He comes from my old stomping grounds of Ocean City, MD and he loves to skate — a few things that sound good in my book. Plus he’s a goofy. We hooked up a long time ago and got some shots. Because of my schedule, we only had two quick shoots. Neither the weather nor the waves cooperated, even though we were on the North Shore of Oahu in December. But thanks mostly to Vince’s skills, we got some sick stuff. Enjoy.
The 48th Street Zone. Sunset, November 2004.
Zon shapes a good surfboard and has some great ideas about surfing and what to do on a wave. If you are in the Mid-Atlantic and need a good custom surf racing board, give Xon a ring. Or if you want to see if the left towards the jetty can be fun, head down there and watch the XYZ show.
Making the most of anything is one of Xon's best surfing talents. He seems to be doing way more fun stuff than most people. Backside Rotator at Ocean City Inlet.
Make it or not, still images of Xon's surfing turn into concrete evidence that Xon is trying some new stuff.
Foam mower, artist, surfer, dad. Zon at work in the creative creatio room, creating some creative new creations.
Good old Knopp. Making the seemingly worthless waves very fun. Hawaii 2012, still laughing.
One of my favorite surf sessions ever, and a story I have retold ad nauseum, is one that involves a bodyboarder and some closeouts.
Not just any bodyboarder, but my main man and roommate at the time, Tom Knopp. And not just any closeouts, but large, mean, clean, heaving, 25-block-long, hurricane closeouts right behind our house.
So no one was around. No one really wanted anything to do with it. Not because it was so scary. But because it was just not really fun.
You could rush and get the view for a second, but there was no real graceful way to bring your ride to an end. No matter what way you went, it was the wrong way.
So as we sat there an looked over ledge after ledge, and pulled back again again, Knopp waited for bombs and smirked as he spun and went into the oblivion.
What at first looked like just unrestrained stoke coupled with some optimistic aneurysm turned into a show of how functional aerial surfing could be. Right as you are ready to write him off and look away, down the beach a lot farther than you would have imagined, Knopp’s body would soar out of the lip, into the air—upside down sometimes—and reconnect with the falling lip before disappearing again.
We had a reunion recently, more than 20 years after that day. And I gotta say, all of those memories came rushing back. I was so stoked to see Tom doing his thing. Making the lackluster surf all of us older surfers grumble at, look fun. Just like that day in 1987 behind Our Place At The Beach with Ricky B and Chris Street. Every time you looked back, Knopp was smiling from ear-to-ear at the “less-than-perfect” waves.
Waldo Remington and the bottom turn that ran on the cover of SIMPLEX
Gary Hastings stuffing into a small tube
Denny Riordon, Mark "Robey" Robinson, Don Dunbar and Ricky Barretto take a quick break at Shockleys between sessions at Assateague
Jerry Vandetti 1 of 3, the drop
Jerry Vandetti 2 of 3, the recovery
Jerry Vandetti 3 of 3, the turn
Big Thanks to Unscene Productions for the video. Wish we could have been there to skate, surf, eat crabs and popcorn!
We The People Inc., are a Philly supergroup. They played a gig at the now gone Iguana Surf in Ocean City, MD. This was the morning after their gig. An in-camera composite using a Bencini and 120 film.
Fred Smith in Ocean City
Paul Wisniewski. Easy target. I skated a lot with Paul in those days. Him and Dave Barranco, Tim Wise, Dave Herman, Jim Veiga, William Howard and my little brother. Pretty sure this shot is from the first summer that the first vert ramp went up. Blender and Losi hung all summer. Fun times.
Indy air by Paul Wisniewski at Ocean City
Paul Wisniewski in O.C. Md. again. Fred Smith and Paul dominated the air, the andrechts and the dreads.
