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Posts tagged ‘Recent Writing’

Dec 14

emocean: matt warshaw profile

Sometime last summer, an email appeared in my inbox. Would you like to write a profile of Matt Warshaw for Emocean magazine? It took me exactly five seconds to reply. Yes, of course, I would like to write a profile of Matt. The story is available now in Devotion, Emocean’s fourth issue.

It has been a joy to work with the crew at Emocean, who love surfing and making print media as much as anyone I’ve ever met. I’d love to see the magazine thrive. If you’d like to buy a copy, and I feel like you most definitely do, you can purchase it at emocean.surf. (For Australia and New Zealand, check the instructions.)

Matt Warshaw is surfing’s devoted historian and spends his days in Seattle sifting through the ruins of our strange and beautiful past time. He says he’s motivated by an effort to assign meaning to his own story and to understand why he’s spent so many hours of life obsessed with riding waves.

How did he arrive here? Matt’s life has intersected so many interesting characters and places in surfing. Matt learned to surf in Venice Beach with Jay Adams, competed in the first Katin Pro/Am, edited Surfer Magazine — and that was just the beginning. Here’s a short excerpt from the longer profile.

When Warshaw went to work for Surfer in 1985, he arrived during a surf media golden age. “It was a really wild and fun period,” says Jamie Brisick, who was a pro surfer at the time. “This was the period of Tom Curren, Tom Carroll, and Mark Occhilupo — the surfers were still characters.” Advertising money flowed, and the magazine was fat with the work of writers such as Derek Hynd and Dave Parmenter and photographers such as Jeff Divine and Art Brewer. “Had he been the editor at a different time, he might have come out of it a different person,” says Brisick.

Read more

Feb 13

bike stories

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This week I have two stories for you about bike racing. This is how freelancing works, by the way, everything publishes at once. Oh hey!

First, I have a story about the Axeon development team and how they try to balance their cocompeting ambitions. They’re an entertaining crew over there — all under 23 and bursting with talent and trying to make the world tour. There are obviously only so many slots to fill on the big teams, so it’s interesting to what Axeon race and try to make sure each rider gets a shot. In any case, here’s a story on the team and specifically, the climber-stage racers Neilson Powless and Adrien Costa. A fun thing is how many times I mispelled Neilson while writing this story. Yay! Axeon Hagens Berman Balancing Act.

Then I went over to visit Rally Cycling at their training camp in Oxnard. It always totally makes me laugh to go to Oxnard — and Silver Strand, at that — to talk to bike racers. It was windy and unruly so there was no good surf to gawk along the way. At Rally I caught up with the junior world time trial champion Brandon McNulty about his career and decision to sign with Rally — rather than maybe go to a development-specific team or head directly to Europe. Fun bonus! I got to call up legend Roy Knickman and get his perspective on McNulty, too. Brandon McNulty Profile.