Margaret Kilgallen & Barry McGee

May 14, ’12 6:18 PM

I have nothing but fondness for these two people and their work. Their story rambles through train yards, stopping to leave an ephemeral tag, winds through the streets of San Francisco past hand-painted signs by non-artists… and strangely ends up in white-walled galleries and fine art museams around the world.

I love their work on the street, on surfboards, on stickers and tshirts and on the white-walls of places street people never go. There is something democratic about their work as it’s… been… everywhere.

Spend a half hour with this video.


 

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Location, location, location: Renzo Piano’s new Whitney

May 8, ’12 6:10 PM

As I write this I’m sitting in the much-adored High Line in the Meatpacking District of NYC. The revitalization of this area seems to be getting better and better every day. It’s must be quite the case study for urban planning turnaround projects.

When I heard Renzo Piano was designing a new Whitney Museam I was intrigued. I love his work and this project is a bit personal to me as my wife Andrea used to work at the existing Whitney on 75th Street. When I heard it was going to located in this area and straddling the Hudson River I was something beyond instantly smitten.

This project feels similar to the Guggenheim Bilbao. That museum, also a satellite of a NY icon and also straddling a river, almost overpowers that region. I take that back, it DOES overpower the city of Bilbao. It acts as a stand-alone monument, a one-man show.

The Piano-proposed Whitney seems to have learned a bit from that project. It embraces the wide vistas of the Hudson, takes in massive quantities of natural light from the south and yet it doesn’t seem too in love with itself. It’s design offers a modern juxtaposition to nearby industrial, turn of the century warehouses and also seems to feel right at home. I love it.

Brilliant.

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Surfers’ transportation of choice

May 4, ’12 7:24 AM

I’ll address the vehicle to the left up front. It was built by Jay Nelson.

I love it.

The front windshield by itself won me over. The singlefin on top pushed it into a another category.

Looking at this vehicle made me think of the choices surfers make regarding their transportation. Another piece, best surf vehicles of all time, made me want to… create some kind of silly infographic to make sense of it all.

Contrary to popular opinion (and pop culture) I don’t know a single surfer who drives a VW microbus. As much as we might love to have a microbus, they have become so highly collectable that they are essentially out of the reach for the common surfer.

As I thought about surfers vehicles it occurred to me that there isn’t a single vehicle of choice for surfers. We’re all over the map. Also, this graphic definitely has a Southern California bent to it.

Here is my take.

a. Puritans. The purest surfer walks to the beach and bodysurfs. Since that’s not easy to do (cost of housing is high close to the beach) and not every wave is suitable for bodysurfing…this group is tiny. Still, in my mind these are the true greenies.

b. Greenies. The truth is that this group really isn’t that green but they’ve got a Prius so they perceive themselves as green. Being the early adopters (they’ll be the first to jump to full-electric cars) they also dabble in experimental shapes… and probably have an alaia in the garage. Board of choice is a sub-six foot quad (with a five fin box setup of course).

c. Professionals. In the old days this group was called yuppies, by the people who eventually became yuppies themselves. They drive German sedans, surf mostly tri-fin shortboards and think fishes are somehow cheating. If fishes aren’t cheating this groups sees them as lame nonetheless. They own more than three suits.

d. Workers. Contractors, teachers and the like. They live simple lives. They drive simple trucks. They surf simple, proven shapes. They haven’t bought a board in the last twelve months. This group, perhaps after the Purists, are perhaps the most “true” surfers. All these things said, they tend to be a tad older and noticeably grumpier.

e. $100+ fill-ups. There is a distinct group who drive the largest vehicles available to consumers. They tend to ride larger, longer boards. This group might also be dubeed “most-likely-to SUP.” Due to gas station credit card cut off restrictions (stop pumps at $75 or $100) many times they have to go to two stations to actually fill their trucks.

 

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Frequencies: Early Echo

Apr 30, ’12 8:20 PM

It’s funny, as a surfer you see the visual depicted in this film multiple times every with every paddle out. Granted, you might not see a wetsuit like this one and I’m guessing you don’t hear the soundtrack.

For those that don’t surf, Bruce Muller has captured a bit of that essence and Kassia Meador steps up as the perfect muse for the visual interpretation.

Worthy little vignette. Full length coming out this Fall, more here.

 

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Has America lost it’s will to innovate?

Apr 27, ’12 6:27 AM

I was having lunch with an SAP-buddy the other day. Our conversation skipped stones across various topics. We filled each others must-read-book list, tried to make sense of various trends around the globe and then he paused to ask the question:

Has America lost it’s will to innovate?

It wasn’t a random question… we had been talking about trends connected to upcoming generations, the stagnant state of seemingly everything on both sides of the political aisle and the oddly-geocentric pools of innovation in Silicon Valley (and the myriad of smaller tech-oriented regions around the US).

The question, as hard as it was to hear, is a logical extension of where it feels like our country is today. It feels like American culture has lost the will to commit to innovation. With the exception of the tech sector (which granted, is a massive exception) we act like we can jump to the enjoyment of success resulting from innovation without taking the actual risks inherent to innovation.

We think we can arrive without taking the trip.

James Dyson failed 5,126 times before finally succeeding with a new vacuum design. Now, as if he’s some kind of cultural change agent, he’s being tasked with changing the culture of England. Good luck with that… is there a harder task than changing a culture? At least they gave him some props for the Everest-Sized task… he’s been knighted, he’s now “Sir James Dyson”.

It seems like there is a “death of failure” associated with the United States. We’ve lost the will to risk. It feels like we currently believe that “failure = waste of time” instead of “failure = one step closer to success.”

The story of Solyndra offers a metaphor for this blog post. Americans talk about jobs and the economy… meanwhile China’s share of the U.S. solar panel market jumped from 8 percent in 2008 to 45 percent in 2011, and has risen further since. Why is this? It’s because we don’t invest in innovation the same way and at the same rate their government does. Instead of understanding that investments in evolving technologies need to include an appetite for risk, failure and innovation, our government, media and pop culture bandies the Solyndra story around like as a political hot potato.

We are literally (and tragically) branding investment in innovation as a political (thus highly divisive) tactic.

If we want to understand why we’re losing ground let’s look in the mirror… we’re all to blame here when we buy into the short-sighted, election-cycle jousting. Meanwhile… we (Americans) all lose. Innovation further shifts offshore.

Nothing new comes easy. Innovation takes commitment, will, drive and bad-hearing. Bad-hearing comes in handy so you don’t hear the endless chorus of people telling that you what you believe in won’t work and that you should give up.

When we call new products and services an “overnight success,” we are almost always incorrect. Overnight success is a myth.

  • Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd game
  • Pinterest had “catastrophically small numbers” in their first year after launch
  • WD-40 is called that because the first 39 experiments failed

This video, while not focused on innovation per se, speaks to these same issues.

If we are going to stay a leader in innovation, it’s going to take a will and the courage to do so.

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America’s best idea is National Parks

Apr 25, ’12 6:27 AM

I’ve heard it argued that baseball is America’s best idea. That makes sense, it’s a great game with a fair amount of history and color… but in my opinion it’s not America’s best idea.

I’ve also heard people make the case that Jazz is our best idea. Of course Jazz isn’t really Jazz without including the Blues. The argument for this being a better idea than baseball makes sense to me. Blues and Jazz have provided a taproot for so much of what we’ve come to love as modern music… meaning ALL music from the last 100 years. Baseball is a bit more of a stand-alone node on the sports network.

One could also suggest that the Internet (and the web) is our best idea. Again, this argument would be a notable one. It has delivered entirely new platforms for cultures to form; it has streamlined communications and transactions of all kinds. It has, in short, created a net new world for us to explore, settle and farm.

But none of these is our BEST idea because America’s best idea is National Parks.

Our best idea is the wisdom to understand the majesty and priceless land in front of us and to protect that land in perpetuity for generations to come.

The Greeks get the nod for inventing democracy 500 years before Christ walked the earth and they left quite a legacy for introducing that idea into the world.

The United States invented National Parks and I believe it’s our best idea to date.

Pour yourself a cup of tea and settle in to watch this.

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Kopps’ Displacement

Apr 22, ’12 9:16 AM

I’m not sure when Alex Kopps’ film will be completed but I’m yet another hull-lover anxiously awaiting it’s arrival.

Films by painters always connect with me. David Lynch’s films deliver a deeper experience as do Julian Schnabel’s… and that list goes on and on.

Extend this equation and add surfing to the mix and you’ve got a formidable trifecta.

Painter’s eye + dynamics of film + love of riding waves = something worthy.

Coming soon to a screen near you.

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So bad it’s good

Apr 20, ’12 6:38 PM

There is something to be said for something that is so bad that it becomes good.

I realize that’s not logical and doesn’t make sense… but its true.

In a way Napoleon Dynamite and Spinal Tap are like this… except that they built as a parody.

The cover to the left reaches the “so bad it’s good” threshold.

Sure, maybe the art director knew what he or she was doing… but I don’t think so.

So bad it’s good.

More “worst album covers” here.

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Hacking photography: Nadine Boughton

Apr 17, ’12 5:19 AM

Photography is a visual lie.

Of course so is painting, sculpture, etc.

Photography is increasingly about creating worlds that don’t exist.

Nothing in a photo is at it really is in real life. The closer you get to photography the more you realize that.

That is why I relate to artists that don’t seem to even try to represent the world you see through your eyes. They simply shun those cues and create a world that is more interesting.

It’s also why I love what Cindy Sherman has enabled other artists like Lady Gaga to do with her persona, why I blogged about Rudd Van Empel and it’s why I love the work of Nadine Boughton.

Her photocollages drop us straight into a Better Homes and Gardens world gone awry.

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The magnetic draw of surf culture

Apr 13, ’12 5:02 AM

During my formative years I lived in Ohio. When I was around 12 years old I wore Vans, Op corduroy shorts and had a Lightning Bolt necklace.

This was the 70s and I was hundreds of miles away from the Atlantic ocean (let alone the Pacific). It was twenty years before the web mashed cultures together.

I think about this from time to time. Maybe I think about it because I’m obsessed with how ideas and cultures are formed and then spread across the planet.

The simple truth is that there is an undeniable pull connected with surf culture. People are drawn to it. It hooked me as a kid even though I was so geographically removed from it.

The surfer archetype is an extension of what it means to be American: self-guiding, individualistic, free and untethered. Those attributes have positive value and they are leveraged to sell everything from perfume to financial services.

Decades later, I still identify myself as a surfer. And so when I saw those shorts my mind short-circuited back to 1970 and the magnetic slides by people like Larry Bertleman.

If you’re a surfer and want to dress like surfers dressed when Richard Nixon was walking Trestles in a white shirt and jacket… you’re in luck. These are for sale at one of Surfrider’s partner sites, SWELL. Nab them here.

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