Andrew Kidman has devoted his life to documenting the backwaters of wavesliding and in the process has created one of his own in the form of a 252 page 12×12 hard bound book called Ether. The work is comprised of photographs, art and interviews of locals and legends, breaks and boards that ignores modern surfing’s photoshopped lineups, faux distressed designs and sponsor produced press packets. Ether has emerged from a life spent sketching stories in pencil, pulling screen prints and surfing lonely lands with the seekers, shapers and originators of style and flow.

This limited edition will be found in the abodes of watermen and women who respect the history of their breaks, who own multiple forms of surfcraft and ride them in all conditions. It will stand beside the rainbowed spines of collected volumes of the Journal and other fine publications which inspect surf culture.

You can download a 12 page PDF Preview of Ether here.

Congrats to Kirk Gee of Consafos Press for shepherding this project through the publishing process.

A few images from the book:

I’ve been hanging onto this link for a while now, waiting for the kind of week that leaves nothing to hope for when the weekend arrives. The kind of Friday that comes after such an oppressively horizontal week, even the most loyal subjects are ready to spend the first hour or more of a throw away day kicking back with some PDF zines. To anyone feeling this description I present This Rich Tapestry.

On the surface, TRT consists of The Surfers Weekly (published once a month and is behind), Form and Gratitude. Dive deeper and there are larger groupings of words and galleries of print and pollariod photos to puruse found down links I can’t recall.

To borrow a line from “A Text of Gratitude”, “The joy is in the doing done.”

It is easy to get old and forget late nights spent pushing around parking lots, grinding curbs, hucking yourself off stairs, falling, spraining ankles. A few pages into Fuck You Heroes though, will bring you back to it.

More pics in the 70 review of FYH ->

I’ve been reading Jamie Brisick’s, We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations for the last few nights and like an album worth buying, it has grown on me.

Sex with an ex, fixations on Bridget Bardo, collages of sex ads, surfs on Tavarua, time spent in Paris, Brazil and the Pacific.

At the root of Martinis lies pleasure. More accurately, the pursuit of pleasure, as Brisick doesn’t gloss over the grit that enevitably pairs with the glide.

A used package, once containing two condoms, on which the message, “Multiple Choices” is written.

What else is a rider of waves to write about? We arguably understand the ups and downs that are inherit to the pursuit of pleasure more than most. The act of waveriding is so pleasurable we quit jobs for it, live like paupers in insanely expensive cities or like kings in isolated, impoverished areas. Finding few words to express the pleasure we feel riding waves, we wrap new language around the activity. Where language fails, we gesture wildly with our hands or better, show photos.

The cardboard bottom of a sixer, condensation from the cans have left watermark rings, over which the words, “Lust, Hiccups and Matter over Mind.” are written.

Somehow, Martinis is saturated in these aspects of the life of a waverider without featuring surfing in more than a few stories. It is apparent on every page though, that surfing is the catalyst, the reason this sketchbook like record of Brisick’s globe trotting excesses exists and why you are reading it.

You can purchase Martinis at your local independent bookstore or at Amazon.