Sam

So you go out, try to make a name for yourself building a career that will ultimately make you a bucket of money that will inevitably set you up for your dream lifestyle. This leads you from one shitty hole to another, further afield from the things that you really enjoy about life. At some point, mid-career, you realize you live in a city you don't love, in an apartment far from the beach, just trying to make sense of a missive from some guy with a golden opportunity. You have it in your head that if you can just pay a few more dues, you will be right where you need to be.

Sam is smarter than that. Here is a guy who had the ken to see that he was living in the belly of paradise, near peeling waves and good breakfasts and groves of avocados, and that to maintain this idyllic reality, he didn't need to pay his dues to anything other than the locale itself, not some shadowy dream of international success. Working as a property manager he got to know the area, figuring the ins and outs to make it all work. He bought a condo early, knowing he could parlay that into a house later. He bought a little local business as a side note that integrates him into the community even more. And there he is, in Santa Barbara, raising a family on a foundation of dues paid to the right cause.

Check it out www.sbgiftbaskets.com

Jack and Lady Liberty

The only time I have ever been to the Statue of Liberty was with Jack. We waited until the worst day we could so we wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds. It was sleeting, then it rained, then it sleeted again and then it snowed. There were four other people on the ferry out there. The statue was so empty the park ranger let us ride the elevator so we didn’t have to walk up so many stairs in our damp clothes. I don’t remember, but I bet Jack paid for the whole thing. This was right at the height of the Jack-pays-for-every-thing stage. That stage lasted for a while and affected some of our close friends. For all I know, it could still be going on, but I doubt it. Jack would probably still be happy to get us all out of a jam if he could, but I don't think any of us are the out and out failures that we were then.

Jack is running the New York Marathon tomorrow morning. He is a fine runner.

Jack In Summerland

Jack has always adhered to a different kind of etiquette than everyone else I know. Its not a bad etiquette. It is far from rude and I don't think anyone who knows Jack even a little would call him thoughtless. But he was always the guy that would just disappear from the party without saying a word and go home and read a book or something. Poof, Jacks gone again. He's always had that tantalizing quality: you can't nail him down.
One night, I think the night Primo slid through my puke in his Spurs Rodman jersey, the night I told Maria she was the devil while wearing a kilt, the night of so many earth-shattering events, Jack disappeared again. Only this time someone noticed pretty quickly and a small search party was formed. They found him passed out in nothing but his shiny, gold surf trunks in the bushes along the fairway of the 9th hole on Montecito golf course. From that night on any shiny surf trunk was called a "bushsleeper."
This is a large format camera reproduction of a photo I took one morning in our house in Summerland.
I also have this photo framed and is one of my most prized possessions as such.

Jack At Miramar

Miramar in Montecito is a cruddy little beach with a crap little break between two better breaks: Hammond's Reef, which is phenomenal when firing, and Sharky's, which is even better, but really only fires at size once a decade. Actually, I shouldn't say Miramar is so bad because it was my favorite place to surf. I probably paddled out there more than anywhere, as much for the ease of use and the view as for the waves. But I have had some great times there, surfing my brains out in three foot peelers, laughing and watching the sunset.
This photo stands out to me as Jack is one of the better surfers I know but he looks so mediocre here. I think its really just the essence of Miramar. It really doesn't matter how good you are, you are just going to end up looking like you are having a great time.

Jack

For a long time I didn't know Jack very well. It seems like years now. Then, one day, there we are, sitting around on a beach drinking cases of Trader Joe's beer in a can back when Trader Joe's had their own brand of beer in a can. One of us came up with the bright idea of going into our college library and commandeering one of the side study rooms to study naked in. We purposefully didn't lock the door since that would have been way too weird and seeing that we were attending a pretty right-wingy fundamentalist Christian college at the time, this was risky business and we knew it. One night one of the prettier girls on campus walks through the door and there Jack and I are, buck naked. He was probably studying physics or math and I was probably pretending to study philosophy but really just zoning out. This pretty girl doesn't bat an eye and just sits down and starts studying with a little smirk on her face. A couple of weeks later I find out that she and Jack have become an item and I am kind of jealous and a little puzzled since between the two of us I was sure I had the more attractive physique. But that's Jack, getting the girl with that little twerpy body of his.

Kris Is Good At Bar Games

Kris used to be "The Guy" at Elsie's, the coolest bar in Santa Barbara. If I went looking for him and he wasn't at the Mothership, I would head down to Elsie's and find him shooting pool in the back room. If he wasn't there, I was stumped. And usually bored. Kris was pretty good at pool, and if you could hold the big, red table at Elsie's, you knew you were pretty good at pool. New Year's Eve one year, Kris, Lyle and I stayed up until two or three in the morning playing ping pong in a garage in San Diego. By the end of the night it was just Kris and Lyle dueling it out. Lyle ultimately won, but then Lyle is the best Ping Pong player in the world. I mean, when he wants to be.

Kris In Front Of The Mothership

"Big Wave Surfers Are Latent Homosexuals"
We weren't big wave surfers by a long shot. We surfed pretty small waves and even then, not super well. But there is some truth to that I guess either way. When I think back to that period, all I can remember is guys. Guys getting drunk. Guys sitting around a BBQ. Guys packed into a shitty car going nowhere. I don't even think I cared about girls at the time. Sure, I kissed them and did other sorts of things, but they were just on the periphery for a while.
Of course that all changed.

Kris

In Summerland, I lived on the top of a hill overlooking the ocean. I took these two pictures one after another on the porch of that house. At the time Kris was working as a substitute teacher and doing triathalons. I wanted badly to be a substitute teacher and do triathalons just like him. It seemed like a great lifestyle.

Kris, Dick Stein and Evan Dando

After my first year of college I got a summer job through one of my father's friends at an environmental laboratory in Redmond, Washington. It was my job to clean and disinfect the beakers and tubes and carboys before the soil samples were tested for toxins and metals. I did all this in a small 6x8 room without much ventilation for 8 hours a day for three months. I didn't mind it so much because just at that moment I had discovered KPLU, the local NPR station that played the news every morning and afternoon and in between there was a DJ named Dick Stein who guided me through the back alleys of straight ahead Jazz. I listed to that station on a little transistor-type radio every day for those three months.

There was this late 20's lab technician with long, greasy brown hair who I used to take smoke breaks with. He was a typical Seattle music scene guy with the black t-shirt and the Doc Martens. He would ask me questions about what kind of music I listened to and what sorts of things I was into and then not really listen to the answers. One day we were out smoking Camels and he told me about a big concert he had gone to to the weekend before. I don't remember what he said about any of the other bands, but he stopped in the middle of his story and asked if I liked the band The Lemonheads. At that point all I knew about the Lemonheads was that remake of the song "Mrs. Robinson" which I really liked. He was pretty antagonistic about his question so I just shrugged me shoulders not wanting to really pin myself down. When he saw that I didn't care either way he finished up his story saying how Evan Dando had played last on the bill and had fucked up the whole show because Evan Dando was a pussy. For the next couple years I was sure Evan Dando was a pussy.

Kris lived about ten blocks from me in down town Santa Barbara for about a year. He lived in this old Victorian style house dubbed "The Mother Ship." I think it was Ian who had first introduced us, but then Ian moved to L.A. leaving Kris and I to maintain the friendship. Somehow it worked out that Kris came over to my place on Pueblo Street one night and we sat on my porch and Kris brought his guitar and was playing some songs. At the time that porch was also my bedroom, since my roommate in the house snored like a jigsaw all night long. I think I slept on that porch for close to four months. Kris played me Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" and that flowers song by Wilco on his guitar. I had never heard Leonard Cohen or Wilco before that and I was pretty excited. Then Kris went into "Frank Mills" and that just about knocked me off the porch. When I asked him who sang that song he said "The Lemonheads" and it sealed the deal.
Later on I found out that "Frank Mills" is from the musical "Hair" but after that night I never thought of Evan Dando as a pussy again.

Music In San Francisco

I lived for a while in an apartment on Turk Street in San Francisco. Every so often Ian and Kris would drive up the coast in Kris' little red pickup with surfboards and guitars and come shack out at my place for a few days. We would play music and drive out to Ocean Beach and drink coffee. My upstairs neighbor, Phoenix, was an HIV positive "male witch" (he didn't use the term warlock) and would get all sorts of marijuana products legally. Kris and Ian used to get a kick out of going up the fire escape to Phoenix's place and looking at all his weird stuff. Phoenix loved the company and would repay it in THC pills. One Saturday night we were in my place playing music and having a real good time when suddenly Kris, seated at the table overlooking the street, yells out the window "Hey! Stop that! You can't do that!" in this kind of helpless stammer. We crowded around the window and watched as this girl in a puffy jacket used a bat to bash in the wind shield of this little black sedan parked on the street then jumped in an idling car and sped off. We were stunned for a moment and then we broke into hysterical laughter, aping Kris' helpless yalp.

Ian In Los Angeles

At the end of that Summer, Ian moved down to Los Angeles to teach elementary school while I returned to classes to finish my degree. We saw less and less of each other after that, getting together less frequently to surf. A number of years later I visited him in L.A. and he had taken up smoking Marlboro Mediums, religiously drinking Starbucks, hanging out at the local pizza joint and kite surfing. The old Vanagon had finally broken down and he had bought himself a brand new green Toyota pickup. He had all these fun kiting toys like a little dune buggy and a kind of big wheel skateboard he could zoom around on the hard pack propelled by the wind at the beach near his apartment.

Ian And Djarums

At the time, Ian smoked clove cigarettes constantly and drove a Vanagon the color of that Crayola crayon Burnt Umber. Everytime we climbed into his van he would pull a couple of cigarettes out of the box and we would light up before leaving the parking lot. Even now, when I smell clove cigarettes I hear the crackle of those pungent things and think of Ian.

Ian At Rincon

Santa Barbara is pretty well flat during the Summer at most breaks. One day we headed down to Rincon to paddle around the kelp beds and have a laugh and I snapped some black and white photos. Somehow I managed to lose the negatives for this roll of film which also included the first photos I ever took of my wife. Incredibly I didn't lose the contact sheet.

Ian Surfing The 60's Plank

Ian had this incredibly heavy and flat 60's plank with one of those wide glassed-in keels. Every so often it would rain so much in Santa Barbara that the sand bars around the pier right in the middle of town would be perfect. It was such an oddity that no one bothered to check it and would spend their time combing the coast north and south. Well, maybe they didn't surf there because all the flooding caused tons of bacterial runoff from the sewers about 50 yards away. We never got sick though and the surf was super fun, especially on that big plank.

Ian Surfing The Big Yellow Tanker

I took this photo with Ian's big clunky under water camera. The housing made it look like a Fischer-Price toy. That may have been the first time he rode that board. It was 10' 4" or something like that. Super long, big board. This is one of those magical summer nights at Santa Claus Lane.

Ian

Ian and I lived together for a summer, working for our college, driving around in golf carts and skipping out to surf, hoping our pagers didn't buzz while we were in the water.