Riding the Mini Simmons..a perspective.

When Grant Newby first began discussing Project Simmons I knew immediately that I was interested. The simple fact that Bob Simmons had conceived this design back in the late 1940’s was enough for me to realise that I could find a deep connection with this style of board and that it was something that would fire my enthusiasm and imagination.
Coming down from a 9’6” log to a 5’8” Simmons was in itself a challenge, but I figured that since I had a life long association with skateboarding and a respect and admiration for the 1970’s,‘Town’ crew that included surfers Larry Bertlemann, Dane Kealoha, Buttons Kaluhiokalani and Mark Liddle, as well as the Z-boy skateboarders from Dogtown, that this low slung pivotal style would be a great resource to draw inspiration from for developing a technique necessary to ride the Simmons.
Grant and I conceived the first Simmons configuration as a styrene stringer-less epoxy job with a truly Bob Simmons inspired hulled bottom flowing into a concaved channel in the rear between the two bamboo keel fins. We kept the traditional s-deck profile but added extra thickness to allow for my transitioning down from log riding and also to enhance the craft’s paddling capacity.
The first trails began in messy conditions at Narrowneck on the beach break inside the sandbag reef. At first the length of the board daunted my best paddling efforts and then the buoyancy of the styrene hampered my ability to engage the board into the face of the waves, but once I become more familiar with the feel of everything I began to settle into catching a few smaller sliders. Each of these though felt like I was fighting for control until out the back a larger left set loomed into my path, I paddled hard and hooked into my backside for a rail grab decent down the face and then in a moment of inspiration I pulled a very tight bottom turn and the Mini Simmons was off like a rocket, blasting up to the lip for a sharp top turn slash that literally took me by surprise, at this point I was stoked and convinced of this little craft’s future potential. I rang Grant immediately blabbering insanely about the possibilities.
After a few more weeks I began to unfold the mysteries of the Simmons. I had come from a position of out of control looseness to a point where I could hold it all together and find a very smooth flow. My analogy was a skateboard with loose trucks. The real moment of truth however came at Snapper Rocks on a day when it was peeling endlessly through to Rainbow bay. These were the first quality waves I had ventured onto with the Simmons. At first the fast late takeoffs were unsettling but once I had honed my focus I found that the moment I placed my feet securely over the rear keels the Simmons came alive, wide square tail driving, biting, tearing down the line with me piloting her glide far out onto the shoulder, her broad flat bottom and hulled front end lifting and floating over the surface of the water in a fluid series of very fast top to bottom s-turns, until crouched, I pressured my rear foot grabbed the rail and drove her screaming into an ass dragging sliding cutback, the tail drifting and throwing up a gushing fan of scattered white water, the direction change sudden, tight and purposeful. After an exhausting session of similar rides I was confident and assured that the Simmons would forever be a part of my quiver. I had spent a lifetime aspiring to a forgotten aesthetic, something gleaned from the movie screen as a teenager watching Bertlemann at Ala Moana and at Kaisers but this had been the first time that I ever felt in my mind that I had come near to achieving this archaic visual nirvana.
Grant’s next venture was a more streamlined Simmons, this one measuring in at 5’4”, with a sleek and trimmed out silhouette and shaped in glass and foam. I instantly liked the stripped down visual of this new board. While maintaining the classic Simmons s-deck configuration on top, Grant added concave to the bottom of the nose as opposed to the traditional hull; this seemed an appropriate contemporary design detail along with sharper rails and less bulk through the tail. This Simmons I christened at Currumbin just inside the point on that sandbank that seems to swing endless lines across to Lacey’s. My first few waves were a workout and this board was everything its predecessor was and then something; superfast and pivotal, but obviously due to its streamlined thickness it lacked the buoyancy and so I had to work twice as hard to keep her alive and engaged on the wave face. The next day I gave her another test run, this time at Little Marley. I was fortunate enough to catch the swell running all the way across into Rainbow Bay at about 2-3 foot, low tide and offshore. I couldn’t have found a better arena! The setup was perfect and the little 5’4” drove flat out down the line just ahead of the sand dredging foam. On almost every wave she powered superfast lines, my legs working like pistons to keep her slotted, grooved and channelled into the wall. On several waves I struggle to get to my feet set as the reduced length of the Simmons made the takeoffs even more crucial as well as the relative thinness of this board adding an extra dimension to the paddling experience and demanding a very thorough workout. However despite these small setbacks I discovered in this little Simmons a super fun surf craft with a huge capacity for speed, long drifting lines and driving pivotal turns, its wide flat underbelly gliding over the face, not dragging through it. After a serious three hour session for the Simmons and I, we both succumbed to exhaustion and washed up onto the shore where I lay with a grin from ear to ear, reflecting on a stoke and headspace I hadn’t felt in a long long time. The Simmons? I think she was happy as well.

Run Silent, Run Deep.

After a beautiful winters morning session down on the beach Im home alone on my day off. Nothing much to do except re-watch WWII submarine movies and play dress ups.
Forward torpedo tubes ready...FIRE ONE!!!

Skull 'n' Bones Honolulu style.

Japanese custom order roofers boot.

Damn the Japanese have good taste. Check out these custom Roofers boot. Of course exclusive to Japan. Looks like they've upped the anti again on American manufacturers.

And in the Islands its coconut rum time!

Meanwhile in the Northeast Dad's in plaid at play...

Where Flyboys reside R'n'R 1940's style

Oh Boy! Fishing Fly-boys. Nice to have something else in your sights other that a FW-190D. Another great shot for the Papa courtesy of photo hound.

Papa Goes to the Fish Fry

A few years ago when I first attended The Alley Fish Fry I was amused at how ‘fringe’ this event felt and how novel it was that this group of surfers had somehow come together into a sort of loose collective. In light of subsequent years and especially at this year’s event, I can only confess to how I misjudged what I observed.
While still a fabulous celebration of this versatile board, I believe this event to now be much more significant than what I had first thought. If I look at the Fish in context within the surfing industry, it has become a vehicle of expression for the brightest minds of this subculture. I use the word subculture deliberately as to me; this has always been at the core of surfing’s development and progression over the last 50 years and something that stands in stark contrast to the surfing industry in general. The surfing subculture is the driving force behind our sport. It defines the direction of the future and is representative of the art. Michelangelo once said that, “Where there is no hand there is no heart”, and this is all the more pertinent when we look at the current trend towards off-shore production and shaping machines. Juxtaposed against all of this then is the Fish. The Fish is guided by the hand and thus has heart and soul. From attending my 4th Fish Fry I can validate that this statement is true and the roll call of shapers and surfers that attended supports my theory. This year, as in past years, has seen a great cross section of the shaping community gather in the park. With shapers such as Rich Pavel, Chris Christenson, Ian Zamora, Danny Hess and DJ Kane from the USA, Roger Hall and Bobby Crisp from New Zealand, Bob McTavish, Jim Banks and Dain Thomas from Byron Bay as well as Gold Coasters Dick Van Straalen, Chris Garrett, Dan MacDonald, Richard Harvey, Sam Yoon, Murray Burton, Dave Verrall, Shoji Muto and many, many others from up and down the east coast and from foreign shores as far away as Japan, Spain, Italy, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

This event provides a communal pool of ideas that produced a staggering array of surf vehicles all loosely grouped under the banner of the humble Fish. Visitors were showcased with a selection of Quads, Sixers, Alaias, Paipos and traditional Fishes that varied in length from very small - under 5ft to the extreme 10ft plus. Many of these conceptual pieces have evolved into highly functional wave craft, most notably has been the rediscovery of the 1940’s derived Simmons board. Now reconceived as the Mini Simmons, this radical little foam slider is blowing the minds of a new generation of surfers. The Mini Simmons borrows US Navy hydrodynamic hull designs and S-deck construction teamed with twin keels. This, combined with a wide square tail provides an amazingly fast ride with tight pivotal turns and lots of floaty tail sliding. These performance principles were applied to many of the Fish Fry’s craft making the Simmons the standout board at this year’s gathering.
Other innovations of the day were equally overwhelming, representing leading-edge concepts in standard foam and glass to hollow marine ply, balsa and Paulownia wood and then space age carbons. Sage Joske, a young shaper from Valla surfboards, showcased the Vector, a more buoyant and glassed derivative of the ancient wooden Alaia featuring traditional Alaia rails, a gentle bottom roll and a deep fish tail allowing for extreme speed down the line and long drifting turns whilst retaining the control features of the Fish with two miniscule mini keels. Jed Done from Bushrat surfboards came along with an amazing quiver of channelled bottom, split flex tails and finless Fishes. Diverse boards, shaped by Feral Dave were also experimenting with slim-lined Simmons with concaved tails and quad fin setups. Richard Harvey boards and Murray Bourton Shapes also played with Simmons hybrids mixed with Greenough conceived Hi-Lo rails, looser fin placement and round tails and swallows. Ronnie Goddard Shapes had Spoon fish quads and Mick Mackie was developing concepts based on the sweeping side cut rail lines of 70’s snowboards. Thomas Bexan even turned up with some beautifully worked timber ‘Hand-o-planes’ while Grown, Riley, Hynd Sight and Generation Gap all showed beautiful examples of wooden boards but for sheer beauty and craftsmanship however, Roger Hall from New Zealand carried the day in wood with his meticulous Fishes, inlayed with hundreds of strips of rare and contrasting grained timbers worthy of a metropolitan art gallery rather than a surf meet.

This incredible array is representative of the very foundation of the Fish Fry and why it has captured the imagination of so many. The possibilities seem endless. In organising this event here in Australia, host Grant Newby has provided a non-profit, non-commercial forum for the healthy exchange of ideas that could fundamentally challenge the way we view our sport. And, it could not have come at a better time. With the short board arriving at its pinnacle in the form of the Thruster, the industry has had its creative brakes on for years. What the Fish Fry has achieved is to open the minds of shapers again to the endless possibilities of offering a choice of wave vehicles that encompasses more than the Thruster could achieve in its role as surfboard to the masses. This was not the only advancement either. Andi Surfboards showed an obvious return to the multi-hued decorative art of the airbrush used on his turbo-concaved boards whilst Jesse from Black Apache boards used heavy resin tints. In a conversation with Byron Bay artist Paul McNeil, he stated that, “For the past decade the only choice of colour in a surfboard was white, white or white and if you were lucky perhaps some lame veneer of spray colour”. Along with the initiatives taken in re-inventing the Fish has come the revival of these glorious resin colour tints and hand-foiled wooden fins. The Fish Fry was abundant in a burst of riotous colour and an amazing array of vibrant hues. This dedication to aesthetics in tint colour is reminiscent of days past when boards were as individual as the personalities that rode them.

When initially rediscovered, the fish was viewed through the rosy glasses of retro-esque nostalgia but today the reality is much different, the fish has become the catalyst for the future, a visionary window into the potential of one of surfing’s greatest hybrids. As the Fish Fry continues as an annual event, one thing is certain and that is the Fish has arrived and is here to stay. Perhaps not as the ultimate answer to all wave conditions, but undoubtedly as a vehicle of choice, essential to the quiver of any discerning surfer.

Chapter Two, my Father in the Pacific.

An insight into my old man is the other chapter to who are we. From my earliest memories I can hear my dads war stories, I still hear them today and for anyone that truely knows me it goes along way to explain why I like the things that I do.
At any rate my father, John Tesoriero Snr, served in the Pacific, in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. He was stationed up there from about 1943 onwards. He had two paricularly good skills, he was an amazing artist and a crack shot with a rifle.
One day whilst on patrol with buddies along the Yalu River he sighted on a large Cockatoo flying and screeching high above the tree tops, he lead him and then took a shot on the wing and then to everyones amazement it fell like a stone at their feet. At the same moment, they heard a splutter and looked up to see a plane coming down from a great height, tumbling like a leaf, no smoke or fire as usually imagined.
At that point a white parachute ejected, carrying the pilot who swung down slowly. It was an American plane, a P-39 Aircobra and then two similar aircraft flew tight circles around the pilot as he came down.
Dad's mates in jubilation at the shot were shouting a lot of nonsense while this went on, such as 'Wow, what a terrific shot! The bird and the plane with one bullet.' It didn't seem to matter that it had been one of ours that fell from the sky. They later learned that the pilot was rescued and was earlier stricken in a dog fight but this didn't stop the rumours from circling the camp as to Dad's marksmanship.

In this photo my father on the left is with mates overseeing the guarding of supplies that had recently been unloaded at Lae.

One of his sketches showing a huge American LST on the beach spilling forth activity and supplies.

Where do we come from?

Recently Ive been inspired by several of the blogs that I view and the wonderful stories that trace our family history. Its a who are we quest and why am I the way that I am. Well the Papa's tale starts back in New York at the beginning of the 20th Century with the arrival of Nonno Vincenzo Tesoriero, my grandfather.

Photographed here at the Crystal Hall Photo studio East 48th and 14th street New York in approximately 1918 we see a very young Vincenzo hamming it up for the Camera.
Vincenzo was an unremarkable man but he belonged to a very remarkable generation who literally took the world as their oyster and pursued their dreams across the oceans to foreign shores. Vincenzo arrived in Ellis Island from the The Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily, alone at the age of 14 years old. He was a solid lad who enjoyed hard work and so moving to Brooklyn he took up the employment of a stevedore on the wharves unloading cargo. It was here that he meet my grandmother whose family had arrived in the late 1890's. She was born on Union Street in Brooklyn. It must have been a hard time and a hard place for them both because not long after, they returned to Italy where my father was born. Four years later they were boat bound again, this time for Australia and that is where my story begins many years later.
I often wonder what my life would have been like had my family stayed in America. In some ways I have always felt a little cheated by being down in the antipodes when all the things that interest me and many of my good friends call America home, this would go a long way to explaining why Ive been to the states about 26 times and feel a deep affinity for the home of my forefathers. I am of course a product of my own environment, here in Australia, and it is perhaps because of this that I have the interests that I have, had I been born in the States there is no guarantee that I would have found any of 'IT' remarkable and I could have been oblivious to it all. It is this thinking that allows me to rationalise everything at the end of the day but at times it certainly is cold comfort when I know that every weekend you folks are at the flea market perpetually on the hunt for the good stuff. Realistically however It ain't all the bad, as I get to wake early and paddle out into pristine waters and conjugate with the sea and then once home again, dried and warm I get to sit in front of this screen and read about what a fine day you've had and what great vintage pieces you've been able to unearth.