This weekend, Spyder Surf will host a reopening party for its newly remodeled, 27-year-old, Hermosa Beach shop on Pacific Coast Highway. Next weekend, Jack’s Surf, a few blocks south of Spyder on Pacific Coast Highway, will host a grand opening party for its new store.

No one in the Southern California surfing industry believes the timing of the two shops’ celebrations is coincidental.

by Kevin Cody and Mike Purpus
It’s doubtful that a Congressional subpoena could have compelled, without a fight, appearances by the CEOs of the surf industry’s four largest manufacturers. Bob McKnight’s Quiksilver, Paul Naude’s Billabong, Bob Hurley’s Hurley and Richard Woolcott’s Volcom account for nearly half of the roughly $7 billion in annual U.S. surf industry sales.

But despite gray skies and small, mushy waves, the four goofyfooter oligopolists all assembled Sunday morning on the sand at Rosecrans Avenue in Manhattan Beach to compete where they got their starts – in a surf contest.

South Bay surfing and skating buddies Matt Grote and Dane Zaun have teamed up to produce a film for the Innersection.tv video competion. The two attended Mira Costa High together. Grote is now attending Brooks Institute of Film in Ventura. To view the film, and show them your support by voting for the video visit http://innersection.tv/video/138

Easy Reader’s Surfing Santa

by Carolyn Kraft

After being wiped out by DDT, bald eagles reintroduced to the Channel Islands have started to bree

After a 15-hour day in Hawaii shooting the Pipeline Masters for the Associated Press, a few years back, Dave Gregerson found his gas tank had been siphoned.

It had already been a challenging day. Just getting the mandatory podium shot of the winner had meant jostling for position with 50 other photographers, all fighting to get the winner to make eye contact with their lenses.

“You have to get the guy to look straight at you,” Gregerson said. “So I have this thing, I yell ‘Your zipper’s down.’ When he realizes he doesn’t have a zipper he looks at me and I get the shot.”

Summertime in the South Bay offers dismal surf. With the natural breakwalls of Palos Verdes and Catalina shading our southern-most corner pocket, south swells on the right angle tease and might just flirt with Manhattan.

by Chris Brown

A crew of South Bay surfers weigh the prospects of barreling waves versus gun barrels in Baja, and are glad they did.

When a race director says of his own race, “The first mile and the last seven miles were good. The rest were horrible,” it normally doesn’t reflect well on the course or the director.

by Carolyn Kraft

If you have been feeling down or have lost touch with the fun side of life, then it’s time to purchase a ticket to see the famous motivational speakers, I mean the famous motivational leapers – the humpback whales. They are the ocean’s merriment masters, thrill seekers and acrobatic all-stars.