SUNDAY JOINT, 7-15-2018: THE MOTORSKILL DIARIES - SEVERSON, GRIFFIN, BREWER, BARRETT

Hey All,

“Shaun Tomson’s Tunnel Vision” was last week’s History of Surfing page. Read it here, then by all means grab yourself an eyeful of the new Tomson supermix video, and do you think we have a bit of a problem here? Video seems to be eating me alive. This one is nearly five minutes long, and while it seems like there's not much fat on the bone, are these lengthier clips taxing your patience? Or are we okay with three- or four- or maybe even five-minute clips? Hit me back. If you like ’em this way I’ll keep doing it.

On Tuesday, out of the blue, former SURFER photo editor Brad Barrett sent me a wonderful short essay about the 1970 “Motorskill” Ranch trip, as seen in Pacific Vibrations. He even attached a few photos, and that should have been that. Load the words and pix, and done. Instant A-grade EOS blog post. But I got to thinking, and—long story short, I ended up posting four Motorskill-Ranch pieces. I don’t know, it feels like some kind of slow-motion old-person impulse control problem at this point. Again, I hope you’ll indulge me.

First up: here’s the full Motorskill-Ranch sequence from Pacific Vibrations. I color-corrected the whole thing, and redid the soundtrack with newer, cleaner versions of all the songs, except for the opening percussion part.

Brad Barrett’s Ranch essay is here.

Drew Kampion was a Motorskill fellow traveller as well, and no such package would be complete without the Dean of SURFER Editors. This is the article he wrote in 1970, and it holds up nicely.

Finally, and dazzlingly, have a look at this short but pungently sweet Art Brewer gallery showing the transformation of a funky old dull-green bus into—Motorskill. The Brewer pic you see below, of Griffin and Severson during lunchbreak, made my week. And broke my heart, as both are no longer with us.

Thanks, everybody, for reading, and see you next week!

Matt

[Photos by Art Brewer]