Journey
Levi's® Wellthread™ X Outerknown
Stronger Cotton. Less Water. Garments you can recycle. Made with workers' well-being in mind.
While designing the very first Outerknown collection, Kelly looked at John and said, “We’re never doing denim.” He had a point. Two billion pairs of jeans are produced every year, each requiring almost 2,000 gallons of water to produce, not to mention the chemicals dyeing rivers around the world an alarming shade of blue. The message was clear: the old way of making jeans didn’t measure up to our sustainable standards.
But where there’s a will there’s a way and as John looked down at his vintage Levi’s® trucker jacket and thought of that soulful connection he’s always had with denim, a seed was planted. There had to be a better way to craft denim consciously.
Meanwhile, a similar seed was being planted in one of the world’s most recognizable denim brands. Levi Strauss & Co®, has long been championing sustainable practices and in 2015 launched Levi’s® Wellthread™ Collection, a revolutionary way of making denim using Waterless dyeing technology, which uses up to 70% less water compared with conventional indigo dying, and is centered around a single-fiber cotton designed for maximum recyclability.
With both companies working toward a singular purpose, a partnership seemed inevitable. Today we’re proud to present the fruits of that partnership. As brands, as friends, as people, we’re creating our favorite clothes in a sustainable way that benefits, not just us, but the entire planet.
Ocean Plastic Buttons
"We believe the 8 million metric tons of plastic flowing into our oceans is one of our planet's greatest environmental challenges and we've chosen to become part of the solution." - Rob Ianelli
They say the devil is in the details, but so are the greatest opportunities. At Outerknown, our focus on sustainability extends to every cut, stitch, and button. Especially buttons, which for our new SEA Legs pants are supplied by ocean plastic manufacturer Oceanworks. But what’s the big deal? It’s just a button, right? When it comes to Oceanworks, a button is more than it seems.
The Oceanworks story began during one of founder Rob Ianelli’s regular surf trips to Martha’s Vineyard. Sitting on the shore, staring out at the Atlantic, Rob noticed something disturbing—something he couldn’t ignore anymore. He’d surfed Martha’s Vineyard since 2009 and over that time he began to become more and more aware of plastic washing up onshore. Deep down, Rob knew there must be a way to endlessly recycle plastic and keep it out of the ocean. And from that simple idea, Oceanworks was born.
The process Rob and his partner devised to create recycled ocean plastic is truly inspiring. The plastic for each Oceanworks button is harvested from places like Haiti and Mexico, by locals who are paid a living wage for their efforts, thereby not only preventing plastic waste from entering the ocean but also combatting extreme poverty at the same time. For people living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a country still struggling to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake, the chance to earn money by clearing out the plastic plaguing their neighborhoods and water supply is a double win.
If you look closely at any Oceanworks button you’ll find the material, year, and the coordinates where it was harvested, printed right into the plastic itself.
With his manufacturing process in place, Rob’s next goal was to find a market for ocean plastic. He’d gotten a lot of interest from various industries following a successful crowdfunding campaign, but he only wanted to work with companies that shared his mission of safeguarding oceans—which lead him to Outerknown. He reached out to our Chief Sustainability Officer Shelly Gottschamer through LinkedIn and the rest is history.
If you look closely at any Oceanworks button you’ll find the material, year, and the coordinates where it was harvested, printed right into the plastic itself. It’s another tiny detail that speaks volumes, reinforcing our commitment to the oceans and those that love it. Expect our future collaborations with Oceanworks to also make a big impact, one tiny detail at a time.
Behind The Lens: Walter Iooss
The Hands That Build Our Clothes
These gestures unite us. These hands build our clothes.
This is about giving credit where credit is due. To the factory workers, weavers, and sewers. All of whom have had a hand in making the clothes we wear each and every day. It's easily forgotten how many hands have been a part of making the clothes we wear. This series honors those hands by putting them front and center. At Outerknown we all know that sustainability starts with transparency, and we are proud of the partners we work with through every step of our supply chain. These are craftsmen (and women) from Groceries, our factory in LA, sharing universal messages that connect our company and speak to a connected world.
Swirling In Rio
"The capoeira kids loved the camera. They hammed and huddled and flipped." - Jamie Brisick
The year was 1999. The city was Rio de Janeiro. The afternoon was bright and humid. I rented a bike in Leme and peddled south along the beachfront, that wavy-patterned promenade that’s almost as iconically Rio as Sugarloaf or the Christ statue.
I passed rollerblading girls in dental floss bikinis and shirtless, leathery old men in Speedos, socks, and shoes who ran in short steps, almost shuffling. I watched a barefoot kid in red shorts run with a soccer ball balanced on his head. I marveled at a woman in a white gown who danced across the sand in a Woodstock-on-three-hits-of-acid sort of way. She was old and maybe homeless. On cue she looked my way. Her eyes were intense, like she’d peered over some cosmic abyss.
For fun, I S-turned with the lines of the curvy mosaic, the bike riding version of that kids’ game of not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk. It felt like riding a wave.
The promenade was designed by the Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, who revolutionized the garden aesthetic.Burle Marx was one of the first people to call for the conservation of Brazil’s rainforests. He labored to identify and cultivate Brazil’s understudied tropical undergrowth (he discovered nearly 50 species), framing indigenous plants in arrangements that gave them new significance.
I peddled past kiosks selling fresh coconut water with tall and thin straws poking out of their hacked-off tops. I smelled that succulent Rio beach specialty: fried cheese on a stick. I heard the whine of the chainsaw that severed my connection to God, country, and family, which is a melodramatic way of saying I forgot myself, I felt intoxicatingly free.
I came across these capoeira kids in the southern corner of Leblon. Presiding over us was Dois Irmãos, that spectacular granite rock mountain that is the backdrop for so many sexy Rio beach photos. By this time a bright haze had covered the sun. The ocean smelled briny and vaguely septic. The capoeira kids loved the camera. They hammed and huddled and flipped. I wish I could tell you that I nailed this image on the first take, but in fact it took four or five.
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Jamie Brisick is a writer, photographer, and director. He surfed on the ASP world tour from 1986 to 1991. He has since documented surf culture extensively. His books include Becoming Westerly: Surf Champion Peter Drouyn’s Transformation into Westerly Windina, Roman & Williams: Things We Made, We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations, Have Board, Will Travel: The Definitive History of Surf, Skate, and Snow, and The Eighties at Echo Beach. His writings and photographs have appeared in The Surfer’s Journal, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He was the editor of Surfing magazine from 1998-2000, and is presently the global editor of Huck. In 2008 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles. For more of his work check out jamiebrisick.com & @jamiebrisick
William Finnegan’S Barbarian Days
Finnegan, aboard Alias, an Australian “surf yacht,” in Fiji, 1978. Photo Courtesy of William Finnegan."The speed runs were dreamlike. I had never seen a wave peel so mechanically." - William Finnegan
William Finnegan is the author of Barbarian Days, a memoir of an epic surfing life that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. The Pulitzer Prize Board described Barbarian Days as “an old-school adventure story, and intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting little-understood art.” A lot happens in the book: he drops LSD and surfs big Honolua Bay, he bushwhacks through Polynesia, he dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, he navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria, and he discovers a perfect lefthander breaking off an uninhabited island in Fiji—a wave that would later become known as Restaurants. Here is an excerpt from one of his sessions there, in 1978—
Tavarua Island, Fiji, 1978. Photo Courtesy of William Finnegan.On the fifth day, or maybe it was the sixth, we surfed. It was still too small, really, but we were so surf-starved by then that we scrambled out at the first hint of a swell. Thigh-high waves zipped down the reef, most of them too fast to make. The few we made, though, were astounding. They had a slingshot aspect. If you could get in early, top-turn, gather just enough speed that the hook didn’t pass you by, and then set the right line, the wave seemed to lift the tail of the board and hurl it down the line, on and on and on, with the lip throwing just over your back continually—a critical moment that is normally no more than a moment but that seemed to last, impossibly, for half a minute or more. The water got shallower and shallower and even the best rides didn’t end well. But the speed runs were dreamlike. I had never seen a wave peel so mechanically.
As the tide peaked, something very odd happened. The wind quit and the water, already extremely clear, became more so. It was midday, and the straight-overhead sun rendered the water invisible. It was as if we were suspended above the reef, floating on a cushion of nothing, unable even to judge the depth unless we happened to kick a coral head. Approaching waves were like optical illusions. You could look straight through them, at the sky and sea and sea bottom behind them. And when I caught one and stood up, it disappeared. I was flying down the line but all I could see was brilliant reef streaming under my feet. It was like surfing on air. The wave was so small and clear that I couldn’t distinguish the wave face from the flats in front of the wave from the flats behind the wave. It was all just clear water. I had to surf by feel. This was truly dreamlike. When I felt the wave accelerate, I crouched for speed, and suddenly I could see it again— because the waist-high crest, seen from down there, was higher than the horizon.
The trades puffed, the surface riffled, and the hyperclarity was gone.
The tide dropped and we were back on the beach.
From Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © William Finnegan, 2015.
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Jamie Brisick is a writer, photographer, and director. He surfed on the ASP world tour from 1986 to 1991. He has since documented surf culture extensively. His books include Becoming Westerly: Surf Champion Peter Drouyn’s Transformation into Westerly Windina, Roman & Williams: Things We Made, We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations, Have Board, Will Travel: The Definitive History of Surf, Skate, and Snow, and The Eighties at Echo Beach. His writings and photographs have appeared in The Surfer’s Journal, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He was the editor of Surfing magazine from 1998-2000, and is presently the global editor of Huck. In 2008 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles. For more of his work check out jamiebrisick.com & @jamiebrisick
Know Fair
Photo: Elliot Eliash © 2014 Fair Trade USA
Who made your clothes?
Not what store you bought them from, or what company designed them, but who made them? The people –– flesh and blood, hopes and dreams –– who sourced and stitched the clothes that live and breathe on our bodies.
Who are they?
This year we’re proud to be going a step further to ensure that the community that makes our clothes are treated fairly and come to work every day knowing they’ll be safe and supported. For us, there are two critical halves to a balanced and sustainable supply network: the environment and people.
Fair Trade changes lives. It’s that simple.
When you shake someone’s hand you feel their energy and what they’re all about, just like when you wear clothes that were made by people that were happy vs. people that were working in grueling factory conditions, they just feel better, and make you feel better. It might sound cheesy, but ideally our clothes are with us for the long haul, and you should feel good about where they came from and how they were made.
Workers from Fair Trade Factories around the world. Images courtesy of Fair Trade USA."Fair Trade USA, an organization that works to ensure that factories are safe, healthy, and prosperous for their workers."
That’s why we’re partnering with Fair Trade USA, an organization that works to ensure that factories are safe, healthy, and prosperous for their workers. For every Fair Trade Certified™ product sold, additional money goes right back to the workers who made it. No middlemen, no red tape, just cash back for a job well done. Workers come together to vote on how to use these profits to empower their lives and address their greatest needs. They invest in things that strengthen their communities, like childcare, improved transportation, or simply as a bonus to save for a rainy day.
Mexico’s Hong Ho is our first factory to join us on the Fair Trade journey, and we’re thrilled to start making this Fair Trade dream a reality. Fair Trade USA, which started off certifying coffee in 1998, now certifies over 30 categories and is a global authority with over 354 strict guidelines in their certification process.
Fair Trade isn’t easy. It’s one of those complicated, multi-faceted concepts that takes some real work. Even so, it can be boiled down to a core principle: it strengthens people’s lives.
With rampant forced labor, human trafficking, and people toiling in badly paid and dangerous working conditions around the world, it’s our job as humans to shop smarter, and understand that cheap clothes often come at a heavy price.
At Outerknown, we’re aligning with factories and producers that care about the environment and the humans whose lives are interwoven with the clothes that we wear. Buying Fair Trade trickles down to nourish our global community. And if more of us started outfitting our lives with products made fairly, that trickle would turn into a flood of kindness that our world could really use right now.
Shop Fair Trade
Stay Dry | Lower Your Impact
Guess what? most waterproofing isn't biodegradeable. Trace chemicals are being found on mountains and trails around the world.
We love the outdoors. We don't want to be stopped by the elements. When it rains or when it snows we stay outside. We surf, we run, we hike no matter what mother nature throws at us. When we travel, we try our hardest to leave no trace. Whenever we can, we clean up after ourselves and we leave environments better then we found them . We hold our garments to the same set of standards that we hold for ourselves.
Recently new research has emerged showing that PFOA’s (perfluorooctanoic acid), the active chemistry used for most waterproofing doesn’t break down when shed from garments. When we heard that traces of these chemicals are being found on mountains and trails around the world, we knew we had to do something. So, in a continued effort to lower our impact we’ve developed a revolutionary form of waterproofing that’s flurocarbon free. It’s gentler on the environment, and repels water and snow effectively and ecologically without leaving any trace on the environment.
How Does flurocarbon free waterproofing work?
Like traditional waterproofing, our flurocarbon free solution is the first line of defense against rain, sleet and snow. It’s applied to the face fabric creating a microscopic set of ridges. These ridges force water to bead together and roll off, instead of spreading out across the surface of the fabric and soaking through. So the next time weather strikes, know that we have your dryness and the environment covered. 
featured on the NORTHERN 3-IN-1 COAT
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Alex Grossman’S Top Five Restaurants
Alex Grossman knows a thing or two about food. As creative director of Bon Appétit, he travels widely to the world’s hottest restaurants. But his eating odyssey didn’t start there. His first job, at age 12, was a dishwasher. Through his twenties he worked nearly every job there is in restaurants, from award-winning establishments like Le Bernardin to greasy spoon joints.
He’s passionate about his work: “I love taking the foods everyone’s seen over and over—roast chicken, sandwiches—and showing it in a way that’s hopefully never been shown before. Then, there’s trashy food—hot dogs, hamburgers, ice cream cones—that you can go really weird and more pop-y with.”
Here are Alex’s top five favorite restaurants:
Manfreds, Copenhagen
I reeeaaaallly love Copenhagen. It's such a cool city and such a great place to eat. And while Noma, which is there, might be the most impressive restaurant in the world, in many ways Manfreds is my favorite. They just do so many things right and they were so ahead of the curve: super-serious chef but very simple (almost casual) place, cheap DIY build-out but still really good vibes, religiously sourced, high technique food but very low-key plating (I mean the food visually looks quite normal), a real dedication to vegetables and treating meat more as a condiment rather than the main driving ingredient. Oh, and one of the best natural wine lists on the planet. On the latter point it's kind of crazy the wine he gets. The entire list is all naturally fermented which means no preservatives. Wine can really mess you up, all sorts of crazy shit in it—chemicals, pesticides, artificial yeasts, tons of bad shit. It's no wonder many people feel like shit drinking wine. Well, natural wine and especially really good natural wine like they have at Manfreds is of another level. I remember when I was there our waiter (who happened to be the som) said: “You ever try and chug wine? You can’t. You’ll get a gag reflex from the preservatives.” So he taught me that you can actually chug natural wine. Try it. Anyway, he literally gets winemakers driving extremely limited stuff up from France and Italy themselves because they so believe in his restaurants (and Noma). So it's an important place but you would never know based on what it looks like. I could go on and on but soooo many restaurants have copied elements of what they do and almost everyone has been influenced by its ethos. It's just so important for food to see a generation of superstar chefs focused on opening cool, inexpensive places with food and wine that is delicious and healthy that everyday people can go to. It's changing the world.
The Walrus and the Carpenter, Seattle
The highest compliment I could ever give a restaurant is that it is a perfect neighborhood restaurant. So many restaurants put so much emphasis on doing A LOT, to really get your attention—extra flavor, extra fat, weird combinations, tricky dishes—that it often gets to be too much. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love eating at places that challenge me, but neighborhood restaurants understand that to come back several times a week you have to have a menu that people really want to eat over and over again, with good but super-chill service, and in a space with a vibe that you want to hang out in. The Walrus and the Carpenter, an oyster bar at heart, is named after a Lewis Carroll poem and it just does all of these things really well. Don’t get me wrong, it has incredibly good fish and shellfish and happens to have the best oysters I’ve ever eaten in my life, but it also has a little extra magic. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Rene’s husband owns Hama Hama Oysters, one of the world’s great oyster farms. I could go in there and down 4-5 dozen easy. With a good bottle of wine in a cool space that is as good as it gets.
HaVL, Portland
To make truly great food is very hard. It just takes so much time to do just a few things really well, to perfect them. To do it consistently in a restaurant is near impossible. It just takes so much work and attention to detail. It really has to be personal because you truly have to love the process of doing it. This just seems so true about this little Vietnamese noodle and sandwich shop in Portland, Oregon—run by a 65-year-old woman named Ha “Christina” Luu and her 75-year-old partner—that makes the best soup noodles I’ve ever had. She makes two soups a day herself, totally from scratch, with high-quality ingredients, and sells them till they’re gone which is usually sometime midday. There’s some really out-there-sounding ones: Crabflake Noodle Soup, Snail Soup, Shrimpcake Noodles, as well as more normal-sounding Pho, but it depends on the day. I’ve probably had half of what she sells but everything I’ve ever had there is exceptional, an amazing balance of clean simplicity and flavor. It’s perfect.
Estela, New York
I think Estela is the best restaurant of the last decade in New York. Like restaurants like Manfreds, the two owners, Ignacio and Thomas, come from very high-end restaurant backgrounds and have put their efforts into making totally original food that is so simple and beautiful, that doesn’t cost a ton, and in a very unpretentious, even plain, spot. To do that anywhere is very cool but to do it in New York, where so few people are taking any risks at all due to the economics of it, is really special. The wine list is awesome. The owners are friends of mine and I’m just so impressed with their food. I just love it. It's weird to find a place that is doing “new” things with food but where every damn dish is just so delicious and crave-able. I literally love eating there.
Contramar, Mexico City
I think we’ve become so food-focused—and restaurateurs so cost-conscious—that we have forgotten that a great restaurant is about more than just food. Don’t get me wrong, the food at Contramar, which is all seafood, is driven in each morning from the coast and it is truly amazing. That said, it is the meal in its entirety that is so unique and special here. This is a “typical” meal at Contramar: arrive on a Saturday at 3 pm (the host knows you by name of course) and grab a table for six with your friends. A super-stylish, white dinner jacket-clad waiter arrives soon after you sit down and in a few words gets you going on some spicy tuna tostadas (and no, not just any tuna tostada but the best tostada of any kind you have ever put in your mouth), a round of micheladas, and some mezcal on ice. You repeat this drink order countless times for the next two hours, the waiter dropping by at the perfect moment here and there to bring you stunningly good food from the menu and off of it (aquachiles, whole grilled fish, ceviche, etc). Two of your friends leave halfway through only to be replaced by two to four other people you never met before. You get full at some point so you leave for an hour to walk around. You come back and sit back down to a table of now 10 (half of whom you don’t know) and eat “dinner," drinking and hanging out in a room packed with people doing exactly what you’re doing. The atmosphere is infectious. By the time you leave you’ve been there six hours and are in a food/alcohol coma but happy as can be about it.
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Jamie Brisick is a writer, photographer, and director. He surfed on the ASP world tour from 1986 to 1991. He has since documented surf culture extensively. His books include Becoming Westerly: Surf Champion Peter Drouyn’s Transformation into Westerly Windina, Roman & Williams: Things We Made, We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations, Have Board, Will Travel: The Definitive History of Surf, Skate, and Snow, and The Eighties at Echo Beach. His writings and photographs have appeared in The Surfer’s Journal, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He was the editor of Surfing magazine from 1998-2000, and is presently the global editor of Huck. In 2008 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles. For more of his work check out jamiebrisick.com & @jamiebrisick
Drawing Clean Lines During The Great Age Of Consumption
Drawings: Katsuo Design
Once again, Earth Day is upon us. It's that special time of year when our planet’s health gets top billing and we all fall over ourselves in a Spring fever of recycling day dreams and sustainability fantasies. And while the groovy green pomp and circumstance certainly adds up to one heck of a party with a purpose, too often we are left with a bit of an environmental hangover in the weeks after. Like New Year’s Resolutions fading fast by the first weeks of February, our Earth Day-inspired eco-awakenings get quickly forgotten as they try to grow roots in the breakneck paced schedules of our daily lives and become actual habits.
Not this year.
Working with folks from the environmental department, the design teams here at Outerknown, as well as a few of our earth-minded partner organizations, we have compiled a list of easily achievable eco-life hacks you can start doing today to be a better, more conscious consumer of everything from the clothes you wear and the toys you play with to the food you eat and the water you use. After all, if we have any true hope of turning things around for Mother Earth, it is going to have to become #earthdayeveryday.
Do you need it?
This should be the first question you ask yourself before buying anything, “Do I actually need this?” Whether it is a surfboard habit or a t-shirt collection or a deep love of carnitas tacos, we all have our issues with over consumption. It is the unfortunate calling card of the late 20th and early 21st century, an age that has seen quantity far out pace quality on the free market while the natural world around us fills with the resulting pollution and manmade toxicity. Simply put, this dire and destructive cycle of excess cannot end until we, both individually and collectively, learn to honestly answer the questions, “do I need this?” and “how long will this last me?" You will be amazed how often the answer is either no, or not that long.
Demand Transparency
If you are spending your hard earned money on something you have the right to know where it is coming from, who made it, and how. If you are putting something on your body you have the right to know where it is coming from, who made it, and how. Most importantly, if you are putting something in your body, you absolutely have the right to know who grew it, what’s in it, and where it came from. Asking clothing companies, restaurants, farmers, food providers, oil producers, and manufacturing outfits of all ilk to better account for their supply chain is the best way to understand the real cost of the things we so often consume without a second thought. More to the point, it creates accountability and that is something we could all stand to be a bit better at.
Water, Water, Water
For us here in California, as we careen ever deeper into a 5th year of historic drought, water resource awareness needs to become a way of life– and fast. Simply put, we need to think about the way we use water each and every time we use it and we need to think about making it last longer. Things like permeable paving, rain harvesting barrels, keyline design, native plants, low flow toilets, plastic beach buckets in the sink, and 5-minute showers are all fantastic and powerful conservation tactics but none of them start without first getting your mind around the fact that clean drinking water is anything but an infinite resource.
Don’t Get Green Washed
Consumer beware, there are no legally binding definitions of marketing buzz words like “natural” and “green” and “organic”. This means that there are also no shortage of companies out there purposely misrepresenting their products and angling to capitalize on the general public’s growing desire to be more eco-savvy with their spending habits. This is especially true with cosmetics and beauty products. Flip the script on this untoward marketing ploy and check for certified organic ingredients and use the SKIN DEEP data base provided by the Environmental Working Group to get the low down before you buy.
Speaking of Washing
When you clean yourself and when you clean your clothes are both excellent times to make some relatively easy change for greater planetary good. With the former, the trick is to conserve, conserve, conserve. Never let the water run in order to “warm up”, keep a plastic beach pail or 5-gallon Home Depot orange bucket in the tub to catch the extra H2O, and, above all, keep it short. Have an outdoor shower? Consider turning the drain into a French drain that waters a lawn or small garden.
As for the latter, washing your clothes offers as much opportunity to earn Earth Day street cred as any other chore in your home. Make the switch to organic/biodegradable soap and divert your machine’s grey water outside to fruit trees or a garden (instead of the septic system or sewer line it is currently flowing into) and voila! Every load of laundry will be a whole lot more than just washing what you wear. As an added bonus, find a sunny spot outside and hang a line for drying clothes. Your electricity bill will thank you.
There was a time in life when the thrift store was good for little more than a dorm room couch or an outfit for some seedy disco party. However, when taken from a more earth-minded, consumption conscious perspective, second hand stores become absolutely brilliant in helping keep things out of the landfill. Have a closet you need to purge? Give those threads a new lease on life and drop them at your local thrift or Salvation Army.
The second hand store is similarly excellent when you find yourself at the other end of the consumption cycle and are looking for a new (to you) certain something. Everything from cell phones and laptops to designer suits, couture, and kitchen appliances can be found surprisingly inexpensive when going the used route.
Nothing Single
The single-use, disposable, throw-it-in-the-gutter-and-go-buy-another mentality that has been part and parcel of American culture since the Industrial Revolution must end. The days of plastic shopping bags and disposable coffee mugs and store-bought plastic bottles of water must become a thing of the past and that begins with you. Until you, the consumer, embody the change and send a message to the markets, these nasty single-use habits will continue to plague us and leave an Earth-damning legacy for generations to come. The solution is simple; stop buying one and done products. Just don’t do it. Prioritize quality and send this message with each dollar you spend. You can even lobby your local government like other communities around the work to ban things like plastic bags. In time, long-lasting, high quality, environmentally conscious products will become the new normal.
#earthdayeveryday
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Born and raised on Cape Cod, Ethan Stewart has been calling Santa Barbara home off and on since that great El Nino winter of 1998. On his way to a career in journalism, Stewart has worked as a bellhop, a carpenter, a surf shop lackey, an overnight security guard on a sprawling Gaviota ranch, a delivery truck driver, a school teacher, and a landscaper. A passionate explorer of Mother Nature's more open and wild places, Stewart reckons Boston Red Sox baseball is the closest thing he has to religion, considers the ocean to be a mandatory daily activity, has been sleeping with sand in his bed for as long as he can remember, and has a dog named Danger.
Todd Glaser'S Top 5 Travel Destinations
Our second installment of 'Top 5 Travel Destinations' features one of the best surf photographer of modern time, Todd Glaser. Constantly on assignment, he's used to packing last minute and hitting the road at a moments notice to capture the best surfer riding the best waves around the world. In between shoots he finds time to travel and explore with his wife Jenna.
Below is Todd's list of the best of the best: the waves, cities and regions that he tries to hit each and every year. The places that resonate for him as photo and vacation destinations more then anywhere else on the planet. Take a minute to dive into Todd's world, you'll get some insight into why he holds each of these places in such high regard.
1. Florence, Italy
My wife and I went there a year after we got married on a one year anniversary/honeymoon trip and loved it. The food, the coffee, the museums, the culture had us not wanting to leave. It’s an hour train ride away from Cinque Terre which has amazing hikes and a restaurant called Da Eraldo which is where we got the best meal we ate in Italy, we went there twice. There are beautiful vineyards where we rode bikes on a wine tour from one vineyard to the next sampling the countrysides finest wines while looking out over the amazing landscapes. The Italians do it right, they love to eat, dress sharp, and walk or ride bikes everywhere.
Irony in Italy.
2. Tavarua, Fiji
Growing up my best friend went to Tavarua annually with his family and would always bring me back a Fiji Bitter hat. It was kind of our thing for many years. I never thought I would get to go there, but in 2010 I was invited to go and have been fortunate enough to go back a few times since. To start, it’s an island shaped like a heart in the middle of crystal clear water with 3 incredible waves all within striking distance. In the water I’ve seen some of the best waves I have ever seen ranging from two feet to twenty feet. For photography it doesn’t get much better. When it’s small you can use a big dome port and shoot underwater and as it gets bigger it’s a test of will and fitness as to how big of conditions you can swim in. Jon Roseman and the staff are like family and are always so welcoming whenever we get to go. For a fair skinned freckly guy, sunblock and hats are extremely important, but it’s worth the exposure to sun to be in the water when Cloudbreak is doing her thing. Oh, and on the ride in or out trolling for fish is a bonus!
Perfection in a wave better known as Cloudbreak.
3. Baja Norte, Mexico
Growing up in San Diego, Baja is a 30-minute drive away. Just on the other side of the border lies miles of uncrowded surf and more roadside taco stands than you can count. Being able to drive into the timewarp of what California would look like without all the development is good for the body and soul. Whenever my friends and I go, we usually camp for a few days to a week or two at a time and completely disconnect.
Solo session with Kelly giving me a shaka.
4. Teahupoo, Tahiti
As a photographer shooting in the water is my favorite place to be. Whenever I get the chance to shoot underwater I do, and I feel like Tahiti has some of the clearest water in the world. If I could shoot every surf photo underwater for the rest of my career I wouldn’t be opposed. In Tahiti the water is warm, the crystal clear water allows you to see everything that most don’t get to see, and when you come in you are usually staying with a family or Raimana (who is like family) and they love to eat the local delicacy, which is called Poi son Crue. It’s like a Tahitian version of ceviche with raw fish marinated in lime, coconut milk, onions, and a few other veggies. After a couple days of eating it, your tongue gets blisters from all the acidity of the limes, but it’s worth it.
Everyone loves to see Tahiti when it's huge, I love it when it's small because I'm able to capture moments like this.
5. San Francisco, California or New York, N.Y.
This one I debated the most on. It’s a tough decision between SF and NY. They both have such a great art scene and they get cold. Tropical locations are great, but it’s nice to layer up and wear a warm coat, get a coffee and walk around a city. Don’t get me wrong being in trunks is nice, but sometimes it’s fun to dress up and walk around a city with a bit of culture. It’s inspiring. Both cities are fast paced and have more art and photography than one can ingest. I always feel like I leave both those cities inspired. In addition to the main city, there are great waves within 20 minutes of each of the cities with hollow beachbreaks. A few years ago a friend of mine surfed in a snowstorm in NY and it is one of the most memorable ocean experiences I’ve ever been a part of.
Left: Getting lost in NY and looking up. | Right: Classic SF, In the winter its sunny and warm, in the summer it's foggy and windy.
The Dance Is In The Details: The Photographs Of Adrian Gaut
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon and based in NYC, Adrian Gaut first studied to be a painter, then found his way to photography. He shoots everything, but his first love—and perhaps his specialty—is architecture. I met up with him on a recent trip to LA. We sipped green tea at a friend’s Malibu home while he took me through some of his favorite architecture images, most of which were shot abroad. “There’s a sense of discovery that comes with travel,” he told me. “The idea that you don’t know what’s around the corner. You go where you think is going to be interesting. That excitement and that quality of the unknown is super important to me.”
the Jumex Museum, Mexico
“This is the Jumex Museum in Mexico City by the architect David Chipperfield. I went to shoot it on assignment for W magazine, prior to it opening. I do that a lot. It’s like, ‘Here’s a museum and there’s two angles and you need to make it look like it’s done ‘cause the story’s coming out in three months when it’s going to be finished.’ ”
housing project, Portugal
“There’s the things that I’m interested in and there’s the things the magazines are interested in, and the point where they intersect has to have a story, it has to be new or it has to have some twist. This was housing project in Portugal that I discovered via an architecture blog. Part of my process is that I’m always keeping an eye out for interesting projects and things that might be interesting from an editorial point of view. This was for DuJour. This is a residential project, so these are all balconies. It was on a hillside and I sort of came up to it, in my car through Google Maps, and this was kind of the first view I saw.”
Oscar Niemeyer building, Brazil
“So this is Sao Paulo, this is Oscar Niemeyer, this is a project I did for Pin-Up, an architecture magazine. They were doing a Brazil issue. I was so happy to be there. Niemeyer was such an important figure in my appreciation of architecture. His work is like sculpture. He was one of the true visionaries of the field.”
‘60s architecture, Detroit
“Detroit was another magazine assignment that was very open ended. The assignment was, ‘We want your vision of Detroit.’ The story was me wandering and discovering stuff. I found that shot. I was basically waiting for like 30 minutes for the dude to be right there. Detroit had this heroic, optimistic, ‘60s architecture, which is stuff that I love.”
Richard Serra Sculpture, Qatar
“This was a project I was commissioned to shoot for the Wall Street Journal, who have been a great ongoing client. The Qatari government commissioned [Richard] Serra to do this project. Serra drove around for like a month and found this place between the two plateaus—it was an ancient seabed. His idea was to do these four plates buried in the ground at the same height as the bluffs. It’s spread out over a kilometer. I went for a day-and-a-half. Flew into Qatar, got in in the evening, woke at 3 am, drive out there, it’s 120 degrees and like 90 per cent humidity, just really punishing conditions. So this is pre-sunrise. It’s really impressive—this was the most intense manifestation of experiencing a Serra.”
AT&T Long lines Building, New York City
“This is the AT&T Long lines Building, which is in Tribeca. I see it everyday. It still baffles me that it ever got built in the first place—a 30-40 story windowless building. It looks like the Death Star. I love it. I love that it exists and I love that it’s so uncompromising. It’s the epitome of Brutalist architecture. I make a conscious effort to be always shooting in New York.”
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Jamie Brisick is a writer, photographer, and director. He surfed on the ASP world tour from 1986 to 1991. He has since documented surf culture extensively. His books include Becoming Westerly: Surf Champion Peter Drouyn’s Transformation into Westerly Windina, Roman & Williams: Things We Made, We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations, Have Board, Will Travel: The Definitive History of Surf, Skate, and Snow, and The Eighties at Echo Beach. His writings and photographs have appeared in The Surfer’s Journal, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He was the editor of Surfing magazine from 1998-2000, and is presently the global editor of Huck. In 2008 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles. For more of his work check out jamiebrisick.com & @jamiebrisick