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July 22, 04 - Good 'Ol LJ Shores

The south swell salt petered out about as fast as I do after an exciting hour or so in the water.

Luckily, I guess, we did get a couple of okay days, but nothing like we did in June.

The Shores came thru, however, and it was really good yesterday [Wednesday] and not too bad today.

But, the big news of the week was:

1. Spicoli, err, Comstock finally found the issue of Surfing Mag, that had his photo in it. I think he had more trouble finding The Longboard Grotto than he did finding the mag.

2. Comstock's my landlord, so, after I scanned his photo, he insisted that WE go thru the mag, page by page. I was not a big fan of Surfing Mag, back then, but I did find a few things pretty interesting:

The Greek Ad - inside front cover, I think. The boards look very similar to the boards that are being ridden now, especially the Fish(es).
The Seasuits Ad with Mike Purpus was really interesting!

He was wearing a "Kneeboarder" wet suit.
He probably had a fish under his arm.
Seasuits used Rubatex rubber.

I'm not sure when the N** B***k guys first started riding The Lis Fish -
Some stuff about The Fish, lifted from this site:

"It was the early seventies and I'd been surfing the Sunset Cliffs with Larry Gephardt, Steve Lis, Snow White and the crew and they got me hooked on Stevie's radical fish designs. Today anything that has a swallowtail can be called a fish, but back then a fish was a fish. It was basically a wide swallow twin fin kneeboard that was ridden standing up. The average lengths were less than 5'6"; mine was 5'2". They performed like no other board I'd ever ridden and there was simply no way to compare fish surfing to any other regular board at that time."

I doubt that Purpus ever kneeboarded, but I'm not sure.
I do know that he was a very good surfer!
Rubatex had cornered the neoprene market for wetsuits.
Rubatex had a hang tag pimping the virtues of their rubber on every major surfing wetsuit manufacturers' product.
Apparently Rubatex did not keep up with what the consumer wanted - lighter weight, highly flexible, - Japanese Rubber?
I don't know if Rubatex is even in the wetsuit neoprene business any more plant closings - bankruptcy

Later,

BA

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