The company presented their label and collection for the first time, from 7-9 July, at the Bread & Butter, Berlin, one of the leading international tradeshows for streetwear. The location was the mesmerizing and historical building, Tempelhof Airport. At the show TWOTHIRDS combined efforts with artist Kathleen Egan in a bid to further promote the health of our oceans, by way of a PET plastic bottle sculpture.

The Plastic Wave, made out of 500 Pet bottles, was the eye-catcher in the Sport & Street hall, where they exhibited. The exhibit not only attracted people into the TWOTHIRDS booth, but was an attempt to further inform and promote thinking beyond the world of fashion. It helped to create awareness of the current topical debate surrounding the volume of rubbish in our oceans, but also that we have the power to stop this.

You don’t get barreled too often in Berlin, so the installation drew a crowd; visitors got inside the wave and also signed a petition for an ocean free of plastic.

A little background to Kathleen Egan:
Kathleen is an artist/activist living in San Francisco. She explores remote beaches around the world looking for surf and post-consumer plastic. She collects washed up plastic debris and transforms them into plastic wave art. Most of her art work is composed of mosaics, made from plastic “chips” that she has collected from remote surf areas such as Alaska, Indonesia, and El Salvador. Her goal is to show how pervasive plastic pollution is throughout the oceans. Our paradise, a perfect wave on an uncrowded beach, is being invaded by non-biodegradeable plastic.

My mouth was full when it happened. Succulent, juicy tuna steak still purple in the middle, crisp black griddle lines searing across its surface, the tang of lime and coriander on my lips. Delicious. I didn’t choose to watch it, not really, but there was nothing else on and, well I like nature programmes; I like documentaries. Flicking to More 4 didn’t feel like it could do any harm and this film got screened at Sundance last year for goodness sake, it had to be worth a look. So my thought train went. I almost wish it hadn’t.

My dinner lay cold on the table as 15 minutes in, the full horror of what I was watching emerged.  Two years in the making, The End of the Line is a chilling scientific prophecy about what our world will look like in 40 years time, though not because of global warming, or oil leaks or any of the usual environmental culprits. No, this threat is even closer to home, even more tangible. In fact, last night it was sitting on my plate. Overfishing is destroying our oceans.

The documentary, made by investigatory filmmaker Rupert Murray and based on a book by Charles Clover, wasn’t going to sugar coat it. It laid its cards early; hard and fast on the table.

If we keep fishing the way we are now, there will be no fish left by 2048. None.

According to the WWF as many as 90% of all the ocean’s large fish have been fished out. Over the last 10 years fishermen’s hauls have declined by up to 80% as fish stocks have been unable to recover from the intense harvesting they are subjected too. If the ocean were a field, the documentary explains, trawling is like ploughing for crops seven times a year. What can grow in those conditions?

Watching how the demand for cod in Newfoundland in the 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world was bad. Finding out that the longline fishing industry sets 1.4 billion hooks a year on enough line to encircle the globe more than 550 times was worse. Discovering that at present global fishing fleets are 250% larger than oceans can sustainably support was frightening.

But the most terrifying segment of the film came with the relevations around the plight of the bluefin tuna. Now as endangered as the white rhinoceros but still being hunted for rich diners’ tables, the commercial fishing boats are voracious in their hunt for the big bucks that bluefin commands.

Granted, the documentary had a point to make and cut no corners hammering it home. Evocative montages of whitewater boiling with blood as fins thrashed and fisherman waded in, knives held high, ready to slaughter are still burned into my retina, but these are empassioned campaigners and they’re not asking much, really.

The film finished with a set of simple solutions which, combined with political will, could halt the demise of our oceans’ ecosystem before it is too late:

Ask before you buy and only eat sustainable seafood

Tell politicians to respect the science and cut the fishing fleet

Join the campaign for marine protected areas and responsible fishing

Of course, it’s not a crystal clear case; nothing ever is. Cutting the fishing fleet is a big ask, economically and socially and the statistics continue to be debated because there is no definitive way to measure what’s going on under the waves. However, thanks to End of the Line, I for one am convinced that responsible fishing has to be the way forward if our oceans and our fishing industries are to survive. Regardless of how tempting those two for £5 tuna steaks on the Sainsbury’s fish counter are.

If you are interested in finding out more about The End of the Line documentary and campaign, log onto their website where you can watch trailers and campaign update films as well as read about the making of the documentary, and current activity. You can also watch webisodes of The End of the Line on Babelgum.

Knoxville takes us to meet Mat Hoffman and explains how Mat approaches BMX riding with the reckless abandon of a man who’s both in love with his sport and completely indifferent to pain. More than any other figure in BMX riding and action sports history, Hoffman’s responsible for the the big air tricks, hence the title of the Spike Jonze/Jeff Tremaine/Johnny Knoxville new documentary about Mat, The Birth of Big Air, Despite breaking over 20 bones and getting his arm shattered to bits by a semi-truck, Mat continues to just go for it.

The film will be premiering at a private event in connection with the US Open of Surfing the first week in August.

The shelves of your local surfshop are filled with a steady stream of new dvds each featuring an all star cast of action heroes pulling into monster barrels in Tahiti or pulling monster airs in Indo. Yet the number of movies celebrating our homegrown talent is woefully small. Having already seen some stills from some of the sessions included in Fusion, it was with a fair amount of excitement that i slipped it into my dvd player.

In the shops as you read this (or available through http://www.surfclips.co.uk) it aims to reveal British surfing and British waves at their best. It’s been a labour of love for filmaker Ross Johns over the last three years and has lead to many an uncomfortable night asleep in the car and many a junkfuelled petrol station dinner.

From the start, there’s no delusions of Thomas Campbell, there’s no chin stroking celebration of how cool we all are for being surfers, this is straight up surf porn. Set to a pumping soundtrack of dance and guitar bands, it’s a balls to the wall barrel fest of epic proportions.

If you are unaware of the quality of the current crop of top British surfers, or you are unaware quite how good some of the waves in the UK are, you will be picking your jaw up off the floor time and again. Some of the slab waves are very scary looking indeed with tow or paddle entry and the quality of the camera work is good. It’s not all pits either, a large number of lips get well and truly slayed over the 60 minute(ish) running time along with some pretty progressive aerial surfing as well.

It’s filmed all over the South West, shows the brown water of North Yorkshire at it’s best and features some of the recent slab sessions in Caithness at waves like Bagpipes that have been well documented in Carve and others.

The cast list is a veritable who’s who of UK shortboarding from Russ Winter and Stokesy (who has a good section as does Mark “Egor” Harris) to newer names like Tom Butler. Reubyn Ash is perhaps the only notable not present.

There’s a dash of progressive longboarding in the mix too. Adam Griffiths and Ben Skinner wield their nine foot sticks into turns that most people dream of doing on boards three feet shorter, before they prove they are both equally at home on shorter, skinnier equipment.

This isn’t “Thicker Than Water”, its not trying to be. It is a great document of where we are right now and almost certainly shows the highest level of homegrown surfing captured on video to date. If it doesn’t inspire you to pull in deeper or smack the lip harder the next time you surf then nothing will!

Since 1994, the volume of marine litter on UK beaches has increased by 146%* and SAS is helping combat this tide line of trash through its beach cleans and ongoing campaigns. Motivocean is SAS’s most ambitious beach clean tour to date and will be calling in at over 20 major UK beaches and waterside locations across the nation, including:

19th August: Portmeor (St Ives, Cornwall)

21st August: Sennen (Cornwall), Tynmouth (Northumberland) & Cromer (Norfolk)

22nd August: Praa Sands (Cornwall) & Croyde Bay (North Devon)

23rd August: Porthtowan (Cornwall)

24th August: Fistral (Cornwall)

25th August: Bude (Cornwall), Newgale (Mid-Wales) & Gwithian (Cornwall)

26th August: Bigbury On Sea (South Devon) & Ainsdale (Merseyside)

27th August: Boscombe Surf Reef (Dorset), Belhaven (Edinburgh, Scotland) & Scarborough (Yorkshire)

28th August: Compton, Isle of Wight (Hampshire), Machrihanish (west Scotland), Saltburn (Yorkshire) & Brighton (east of the pier, near Yellow Wave)

29th August: East Witterings (West Sussex) & The Thames (London)

30th August: Broadstairs (Kent)

Everyone is welcome at the events and thanks to the support of the youth volunteering charity v, SAS can also offer volunteers between 16 – 25 years old the opportunity to access and experience exciting sports, including surfing, by participating in these beach cleans. The sea and coastal environment are a vital component of so many sporting activities from sailing to surfing, and SAS hopes to further build awareness about coastal conservation by linking beach sports to the protection of the environment.

Hugo Tagholm, Director of Surfers Against Sewage, commented, “We’re delighted to be holding our ‘Motivocean 20th Anniversary Beach Clean Tour’ at so many locations this year. The tour will help us engage a record number of new environmental activists and volunteers to make a meaningful difference to the UK’s precious beaches and the wider marine environment. We look forward to welcoming everyone to local events; our members, supporters, families and youth volunteers.”

To sign up please email Chris@sas.org.uk with the location you’d like to join SAS at, your name, age and contact details. If you are between 16 – 25 years old, you can also sign up directly at www.vinspired.com.

So, please go along to an event near you, meet SAS team members and like-minded volunteers, and help protect a beach near you!

Have a gander at what’s available here, if you like quality custom-built boards, with a flair, intuition, creativity and love, you’ll get on board with Neil’s finished articles.

Transfer is an exhibition showcasing contemporary visual art, street art, skateboarding (via photos, videos and live performances), independent music, as well as underground comics and fanzine art from the last two decades. Featured within the framework of this concept, original artwork and site-specific installations from internationally acclaimed Brazilian and American artists with roots in urban culture will be on view. The exhibition highlights the history and complexity of these interrelated creative cultures between both nations that now are merging with the mainstream art world on an international scale.

Through the 80′s, as subcultures such as skateboarding, punk, graffiti and hop-hop were exported all over the globe, Brazilians developed their own flavours of these genres. Transfer is a travelling museum of the youth culture which wrapped itself around these styles over the last two decades.

Check out Jair’s blog Pureness in the Imperfection for more about Brazil’s surfing and skate culture.

For thousands of years the waves breaking on the limestone slabs of Crab Island and Doolin point have been peeling off & spitting tubes. It is only since the early 1970’s that they’ve been ridden by surfers. Since then they have become, along with the Bundoran reefs, the most surfed spots in the country.

They have been on the “must surf” list of any travelling surfers coming to Ireland, from Kevin Naughton’s arrival in the 70′s, to the McNulty brothers virgin surf on their ancestral turf in the 80′s, to Anthony Walsh’s extended stay last winter.

The scenery in the area is spectacular, with the massive cliffs of Moher looming to the south and the geographical uniqueness of the limestone karst region of the Burren to the north. Add in the Aran island chain only a few miles to the northwest and it all comes together to make this spot the iconic postcard surfspot of Ireland.

While being overshadowed in the media lately due to the discovery of heavy spots such as Aileen’s and Riley’s, Crab Island is still a more important surf spot to most of the surfers of Ireland. This is because of the frequency of which it breaks and the fact that it is within the capabilities of all competent surfers. It is the spot most likely to deliver the ‘ride of a lifetime’ for 90% of Irish surfers.

Unfortunately that may not remain the case…

There is a ferry operation running from a small pier in the lagoon behind crab island to the nearby Aran islands. This runs during the summer months when the lagoon is not getting churned by big winter swells. These ferries now require a larger pier in deeper water in order to meet an EU regulation on commercial passenger ferries. However the design that Clare Co. Council has decided on is likely to damage both waves of Crab Island and Doolin point from backwash. It will also introduce a safety hazard by forcing surfers to now paddle across the ferry’s paths to get to the lineups. It is also likely to get damaged by winter storms due to its exposed location out the point. (The existing pier is located at the back of the lagoon). Reading the plans drawn up shows that the effect on the surf spots has not been taken into consideration at all by the council. They have, to date, not given any response to repeated and sustained requests from local surfers for a meeting on the issue.

Please sign the petition to keep this from becoming a reality.

We caught up with the man himself to find out more…

Hey Riz, where are you right now?
Sunny Cove Studios, sitting in my lounge bay window, looking out over West London houses. Not quite the beach bay view I’d like, but it’s a ‘bay’ nonetheless.

What made you want to make boardies?
I had been designing swimwear and boardshorts for other other brands for years and, like many commercial designers, I got bored of having to churn out the same designs all the time. I love the idea of specialising, honing your skills and doing one thing really well, so I thought ‘let’s just make amazing boardshorts’.
When I left fashion college I wanted to do high-end menswear, and randomly landed a job at Speedo. I worked there for years and learnt everything there is to know about swimwear. After that I designed surfwear for Ocean Pacific before working on lifestyle ranges for brands like Ben Sherman and Puma, so I’ve had a very commercial background, but now I’m doing my own thing.

What’s the Riz style?
At the moment I’m all about the ‘beach dandy’. I take references from the details of period menswear, and weave into that the notion of a gentleman surfer. I like the idea of using the Britishness of traditional design, and combining it with something that’s usually considered a casual garment. I also like my designs to have a certain subtle cheekiness to them! Riz Boardshorts are more tailored than regular boardies – cut slimmer, but retaining good movement. They come in three lengths, classic knee, retro mid-thigh, and 1950s short short.
Most of the surf brands produce board shorts and clothes for teenagers and kids, but I wanted to create shorts for the savvy guy who’s over that ‘radical dude’ look, but not ready to shop at M&S just yet. Environmentally conscious clothes tend to have a bit of a hippy vibe, but there’s no reason why they can’t be dapper and cool. We’re aiming to collaborate with artists and designers, using each short as blank canvas. The future of brands is to create communities where people can input and evolve the product through communicating and experimenting.

How do you think we can improve the environmental impact of the clothing manufacturing industry?
Wow, that’s a hard one. It’s going to be a slow process but education is key. I think there need to be tougher laws and inspections on fabric production, factories, shipping and ultimately what we do with the clothes when they reach the end of their useful life. Transparency and responsibility are key – I think the clothing industry is about 10 years behind the food industry at the moment.
The best way to improve the system is to support it. Environmentally produced clothes are expensive at the moment, but the more people buy them, the cheaper they will get.

What’s in your quiver?
Living in London can eat you up, but I try to get down to the coast as often as possible. My quiver is usually armed with a powder blue 6’2″ fish I bought in Costa Rica and an old, yellow-tinged 7’6″ JP board. I’m after a wooden longboard though, to go with my shorts.

If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?
Right now I’d love to be in Nicaragua, in this secluded spot we found a few years back. It’s totally remote, with miles and miles of untouched beaches. We’d get up at 5am to surf the glassy waves, which would go flat at 8am when the wind changed, so we’d snooze under a palm tree. Ahh, lazy days…

What’s the first thing you can remember?
Buck Rogers.

What are you scared of?
Snakes and heights.

What will you be doing in 10 years’ time?
I’d like to think I’ll be living by the sea, selling quality shorts, maybe with a little gallery / cafe/ shop thing tacked on. I’ll be surfing my wooden longboard and probably still chasing girls up and down the beach.

What keeps you awake at night?
My cat scratching at the cat flap.

You can buy Riz Boardshorts online and at Tonic on Portobello Road, London. Keep up with the latest developments at Alive with Pleasure.