On September 6th, Daryl-the-intern and I left the office and headed south to the Orange County Convention Center to spend the day at the Bi-annual Surf Expo. It's always a great to see clients, meet new ones and take in ton of inspiration along the way. The September show also includes the wakeboard/waterski stuff so it's cool to see the most bad-ass & expensive wake boats on the planet and drool over the edges of their beautifully-detailed upholstery. There were some cool boards from Byerly, Hyperlite, Liquid Force, Obscura and more. Had a fun time catching up with some old friends at Meyer Boarding Co and got to see their new land paddleboards, which are sweet. While cruising the show floor I spotted a cool new skateboard company called STRGHT that uses a sandblasting technique to hand-carve their boards before hand-painting them. Also spotted a booth for the designery notebooks, called Field Notes. Got to see a cool work-in-progress chalkboard mural on skateboards by artist Joshua Noom. But, the highlight of my day was hanging out with the guys of Iron & Resin who've got a really cool thing going out of Ventura, CA. I love their aesthetic and all the fun hand-made details they put into everything. They even hand-stitched their lookbooks and gave us some stickers/patches/and a rag pouch with screen printed rag. Fun stuff.
Here's a sampling of some of what we saw at the show.
