Christopher Clark is a shaper who understood that the rest of us also wanted to get our hands on a planer. We speak to Chris about his company Shaper Studios which offers workshops on board design and craft all the while creating community in cities around the world. We get into the challenges of making a buck in the board business, why Vancouver (six hours and a ferry away from surf) was the perfect spot to expand his business, and the emergence of women shapers though his classes. Ben and...

Jonathan Alcock is a high end wood furniture maker who took a busman's holiday to learn how to build a wooden surfboard. Matthew Schenning is an artist who found a surf school foamie in the trash and hacked a swallow tail in it, painted the NASA worm logo it and vowed to tinker with it until the foam can't be surfed. They both presented their creations at last month's It Doesn't Not Work Design Symposium. Music Credit: The Silent Partner:...

Kevin Miller co-founder and director of the Florida Surf Film Festival talks about why mounting an annual and quarterly non-profit film fest is best done when you are a CPA. The film fest is one of the sport's best and the line-up of jurists is a whose-who in surf journalism. Kevin tells us why he loves the Shorts and is excited about the the Zimbalist brothers' (ESPN's 30 for 30) ode to 90s surf gods, "Momentum Generation" one of the best docs of the year. Head down to New Smyrna Beach on...

Jen Poyant was winning at New York Public Radio. She was Executive Producer of WNYC Studios and launched the hit shows "2 Dope Queens" and "Note to Self". After the institution fell into its own #MeToo scandal and mismanagement the simmering burn to work for herself only became hotter. So like all good start-up founders, Jen and "Note To Self" host Manoush Zomorodi met at Le Pain Quotidian and plotted the launch of their company Stable Genius Productions. They received a grant made of...

Professional shapers and backyard tinkerers took over Rockaway Beach Surf Club last weekend for the 5th Edition of the experimental water craft symposium: It Doesn't Not Work. Swell Season spoke with several designers one on one, including Johnny Borbone and Grace Moon. Tyler and Ben also moderated a panel discussion with Chris Clark of Shapers Studios, Dan O'hara of Solid Surf, and Ron Shine of Board Porn TV. Pressing questions like: Do shapers charge enough? The Wave Pool effect, and...

September 14th-16th Rockaway Beach Surf Club will host the "It Doesn't Not Work" design symposium. In its 5th year, IDNW hosts professional shapers and tinkerers alike to share their most boundary breaking and bizarre water craft creations. We preview the event with forward looking shaper Kyle Black and show organizer and hosts J Scott and Lois Klossner. We also look back to this day 17 years ago when Hurricane Erin pumped surf while the city was under attack. Music Credit: Boss Bass...

Co-Host Tyler does the tough duty of broadcasting live from a dance party and film screening at Low Tide Bar at Rockaway Beach, Queens. Guests include Rockaway Beach Bakery owner Tracey Obolsky, Tyler's E.S.A arch-nemesis Peter Egan, local legend Shane Murphy and lifeguard and poke bowl slinger Greg. Also, the stars of the Irish Surf film "Green Means Go" and Long Beach NY's big wave commanders Will Skudin and TJ Gumiela bring us into the slabbing depths of the Emerald Isle.

Big Wave Surfer Leah Dawson and Big Wave Surfer Attorney Becky Mendoza visited the north coast of the Dominican Republic with a team of other female wave stars who make up the Changing Tides Foundation. The team worked with a group of local girls who attend the Mariposa Foundation, an organization which aims to end generational poverty by educating and empowering young women. The first thing the girls learn to do is swim and some even surf. Leah Dawson made the film "Sameseas" about the trip...

Scientist and surfer Tyler Cyronack of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Ca shares the magic behind the Smartfin: a Future fin loaded with sensors that record water temperature and GPS data. Tyler studies the chemistry of coral reef environments and he looks forward to fellow surfers capturing - while getting shacked - all that hyper-localized data that traditional instruments and techs could not step up to. Smartfin is still in Beta so you'll have to just listen to our show...

Mösco came to NYC in the late 90s as a skater and graffiti artist. Sand in teeth from Zicatela he sought a new home to surf, so he looked at the subway map and saw that the A train went to the beach. Mösco has been making the commute to Rockaway ever since. We talk about his life's pursuit to make the beach cleaner and safer with his work with Surfrider Foundation and his public art. We also discuss the challenges of communicating environmental problems even to those most affected; and why he...

Alex Valich is the host of the Bodega Boarder Crew, a podcast that mixes old school hip hop with modern day surf culture. It’s a fun listen if you ever get a chance to listen to it. Born and bred on the streets of Brooklyn, this 30 something creative director made the move to the west coast some years ago and picked up surfing. As he delved more and more into the culture, he noticed that diversity was missing from the lineups and in the industry. So he decided to start the Bodega Boarder Crew...

There are 253 miles of shoreline in Connecticut and only seven of them are free and open to the public. Andrew Kahrl Associate Professor of history and African American Studies at University of Virginia brings us the story of Ned Coll who mobilized a multi-decade battle against town residency requirements and other segregating mechanisms along the Connecticut coast which make a day at the beach expensive, impractical or simply illegal. Our conversation delves into the core of public and...

Co-host Tyler Breuer nerds out with Nick (last name withheld), the founder of the Instagram account @surfads, which both honors and "takes the piss" out of the bleach tipped, neon glory of 1980's and '90s magazine advertising. The conversation covers how social media has changed how stoke and rad is sold to us and why the 90s surf culture remains so potent in popular imagination. Music: Hoodoo Gurus "What's My Scene"

The non-profit A Walk On Water brings individuals with disabilities to the beach with their families for a day of surf, fun and celebration. Volunteer staff share the joy and healing power of surf and sea with athletes of all ages who may have never believed it possible to glide through the ocean. Garden State winter barrel hero Sam Hammer talks about the obstacle leveling nationwide program in advance of Hammer Surf and AWOW's June 9th event in Spring Lake, NJ. Corey Sanese of Corey's Wave...

Right on top of Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start to beach season, the NYC Parks Department drops the news that due to extreme erosion it is closing indefinitely the beach between 89th St and 102nd in Rockaway. We speak with Local's Surf School co-owner Mike Reinhardt about the pace of erosion he's seen first-hand and how the closure might affect other businesses on the boardwalk. Our feature interview is of Danny Collins: former fossil fuel worker brings us into what he learned...

Teton Gravity Research's latest film, Andy Irons: Kissed by God, is bold in ways you might not expect for a documentary featuring the famously fearless three time world surf champion who died in 2010 at age 32. The documentary goes to a challenging space that many of the bravest in the extreme sports will not go - an open discussion of mental illness and opioid addiction with of its own. Todd Jones, the film's co-director and co-founder of TGR brings us into the three year journey of making...

Mavs, Nazare, Jaws. If it is huge and scary Will Skudin has surfed it. He's one of the elite on the WSL Big Wave World Tour. Will's performance and confidence out in the water is supported by his partner on land, Jenny Hanono. The couple join us in the studio to talk about a relationship around the world, on the water and how balance makes the difference with an extreme sports athlete. Music credits: Benjamin Banger http://smarturl.it/hjfi20 Zombie Dandies...

Victor Lucia studied fishing culture in college and realized that the NYC fishing community was deep but disconnected. In response he launched Brooklyn Fishing Club in order to connect city anglers and help them get on top of fish. The club, now in the hundreds, has evolved into a take no prisoners crew who patrol the most unexpected fishing ground, like the East River and a lake in Central Park. We’ll talk about why the surf community and the fishing community have common cause here in New...

On a balmy May Tuesday at Union Pool in Brooklyn, the 2nd annual Clif Bar Cold Shot Challenge awarded cash and prizes to the best photography taken from land, air and sea this winter. The contest started in freezing and dark January and ran through a procession of record size and conditions of blizzards, named winter storms, and Nor' Easters that pounded the the East Coast the first four months of 2018. All of these storms were tackled by core winter chargers and documenting them were...

On April 26th residents of Rockaway and New Jersey, city surfers, and others gathered at a Best Western in Brooklyn to voice their opinions on a proposed natural gas pipeline that would extend from Pennsylvania, through New Jersey and under the Raritan and New York Bays. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approval authority of pipelines and invited the public to speak to the agency, the Army Corp of Engineers and a contractor about the proposed Williams Company project....

Jeremy "Dingo" Dean literally grew up in the jungles of Peru. Born the the 2nd son of missionaries, Jeremy Dean recounts his upbringing, the culture shock of moving back to the US and has always had an outsider vantage point, which reflects in his art work. We sit down with Jeremy to discuss, his art, race, redlining, religion, and the state of the New York Surf Scene. We go deep in this episode. Sit back and listen to some knowledge being dropped by our guest this week.

We know Johnny Knapp can shred a sandbar. We learned on the show what deep grasp the Brookhaven native has on Long Island shaper geneology and lore. The renaissance man brings us into the finer points of glide in the Bonzer shape, lessons in the "kiddy pool" of whitewash while surfing with dad as a kid, and taking the Bellport arts collective Auto-Body to the Bronx. Music credits: Ryan Little; Johnny Knapp Intro sound credit: Atlanta Arts Today

In October 2015 a natural gas compression plant in Gibson, Louisiana exploded killing 4 and badly hurting 2. Houma-Thibodaux senior staff writer John DeSantis broke the story. We spoke on the phone about what happened at the Williams Company owned facility, which is currently applying to expand nat. gas capacity under NY Bay, the role of subcontractors, and why all this matter to us who surf in the waters NY/NJ Bight. ...

Charlie turned 8 years old on a surfboard in Nosara, Costa Rica last week. His mom, Marta Maletz , joined him in a lesson when Charlie stood up for the first time. "Dancing on the board", in the words of the instructor. The Brooklyn son and mom duo bring us back to joys of learning how to surf and sing a long to Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-ling". If you are offended by silliness, this is not the episode for you.

Rockaway native Joe Falcone is not afraid getting real when it comes to the surf scene at his local breaks ; and did so unabashedly in a March New York Times article when he called out bad conduct in the line-up. We sat down with Joe to discuss early life in Rock, how he really feels about the way things have evolved on the peninsula, and some of the costs and benefits of not worrying about what people think of him. Also, we preview next week's interview with the reporter who covered the...