threatened his life and those around him. Devil also shows the support that surrounds Daniel, from his long-suffering parents to the legions of fans. It’s a re-assuring testament that his light will surely never go out. Abigail Lelliott

Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut

Director: Ridley Scott Scott’s sword-and-sandal epic was cut to ribbons for its theatrical release, but after dive-bombing at the box office the suits at Fox have restored the film to its three-hour glory on DVD. That means a much fuller performance from Orlando Bloom as the blacksmith-turnedwarrior-king Balian, as well as an entire sub-plot about the Queen of Jerusalem’s leprous son.

But the original problems remain: a blacksmith who just happens to be a military, tactical, engineering and agricultural genius? Er, no.

Matt Bochenski

Manga Essentials: Box Set

DirectorS: Katsuhiro Otomo, Mamoru Oshii, Yoshiaki Kawajiri Two masterpieces and one grossly overrated fan favourite – you could do worse for under twenty quid. Akira is Katsuhiro Otomo’s timeless slice of pop genius that propelled anime into the mainstream. Everything about it is perfect from the production design to Shoji Yamashiro’s industrial score to that famously obtuse finale.

Ghost in the Shell deservedly launched Production IG into the big league. This story of an AI gone rogue is a meditative affair, but any film with its own weapons designer is okay by us. Ninja Scroll is crap.

Sad but true. Deal with it. Matt Bochenski

REVIEWS: ANDY DAVIDSON The Godfather: The Game (Xbox 360) EA £49.99 Snappy title. Making its belated appearance on 360 is EA’s The Godfather The Game. A classic movie and massive PR campaign didn’t stop the current console versions from being badly received by critics and fans. This next-gen iteration will doubtless fare the same. Yet another GTA clone, The Godfather is hampered largely by the license it’s attached to. There weren’t that many cars in the forties, and certainly none that could get up to any great speed, making what should be action-packed car chases little more than a chore. 5/10

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PSP) Rockstar £34.99 The GTA series has spawned a raft of sequels and inspired a herd of dim-witted clones, particularly since it went 3D on PS2. For the follow up to the successful Liberty City Stories on PSP, Rockstar have returned to the Miami-esque Vice City.

Ride around town in a pastel suit, sleeves rolled up, completing violent and occasionally hilarious missions. With its eighties soundtrack and gun-fuelled mayhem, Vice City Stories keeps the quality of the franchise firmly above the watermark. All this and it fits in your pocket to boot. Yes, please. 9/10

Scarface: The World Is Yours (PS2, Xbox) Vivendi £39.99 “Say hello to my little friend!” said Tony Montoya shortly before he was gunned down at the end of Scarface. Or was he? Scarface: The World Is Yours begins with Montoya machine gunning his way out of his mansion and surviving the movie’s epic assassination attempt. Of course this leaves him once again at the bottom of the criminal barrel, and only a series of plodding missions will get him back to the top. GTA: Vice City was Scarface without the license, and frankly it served Montoya’s memory with much more wit, fun and style. 6/10

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent (PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, GC) Ubisoft £39.99 Shooting terrorists is big in games these days, and Splinter Cell: Double Agent lets you kill loads of ’em. It’s touted as the first game to feature the player as a double agent, but what that actually means is that you can’t kill everyone at once: blow your cover and innocents suffer. Hmm, tempting. Instead, Splinter Cell features the usual sneaking around garrotting people and spending a lot of time hiding.

Joy for some, but anyone with an itchy trigger finger will be unable to contain themselves. That said, there are some ambitious ideas at work here and a handful of genuinely tense set pieces that make for a largely rewarding experience. 7/10

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

(PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, GC, PSP, DS, GBA) Activision £39.99 The first LEGO Star Wars came out of nowhere to become the surprise smash hit of last year. And deservedly so – it was a fun-focused experience packed with solid, no-nonsense gameplay where so many Star Wars games have been joyless cash-ins.

Travellers Tales return with more of the same in LEGO Star Wars II, letting nostalgia freaks live out their fantasies over the events of the original trilogy. The game is cartoony enough in its presentation not to be taken too seriously, and yet has a wellpitched and rewarding core, with enough surprises thrown in to keep it interesting.

The force is strong in this one. 8/10

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TEXT: JAMIE BRISICK

For washed-up ex-pros such as myself, storytelling is our best revenge. And while it’s easy to fall into the “back in my day” spiral, I prefer to draw connections: the surfing world tour in 1986 compared to 2006; $30K versus $300K a year; an endless, irresponsible party as opposed to a serious, athletic season of eleven contests at A-grade breaks.

The details change, financial rewards improve, and surf spots only get better, but the game essentially remains the same.

Which brings me to my nine-year-old nephew Gage, who can ollie an entire city block in a single bound. Not in real life of course, but in Tony Hawk’s Underground 2. It’s a classic case of the virtual world informing reality, art preceding life (in ‘life’ he’s still working on his ollies). And though this may seem to be a thoroughly modern concept, it actually goes way, way back. In the case of our story, all the way back to 1979.

I was a stoked little thirteen-year-old whose entire world was changed the night my dad took me and my brothers to see Big Wednesday at the Malibu Cinema. Aside from the fact that the movie ultimately showed us what it meant to be a surfer, it’s the climax scene that stayed with me most: Matt Johnson is out on the fabled Big Wednesday. He catches the wave of the day and pulls into a huge barrel.

The scene is shot from a camera board, and as he threads through the barrel, we see the lip spiraling overhead from his POV. We are in that barrel with him, an entirely visceral, emotional tube shot.

Now we cut to the dream I had two nights after seeing the movie, and bear in mind, at this point in my surfing odyssey I’d yet to ever get a barrel: Smooth little emerald swell looms in my direction.

I swing around for it, stroke, hop to my feet, and angle down the face. The chandelier lip pitches over my head and envelopes me in a tight little cylinder. Water sucks up the face and my board spears through the gushing, circular energy, the wave face dimpled and shimmering in greens and golds and iridescence.

And then I wake up tingling, with that swooshing, watery sound that we all recognise as the Sound of

the Barrel playing in my head. And of course I brag to my brothers about how I got an epic barrel the night before.

“Counts!”

“No, it doesn’t, it was only a dream.”

“Counts because I remember every detail of it.”

“How can it count if it was only a dream?”

And for the entire next day that sound stays with me.

Where did it come from? How did it get there? Later that night I made the connection. I was lying in bed, re-living my dream barrel when I realised that it all came from the movie. I was absolutely certain that had I never seen the barrel sequence in Big Wednesday, I never would have been capable of dreaming it as vividly as I did.

Throughout the rest of the decade I would get a number of memorable barrels, these ones undeniably real.

I remember getting three on one wave at Jeffrey’s Bay in ’89, which were almond shaped and in the upper third of the wave; and I remember standing in a giant top-to-bottom one at Inside Sunset which was absolutely terrifying, and had a little something in common with Matt Johnson’s. In fact, I later found out that the climax of Big Wednesday was actually shot at Sunset, which made me wonder whether I was unknowingly following the film, or the film was following me. At any rate, when I review my twenty-five-plus years of surfing and try to pinpoint my first ever real barrel, I inevitably come back to the dream barrel, which I attribute to the movie barrel.

And this is where we bounce back to 2006. Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, presenting skateboarding in a superhuman fashion, Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer, taking us through rodeo clowns and alley-oops and backflips... as compared to Big Wednesday, presenting us with merely mortal human quests, reality as it were. Surf movies informed waveriding from the fifties through the seventies, then came the advent of video in the eighties which accelerated performance curves and broadcast stoke into the living rooms of millions. Now we’re in the early phase of the virtual world, where manoeuvres far beyond our wildest imaginations can be done on screen first, and then, at some point in the future, brought to the water.

Which makes me wonder how the thirteen-year-old of today’s surf dreams might differ from the thirteen-year-old of the seventies. And, for that matter, what tube riding will look like thirty years down the track, on screen and on the wave.

“Grippingly intense and thoroughly rewarding” - HUCK

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