The Surfer’s Journal

TSJ 30.3 – On the cover: Kainehe Hunt finds room to stretch amid the backwash chaos on an otherwise picture-postcard afternoon in Hawaii.

The issue’s inner workings offer a far-and-wide trip in era, avenue, and geography: Smugglers laying down the original tracks at a famed Indonesian reef pass. The Southern California showdown between a sitting US President and a surf culture-maker. A written portrait of one of the world tour’s all-time leading proponents of surf progression. Modern exploration in a harsh, boom-or-bust European sea. High-action photography from one of the world’s most wave-rich regions.

TSJ 30.2 – On the cover: Mid-morning light. A locked inside edge. Body English born of pure reaction. Some frames just embody the whole big thing. Sam Hawk, Off The Wall, 1975. Page one is backed by a full tracking of the cover subject’s transformation from Huntington surf rat to Pipeline groundbreaker in the 1970s. Spot studies also abound, including the history of big-wave surfing at South Africa’s Sunset Reef and the risk versus reward of surf tripping to a Mexican prison island. Find high-art lessons in an excerpt from celebrated author Paul Theroux’s new surf-centric novel and a page-by-page look at photographer Slim Aarons’ ocean-peripheral work. As to contemporary happenings, a visual roundup from a dozen of the game’s best photographers hits on global action points.

TSJ 29.6 nearly breaks the odometer, jumping from an unlikely shaping bay in the Californian desert to trespassing for empty lineups in the Antipodes to checking the reemerging balsa scene among locals in Papua New Guinea. A look back at the surf lineage of a mile-long stretch of San Diego beach and a profile of the multi-craft expert Kai Lenny provide written doses of subcultural tradition and pure evolution. Visually, the issue’s showcases on fine artist Milton Avery’s abstract seascapes and photographer Will Adler’s atmospheric captures serve as reminders that the ocean, and riding waves, ultimately boils down to feeling it.

In TSJ 29.5, we pay close inspection to waypoints as far as Namibia’s Skeleton Coast to take stock of that sand-dredging bender, and as wide as the snowsurf movement deep in the mountains of Japan’s Hokkaido Island. Profiles of Waikiki style staple Arthur “Toots” Anchignes and Australian surfer-rocker-taxidermist Jaleesa Vincent provide contemporary written portraiture, while a look at the premillennial photography of dirther Rennie Ellis and a 10-spread roundup of the world’s best surf shooters’ latest work offers page-stopping visual stimuli.

TSJ 29.2 treks through the Western Australian wilderness looking for empty setups, tests twin-fins at an off-grid Mexican beach break, and recounts some of surfing’s most notorious travel disasters. Essayist Ralph Sneeden’s reflections on bi-coastal identity and shaper-artist Trey Edwards home in Daytona Beach hit on cultural points, while Todd Glaser’s underwater photography and John Respondek’s highlights from six weeks in Indonesia provide visual counterbalance.

Issue 28.6 On the cover: Framed in the strobes of citified light, Hawaiian surfer-chemist Cliff Kapono reflects silently at the fountainhead of surfing life: Waikiki. Inside the flaps, the new issue journeys from the wood mill that launched surfing’s balsa revolution and to modern caravan camping in Western Australia, from atoll searching in remote French Polynesian to surf-skating concrete pipes in the Arizona desert. The ocean-infused artwork of John Millei, Waikiki under the blanket of night, and Nolan Hall’s photographs of surfing’s offbeat “athletes” add visual high points.

Issue 25.3 Inside pages range from the diamond- and surf-rich coastlines of Africa to an atoll in the Indian Ocean. Tintypes from photographer Bernard Testemale, time-bending imagery from Jay Mark Johnson, and the back-alley noir and shorefront vibrancy of Town lend lights and darks.

Issue 24.3 Includes an article with us as the subject, penned by Daniel Crockett. SOLD OUT – contact us to get back orders.