yater

back in '96 i moved to santa barbara. i only lived there 5 years. in that time, i surfed a ton of epic waves, and met a grip of people that shaped my life forever. plummer, klemman, the potter brothers, jeremy and seth of the beach house, hilbers, brom, cooper, and hatzikien (among others). plummer intoduced me to seth that introduced me to brom that introduced me to the crew of legendary surfers that inhabited the "funk zone". i was surfing the point and hanging at the beach house when i wasn't reading and writing theoretical maths. eventually clyde beatty wanted an inexperienced newbee to huff resin in his glass shop. i enthusiastically requested and environment that wold rot the effort i had been putting into my mind, and perhaps slowly rot my cells. i started working at clyde's. hot coating and routing fin boxes. that was so great. i would study math and surf all day, help build boards at night. during that time, i was hanging with brom a ton. we build his "surfenginez" website. that was rad. i was surfing the shit out of brom's 5'11's and gene and tyler's logs. i was stoked to get to know mr. rich in the capacity i was. also i helped skip landscape his yard. that was an honor. most of all, i got so see ferndod quite a bit. those days were amazing. dan and i would show up early in the morning and see ferner lurking in the bushes checking the point, we'd end up beside him coughing after smoke had gone into our lungs. the best part of those sessions was seeing mr. white out in the water. i'd paddle up to him and say: "mr. white"... he'd return a : "mr. black". shit was all time. while spending time at beatty's factory, i saved it from burning down after gramuel dam and john botched a roofing job. john had cooked the roof too hot and thought shit was good to go. he split over to lauren's rig to grab a template. i showed up to see if gramuel wanted to shred later. i saw no one up there, and a roof burning. my luck of looking for gramuel saved the day. shit was crazy. now looking back, some of the craziest stuff was the fact that renny and lauren were the backbone of it all. renny built that stuff. the roots of renny go so far back. i've never even rode a board renny shaped that felt good to my surfing style. i've owned one (the floating drifting seacucmber) , and rode a few of my friend's. regardless, in that time...renny and i didn't become friends. he asked me a few questions once. when i was around him, i didn't feel like he was some big time guy. it was like he was just an average man. he lives honestly and cares about his thing. if he would have been a flower grower, he'd have approached it the same way. he is a genuine person.  i am honored and humbled to have the life experiences i do. seeing these pictures of renny speak to me.