“I’m not cheap, I’m just broke” – Shwayze

If you’re anything like me, you probably despise Valentine’s day. An over-hyped, made up holiday that corporate America pushes on us so we’ll go out and waste a bunch of money on chicks that will put out anyways. But like me, you also probably give in and do it. If you don’t, you’ll never hear the end of it and because all the other dudes do it, you won’t get any for a week either. So thanks to our friends over at LOST, we can stick it to the man (and the ladies) and go cheap this Valentine’s Day…

At least one good thing about the economy is that you have a good excuse this year. I think I’ll go with #8 and take some dance lessons.

I first caught a whiff of Lost’s latest(and greatest?) ad campaign when EXPN’s Jon Coen posted a smooth read on it not many moons ago. Not long after that first view of the ad, I walked into my Southern California hotel room to find full page of the “If you Don’t surf, Don’t start” campaign neatly ripped out of the latest surf mag’s and gracing my top sheet with all of it’s brilliance, courtesy of my Editor-in-Chief. Lord knows we could use a lot less advertisements in our favorite surf mags, but Lost has once again made their ad’s fresh and not so disturbing to stumble upon while skimming from spread to spread.

It turns out this is a campaign first run by Gotcha about 20 years ago. Gotcha, along with Op, was one of my all-time favorites back in the day so I was kind of surprised I didn’t remember this. Anyway, it didn’t really seem like Lost was losing any sleep at the fact that they were resurrecting Gotcha’s campaign. “Even knowing it was someone’s campaign 20 years ago, we’re still running with it,” Lost Enterprises explained, “I think Gotcha’s out of biz anyway, so they can’t sue us.”

The basic premise of the ad is to portray the typical modern anti-surfer with the “If You Don’t Surf, Don’t Start” headline sitting below. Out of all the characters used by Lost, and I do mean characters, the cliche ultimate fighter looking fella was by far the topper (the Abercrombie & Fitch dude isn’t far behind). It’s the perfect answer to the infiltration of certain tough-guy brands advertising in our favorite surf magazines. Good on Lost for reminding all of our friends that “If You Don’t Surf, Don’t Start.” As well as for following that up with “If You Surf, Never Stop.”

Unreal…. That’s all you can really say about the video Lost.TV released a few days ago of Cory Lopez at Skeleton Bay in Africa. It was Cory’s first wave of the day and will be part of the upcoming Lost film: 5′5″ x 19 1/4″ REDUX. Upon first site of the clip, a friend of mine asked me “how do you top that?”…You don’t, you just paddle back out and do it again.

This is also the same break featured in the latest Surfing Mag that had me frothing at the mouth the moment I laid eyes on it. Credit for the wave discovery goes to Brian Gable, who won this year’s Google Earth Challenge that was put on by Surfing Mag. I’ve had my eye on Western Africa for awhile now and this just goes to show I need to hurry the hell up and get out there.

While it doesn’t appear Cory’s shacked the entire time, there’s easily 20-30 seconds of barrel time on this wave. Apparently, he got even more tube time on every wave following this one…. Unreal

Twice a year the action sports industry comes together to showcase and display what they have in store for the upcoming year. ASR, the Action Sports Retailers tradeshow, brings together not only the big players of the action sports industry, but gives up and coming brands the opportunity to launch their brands to the industries who’s who. One major difference that’s notable this year is the absence of the major footwear companies. Brands such as Sole Technology (Etnies, ES, Emerica), and Globe have opted out of attending the show. Being that ASR is heavily influenced by skate and surf brands, the absence of these brands is quite apparent. But this may be a grand opportunity for other brands to step up and shine in their place. With such a void of the presence, other themes and brands are catching people’s attention.

Noticeable surf brands that were showing what they could bring to the table were your obvious contenders, Quik, Bong, Hurley, Volcom, and Lost. There were a lot of other notable brands that also were making an unexpected presence at the show as well. Smaller brands that focus on surf like Ezekiel, Lost, and Fox all made the push to showcase their spring lines.

Since the main focus of the show is to highlight the spring lines, there was no shortage boardshorts, swimwear, walkshorts, tanks and tees. Bright colors and geometric graphics still prove to hold strong and look to continue through until next year. Neons and fluorescent colors seem to still highlight the slimmer shorter silhouettes of boardies and shorts. Always leading the pack and pushing the envelope with the boardshorts is Billabong. All the boardshorts on display looked to be leaning toward the shorter length, veering away from the standard over the knee boardies that have been the standard in the industry for many years. Jumbo all over graphics, mixing geometrics with animal prints, the Billabong assortment proved to be new and exciting while stilling to their roots as clean and wearable boardshorts.

One notably cool disply on the ASR floor was the Quiksilver compound. They had a total of 4 booths at the show to exhibit their range of men’s, core, and woman’s divisions as well as a full set up for Roxy. Between this massive layout they displayed their timeline in boardshort history. The lounge exhibit held cases of boardshorts from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today to give buyers and visitors a like a brief history not only of what Quiksilver has brought to the surfing community, but how it shaped and set the standard for the industry throughout time. Most interesting of all was to see how the styles of today can truly be accredited to how things use to be as fashion has seem to come full circle within action sports.

Though the show was much calmer this year, there was nothing subdued about the brands and activity that was still in attendance. It will be interesting to see how the industry moves into the Fall 2009 season. This week the east coast gets a taste of what is to come for the Spring 2009 season as we move to Orlando, Florida for Surf Expo.