Brown Eggs are Fresh

Stoked bro from the north Konrad showing off his new 7-something egg behind the scenes at the Fattyshack.
2+1 with a Skip Frye flexie and some bamboo under the hood for maximum overdrive.

Ground's a little frosty, sky's a little blue. flannel's a good call .
Ahhhhh, winter!

War Pony Chronicles: The Lost Boys

For a few short, sweet years in the late 1980s, teenage heartthrobs The Coreys (Haim and Feldman) ruled the Tiger Beat set.
Then they went underground in pursuit of other creative projects, like hanging out and resisting impulses to exercise.
Recently, Corey Feldman resurfaced in Lost Boys: The Tribe, as Edgar Frog, "Vampire Hunter and Surfboard Shaper." IMDBs character page for Edgar Frog states, "This character biography is empty." One can only imagine this still holds true after Feldman took a stab at it.
Not to be outdone by his teenage compatriot/nemesis, Corey Haim began loitering around my shop in pursuit of shaping tips and lukwarm Tecates.
Although he didn't have the skills to shape his own, Corey possessed the eye of a connoisseur, and couldn't resist pulling the trigger on a new War Pony.
Haim. War Pony. Fattyshack.
The War Pony is a vampire slayer in its own right. Curvier than my standard quad fish template with a souped-up rocker and bottom contours specially formulated for driving stakes through the hearts of northcoast nasties.
Haim made a personal trek to the Fattyshack to meet Leslie and have a glass or two of whatever local red Bob was pouring at the moment.
His hair was perfect.
Take that, Feldman!

Airing out the Inbox

Sophocles once quipped, “The true mark of a man lies in his email activity.” Amen. Modern social anthropologists, like yourselves, long ago forsook sifting through the garbage of humanity in search of answers, choosing instead to focus their lenses of scientific voyeurism onto more digital affairs. Is someone aligning themselves with terrorists? Check their email. Is there one amongst us who shops Amazon with Les Affaires abandon? It’s in the inbox. Do thoughts of adding girth to his flaccid schvantz occupy the lion’s share of your teenager’s time? I wouldn’t recommend it, but a quick AOL search would reveal the answer. You see, only email can fill in the blank spaces on the map our character.
That is why, under the banner of honesty and full disclosure, every third Tuesday I fling open the doors of the HHG inbox from the past few weeks. Onward into the unknown!

Dear HHG,
Is it possible my husband Paul ordered another board from you within the last month? I ask because there’s a blue longboard with double pinlines in the garage that I haven’t seen before. When I ask him about it, he just mumbles and points at our son. He's eight.
Thank you,
Paul’s Wife Who Is Saving Up For The Down Payment On A New House
Dear PWWISUPFTDPOANH,
Under the Shaper’s Disclosure Act of 1999, it is not compulsory for me to answer your query. However, I will say that as of last week, Paul is one step closer to a free sandwich*. Also, when he picked up something the other day (not saying what it was that he slipped into his new 9’6 board bag), he did mention how much he loved you, and how understanding you are. Maybe not in those exact words, but still.
*The HHGSC (HeadHighGlassySandwichClub) offers a free sandwich** from Traverso's, a Santa Rosa tradition for four generations, for customers who reach a certain number of board orders. In order to stave off a run on new orders, I won't give the exact number, though it's between five and seven.
**Sandwich includes one (non-alcoholic) drink, but no chips, as chips are ridiculous.
This may, or may not be your husband's new stick.

Dear HHG,
Is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 the best fall-related ode?
Yours in poetry,
Tina from Marina

Hi TfM,
No. It is clear Shakespeare never visited California during this most lovely of seasons when he penned, “when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang/Upon those boughs which shake against the cold…”
Instead, let me recommend Keats’ To Autumn. At just 24 years old, he nailed it right from the opener: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness…”
Huzzah!

HHG,
How do you know when you’re getting old?
Fondly,
Humbolt-er Every Day

HED,
Do you make strange noises when you sit down?
Do you ever wish your board were 2” thicker?
Have you ever opted out from a surf session to work in your vegetable garden?
Wait, that might just be me...

Dear HHG,
I’m thinking about relocating—does Sonoma County have good surf?
Sincerely,
California Dreamin’

Dear CD,
No, SoCo does not have good surf. Especially last week.
San Diego does, though!
What we do have is excellent wine. Let me recommend Trentadue’s Old Patch Red (2005). A 2008 Sonoma County Harvest Fair winner in Best of Class, and a steal at Bottle Barn right now for $9.99. The convenient screw top makes it even more appealing as a daily drinker.

And with that, I seal the HHG inbox for another month.
Don’t forget this Thursday’s Surf Movie Night at Santa Rosa’s Toad ‘n The Hole Pub in historic Railroad Square. This month’s feature is going to be solid. Festivities begin around darkish.

The Spitfire

On a warm summer’s day in 1940, Adolf Hitler commanded his air force, the Luftwaffe, to bomb the hell out of England.
The United Kingdom, with its trademark gusto, dispatched the Royal Air Force. The Battle of Britain, the first campaign ever fought entirely by aircraft, was officially underway.
The Luftwaffe had firepower, but the British had heart. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth refused to leave Buckingham Palace, inspiring the nation with their pluck. The Germans seemed indomitable with their Messerschmitt Bf 110s (nicknamed the Zerstorer or ‘Destroyer’), a fast twin-engine, long-range aircraft.
But the RAF had a feisty retort: the Spitfire.
Designed with clean lines for speed and elliptical wings for agility, the single-seater Spitfire immediately began kicking ass. It could accelerate faster than the Zerstorer, bank in tighter arcs, and fire more rounds.
The result: the RAF, powered by vigor and the Spitfire, handed the Nazis their first defeat and turned the war around. Not too shabby.
San Francisco shred enthusiast Giles is lucky enough to have a real-live war hero in his family. His stepfather served in the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Wanna know what he flew?
The Spitfire.
He was 19 years old.
Each of the color marking on a Spitfire conveys meaning--the yellow rail bands and black-and-white stripes communicated their allied association, while the British flag was represented by the red and blue circle (interesting fact: RAF and American fighter planes during WWII ditched the red part of the circle, as they could be mistaken for Japanese aircraft). The pilots put red tape over their guns to keep them from freezing, as seen in the pigment 'patches' in the nose of Giles' board.
Every color on this board is pigmented resin.
A mistress of understatement, when Leslie saw a drawing of the task before her, said only, "I'll need to order more tape."

Twins

Ever since the first zygote divided into two separate embryos, humans have reserved special places in their rites and mythologies for twins.
The Igbo peoples of Nigeria saw twins as a curse, and would sacrifice them to the forest (as detailed in Chinua Achebe’s excellent novel Things Fall Apart).
The Navajo honor twins as descendants of the twin gods of sun and moon, believing that they will help restore order to the chaos of the world.
Americans like to stick a fake goatee on one of them and call them Evil.
Dr. Spock’s evil twin showed up in 1967, sporting the trademark Evil-Twin Beard.
Cartman's evil twin broke social boundaries, becoming the first elementary school kid with an Evil-Twin Beard to go prime time.
Surfers have our own preoccupacy with twins--twin fins, twin pins, Twinzers, the Hobgoods. Even our own Leslie Anderson isn't immune to their thrall, as evidenced by a pair of longboards that recently left her shop.
Jason's diamond tail log with 3/4" red cedar stringer seems to have shared some embryonic developing time with its twin below, blogged about here:
Both were shaped by hand in Sonoma county with smaller Northcoast waves in mind . Both feature single fin goodness, volan glasswork, and resin art by Leslie.
But what is perhaps most intriguing about twins is how they differ--which one is more popular with the ladies, which one is more fearless in the hockey rink, which one dances with their tongue out.
The differences in the above boards are equally intriguing—the bigass cedar stringer vs. the high density foam one, the diamond tail vs. the rounded pin, the clean shaven vs. the goateed one (one of these is not actually a design feature).
Although some may see one of the above boards as an evil incarnation of the other, I prefer the Navajo interpretation that twins are two parts of the same whole. That they, together, can separate the good from the evil, and order where before existed only chaos.
Or at least score us some waves when it’s head high or under.

The Green Machine

Back in college, the dorm affectionately referred to as KW (Keyes-Wasserman) was comprised of single occupancy rooms only. In college, single occupancy rooms exist for two reasons:
1. Occupant is seeking a tranquil venue for contemplation and study.
2. Occupant is seeking a tranquil venue for getting it on.
Both make sense to me.
So much so that when identically-initialed SF shred enthusiast KW expressed interest in a board, I waved all aspects of my formal vetting process (hazily-framed inquiries regarding beer and pornography preferences) and got to it.
The product, a double-wing quad fish, speaks to Kevin's interest in a more sustainable surfboard (100% recycled EPS foam, epoxy resin, bamboo fins) and my Atlantic Coast nostalgia. Either way, this floating venue will provide a platform for both contemplation and getting it on, surf-wise.
On a side note of appreciation, I'd like to point out that there are very few glassers out there highly skilled in EPS/epoxy applications. There are fewer still (in fact, I can't think of any offhand) who are masterful enough to tint--that's right, not opaque, but tint--over EPS foam. There are perhaps a handful of people in the world who would tint a shaped EPS blank, sand it, double pinline it with resin, create a custom matching resin logo, then gloss and polish it.
Did I mention Leslie also gardens, breeds reptiles, and plays a mean guitar?
101 bambo quads keep boards snappy and happy.

Long Board and a Short Sentence

Like most of us, Ted’s aquatic aesthetic mirrors his terrestrial one. In the water, his lines are clean, sparse. His movements always seek the economical. I once saw him track so high on a wave that it seemed reckless, but his fin trail was a thing of beauty—a lazer-straight scratch etched into an impossibly steep wall.
On land, Ted has brought the voicemail board order to a similar artform. His messages are so spare that they, too, flirt with recklessness. How else could you interpret his first voicemail order?
“Ripstick.”
Or this single-syllabic beauty from a few years ago:
“Fish.”
This gem came in last year, wide-open in its interpretational range:
“Quad.”
Sometimes Ted’s voice seems disguised, as if trying to limit the actual breath he's expending.
Thankfully Ted opened up a bit with last week’s message. Compared to the others, it seemed more Tom Robbins than Ernest Hemingway.
“Hi Pro-Log. Styro.”
Still, I had to admire the effort. Beside the abbreviations for 'performance' and 'longboard,' he substituted ‘EPS’ for ‘styro,’ saving himself a syllable.
Nice.