FROM THE ARCHIVES “GO FISH PART 2”

“A rough approximation of what it feels like to watch the latest tropical excursion super rad exotic super surfy film DVDQuicktimeYoutubeVimeo while sitting in your cramped Brooklyn apartment with the soundtrack turned up to eleven, trying to beat out the sounds of sirens and people yelling at each other right outside your window.”

What year was it? 2010? 2011. It was a certain heyday of Brooklyn surfy incision — those heady days of early adoption for those who hadn’t adopted yet — the hurling of hipster epithets — the sniffing around of mysteriously recent bygone movie stars. Chris Gentile of Mollusk Surf Shop, as it was known in those days, asked if I’d put together a few films for the nascently annual Fish Fry(e) afterparty to be held down on River Street in the “already blown” trendy enclave of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I got a stack of DVDs featuring footage of hotdoggers riding the eponymous shape and attempted to come up with something that would marry the patently (mostly) non-New York surf footage with… New York.

Featuring a collaboration between poet Jayne Cortez and jazz great Richard Davis, with a cameo by Henry Miller, and combining the works of Hans Richter, Robert Florey and Harry Smith with the surf films Perch, Sprout, The Present, Blue Horizon, Thread, Glass Love, Fresh Fruit & Rotten Vegetables, Lost Hope, Litmus, The Search 2 and 5x5”x19 1/4.

A few years after The Surf Magazines Don’t Talk About Lapsed Catholics, and at the time I was making all sorts of surf home movies. This one still sticks in my head as a weird sort of success.

Art for art’s sake, not selling anything here. Just the vibe of it, really.

Later that year I’d apply what I’d learned from the Fish Fry when Jamie Brisick came calling, wanting to make films for the Quiksilver Pro in New York that same summer, featuring big wave icon Mark Healey, GOAT Kelly Slater and local hero Balaram Stack.