The Weekly Bugle: Into the weeds of the surfing week that was
Jumping on wooden surfboards, a convo with Snapt’s Chucky Dulian, Flow Violento and Bronte Macaulay talks for the first time about her brother’s suicide.
Bosiny Surfboards
I covered the Portuguese-based Bosiny Surfboards new wooden tech for a piece in the Inertia and spoke to shaper Alex King. “I've done a lot of composite material work with my furniture design, but with surfboards, we found the carbon fibre was too brittle and the mix of Kevlar and carbon too heavy. However, with a hollow paulownia core, a thin layer of Kevlar on the underside of the timber skin and bio-resin on top, it gave us the right mix of weight-to-flex." They are about as eco as surfboards get. However, as usual, a video tells a thousand words, and this simple demonstration of the boards' strength, tells you all you need to know.
Flow Violento
I’ve worked with The Surfers Journal’s Scott Hulet and always found him a man of humour and integrity. Despite those flaws, I still like him. His new book, Flow Violento, looks pretty sick. The blurb says, “Collected from over 30 years of published works—including travel reports, journal entries, profiles, interviews, transcripts, and recipes—Scott Hulet’s Flow Violento is a 248-page ballad to decades spent traversing the edges of Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.” I'd get on it.
Ever Seen Yourself Surf: The Green Room Times Strikes Again
Ever seen yourself surf on video? Never has the gap between perception and reality been more ruthlessly exposed. Trust the @greenroomtimes to illustrate that horrible truth-space to perfection.
Photo Of The Week
I don’t golf or foil, so fuck knows why this made my tiny, brittle heart skip a beat? Sydney, and @hazmatt1976, on the pump.
Clay Marzo, Logan Chucky Dulian and Snapt5.
I spoke to Chucky Dulian this week after he’d helped Clay Marzo secure a contract with RVCA and dropped the first teasers of Snapt5, the last of the iconic series of surf films. Chucky’s in it for the right reasons, and can talk the leg off a chair. Our 25-minute (unedited, low sound quality) conversation is here if you want wanna hear an OG of the indy surf film talk through Clay, Snapt and why only cunts post videos of them having ice baths (my words, not his).
Speaking of C’Nuts
Hard to argue here with the Oasis’ Noel Gallagher appraisal of the modern world.
Brave Bronte Macaulay Talks About Her Brother’s Suicide
On a final serious note, I found this moving this week. “I lost my brother by suicide in 2021 and since then I've struggled with my mental health.” And with that brave statement, pro surfer Bronte Macaulay has talked, for the first time, about the effects of her brother Jack’s suicide a few years ago. Interviewed for the West Oz charity Talk_20 Bronte is open about not being able to talk about her grief and the depression that resulted. With Jack’s death being just one of more than 3000 suicides recorded in Australia (the majority being men under 40) it's a brave and important piece of storytelling.