What's better than a bottom turn on a singlefin? Really?
Lets face it - tie dye is lame. While the socio-political happenings in the 1960s were truly revolutionary, the style was kind of whack. I'm not taking anything away from Dora, Hendrix
and JFK, but the decade of love-ins that went with it was kind of corny, especially considering many of those flower children went on to own sportscars and fun shapes in the '80s. Besides, the Grateful Dead make my ears bleed.
You can keep your '80s revival too. Maybe once a year, it's amusing to make fun of the neon nightmare, but these trendy teens Twittering about their half-thigh retro-87 boardshorts gotta go — along with Alf, the Rubix Cube, and Wham.
Now the '70s was where it was at — VW campers, shaggy doos and the shortboard revolution. And lets face it, any time period where Neil Young put out " After The Gold Rush", "Harvest," "Decade," and "Long May You Run while Lopez
was setting new standards at Pipe, is just a great decade.
Some day, cultural historians will look back and concur that disco, greed, and hard drugs ruined everything.
Apparently there are a few people who share the nostalgia for the old days, like the folks at Billabong who just held the 10th Annual Cosmic Creek
festival in Laguna last weekend. Everything started at Seven Degrees at Laguna Canyon on Friday night, and of course, Donovan Frankenreiter was in the midst of it all.
He managed to get his hands on a bunch of Italian Cordoba guitars, which were then given the artistic treatment by such talent as John Van Hamersveld, Wolfgang Bloch, Art Brewer, Herbie Fletcher, Jay Alders, Kevin Short, Daniel Chang, and Timmy Patterson.
Donovan
jammed away on Friday night and was up and at 'em for the Cosmic Creek contest early on Saturday morning. And Salt Creek came to life, delivering some north-northwest windswell to the current groundswell for a few chest and head-high sets.
Courtesy Billabong
Billabong started in the 1970s and continues those traditions to this day with Cosmic Creek.
Perhaps the gooviest part of this whole ordeal was the different folks from different aspects and eras of surfing who all share an appreciation for the 70s and came out to surf in the Space Cadets, Rocket Men, Groove Masters and Rolling Stones divisions. You had those who keep the decade alive like Machado and Donovan, mixing with '70s O.G.'s like Ian Cairns, and P.T., plus randoms like Christian Fletcher and Curren. Billabong's own man at the helm, Paul Naude, even won the Cosmic Legends heat. Any happening mixing those guys with fat singlefins, and raising money for charity is a worthy one.
Courtesy Billabong
Another surf writer once told me that Naude keeps track of his retro board cutbacks at Creek by notching them on a bench in the parking lot.
In addition to needy families (which apparently do exist in Orange County) money was raised specifically for the Surfrider Foundation's local Clean Water testing Program.
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Contributors
Jon Coen
Jon is from New Jersey and continues to reside there with his wife and dog—which means occasional empty barrels and the occasional session in the snow.The state isn't as dirty as people might think, but he'll let them keep believing that.
Jake Howard
Jake lives, writes, and surfs in San Clemente, California. He spent his formative gremlin years surfing points north of San Francisco, and for the last 10 years has been contently surviving behind the Orange Curtain.
Kimball Taylor
Author of Return by Water, as well as books on Jeffreys Bay and Pipeline, Kimball drives a red hot Camero, and back in the '70s, he used to party with your Dad.
Daniel Ikaika Ito
Daniel surfs like a hippie, but dresses like a homie. The Native Hawaiian originally hails from Hilo, but now resides in Honolulu. He enjoys twin-fins, new sneakers and being ESPN's "Cuz On The Scene" in the 50th State.
Jason Kenworthy
About as majestic as a turkey vulture, when he's not shlepping his lens around the world or looking for road kill, Jason can be found at home in Dana Point tending to his growing brood.
