I’ve been just surfing lately. Not really reading about it, and obviously not blogging about it. One long day at The Sacred Craft was all it took to re-ignite my surf stuff stoke.

Before we get any further, I have to say now that Maggie Marsek has about 100 photos of the show on her site.

Maggie and I roamed around taking a full hour and a half to make our way down the first row. We talked to JP, Peter and Sally at Moonlight; marveled over Marlin’s fin display and were afraid to touch John Cherry’s craftsmanship.


I’m rating this the photo of Sacred Craft 08. Jed Noll, John Cherry, Greg Noll. Photo: Maggie Marsek Click for larger image.

Bings glass jobs were sticky sweet. Photo: Maggie Marsek Click for larger image.

While fondling a 9 foot Christenson gun across the row, I actually calculated the distance to the door and whether or not I could make it outside without dinging it. Unpossible. We noted that… Aaron of Dsurf was likely in Indo or Baja ‘product testing’… his booth had no one in it. We stuck No Pop-Out stickers on some moldeds in the SurfTech booth. We said hello to Josh Hall, the only dude with a couch at the whole event. Maggie’s got a soft spot for Bings, so she put some fingerprints on a few. And on and on for every single row.

Riders of waves, by Mark Andreini, about as nice a dude as you’ll find anywhere. Photo: Maggie Marsek Click for larger image.

Marlin Bacon’s 101 fins are freaking phenomenal. Photo: Maggie Marsek Click for larger image.

We met Mike Hynson, Royce of the sick quiver, Mike of Waveriders Gallery and Scott Hulet of the Journal, who said to me… “Oh yeah, 70… I used to have your site in my bookmarks.”

That’s a real kick in the blogging ass. ;D

The v2 Patagonia suits are out! Photo: Maggie Marsek Click for larger image.

Maggie squealed when she saw Greg Noll. We started to watch Gerr shape a blank, but it got painful to see so we ran away. We ate a 10 dollar plate of falafel and drank 5 dollar Lemonade. We missed the flicks, which sucks and means I still haven’t seen Under the Sun. We got super tired and stuck around for more.

What this photo doesn’t show, is Manny’s groupies. Photo: Maggie Marsek Click for larger image.

JP St. Pierre says that getting shapers to do anything is like herding cats. The Sacred Craft was kinda a big circus full of those cats. That means all the herding necessary to put the event on makes Scott Bass a circus master.

Anyways, Scott had shapers from all of SoCal, Australia, Maine, SF, glassers and fin makers, artists, environmental agencies, you name it. If it was core to surf, it was there. If you didn’t actually need it to surf, it wasn’t. Peter St. Pierre of Moonlight Glassing said it what the ASR was like in the 70s, which I took to be quite the compliment. Scott was doing everything from handing out beers to dusty shapers, to promoting slower booths over the PA to give them a little boost. Basically, Bassy straight rocked the surfing world with this event.

You can usually find Scott Bass sweeping the lineup at Cardiff. Photo: Maggie Marsek Click for larger image.

Thanks to all the cats at all the booths, you guys bring the stoke. More thanks though, to Scott B(ad)ass for herding them all together.

And again, go look at Maggie’s full coverage here