Looking Sideways: 10 Things
Looking Sideways: 10 Things
Here are this week's ten things I thought were worth sharing
1. My latest episode with author, journalist, surfer, swimmer and all-around legend Bonnie Tsui. This one is a proper geek-off about the art of propelling yourself through water with the author of Why We Swim, one of my favourite books of the last couple of years. Click the link above to listen, and big up my swim crew who’ve all been in touch to say how hyped they’ve been on this episode.
2. I’ve just been in Stockholm to interview Chris Burkard at a live event organised by my pals at Db. This one will be released as future episode of the show, so keep ‘em peeled for that one.
3. Recently, I’ve become fascinated with the phenomenon of performative LinkedIn posting. If you’ve been on there, you’ll know what I mean. It’s when…
People write posts
And leave these weird line-spaced gaps
To make their platitudes appear
A little bit more meaningful…
…and it is equal parts hilarious and maddening. Turns out that I’m not the only one to have noticed this - Bloomsberg ran a piece on it a few years back and christened it ‘broetry’. Click here to read the story.
4. I love it when people uncover insights hiding in plain sight, and there were two great example of this in the last week. The first was friend-of-the-pod Lauren Hill’s Instagram post about the representation of women in The Surfer’s Journal, which fair threw the cat among the pigeons. Click the link above to get the measure of the debate.
5. The second was my pal Ben Mondy’s post about Wave Pool Culture for the Inertia, which took a dry slice out of the “grown men on those long skateboards” who have made the Bristol Wave in particular their new habitat. Click here to read that one.
6. Related - the controversy around the recent decision by a climbing wall in the UK to ban men from climbing topless. Robbie Phillips posted about this on Instagram which led to another spirited debate. Get up to speed by clicking the link above.
7. And related to the hidden misogyny theme of Lauren’s post is the outcry over the coverage of Alex Honnold and Hazel Finlay’s recent first ascent of Ingmikortilaq in Greenland. Why? Because Hazel’s name has been conspicuously absent from most social and mainstream media coverage of the feat - as with this Nat Geo post, above.
8. Memes are difficult to do well. Which is probably why Chas Truslow, the man behind The Catfish Chronicles, has struck such a chord with the US snowboarding community. Snowboard Mag ran a great piece on Chas and his journey through the snowboard industry. Click here to read it.
9. I also enjoyed this entertaining episode of the Adam Buxton podcast with economist Mariana Mazzucato on rethinking capitalism - partly because of how wildly out of his depth Adam was, and how wittily he handled it. Listen above.
10. My 2022 Spotify playlist now has over 100 tracks on there. Hit shuffle and dive in.
Enjoyed this edition of 10 things?
No 4 smacks of someone getting pitches turned down.
She’s isolated two issues there, which just happen to have vaguely gratuitous pics of women. If that was representative of the mag as a whole she might have a point, but I strongly feel it isn’t.
When I get home I’ll maybe have a flick through recent issues and flag up some female subjects and writers featured over the past couple of years.
As the last bastion of quality print media in surfing, it irritates me to see TSJ attacked like this. They do a bloody good job with very few employees and in a field where it’s a miracle they’re still afloat.
They cover what they can, and their standards are high. They shouldn’t be forced to make editorial decisions based on social media outrage.
Part of the issue here is that there just aren’t enough women writing about surfing. I’ve had some kickback recently for not covering the women’s tour on Beachgrit, my response being that I’m not paid to do so and don’t have the bandwidth to do that and the men’s tour.
But really I don’t think it’s right for me to do it anyway. I think it needs to be covered by a female writer, not just as an adjunct and afterthought to the men’s coverage. Plus, comparisons between them aren’t particularly useful.
Best newsletter yet. Keep up the good work.