Good news. As a subscriber, you are automatically entered to win a 60 album Twinsman.

We're giving it away on March 1st, and you'll hear lots more about it in the coming weeks.

I've already recorded a conversation with Shaper Matt Parker, reviewing the surfboard, doing a deep dive.

He and I are actually the same size. So he shaped this specific board,

wrote it a few times for R&D purposes. Then he gave it to me, and I've been writing it all through

the month of January. And now it'll be yours, gently used, loaded with our own underachievements

and self-loathing.

No, I kid.

You'll love the board.

And you'll hear why I love it in the coming weeks.

Anyways, thanks for the subscription support without which today's show wouldn't have been possible.

So enjoy this one. Son of iconic surfboard shaper and longtime surf shop owner john mel today's guest first entered surf media's limelight

as part of santa cruz's progressive skate-inspired surfers while similar movements were taking place

elsewhere around the globe one thing separated the s the Santa Cruz contingent of surfers,

and that was a storied, notorious wave about an hour north in Half Moon Bay. Surfers around the world

were beginning to incorporate airs into their repertoire, but few outside of Santa Cruz were

equally adept at charging frigid 30-foot waves.

It's an area that values discretion and perhaps even anonymity, so most of the early performers

and chargers names are only discussed through local lore.

But then came guys like Richard Schmidt and Kevin Reed. They garnered media attention, but they never

really committed to the requisite full-time trips to Southern California and Hawaii every year,

into the surf media epicenter to stoke the embers of potential surf fame. Then, in the late 80s and

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