1. As close Looking Sideways watchers will have gathered, I’m in the middle on an extended break from my podcast and Substack, although I have generally managed to keep up the 10 Things cadence (even if I did miss last week).

The reason? A very busy work life, combined with a house move, has coincided with a period of reflection on whether the whole thing is still serving me as a creative outlet. And I’ve had such little headspace that I’ve not picked up a book for a month, which is when I know things are bad.

I’ve also been experimenting extensively with Claude Cowork, which really is a remarkable and perplexing tool, coming as it does with so many ethical and philosophical questions (not least the Parkinsonian idea that our work will always elastically expand to fit the time available for its completion, something far greater minds than mine have grappled with over the years).

Yet there’s no doubt it has been transformative in the way it has enabled me to operate my various businesses in the last two months.

One thing I have also learned in the twenty years I’ve been running my agency ACM is that the sooner you get familiar and comfortable with these tools, the better. I think Douglas Adams was generally right with his take on our responses to technology, which is why I’m comfortable sharing his peerless line on just this topic yet again.

10 Things is free, and always will be. But pulling it together each week takes more time and obsessive curiosity than is probably healthy.

So if you’d like to chip in without committing to a paid sub, you can now buy me a coffee (or something stronger) right here. Even a couple of quid helps more than you’d think.

And if one person came to mind as you were reading this, send it their way. Nothing helps a newsletter like this more.

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The Anti Blueprint Project

Volume 2, Episode 1 : Emilie Uttrup

I’ll start here with a bit of background. I have wanted to write a second book for 5 years and so finally in Spring I snapped into action I have been doing these interviews as podcasts and videos since then. In truth I have been getting a bit overwhelmed with trying to imagine how this whole second book project comes to life…

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7 days ago · 4 likes · The Anti Blueprint Project

2. Congratulations to my old pal and regular Looking Sideways guest Jon Weaver (aka ) on the launch of his excellent new Anti Blueprint Project podcast series. And not just because he gave me a very kind big-up in the intro to the first episode.

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3. This Guardian piece is the dumbest article on surfing I’ve read this year. Or possibly any year.

Like a geeky Victorian butterfly hunter, I’ve been collecting and mentally cataloguing this type of thing since at least the mid 1990s.

If you told me back then that mainstream newspapers would still be publishing deeply silly stuff like this in the year 2026, I doubt I’d have believed you.

4. One of the most enjoyable creative experiences of my life was working with my friend Andy Wilkins on the collection of songs and half-finished recordings that eventually became the Matt & Boog record ‘Duets’ we released ten years ago now (and which, to my delight, still earns me a tiny sum every year from appearances on various TV shows and adverts).

Andy is one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and he’s just released a brilliant new record which has quite rightly been getting a lot of praise and attention (not least from the great and good of 6 Music). Have a listen above.

5. Another couple of things I greatly enjoyed listening to this week - this brilliant podcast about Staten Island's 1990s attempt to secede from New York, from Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History stable.

6. And this BBC Prog at the Proms gig, featuring Guy Garvey, Jane Weaver, Gruff Rhys, and more.

7. Another week, another piece about what the death of reading means for the fabric of civilisation

8. How tourism swallowed Bali's precarious water supply - and the centuries old cooperative system designed to ensure its fair allocation.

9. One particular internet rabbit hole this week lead me to a fascinating discovery - the trend among killer whales to wear salmon on their heads as fashion accessories. Quick, somebody call the Guardian's fashion desk

10. Among the hecticness: the joy of welcoming old friends to new places, as my oldest friends came to visit us in Normandy.

How is everybody getting on out there?

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1. Showing up is important, part 2. Last week it was Steve Gibson and the Eco-Koozie. This week it's my mate Gav Fernie-Jones, who gave me a generous public shout-out for the help I gave UNPARALD with their messaging ahead of the Winter Paralympics, and on their campaign generally. Merci Gav.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

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2. The hills above the Bozel valley, a place I know and love, have been ablaze this past week. I’ve been chatting to a couple of friends who live in the valley, and their responses neatly encapsulate a debate we’re going to be having more and more in the future.

On the one hand: how did we get here? And what do we do about it?

On the other hand: why don’t the authorities do something about this?

The reason for the latter, in this case, appears to be instructive and alarming: fires like this have apparently become so common across France that this one simply wasn’t a priority. Hard choices - which fires get dealt with, and which are left in the hope that the rain forecast on Friday might sort it - are already here.

(And if you want to learn more about this, I can’t recommend John Vaillant’s magisterial Fire Weather highly enough).

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3. Related: freeride skiing and snowboarding have just been confirmed for the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps, with venues right next door to the - checks notes - currently on-fire Bozel valley.

4. Natural Selection Surf is back, this time in South Africa.

5. New Ken Burns alert! Well, kinda - this week our greatest documentarian was a guest on Empire for a conversation in which he discussed his five decades chronicling American history. I love Ken, and this is great.

6. How predatory end stage capitalism leads to the enshittification of everything, part 1000. This time at the Shitpipes, my erstwhile home break, where the council have flogged the car park to the port authority, who promptly wheeled in one of those notorious predatory parking firms. They immediately ramped the costs up and priced out the community who have done so much to make this unlovely corner of the Sussex coastline a place worth visiting. And so it goes…. sign the petition.

7. In slightly lovelier news, we came back from two months preoccupied with moving house in the UK to find our Normandy garden completely overgrown and a colony of these ridiculously cute little legends moved in (volume up).

8. This week's reading: Andrew Ross Sorkin's 1929. What stands out is the weapons-grade, galaxy-sized hubris of the men who sailed the whole world off a financial cliff.(Black Tuesday, the most calamitous crash in the history of capitalism, which led to the Great Depressions, took place ten days after Lamont, Senior Partner at JP Morgan, and one of the men who had systematically sold stocks to the none professional middle classes, sent President Hoover this fantastical analysis, above).

It also felt very, very familiar: the same bulletproof, consequence-free privilege and arrogance Adam Higginbotham laid bare in Challenger, his brilliant account of the Space Shuttle disaster, and one of my favourite books of last year. And the same grim epilogue: in both stories, the people actually responsible walked away with barely a scratch.

A quick reminder - buy any of my recommendations from my Looking Sideways book store (and plenty of you are doing so!) and you’ll be buying directly from independent UK book stores (which means your money won’t be helping to finance the next ghoulish Bezos-sponsored Met Gala, for one) as well as helping support Looking Sideways (I get a 10% commission) in a really simple and (I humbly propose) righteous way.

Get involved here and you can also join my Chat and share your own reads below. We’re racking ‘em up! Come and join us…

9. (One) of the World Cup-related questions on everybody’s lips this week. The fish openly rotting from the head down, shamelessly broadcast to the world in real time. Thank God the actual football has been up to it.

10. Finally, one of the songs I always find myself returning to as we head into late summer: Jon Redfern's lovely I Love the Sun, a sunlit folk gem in the Nick Drake and John Martyn tradition.

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1. Reflections from a busy fortnight on the road: 1

Sometimes it only takes a window seat on a clear day to remind you anew of the commonplace technological wonder that is modern passenger air travel.

From Milan, we flew down the Aosta Valley, with La Meije standing proud against the skyline to our left. Then directly over Mont Blanc and the Grand Jorasses (above) before crossing Lake Geneva, and then up to the French coastline at Le Havre.

Then, as we banked across the Channel, a view of the entire Sussex coast: from Eastbourne all the way down towards the Isle of Wight, with my old East Sussex stomping ground clearly defined in the foreground, and our new home of Bracklesham Bay just visible in the distance.

Vast swathes of my entire adult life viewed from above, from a perspective we take far too much for granted.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

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2. Reflections from a busy fortnight on the road: 2

The sheer buzzy noisiness of modern life, as more and more fully adult humans deem it acceptable to wander around with their phones on speaker on full blast.

The trucker on the boat scrolling TikTok at deafening volume. The family in the restaurant conducting a raucous FaceTime with overseas clan members. The businessman holding a Zoom call on speaker at the breakfast buffet. The kids on the bus playing music and daring anybody to challenge them.

Technology cocooning us in our own solipsistic bubbles, with zero regard or even interest in the impact on our fellow planet dwellers.

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3. Reflections from a busy fortnight on the road: 3

An atavistic, naturalistic tableau from the front of the 8am Brittany Ferries journey from Portsmouth to Caen: colonies of gannets, fulmars and other seabirds hunting en masse across a huge territory, miles out in the Channel. A beautiful and timeless spectacle completely ignored by everybody else on the boat (yes, they were all glued to their phones).

4. Reflections from a busy fortnight on the road: 4

Don’t get me wrong. My phone has improved my life in many ways. But does Jony Ive lose any sleep when he witnesses with his own eyes and ears this evidence of the fraying social contract his fiendish invention has engendered? (Spoiler alert: does he fook.)

5. A return to Normandy means a return to the caravan, and normal podcasting service returning. In the pipeline: Johno Verity, Christina Koch, Maribou State and more.

6. As I prepare to rev up the podcast engine again, and go through the familiar “does anybody even care?” ritualistic self-abasement that attends the beginning of any creative bout, a welcome reminder from listener Steve Gibson of how far these things travel.

Steve got in touch to tell me how he’d attended my live interview with Yulex’s Jeff Martin and Liz Bui at the Finisterre store in London a year or so back. Afterwards, Steve grabbed Jeff to describe an idea he’d had: using Yulex natural rubber foam to reinvent the traditional neoprene can cooler.

A couple of years, and rather more development than expected, later, Steve’s Eco-Koozie brand - handmade in Lincoln from Yulex foam, recycled polyester and water-based inks, with small numbered runs - is up and running.

Showing up is important. You really never know where it will lead, or what impact it will have. Thanks for the reminder Steve.

7. I love this piece on how Arabic World Cup commentary follows a rich oral tradition of declamatory poetry.

8. Another plug for UN[PARA]LD, the collective with the grandest of visions: “embedding accessibility into the design, culture and infrastructure of the outdoors and sports industry - for every-body, as standard.”

This genuinely innovative initiative needs your support: back the crowdfunder here, and help them deliver their first round of prototypes.

LOOK-UP.WORLD™ by Morwenna

The Pitch Is Broken

Last week, in The Silent Contract, we touched briefly on pitching for free, with the promise that the pitch process would get a full reckoning in this week’s article. This is that reckoning…

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a month ago · 11 likes · 4 comments · LOOK-UP.WORLD™ by Morwenna

9. Long-term Insights followers will be aware of my disdain for the sheer number of conventions in agency and marketing land that everyone quietly accepts, and almost nobody actually challenges (those clowns holding small mics against cut-out backdrops while proffering shonky brand marketing insights are a recent classic example of this).

And free pitching (or, even worse, free “gold/silver/bronze” bet-hedging pitching) is right up there, and it really shouldn’t take a seven-part investigative series to say what really should be quite obvious: pay for the work, or don’t ask for it.

10. This week's reading: Andrew Ross Sorkin's 1929, the Billions writer's pacy account of the OG Wall Street Crash. If you believe in the lifecycles of history, we should have another one coming down the pipe any minute now. And you know what the last one led to...

A quick reminder - buy any of my recommendations from my Looking Sideways book store (and plenty of you are doing so!) and you’ll be buying directly from independent UK book stores (which means your money won’t be helping to finance the next ghoulish Bezos-sponsored Met Gala, for one) as well as helping support Looking Sideways (I get a 10% commission) in a really simple and (I humbly propose) righteous way.

Get involved here and you can also join my Chat and share your own reads below. We’re racking ‘em up! Come and join us…

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1. We moved to Bracklesham Bay! It's been a long time coming (and explains why I’ve taken a two-month sabbatical from wider Looking Sideways activities) But we are looking forward to getting to know our new home after so long in Brighton.

On that note - big up listener and subscriber Sam Evans for the message - normal service will be resumed soon!

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

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2. There’s still time to enter the Dacia Bucket List Fund, the brilliant new competition I’m running through my agency ACM. In case you missed it last week, it’s simple.

Apply, tell us about your dream trip and if we like your idea we’ll lend you a car AND award you up to £5000 to make that pipe dream a reality.

Maybe there’s a family trip you’ve wanted to do for years. An adventure that’s been nagging away. A corner of Europe you’ve always had a hankering to enjoy. Whatever it is, we want to hear about it. Apply here.

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3. On topic - I’m heading to Milan with Dacia next week for the launch of their new Striker motor.

I’ve never been to the city before - what should I do? Where should I go? Where should I eat? What’s the one thing I absolutely have to do? And how do I cope when the forecast is 35 degrees in the shade?

Italianate gang - let me know in the comments.

4. Humans famously have real difficulty conceptualising the exact magnitude of concepts such as a billion or a trillion. Which is why this new What's Elon Worth? wealth tracker is a) a handy way of getting your head around the obscenity of it all and b) a remarkable indictment of late stage capitalism in action.

Grumbach Wealth Common Ownership

399KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

5. A useful companion to the above: just why are these rich-as-Croesus oligarchs buying up legacy media companies and running them into the ground at a loss? Why did Musk buy Twitter? Why did Bezos buy the Washington Post? Why did Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz pour money into right-wing media?

Berkeley political scientist Matthew Grumbach’s recent paper (above) provides one answer. Extreme wealth concentration isn't just an economic problem - it's a political one. Media ownership is political power. And once concentrated wealth has captured democratic politics, as these clowns have, you can no longer use democratic politics to fix it. Bleak stuff indeed.

6. With Andy Burnham confirmed as the sole candidate to replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader - and, in all likelihood, prime minister - now is a good moment to read the Manchester Mill's forensic, sceptical look at what "Burnhamism" actually amounts to after six years in power. Verdict: not as much as the hype suggests. Essential reading.

7. Pharrell's surf-themed menswear show for Louis Vuitton has been caned for the environmental impact. But what did surf industry leaders think about a fashion house co-opting surfing's iconography on such a scale?

8. Now reading: Hilary Mantel’s French Revolution epic A Place of Greater Safety, which follows Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins from ambitious young lawyers to architects of the Terror, and is a proper door-stopper.

It’s heresy to admit this, but I really didn’t get on with Wolf Hall. So I’m enjoying this riveting read immensely (and with something of a sigh of relief).

A quick reminder - buy any of my recommendations from my Looking Sideways book store (and plenty of you are doing so!) and you’ll be buying directly from independent UK book stores (which means your money won’t be helping to finance the next ghoulish Bezos-sponsored Met Gala, for one) as well as helping support Looking Sideways (I get a 10% commission) in a really simple and (I humbly propose) righteous way.

Get involved here and you can also join my Chat and share your own reads below. We’re racking ‘em up! Come and join us…

9. This beautiful, harrowing account of the life and death of Annabel Rook - who was murdered by her partner last year - by her friend Catherine Milne is a really important read. Her disbelief and righteous fury fairly leaps off the page. I haven't stopped thinking about it all week.

10. The news that Johnny Marr is auctioning nearly 100 guitars at Christie’s this September - including the 1971 Martin D-28 he used to write Cemetry Gates - sent me straight to Spotify for another listen to my favourite Smiths song.

One of the many reasons I love The Smiths so much, and consider them to be Manchester’s greatest ever band, is because of how precisely they captured what it meant to grow up in the city of my youth in the 1980s.

And Cemetry Gates, evoking as it does a very particular South Manchester experience and location, at a very particular moment in time, in three beautiful, sunny minutes, is a brilliant example of their economical genius.

It also got me thinking: what’s your favourite unlikely summertime banger? The one that evokes something in you?

Cemetry Gates is mine. What’s yours? Let me know in the comments.

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1. I’m moving house, so my life is currently a chaotic pile of boxes and frenzied calls to solicitors and estate agents. Still, going through a lifetime of belongings does throw up the odd gem.

Such as: seeing The Verve on the cusp of A Northern Soul, and still playing A Storm in Heaven, for six quid in a tiny room at Manchester Uni. As the true heads know, they were untouchable at this point, before old Mad Richard dragged ‘em right down the middle of the road.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

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2. I don’t often talk about my work with my agency on here, but I’m breaking that particular fourth wall with news of a campaign that’s too good not to share with the LS faithful.

It’s the Bucket List Fund we have just launched with our friends at Dacia.

Apply, tell us about your dream trip and if we like your idea we’ll lend you a car AND award you up to £5000 to make that pipe dream a reality.

Maybe there’s a family trip you’ve wanted to do for years. An adventure that’s been nagging away. A corner of the British Isles you’ve always had a hankering to enjoy. Whatever it is, we want to hear about it.

One of the great joys of my work at ACM is coming up with ideas that help everybody experience the incredible privileged life of travel and adventure I’ve been luck enough to enjoy over the years.

That’s the thinking behind this one, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what ideas people have. Apply here.

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3. Seeing my old pal and bezzie Johno Verity ascend to ever more deified Instagram influencer status has been brilliant fun.

And I had a small hand in his latest bit, as he explained in this video above. Johno is coming on the podcast later this year and I'm really looking forward to spending a couple of hours reminiscing about our three decades of friendship, and this mad new chapter of his life.

4. Yep. I am slowly coming out of my little podcast break and planning some new episodes for this summer and beyond.

Up soon (well, hopefully): none other than Jack Johnson, after his ‘people’ got in touch to see if I was up for speaking to him on the occasion of the release of SURFILMUSIC - Emmett Malloy’s documentary tracing Johnson’s journey from surfer to filmmaker to musician. Watch the trailer above.

5. Also in the offing - a long-awaited conversation with the great , about his very singular career as a writer and adventurer, and the release of his new book Unwilded.

Luscious Jackson’s Substack

When I was a Beastie Boy

TIER 3 & JOHN BERRY’S WOODEN HOUSE— WHERE IT ALL BEGAN…

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a year ago · 378 likes · 32 comments · LUSCIOUS JACKSON

6. The best thing I read on Substack this week: Kate Schellenbach of 's brilliant recollections of her experiences as a founding member of the Beastie Boys. Substack is so good for this stuff.

Dispatches From the Fringe

Boys Do Cry: Revisiting “Spiderland,” the Album that Helped Create Post-Rock

In 1992, as I toured the country in a drafty van, Spiderland was everywhere…

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2 months ago · 12 likes · 15 comments · Seth Lorinczi

7. The second best thing I read on Substack this week, also on the 90s music tip (clearly something of a theme this week): a piece on Slint's epochal, unclassifiable early 90s classic Spiderland, a record that absolutely changed my life (and that I still listen to this day).

Any other Slint heads out there? Let's hear ya.

8. This week's read - White Bicycles, Joe Boyd's lovely, easy memoir about his life as Swinging London’s promoter du jour, and the producer of Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, John Martyn and more.

9. Do these loathsome World Cup 'hydration breaks' signify the final Americanisation of our beloved game? (The answer is yes)

10. Finally, a very timely reminder, via . (Yes, even on here, in this supposedly fluffy corner of the internet).

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1. “For most of my life, the Southbank Centre has been the villain: casting stones, turning out the lights, building barriers, incrementally taking the space away, attempting to relocate it entirely, and then taking money off the community in order to ‘give’ the space back to them.”

When Wig Worland - one UK skateboarding’s most influential figures - posted recently about this decision to have nothing to do with the Southbank Centre’s Skate 50 exhibition, I was intrigued. Especially in the questions it raised about who was telling that version of the story, and why.

His full account is my latest Looking Sideways Opinion piece, and the issues he raises are important and prompt consideration of a wider question, especially when it comes to a subcultures like skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding: who gets to tell the stories that shape our history?

This question really has been at the heart of my entire career - read it above.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

And if you just want to pass it on to somebody who might enjoy it? Hit the button below:

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2. I was 50 this week, and my family and friends clubbed together to buy me a new surfboard. Lovely, right?

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3. My book stack also went through the roof - here’s the latest. What’s on yours?

4. Barney Ronay, as ever, absolutely nails the World Cup’s ghastly sweet spot at the nexus of brutal global geopolitical reality, end-stage capitalism on steroids, and the hijacking of sporting spectacle as the ultimate expression of nation-state soft power. (Yes, I will still be watching it.)

Rutger Bregman

An Inconvenient Truth About AI

Hey everyone! I don’t say this often, but I think this is the most important thing I’ve published in quite some time. Watch it as a video essay or read it below. I think we're sleepwalking through the most important shift of our lifetimes, and the people who should be sounding the alarm are looking the other way. If you agree, please share it widely…

Read more

2 months ago · 770 likes · 181 comments · Rutger Bregman

5. Rutger Bregman’s contribution to the ‘AI is the new industrial revolution’ debate has been ruffling feathers on here.

6. For some reason (well, I am 50 now) the algorithm keeps serving me clips of Glen Campbell playing this Jerry Reed song on various UK chat shows. I guess it’s the 80s version of guests repeating the same anecdotes on various podcasts. But when it sounds this good, frankly, who cares?

7. Ok this is definitely my final contribution to Pattie Gonia/Patagonia debate. (You can have a listen to our 2020 conversation below, and draw your own conclusions)

8. Willa Cather’s My Antonia is the most beautiful short novel I can remember reading. It brought to mind A Month in the Country if it was set on a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century prairie farm. Highly recommended if you’re looking for a gentle way back into the joys of reading

9. The release of Inferno has seen Boards of Canada hype at fever pitch. If you don’t know this most influential of groups, this DJ Mag guide is your starting point.

10. And here’s what I’ve had on repeat since the record came out.

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(Intro by Matt)

Who gets to tell the stories that shape our history? Looking back, this question has been the defining one of my weird little career in action sports journalism. It goes back to the era in which I grew up, the 80s and 90s, when these pursuits were genuine subcultures, and participating in them and caring about them was a way of defining your life and your own values.

That state of play never remains constant, of course: age, the passage of time, and the ongoing evolution of cultural trends see to that. But it remains a question worth asking, especially when it comes to skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding, which have always attracted outside interests keen to borrow their credibility without really understanding (or caring about) the impact this borrowing inflicts on the lender.

This is why I’ve been fascinated by the story of snowboarding in the Olympics for the best part of 20 years, and why I recorded a three-part special on snowboarding’s relationship with the Olympics earlier this year, including this relevant discussion with Lesley McKenna:

And it’s why, more recently, when legendary skate photographer Wig Worland posted an Instagram thread about his issues with the current exhibition at the Southbank Centre, celebrating 50 years of skateboarding in the undercroft, I was immediately interested. Not just in the exhibition, but in the questions it raised about who was telling that story, and why.

Personally, I go back a long way with Wig. We first met in the late 1990s, when I was running Whitelines snowboarding magazine with Ed Leigh, Chris Moran, Chod Thomas and Nick Hamilton. We’d loosely hang out when I was in Abingdon working on the magazine, or at Permanent Publishing’s legendarily messy Christmas parties.

To be honest, I was always slightly intimidated by Wig and the rest of the Sidewalk lads. I had the feeling they thought us ‘snowboarding goons’ (to use Andy Horsley’s memorable coinage) were a bit wet. But as the years have passed, that shared history has become the basis of a mutual respect and friendship.

And at this point, Wig is one of the most important and influential figures in UK skate history (as much as he would hate to be described as such). That’s why I’ve interviewed him for Looking Sideways twice (that’s our latest conversation below), and which is why when he takes the time to opine about something like the Southbank exhibition, he is very much worth listening to.

There will always be detractors to the counterpoint Wig puts forward here, the ‘old man shaking his fist at clouds’ trope. I get it. And as Henry Edwards-Wood (one of the originals behind Long Live South Bank) put it to Wig, in a conversation around these issues that informed the piece you’re about to read, ‘tomorrow some kid will roll into the undercroft and begin a skateboard adventure I’ll never know about. One of a million threads the place itself has created’.

But these are questions worth asking precisely because of that kid. Because a story as sophisticated, nuanced and important as the history of skateboarding at Southbank deserves to be told honestly, even if that involves reckoning with some uncomfortable perspectives.

That’s really the entire ethos behind what I do with Looking Sideways. To encourage consideration of that simple question: who gets to tell the stories that shape our history?

It’s the spirit in which I publish this piece. And that’s the spirit in which I invite you to read it.

Over to Wig:

In the summer of 2026, the Southbank Centre celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, the event that brought most of the Centre’s buildings into being. Alongside this, they also wanted to mark the 50th year of the undercroft, or ‘Skate Space,’ as they now prefer to call it.

After much consideration, I decided I’d have nothing to do with the exhibition itself. Not because the ‘Skate Space’ meant nothing to me, but because this was the same Southbank Centre that had spent most of the previous 50 years trying, in various ways, to shut the space down.

For most of my life, the Southbank Centre has been the villain: casting stones, turning out the lights, building barriers, incrementally taking the space away, attempting to relocate it entirely, and then taking money off the community in order to ‘give’ the space back to them. I couldn’t let them use my work to celebrate their relationship with skateboarding without some serious questions being asked about the reality of this history as I and others experienced it.

So here, in an exhibition space on the World Wide Web with our own audience, is my story, my timeline of Southbank history. (And no, I will not be referring to it as anything other than that from now on).

In the mid-to-late 1980s, when I first encountered the Southbank, yes, on my skateboard, with friends (both hard to imagine these days), not only were the lights switched off in the undercroft at night, but staff from the Centre would regularly throw stones across the floor to stop the skateboarding. It was lo-fi, but pretty effective.

When the skateboard problem persisted into the early 1990s (around the time Gonz visited with Spike Jonze while filming Video Days, above) the Southbank Centre erected barriers at the bottom of the small banks (see pictures) and at the bottom of the bank-to-wall.

The ‘Driveway’ had pebbles concreted onto it, and the paving slabs at the back of the undercroft had lines jackhammered into them.

Some skateboarders with enough ability (like Carl Shipman, above) showed their creativity by treating these new additions as skateable objects. But would any of this behaviour be considered inclusive or worth ‘celebrating’ today? I have my doubts.

This period was my most active documenting the (skateboard) culture at Southbank, as I was a full-time photographer for a monthly magazine. Back then, extra lighting was essential in dark environments like the undercroft, and I would regularly be hassled by security, less for the photography than for the lighting stands themselves. Odd-looking electronic devices in unusual positions in a public place, I suppose. But at the time it felt like harassment, and looking back, it feels like the deliberate prevention of the cultural documentation that the current exhibition seeks to celebrate. So there!

In 2004, the Southbank Centre closed off large sections of the undercroft, giving reassurance that the closure was temporary. At the same time, the first ‘skateable sculptures’ were installed.

By 2006, the Centre had begun removing significant parts of the original site. Most of the riverside walkways in front of the Royal Festival Hall were removed, and the ‘bank-to-wall’, a significant part of the skateboard legacy of Southbank, was demolished. All of this happened without any consultation with the users of the space, who were of course predominantly skateboarders, and who had zero say in the significant decisions the Southbank Centre were making on their behalf.

Until - well, we all know what comes next.

In 2013, the Southbank Centre sought to close the undercroft completely and replace it with a dedicated ‘Skate Space’ under the south end of Hungerford Bridge. This idea had some high-profile support, especially from some areas of the arts, including none other than Billy Bragg.

Who, it seems, was under the misguided impression that, after evicting the skate community from very scene it had created, the undercroft would be transformed into rehearsal spaces for artists, performers, and musicians. Vain hope is quite the look. Because we all know what they really wanted to do with the space - and what arts organisation wouldn’t want to swap its cultural heritage for some income from another fast-food restaurant?

The history of LLSB (Long Live Southbank) is very well documented elsewhere (not least in this episode I recorded in 2018 - Matt), so I don’t need to get too into it here. Suffice to say, a great deal of good work was done by some very well-meaning people to save the space, and I’ll take this opportunity to congratulate them once again, right here.

But let’s not forget that the final word actually went to the one of the most polarising political figures of the last twenty years: Boris Johnson. A political opportunist he may be, but the reality is that the skateboard community has LLSB to thank for forcing the former Mayor of London off the fence long enough to make the right decision.

What happened next remains somewhat murky. At the end of the twenty-teens, the Southbank Centre, in my opinion, saw an opportunity to mobilise the wider skateboarding community into paying for the renovation of the back of the undercroft, a space that had been promised back to them in 2004. I recognise I might not be the best person to judge quite what the £790,000 apparently raised by the subsequent crowdfunder might have eventually bought in 2018/2019, when the space reopened. But I’m left feeling suspicious.

Yes, a section of the undercroft reopened in 2019, including much of what would have been called the ‘small banks’. Yet the final section, furthest from the river, which was retained by the Southbank Centre with the supposed intention of turning it into a ‘young people’s centre’ was, in 2024, still being used as a storeroom. Right up until the opening of the current skateboard exhibition.

In 2026, a further development saw the entire site, from the Royal Festival Hall all the way to the Hayward Gallery, become subject to Grade II listing, despite the best efforts of the buildings’ owners (the Southbank Centre), who would presumably have preferred to carry on modifying it with impunity. Plenty of damage had already been done. At least, from 2026, nothing more can be.

So with all that context in mind, why did I choose to stay away from the exhibition?

From late 2024 I had several meetings with Cedar Lewisohn, the exhibition’s curator, and my reservations were, to be fair, taken seriously - to begin with, at least.

I asked that the exhibition address the history I have outlined here as honestly as possible, and perhaps allow the Southbank Centre to express some contrition. Instead, as seen in recent coverage in Huck Magazine, it feels like they instead wanted to focus on celebrating their own role, portraying themselves as something they are not, and absolving themselves of responsibility in the process. I guess radical thinking doesn’t appeal to everyone.

I still feel the exhibition could and should have been used to address the last 50 years honestly, apologise for it, and look toward the future. I know I’m not alone in that view; the comments section of the Instagram post where this essay first appeared made that very clear.

And yet.

I’m trying my best not to be too affronted by it all, because as Henry Edwards-Wood of Long Live Southbank recently reminded me:

“Tomorrow some kid will roll into the undercroft and begin a skateboard adventure we’ll never know about. One of a million threads the place itself has created.”

In the meantime, now that the undercroft’s transformation into a skatepark, complete with de rigueur graffiti, is finished, there’s nothing an architectural absolutist, a free-movement fundamentalist (if you will) like myself can do other than write a short essay, express my own opinions, and remain on the sidelines whispering my truth into the wind.

When I pass by the space, I look for some of the characters I follow in my social feed and try to say hi, but I’m no longer the demographic the space should be attracting. It’s fine. I get it. I’ll take my opinions elsewhere. But I still think it’s better to have an actual opinion than not.

Anyone who knows me knows I’d do anything for the wider skateboarding community, and I don’t have a problem with anyone who wants to use the space at the Southbank. I still support it, and I love that there’s a place in central London where you can ride a skateboard for free.

Just don’t ask me to support the Southbank Centre themselves. They rarely did the right thing and were pretty much always the enemy. But let’s see what the next 50 years bring.

If it all goes well, I’ll maybe support the next exhibition.

“We do not feel that the communal value of this aspect of the site has been fully appreciated by the Southbank Centre.” — 20th Century Society

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1. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have sent me links to the Patagonia x Pattie Gonia story this week. And my LinkedIn and Instagram feeds have been ablaze this week with outraged people asking “What did ‘Earth is our only shareholder’ even mean!?”

If you’re interested in actually finding out the answer to that question, you’re in luck: last year I made a three-part podcast series called The Announcement in which I tried to get to the bottom of the whole story, and which none other than the great sustainability pioneer John Elkington praised as “capturing the thinking on the future of evolutionary paths of business, markets and capitalism”

Listen above, although fair warning: it might involve you engaging in some critical thinking, rather than jumping to binary conclusions based on whatever you’ve read online that day. (Not very fashionable these days, I grant you).

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

And if you just want to pass it on to somebody who might enjoy it? Hit the button below:

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2. One of the really interesting things about releasing my The Announcement (apart from the number of people whose work I’ve actively supported through Looking Sideways not returning my calls, especially if they had a relationship with Patagonia) was the surprising number of listeners who questioned why I’d gone so deep on such an esoteric topic, saying things like ‘Well, now I know more than I’ll ever need to about what a 501(c)(4) is!’

Which, I must say, surprised me: given that for me the point of creative work has always been to follow the threads of your own curiosity, see where they lead, and, all going well, end up with a piece of work you can be proud of, whatever form that takes.

So it was really gratifying this week to listen to Conan O’Brien on the 99% Invisible podcast, discussing Robert Caro’s work on The Power Broker, and to hear him talk about this as being one of the exact reasons why he admires Caro so much: the idea that undertaking vast pieces of work for their own sake is reason enough.

I also found the point that, in writing The Power Broker, Caro had deliberately eschewed the New Journalism style - which I hadn’t actually clocked while reading it, but which now strikes me as one reason why the book is so authoritative.

More simple ways to support Looking Sideways - use any of these codes and I’ll get a small commission 🫡

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3. On topic: I’m three weeks and 1000 pages into The Power Broker, which as I predicted is one of the most memorable reading experiences I can remember.

And Robert Moses has finally - finally! - been clocked as a total wrong ‘un. I must say, it’s a pretty satisfying moment. Calling this book ‘encyclopaedic’ really doesn’t do it justice.

4. I’ve been raving about Becky Coley’s brilliant Nias documentary Point of Change for months now, and it is available to stream free online for the next 48 hours! Watch it here and the trailer above.

5. Back in 2020-2021 I was heavily involved in helping to establish the organisation that eventually became Opening Up The Outdoors, the non-profit initiative founded in 2021 to support the progression of continued inclusion within outdoor spaces.

So I was really interested to read my pal (and OUTO founder) Phil Young’s reflections on that last five years for Huck Magazine.

6. Rest in peace Marc Johnson. What a loss.

7. Closer to winter I’ll be recording an episode of Looking Sideways with my friends and colleagues Jen Sherowski and Tricia Byrnes in which we’ll discuss their brilliant Going Off snowboarding history podcast. In the meantime, they were just guests on Trevor Graves’ Co-Pro show.

8. Is Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas document the most significant intervention yet in the debate around the ethics of AI?

9. As long term Looking Sideways watchers will know, my friend and mentor Chris Hines has been one of the most important voices in UK ocean activism for at least thirty years, and his forthcoming event with Rising Tide looks like a brilliant opportunity to glean some insights from one of the most influential voices in the game.

WALTER MARTIN RADIO

Episode 79: John Lennon's Jukebox, Pt. 1

Episode 79: John Lennon’s Jukebox, Pt. 1…

Listen now

2 months ago · 1 like · Walter Martin

10. Finally, if you don’t subscribe to Radio then really, what are you doing? It’s one of my only paid subscriptions on here and improves my life every week. Walt’s none-more-geeky Beatles season, which has been running for weeks now, is a brilliant place to start.

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1. Every now and again, I realise I’m in a bit of creative fallow period.

It usually happens, almost imperceptibly, every 12 to 18 months or so. I can tell because I find myself unable or unwilling to sustain the juggle that usually enables me to put out regular work across many different fronts (in my case: running my agency ; producing, researching, writing, presenting, distributing and marketing regular episodes of my podcast Looking Sideways; this Substack and my weekly 10 Things emails; various other bits like public speaking, panel hosting, books, journalism, mentoring, working in different advisory capacities, and so on). It’s also usually when I delete Instagram for a bit, which I also did this week.

Over the years I’ve learned not to worry about it, and just accept I should do less for a while. (Which isn’t easy when your self worth has been always been predicated on how hard you work creatively. But anyway…)

Because another thing I’ve realised over the years is that I operate on a weird and lengthy feast-or-famine rhythm. There isn’t really much of an in-between. It took me a long time to understand this, but doing so was useful for my sanity.

Plus, these periods are usually a good chance to ask myself a few necessary questions - do I still enjoy this? Is anybody else still enjoying this? Is it worth the work and effort? Should I put these energies somewhere different?

In May 2026, a couple of weeks before my 50th birthday (June 8th in case you’re asking; and yes I am milking it for all its worth), this is where I find myself once again. So I’ve decided to pause paid subscriptions on Looking Sideways for a couple of months, in order that I can ask myself these questions without feeling any pressure to keep feeding the content machine every week.

If you are a paid subscriber - firstly, thank you so much for supporting what I do in this weird little corner of the internet. It never ceases to humble me when people back my vision of an ad-and-algorithm free media platform that is entirely driven by my own curiosity (and, increasingly, the lovely little community that has developed as a result) with their own money. It’s been one of the best thing about my extremely random creative career, and I never take it for granted.

Secondly, you don’t actually have to do anything. All it means is that your existing subscription will pause for two months, and then pick up again.

In the meantime, everybody, whether free or paid subscriber, will continue to be able to access my frankly enormous archive of Looking Sideways … stuff.

I’ve pulled a few favourite bits you might want to check out below, but if you’re jonesing (lol the 90s) for a regular Looking Sideways fix in the meantime, there are 300 episodes of the podcast and hundreds of articles to dig into.

Alright, thanks for reading. On with the usual 10 Things show….

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

And if you just want to pass it on to somebody who might enjoy it? Hit the button below:

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2. Tom Holland got a great interview out of Uncle Paul in this Rest is History special.

More simple ways to support Looking Sideways - use any of these codes and I’ll get a small commission 🫡

FINISIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre

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LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for a whopping 20% off anything from Goodrays.

3. The best thing I’ve discovered on this thing called ‘the internet’ for quite some time - The Nightly, a chat and ad-free radio station playing nothing but ‘sad old songs’. I’ve listened to nothing else for the last week or so.

Well Good Blog

‘Small Treats’ Culture

There’s a lad in front of me in Greggs buying a butty, sausage roll, a steak bake and one of them iced coffees that tastes vaguely of cheap birthday cake icing. It’s 8:15 in the morning on a Tuesday and he looks absolutely shattered. A lady brushes shoulders with him by accident and he doesn’t even acknowledge it…

Read more

3 months ago · 340 likes · 50 comments · Well Good Blog

4. Among the Substack dross, there is some genuinely original writing. And there’s nobody writing about British food culture in quite the same way as the lad behind . Highly recommended.

DAS Z LETTER — Running, Culture & Self

The Satisfy x Adidas Subculture Heist

A lot has already been said about The Circle Pit, the Satisfy and Adidas brand activation and shoe collab launch. If you want to dig deeper here is a selection of excellent articles by some of my much-respected fellow running writers…

Read more

2 months ago · 17 likes · 4 comments · Chris Z

5. One of the questions we ask potential new starters at my agency All Conditions Media is ‘what’s the one link you’d share with the rest of the team this week?’ And this week, one story has dominated the virtual ACM bush telegraph - the adidas x Satisfy ‘Pit Circle’ brouhaha.

If you’re a) not terminally online or b) don’t work in marketing or running circles, you’re probably blissfully unaware of this story. But as ever, stories like this, to paraphrase Barney Ronay, are always ‘trying to tell us something’, which is why I’ve found it quite fascinating.

Click the link above for a decent overview and round-up.

6. My copy of Elsewhere, Neil McDonald’s history of British skateboarding, just arrived and I’m a little lost for words tbh. I interviewed Neil four years ago when he was at the beginning of his project (listen below) so it’s brilliant to see him accomplish what is effectively a life’s work in such triumphant fashion.

He’s coming on again in a few weeks to discuss the book - watch this space.

7. On topic - my pal and long term Looking Sideways supporter Ben Luxford has co-programmed, Push Play, a new season celebrating skate culture on film at the BFI which takes place next month. Expect the UK premiere of French drama Ollie, Blondey presenting Kind Hearts and Coronets, a celebration of 25 years of Dogtown and Z Boys, Spike Jonze live in conversation, and much more.

8. New podcast alert! UK skate legend Lucy Adams just launched her new Fortune Favours The Babes show - listen to the first episode with Kaitlyn Massey, above.

9. To mark 30 years since the publication of Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer has been doing a media round during which he’s been discussing the impact of this most influential of nonfiction works.

10. Thanks to Chris Hines and Julie Maughan for sharing details of the new For Heather website. Buy a t-shirt to support the cause - all proceeds go to Kidney Research UK.

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If you work in the creative industries and have logged into LinkedIn at any point in the last few years, you’ve probably heard of Jolyon Varley.

One of that platform’s most visible figures, and co-founder of OK COOL, arguably the world’s highest-profile social agency, Jolyon has carved out a unique career at the intersection of tech, culture and creativity.

So when I found myself sitting next to him for dinner on the first night of last year’s Kendal Mountain Festival, where we were both scheduled to speak at the following day’s Outdoor Connections event (Kendal’s first attempt at a B2B summit; read my thoughts on that event below), I was intrigued, and curious to meet someone who’d been so visibly successful in my own industry.

We hit it off immediately. And as I watched him at work, especially during his Outdoor Connections panel, I realised Jolyon’s mastery of communicating ideas around tech, culture, and the way they influence each other, wasn’t limited to LinkedIn.

Over the next couple of days, as the festival progressed, we grabbed the odd beer and conversation, including one late-night chat at the Arc’teryx after party, where Jolyon hinted he had some big news coming.

A few weeks later, the news broke. The agency he co-founded with Liz Stone, OK COOL, was being acquired by US giant Residence. It’s the kind of move almost every agency owner aspires to, though few manage to pull it off on their own terms.

Once things had calmed down, I messaged Jolyon to ask if he’d be up for sharing some lessons from his singular and rapid career with my Insights community.

That’s what you’re about to read. There’s plenty in here worth considering when it comes to your own creative and working life. Let me know what you think.

Insights is the Looking Sideways section, exclusively for my paid subscribing community.

It’s an absolute treasure trove of the - well - insights and wisdom imparted by over 250 Looking Sideways guests; as well as from the 25 plus years I’ve been making a living as a journalist, author, podcaster, business owner, mentor and speaker.

It’s where you’ll find exclusive blogs, podcasts, video chats, guest posts and articles all geared towards answering that two fundamental questions:

• How can I spend more time doing the things I’m passionate about?

• What does a ‘successful’ creative life actually look like?

Here are a few recent Insights articles to whet your appetite:

1. I don’t know much about anything. But I trust my taste

Most of my best decisions arrive quickly and intuitively, from the heart.

My friend once said that when you are wondering whether to trust your brain or your heart, remember that one is the most sophisticated organ in the known universe, and the other is a pump.

Cool. But I’m still going with the pump.

2. The world wants you to conform. Don’t let it

Society has a quiet way of sanding people down. Stand out too much, and you’ll feel it.

I’ve met a lot of flamboyant characters in my life. They’re easy to criticise because eccentricity tends to announce itself.

Big characters can be triggering. But I think it’s less about their behaviour and more about what they reflect back: how free we might feel if we cared less about what others thought.

I used to find these people intimidating. Now, I try to absorb their confidence.

“The less I temper my own energy, enthusiasm and idiosyncrasies, the happier and more aligned I feel. Authenticity is a colossally overused word - but perhaps one of life’s great challenges is to step, fully and unashamedly, into one’s own character”.

Lean into your weird. Find your people. They’ll love you for it, not in spite of it.

3. Who not how

In Who Not How, Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy argue that the key to achieving bigger goals isn’t figuring out how to do everything yourself, but identifying the right who - the person or people who can do it for you.

“The premise is that high achievers waste time and energy trying to learn and execute every task themselves, when delegating to specialists frees them to focus on their highest-value work and unlocks exponentially better results”.

Will Smith once said something to the effect of: “I’m world-class at only a couple of things. And every hour I’m not doing those things, I am doing a disservice to myself and the world.”

I think The Fresh Prince was onto something.

Never outsource what you enjoy. For everything else: WHO not HOW*

*Sadly, this lofty protocol does not apply to domestic drudgery like the washing up.

4. Make your career the thing you love

At 15, I thought all the subcultures my friends and I were into were the coolest things in the world. Skateboarding, graffiti, hip hop, punk, streetwear, DIY publishing...

“What I didn’t have was the conviction, confidence or experience to realise that my taste and fluency in those scenes was the exact currency the world’s most culture-defining brands were buying”.

So I tried a bunch of other stuff: only to come back to those same things, 15 years later.

Happiness, I think, is solving problems you actually care about.

It looks like work to them. It feels like play to me.

5. The secret is not to find the meaning of life, but to use your life to make things that are meaningful to you.

When I look back over my career, some of my most fulfilling creative achievements have been the most frivolous. The ‘inconsequential’ stuff.

Club nights. Zines. Art shows. Things made with friends, or on a shoestring, rather than for big brands, big budgets or big returns.

The Swedish fashion brand Our Legacy has a sign one of their shop doors that reads: “Is one thing better than another?”

A tantalisingly stark proposition.

“There is no win. There is no fail. There is only make.

So, what are you making today?”

Enjoy the Insights piece? Anything resonate? Let me know using the button below!

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A quick reminder - buy any of my recommendations from my Looking Sideways book store (and plenty of you are doing so!) and you’ll be buying directly from independent UK book stores (which means your money won’t be helping to finance the next ghoulish Bezos-sponsored Met Gala, for one) as well as helping support Looking Sideways (I get a 10% commission) in a really simple and (I humbly propose) righteous way.

Get involved here and you can also join my Chat and share your own reads below. We’re racking ‘em up! Come and join us…

1. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert A. Caro

In the years I’ve been recommending books to Looking Sideways listeners and readers, I’d like to think I have a pretty solid hit rate. There has been, however, one controversy, and it came as a result of my August 2022 conversation with the great skateboarding filmmaker and entrepreneur Stacy Peralta:

Stacy was in town to promote his Patagonia-backed documentary The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez, and the interview took place, in classic junket style, in the East London hotel room that was his home for the duration of his stay.

These things are always a little awkward, and as long-term listeners will recognise, I’m always searching for some common ground or shared interest to bridge the gap that exists between interviewer and subject - especially with an old hand like Peralta, who has been asked the same questions countless thousands of times.

Early in the conversation, I clocked Stacy as a classic autodidact: somebody in love with creativity and learning for their own sake, who had obviously spent his life happily following the threads of his own curiosity, wherever they happened to lead.

That’s also the trait of the voracious reader. So towards the end of our chat I asked him to recommend a recent favourite book.

It’s the type of question I’d usually reject as too cringingly on-the-nose, but I was genuinely interested, and hoped it would prompt a fellow book geek to share his latest passion (as anybody who follows me on Instagram will know, we need little excuse):

Anyway, if you’ve listened to the episode, you’ll probably remember the delight in my voice when Stacy responded by extolling the virtues of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer’s legendary history of the Nazi party.

As it happens, I’ve read this classic of post-war non-fiction twice - and I’d finished my second reading mere weeks before our meeting.

So it was that the two of us spent the last ten minutes of the conversation merrily exchanging notes on this most pleasurable of reading experiences, and swapping other book recommendations. (Think what you will about Looking Sideways, but you sure don’t get that with The Bombhole or The Nine Club.)

I published the episode (which, as you might expect, attracted a large listenership) and thought little of it. That is, until I began to receive messages from listeners who’d bought their own copy of Shirer’s classic and were, shall we say, REALLY not enjoying it. (Four years later, I’m still receiving them.)

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying: if you didn’t enjoy The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich, you are unlikely to enjoy The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s 1,110-page biography of New York civil servant Robert Moses, which so far is the best book I’ve read in 2026 (or rather, am reading - 800 pages in, I already know it’s the winner thus far).

Of course, describing this magisterial (I’m almost embarrassed to use such an obvious adjective, but really, what else is there?) non-fiction opus merely as the biography of a New York civil servant is, to paraphrase an erstwhile review of Looking Sideways itself, “a little like describing Moby Dick as ‘just’ a book about a load of men chasing a whale in a boat.”

Because The Power Broker is much, much more than that. It’s a social history of American immigration. A gripping, labyrinthine examination of New York politics. A sprawling account of New York the modern city, and the violence upon which it was founded. A clear-eyed history of endemic, institutional, cross-generational racism. And a generation-spanning soap opera that more than earns the comparisons with Tolstoy or Steinbeck.

It is also, as the subtitle suggests, a history of power - specifically its execution, and how it corrupts even the seemingly incorruptible. Little wonder no less an authority than Barack Obama says it “shaped how I think about politics.”

Above all, though, it’s one of the most pleasurable reading experiences I’ve had in as long as I can remember, thanks to Caro’s masterly style and his remarkable ability to marshal these seemingly infinite themes into a satisfying, coherent and authoritative whole.

Does this mean I’ll be inspired to follow it with Caro’s multi-volume (!) history of Lyndon Baines Johnson, which online Caro stans (yes, they very much exist) assure me is even better? Frankly, I’m a little scared. But never say never.

(And yes, I have recommended this book to Stacy Peralta.)

More here.

2. Wild Thing, by Sue Prideaux

In a recent newsletter I quoted in last week’s 10 Things, has a neat riff on what he calls ‘mansplaining yarns’ - the type of pacy, narrative non-fiction that writers like Patrick Radden Keefe, David Grann, Sebastian Junger, John Vaillant and Robert Caro (Joel’s piece is where I first heard of The Power Broker) specialise in.

But if you ask me, Sue Prideaux trumps them all. As regulars will know, I loved I Am Dynamite!, her biography of Nietzsche, so much that I wrote a very lengthy blog post about it:

I decided from that point I’d read anything she writes, and her wondrous new biography of Paul Gauguin, about whom I knew nothing before I picked this up, settled the case: there are very few non-fiction writers doing it quite like Sue.

She has THE most beautiful and enviable style; an ability to convey difficult ideas with humour and affectionately-rendered irony; and a compassion for her subjects that is infectious and, at times, very moving.

I can’t recommend her work highly enough, and her loving, affectionate tribute to Gauguin is a great place to start.

More here.

3. The Pretender, by Jo Harkin

Every December, I’ve got into the habit of reading through the main Books of the Year features in each of the big papers and websites for things I might have missed. It’s a great way of discovering new writers, especially as these days I have a good feel for what I’ll find interesting.

That’s how I heard about The Pretender, and when I read the notices - “Wolf Hall meets Demon Copperhead” is fairly typical - I could not have been more in.

And The Pretender, a Bildungsroman set during the Wars of the Roses, is one of my favourite novels of the last few years. It’s funny, kinda saucy (is it a medieval ‘romp’? I think it is), historically fascinating, and wears its not inconsiderable cleverness very lightly indeed.

Tonally, “a Plantagenet Adrian Mole” (another of those end-of-year notices) very much fits the bill. Above all, it’s everything I want from a novel: endlessly immersive, and with characters I rooted for. I was sad when it was over.

More here.

4. This House of Grief, by Helen Garner

Helen Garner’s collected diaries, How To End A Story, just won the Baillie Gifford, non-fiction’s equivalent of the Booker.

This 2014 non-fiction classic, which I’d been meaning to read for years, comes with an equally towering reputation. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a fairly typical comparison, and you can understand why: both books follow ghastly murder trials through to their unsettling, harrowing conclusions.

Garner’s territory, like Capote’s, is the unspoken hinterland of human experience, and her account of the trial of Robert Farquharson - accused of deliberately driving his three children, Jai, Tyler and Bailey, to their deaths in a dam - takes us right to the edge.

More here.

5. John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, by Ian Leslie

Whisper it, but we’re at the beginning of yet another ‘new’ Beatles era.

I’ve been thinking about this since finishing Ian Leslie’s John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, a book that got me mulling over things I have, in hindsight, been thinking about for … well, decades.

I should probably qualify all of this upfront. I’ve been an avid, card-carrying Beatles geek since I read Albert Goldman’s The Lives of John Lennon at the age of 16, and I’ve basically never recovered. Since then, I’ve read everything of note, watched every doc, and pored over every song (and at this point, for what it’s worth, I am firmly Team Paul).

One thing I’ve observed over almost four decades of close Beatles study is that Fab Four sentiment comes in waves, and it’s my humble contention that we’re at the beginning of another period when an entire new generation will discover them anew (as every generation inevitably does).

Personally, I think this particular revival began four years ago with the release of Peter Jackson’s Get Back series. It continues this year, with the reissue of the Beatles Anthology, the new McCartney/Wings doc, and Jim Windolf’s recently released Where The Music Had To Go, a new book on the Dylan/Beatles relationship.

And it will go properly stratospheric once Sam Mendes’ forthcoming Beatles four-parter (!) starring Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan is finally released.

Ian Leslie’s book is best viewed as part of this ongoing lineage of Beatles storytelling. But before I get to my thoughts on it, I’d like to get something off my chest: I fundamentally don’t trust anybody who says the Beatles are over-rated.

Why? Because it was a lazy, pseudo-edgy thing to say when the writers of This Life gave the line to Anna as a way of signifying what a fearless slayer of sacred cows she was. And that was thirty years ago.

In a way it reminds me of the recent brouhaha around Chalamet and his clunky, cringe-inducing take on the virtues of opera and ballet. Whenever I hear somebody say something like this, I’m reminded of something I think is basically true: some cultural things have accrued such weight and significance that your own personal reaction to them is, frankly, not that relevant. Or required.

That’s why saying the Beatles are over-rated is like saying Sylvia Plath is over-rated. Or Mark Rothko. Or Virginia Woolf. Or Leonard Bernstein. Or ballet. Or opera.

They might not be ‘for you’, to borrow Austin Kleon’s elegant phrase. But to dismiss their significance is just silly. These universal cultural influences have existed for so long, and enriched so many lives, that at some point they rightly transcend the milieu of localised opinions espoused by dickheads on the internet.

(I’m aware, of course, that one of the transformative things about t’internet is the way that - if you like - gatekeeperish opinions like ‘the Beatles are above criticism’ have been forcibly dismantled by the democratisation of online discourse.

But I don’t think that changes the underlying truth of what I’m saying - which is that saying the Beatles are over-rated, at this point, is to reveal yourself as a fundamentally unserious person. And that’s before we get into the way being extremely online, all of the time, has encouraged us to have daft, unnecessary opinions about absolutely everything - which is, of course, another essay).

Anyway… I enjoyed Ian Leslie’s revision of the Beatles story. Like a warm bath at the end of a long day, there’s genuine pleasure in hearing these stories told so expertly. And Leslie’s central premise is a lovely and original one: that John and Paul wrote songs for each other, as expressions of their deep platonic love and the type of creatively charged friendship most of us will never experience.

Anybody who’s watched Get Back, especially the scene where John and Paul perform endless versions of Two of Us, will immediately recognise the kernel of truth at the heart of Leslie’s conceit.

Despite this, I did have an issue with A Love Story in Songs: which is the sheer amount of conjecture and authorial overreach that pervades the book. There’s an awful lot of “therefore, we can imagine Paul was thinking this when he wrote this line for John” propping up the argument, and as the book progressed I found it increasingly flimsy (and, to be honest, a tad self-satisfied).

More tellingly, I think it’s slightly cowardly that Leslie didn’t attempt to interview Paul McCartney, and I found his explanation (basically, that Paul’s views are on record, and they’re the ‘official’ and not that interesting version) a bit of a cop-out.

Sure, McCartney is a notorious, expert self-mythologiser who isn’t considered an especially reliable narrator of his own story. But he’d presumably have a view on whether he was trying to send John Lennon a message when he wrote, say, “the movement you need is on your shoulder.” This is Leslie’s central contention, and he never actually asks the one person who might confirm or deny it.

Overall, what Ian Leslie has going for him is that books like Revolution in the Head, Shout! and even The Lives of John Lennon have, at this point, largely been forgotten by anybody other than geeks like me. So he does get to offer a fresh take, which at this point is no small achievement. And if A Love Story in Songs helps a new generation understand the importance of the Beatles, and reaffirms their position as the twentieth-century cultural giants they truly are, then that has to be a good thing.

Certainly, if you want to interrogate the claims I’ve made here, it’s a good place to start.

More here.

Read something I should add to my 2026 list? Any books you particularly enjoyed this year that you’d like to share? Just want to geek out on reading and books with other members of the Looking Sideways community? You know what to do….

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1. Yes, I know I spoke about this last week. But if you’re a swimmer, surfer or recreational water user in this country, you REALLY need to show up and support one of the forthcoming Surfers Against Sewage paddle-out protests on May 16th. There are 46 happening around the country, and they’re a chance for us to make the following demands:

• Public health must come first – profit from sewage pollution must end.

• The Government must end the current privatised water industry

• The Government must take back control of water companies, and restructure them, removing the profit motive, to ensure they operate for people and the environment. No option, including public ownership, should be off the table.

Find out more here.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

2. If you want to understand the full extent of the water scandal in the UK, and why you should care about it, my recent Looking Sideways episode with Julie Maughan and stalwart campaigner Chris Hines (below) is a good place to start.

The death of Julie’s daughter Heather Preen after she contracted e-coli from raw sewage was the focus of recent Channel 4 series Dirty Business (click here for an interesting analysis of DEFRA’s appraisal of media sentiment around that show).

In this episode we discussed Heather, Dirty Business and the very real human impact of this scandalous situation; the baffling apathy among water users and the public-at-large; and, above all, how our water industry has been systematically and ideologically filleted in the name of corporate profiteering.

I’m really grateful to all the listeners and readers who continue to get in touch to tell me how much this episode impacted them, as Simon did above. Listen to the episode below:

Just Start

Bonus post: Moby Dick is completely amazing

I read Moby Dick recently: it was fantastic. This entire post is going to be about why I liked it so much and why you should probably have a serious go at reading it at some point, but I suppose it’s also more broadly about why we’re not always in the right place to read brilliant books when we first try them out, and why it might often be worth trying …

Read more

3 months ago · 20 likes · 9 comments · Joel Snape

3. As a card-carrying Moby Dick stan (I read the novel in my 20s, 30s and 40s; and will be re-reading once more when I turn 50 in June), I loved ’s piece (above) on the eternal wonders of this funny, profound and unremittingly bonkers reading experience.

Not least because Joel’s piece also introduced me to The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses (and modern New York). I’d never heard of it, but soon learned it is considered to be one of THE great post-war none-fiction masterpieces. As regular readers might expect, I’ve never bought a book more quickly.

The verdict after I raced through the first 100 pages? This magisterial, elegant study in politics, power and, er, urban planning could not be more up my particular Manhattoe boulevard (to coin a classic Herman Melville-ism).

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4. Speaking of book recommendations - I finally finished Band of Brothers author Stephen Ambrose’s lengthy history of D-Day this week. As ever with this type of thing, every page contained a proper WTF moment - like the gang of Allied paratroopers who were dropped behind enemy lines armed with only a gramophone and some flares. Their mission? To wander around broadcasting a fake battle recording, to convince the Germans to send reinforcements away from the area the landings were actually taking place. It worked as well….

A quick reminder - buy any of my recommendations from my Looking Sideways book store (and plenty of you are doing so!) and you’ll be buying directly from independent UK book stores (which means your money won’t be helping to finance the next ghoulish Bezos-sponsored Met Gala, for one) as well as helping support Looking Sideways (I get a 10% commission) in a really simple and (I humbly propose) righteous way.

Get involved here and you can also join my Chat and share your own reads below. We’re racking ‘em up! Come and join us…

katie arnold // work in process

dean's world

The four-part documentary “The Dark Wizard,” about the life and death of climber and aerialist Dean Potter, premiers tonight on HBO. I spent time with Dean in Moab and Yosemite on several occasions from 2005-2007 and was interviewed for episode one…

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3 months ago · 26 likes · 7 comments · Katie Arnold

5. Anybody else watched the new HBO Dean Potter documentary? I thought ’s companion piece (above) helped add useful nuance to the story told in the series.

6. Definitely the strangest and most poignant clip I watched this last week - Elliot Smith firstly being patronised by, and then emotionally flooring, a zany gang of presenters (and a Zig and Zag-style puppet) on a mid-90s American breakfast show.

If you click any link this week, I implore you to make it this one.

7. A new Anthony Bourdian biopic? Can’t say I’m persuaded this is a good idea.

8. Ditto the new Christopher Nolan Odyssey, if the trailer is anything to go by. (Yes, I will watch them both anyway).

9. I’m not ashamed to say that the original James Brown and Tim Southwell-helmed version of Loaded was a huge influence on what we tried to do at Whitelines back in the innocent old 1990s.

Personally, I learned a lot from the way people like Brown, Neale Haynes and Bill Borrows approached their craft and forged their idiosyncratic media careers.

Anyway, Bill has just launched a new podcast with fellow Loaded alumni Ben Marshall and Tim Southwell - listen above.

10. Finally…epoch-shattering news for fans of achingly beautiful, slightly sinister pastoral folk-techno, as Boards of Canada release their first new music in 13 years.

Listen to their latest above, and click here for an in-depth Clash Magazine piece that fully contextualises their importance and brilliance.

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1. I had fun catching up with our team at the latest Away Day in London. Me and Jojo and I have been working together for 12 years now, and I’m really proud of the little company that we’ve built. Thank you, Owen for the picture.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

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the outlier

writing, books and sports with Matthew Barr

Thank you to everyone who tuned into a chilled meeting of minds between the guys behind Looking Sideways and the outlier…

Listen now

a year ago · 12 likes · 2 comments · Ben Mercer and Matthew Barr

2. While in Richmond I also took the opportunity to finally meet in person. Ben writes on here, is doing some really interesting work around literacy for young boys, and is part of the gang behind .

We met virtually last year when he invited to me to take part in a live discussion on here about our shared love to literature and reading, and our background in sport (you can watch that above). True to form we met at a bookshop on Richmond Hill, where we both chose a new read each.

I went for Werner Herzog’s new one, which is now available on the Looking Sideways book store. A quick reminder - buy anything from my book store and you’ll be buying directly from independent UK book stores (which means your money won’t be helping to finance Jeff Bezos’ next ab-lift, for one) as well as helping finance Looking Sideways (I get a 10% commission) in a really simple and (I humbly propose) righteous way.

Get involved here and you can also join my chat and share your own reads below:

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3. Lachrymose country Beck has always been my favourite Beck, so I’m glad to see he’s heading back down the Sea Change route with his new song.

My favourite ever Beck record is One Foot In The Grave, the indie record he made with Calvin Johnson over a couple of days. He snuck this one out at the height of Loser fever back in 1994, after insisting his major label Geffen let him continue to collaborate with his favourite indie labels.

If you haven’t heard it, it’s a real lost gem:

4. Among all the sub-2-hour marathon discourse, this piece about how Sebastian fuelled his Bannisteresque run was the most interesting thing I read this week.

5. “What does Michael Jackson’s current popularity say? It says that people don’t care that he was a child molester”.

Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed shares his thoughts on the new Michael Jackson biopic.

6. Rest in peace the great Beverley Martyn. This righteous valediction by Peter Paphides puts her singular folk career and remarkable life in just context.

7. I really enjoyed Robert Plant’s Colbert performance of Ramble On.

8. The Moriah Wilson documentary on Netflix is tastefully handled but what a tragic waste this really was.

9. My friends at UN[PARA]LD have just launched their new crowdfunding campaign. Find out more here.

10. Finally, if you listened to my recent episode with Chris Hines and Julie Maughan, and are ready to take action, then make sure you attend one of the forthcoming Surfers Against Sewage paddle outs on May 16th.

The Paddle Outs are a nationwide mobilisation demanding:

• Public health must come first – profit from sewage pollution must end.

• The Government must end the current privatised water industry

• The Government must take back control of water companies, and restructure them, removing the profit motive, to ensure they operate for people and the environment. No option, including public ownership, should be off the table.

There are 46 happening around the country, and if you’re a surfer, swimmer or other water user then you really need to be there to show your support. More here.

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How does it feel to go into space? What does it make you feel about the future of our planet, and your own place in the universe? What are the moral implications of space travel? And just how do you take a picture of Pipeline from the International Space Station as it flies overhead at 17,000 mph?

All questions that I discussed with one of my favourite ever guests: Christina Koch, a surfer and – yes – astronaut who spent 328 days in space in the International Space Station, setting a new record for the longest spaceflight completed by a woman in the process. She also, as we discussed, spent her downtime photographing the planet’s best surf locations, posting them on her hugely popular Instagram feed and outing herself as a serial surf geek in the process.

In this blog, I rounded up four things we learned from our lengthy and inspirational conversation. And click here if you’ve yet to listen to the episode - it’s a good one.

1. Focus On The Now

Christina’s record-breaking spaceflight was as much a mental as it was a physical feat. To manage this challenge, she utilised the Expeditionary Behaviour training she received from NASA and also came up with her own coping mechanisms to deal with what she calls ‘sensory underload’ – the lack of new stimuli that is a disconcerting feature of space flight.

When things got tough, she focused on the positive experiences she’d miss, rather than fixating on her mission end date. It’s a technique she applied to her time in Antarctica, her time aboard the ISS and her time in lockdown.

2. Have A Hobby

“I don’t think I’d have survived 11 months in a tin can without a hobby I was really passionate about. For me that hobby was photographing surf spots.”

The impact of Christina’s celestial side hustle on her time in space was significant. It gave her a focus away from her tightly schedule workdays, offered a technical challenge that occupied valuable headspace, and kept her connected to her favourite earthbound hobby.

“It was a project I was absolutely in love with. It brought me so much joy, it connected me with my friends who were surfers and, having watched all of the competitions up there, it was neat to know there were instances where the picture I took was during the final heat of a competition.”

3. Learn From The Past

NASA’s lengthy experience of sending humans into space means the organisation has accrued an enormous amount of knowledge when it comes to the psychology of small groups living in small, enclosed spaces.

As a result, understanding and adhering to best Expedition Behaviour practice is one of the key reasons Christina’s mission went so smoothly. As Christina explained, there are five tenets of ‘good’ expeditionary behaviour: Communication, Leadership/Fellowship, Self-Care, Team Care and Group Living.

“It’s an entire part of our training flow, learning how to live with other people in a group setting… we talk about these skills in a way that creates a common language between you and your crew mates. I would say that that’s the main way that NASA enables us to cope with what is a very challenging and unique situation”.

4. Avoid The Stereotype Threat

A ‘Stereotype Threat’ is defined as the fear of inadvertently confirming a negative stereotype, something Christina became acutely aware of while undergoing her astronaut training and during her record-breaking spaceflight.

“Spacewalking is the biggest intellectual and physical challenge of every flight”, she explained during our conversation. “It’s the equivalent of running a marathon, and I was constantly worried about the fact that it was this well-known stereotype that women were not as good in the suit”.

To counter the self-fulfilling effect of the Stereotype Threat, Christina replaced these negative thoughts with positive visualisationsl

“I would imagine the people in the control room watching me saying, ‘Oh she is so good at this! Watch what she’s gonna do’:”

By replacing the Stereotype Threat with positive images, Christina found herself able to overcome these intimidating situations and succeed on her own terms.

1. I recorded some thoughts on the Sidetracked column on the value of storytelling I shared last week, on whether brands just follow what they think is popular (spoiler alert: I think yes), and what the ensuing debate says about the type of storytelling we actually value these days.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

2. Giving myself a tentative public pat on the back for achieving a mid-term/mid-life goal. I’ve been taking running a little more seriously over the last year or so, with the extremely vague idea that I’d try and run 10k in under an hour. So it was really nice this morning to tick this one off a month or so before my big 50th birthday (53:35 if you’re asking. What have I turned into?)

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3. Timber Timbre are a really important band to me, so I’m really devastated to hear the news of Taylor Kirk’s outrageously premature death.

4. Who says activism doesn’t work? A concerted social media campaign in Cornwall seems to have convinced the council to end the proposed use of glyphosate.

5. My pal Keme has written a brilliant piece about our recent trip to Georgia which complements my own piece perfectly. (Yes, that is me in the pic)

6. So Robert Capa had an especially hectic D-Day then. (Taken from Stephen Ambrose’s excellent history of D-Day which I’m currently reading).

Joshua Heath Scott

I CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED

A couple of hours ago, I found out that Pearl Jam posted about the local nonprofit community art center Alice and I started, Art House Grandview, on their Instagram…

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3 months ago · 222 likes · 42 comments · Joshua Heath Scott

7. Finally, some good news. Pearl Jam fund fan’s none-profit music academy on the quiet.

8. Congratulations to my pal Si Belson on the forthcoming launch of his new House of Maiden Chinwag podcast. If you’re into the core end of the snowboard scene, you’re going to love this.

9. I posted a short video of some Asian hornets we trapped here in Normandy, which caused everyone on Instagram to lose their minds. So I thought I’d share it here. (Viewer caution advised - they’re grim little fellas)

10. Finally, a question: what’s the best book you’ve read this year? (The Pretender, above, is mine; see my whole 2026 list thus far here).

I need some new inspiration, so let me know in the comments below.

Leave a comment

1. I’ve had some really interesting responses to my piece on Georgia: not least from a travel writing friend and colleague of mine who basically said I was laying it on a bit thick, and the adventure writing industry is these days much more responsible than the picture I painted here. (He also gave me a great note on a shonky, hyperbolic line that didn’t help my argument, and which I’ve since edited; merci Tristan!)

Having reflected on it though, I stand by the points in this story. I know anecdotes don’t equal data, but having visited Ahangama and Courchevel recently, I think it’s hard to argue we have made much progress, beyond the odd pocket or responsibility-minded company (admittedly, they are out there). And that’s before we look at the impact of influencer culture closer to home.

Plus, in writing the piece I was just trying to reflect a pretty specific trope of surf and snow culture, as well as a moment in time for this particular valley. I’m not trying to dissuade people from visiting these places. But locals trying to influence how things develop has to be a good thing. As does gently asking travelling surfers and snowboarders to think about the impact of their actions.

Anyway, here’s the piece again - let me know what you think.

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

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Sidetrackedmag

The Value of Storytelling

Our creative director John Summerton writes about his hopes for mutually sustainable collaboration within the outdoor industry – and for storytelling to be valued as it deserves to be valued…

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3 months ago · 29 likes · 13 comments · Sidetrackedmag and John Summerton

2. As a) a journalist who’s been pitching magazines like Sidetracked for 30 years and b) the owner of a PR/creative comms agency, I am so intrigued by the points raised in this article, and the very fair questions being asked in the comments.

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3. For years now I’ve been making the same point whenever a debate around the ethics of paying somebody fairly comes up: anybody who says they can’t pay people properly for their work either has a problem with their business model, or is being disingenuous.

So thank you to Terri White for basically saying the same thing with such righteous fury in response to the Plum-Sykes-doesn’t-pay-her-interns brouhaha (and here is the original Substack post that kicked the whole thing off.)

4. Patrick Radden Keefe part 1 - his latest for the New Yorker.

5. Patrick Radden Keefe part 2 - interviewed in the New York Times about his new book London Falling.

6. This Sidetracked conversation with Alice Sainsbury is a good companion to our episode 258 conversation.

7. My pal CJ Mirra has a new soundtrack out, and this piece has made my week a better place.

Well spent.

The Manosphere is so close to getting it

I posted a video yesterday evening about the Louis Theroux Manosphere documentary and … let’s just say it’s blown up…

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4 months ago · 310 likes · 18 comments · Well spent.

8. A Substack piece about the manosphere that nailed the feeling I had while watching the Louis Theroux thing but couldn’t quite articulate - it’s a ponzi scheme and they’re all essentially salesmen praying on the credulous.

9. Nike’s Parkrun blunder (LI).

10. Helen De Witt’s (lengthy) account of why she turned down the $175,000 Windham-Campbell fiction prize (spoiler alert: it meant she had to do a load of promo)

Which of these stories did you enjoy this week? Let me know ✌️

Leave a comment

“The newly emerging ideal was solitude, purity, perfect waves far from civilisation. Robinson Crusoe, Endless Summer.” - William Finnegan, Barbarian Days

In the weeks since my recent catboarding trip to Georgia’s Bakhmaro valley in the Lesser Caucasus, I’ve been thinking a lot about scarcity, and what it means for surfing and snowboarding.

Why? Because scarcity is one of the things that makes us unique in the sporting world, something fundamental that anybody who follows these pursuits at all seriously comes to understand.

Think about it. Footballers don’t have to travel across continents to find a pitch worth playing on. Swimmers can lap the local pool. Runners can step outside their front door.

But unless you’re lucky enough to live by the ocean or in the mountains, surfers and snowboarders are travellers by default.

Most of us have to go out and find it. And that peculiarity has shaped our culture in profound ways.

“California was getting crowded, so in high school a friend and I said, ‘Well, let’s graduate high school early and drive down to some place like Central America.’ You know, because there’s maybe uncrowded waves there.” - Craig Peterson, Looking Sideways, episode 077

The most obvious consequence is that scarcity has always been one of our key currencies: hunted out, hoarded, jealously guarded.

Another is that ‘the search’ for a particular type of untouched paradise has become one of our most persistent and influential tropes. Adventure as a solution to scarcity is part of it, of course. But over the years the romance - or ‘purity’, to use Finnegan’s revealing signifier - of the search has taken on equal importance.

Think of Endless Summer, surfing’s ur-text. Or Peterson and Naughton, our own Lewis and Clark, questing their way across continents in the 1970s, documenting it all in a series of massively influential dispatches for Surfer magazine, and creating the wave-hunt template followed to this day by everyone from Kepa Acero to Chris Burkard.

It’s why, in Barbarian Days, Finnegan casts his surfing life as the search for ‘a scratched-out frontier, where we would live as latter-day barbarians’, and names his entire book after it.

In recent years, though, there’s been a growing understanding that these sideways Shangri-Las don’t exist merely as backdrops for our own solipsistic imaginings. Reconciling the impact of surf and snow tourism on the places we visit has become an increasingly important part of the culture.

Becky Coley’s essential Point of Change, which tracks the generational impact of surf tourism on the Indonesian island of Nias, is one such example. At its heart, a film like Point of Change asks us to ponder a shamefully overlooked yet vital question: how do we reckon with the impact of our own narrow fantasies on destinations ill-equipped to handle them?

All of which is useful context for why my trip to Bakhmaro proved so thought-provoking.

I’d wanted to visit for years, lured by the stories that always do the rounds about such places. If friends who’d made the trip were to be believed, here was a proper throwback of a valley: the beneficiary of a geographical uniqueness which means it gets dumped on with light, dry coastal Black Sea powder; yet close enough to Russia and other perplexing geopolitical realities to scare most people off and keep the crowds down.

My kind of trip, in other words.

When it comes to snowboarding, I’ve always sought out resorts at the margins. Shemshak and Dizin in Iran. The Cedars and Mzaar in Lebanon. Beldersay in Uzbekistan.

These trips had dual inspirations. There were the magazine stories I’d devoured early in my career - Craig Kelly in Iran; Trevor Graves, Jamie Lynn, Dale Rehberg and Mike Ranquet in Greece - as influential to me as Peterson and Naughton had been for an earlier generation of surf travellers.

But equally important were literary influences: Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana (the reason I dragged everybody to Isfahan) and F.M. Bailey’s Mission to Tashkent (ditto Samarkand, when we went to Uzbekistan).

As well as being miles from the mainstream, visiting these places fed an adventurous curiosity that eventually became at least as important to me as the riding itself - just as it so obviously had for Finnegan, Peterson, Naughton and the rest.

As I worked out what snowboarding meant to me and how I could express it, these trips seemed like a mix of adventure and pretension that was right up my youthful boulevard.

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So when I was invited to Bakhmaro in March 2026 to write a story for The Times, as part of a group of UK journalists, I was excited to fulfil a minor snowboarding ambition.

Even better, as became clear on our first morning, the riding is ridiculously accessible and fun: perfect for the vast majority of snowboarders and skiers who want to ride untracked hero snow in an insanely beautiful spot, with very few people around.

Personally, I also loved that it isn’t frightening. I’ve always been a bit of a coward when it comes to exposure and steeps (though, weirdly, my appetite for fear in surfing is much higher). I used to beat myself up about that; these days I couldn’t care less.

One of the joys of the trip was that you could absolutely pin it everywhere, without worrying too much, and just enjoy the snow, the turns, and the environment.

As the trip continued, the rhythm of lodge life - snowcats each morning, post-ride beers, falling asleep into enormous plates of mountain food - reminded me of surf trips to the Maldives, Sri Lanka or Morocco. Not that Georgia has the crowds that are now the reality of those places. (At least, not yet.)

So yes: Bakhmaro is an outrageously user-friendly version of the promised land we all seek. And only a short day’s journey away from London.

As you might be gathering, I had a blast.

Still, as the week unfolded, I began to wonder what the future held for the valley.

There was our experience on the second day, when we found ourselves in a small queue of cats heading up to Sakornia, one of Bakhmaro’s most sought-after runs, and had to wait in line to make the access traverse. Normal in, say, Chamonix. But not really what I’d been expecting here.

Then there was the encounter on our last morning, when we were overtaken by a group of apparently guide-free riders gleefully breaking every rule of guided backcountry snowboarding - to our head guide and Georgia Catskiing co-founder Shota Komakhidze’s evident fury.

Individually, these moments were trivial. Together they were telltale signs that Bakhmaro is already being fast-tracked to a critical point in its history.

Hardly post-Instagram Canggu or Ahangama (although neither were they, until fairly recently).

But enough to raise a couple of questions:

How did Bakhmaro get here?

And how would inviting a group of journalists to spread the word help?

A couple of nights later in the capital, Tbilisi, I sat down with Shota Komakhidze to ask him just that.

Shota had been our constant companion for the last four days. He’d guided our jet-lagged group around Kutaisi, Georgia’s third city, on our first morning. He’d been lead guide on every drop.

And he’d joined me, Caroline and Keme as we’d ill-advisedly necked late-night chacha from a shot-ski.

As co-owner of Georgia Catskiing - the outfit hosting our trip - the bearish, avuncular Komakhidze was both the reason we’d been invited and the only person I’d seen express any tangible disquiet at the vibes on the hill.

Now, on our final night in the country, I wanted to understand how he reconciled those two seemingly contradictory positions.

It soon became obvious that I’d underestimated how quickly ski tourism in Bakhmaro had developed. According to Shota, the transformation had taken less than a decade.

“The first time I visited Bakhmaro there was almost nobody skiing,” he told me, over the khachapuri, khinkali and mtsvadi that are ubiquitous at every Georgian meal.

Early pioneers like Shota and Ingo Schlutius - a Swiss skier whose explorations of Bakhmaro predated Komakhidze’s own - were drawn to the valley by forces Peterson, Naughton or Finnegan would recognise: fun, adventure, wildness, and a crowd-free riding experience you simply couldn’t get anywhere else.

“The conditions were difficult,” he reflected. “It was completely wild. People didn’t understand why you would even go there.”

In those early years, ski touring and splitboarding kept numbers low. The turning point came when Schlutius opened Powder Project, Bakhmaro’s first catskiing operation.

As a mountain guide who’d set up his first ski touring, mountaineering and trekking businesses in 2009, Shota moved quickly. His Georgia Catskiing company began operating in the valley soon after.

Snowcats enabled pioneers such as Shota and Ingo to open up vast swathes of terrain, and made the valley viable as an international destination.

“That changed things,” as Shota says.

Before long, increasing numbers of a particularly intrepid type of skier and snowboarder began making the trip: unable to afford a once-in-a-lifetime splurge to, say, Baldface; and drawn by word-of-mouth about an affordable, beguiling powder paradise.

For Shota and Georgia Catskiing, growth was rapid.

“The business grew quickly, around 20% each year. But growth means challenges. I realised I couldn’t guide everything myself anymore. I had to build something bigger, bring in other guides, and scale it.”

Soon, Komakhidze and the valley’s other established operators faced the problems that can bedevil such scenarios: less scrupulous operators, lowering safety standards, and a shifting Overton Window of acceptable behaviour.

I’d seen something similar while surfing a reef called Gas Stations in Sri Lanka in February 2025. A quiet dawn session was suddenly flooded by beginners on foamies, their instructor pushing them into waves over the reef.

Later, over coffee, I asked my friend Ed, who runs an established outfit called Soul & Surf in Ahangama, how long this had been going on.

He grimaced. “Since last year. Lazy Left and Right (the area’s two beginner breaks) are so crowded that one of the surf schools started taking his lessons to the reef. Now everyone’s at it.”

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According to Shota, a new wave of ‘cowboy operators’ in Bakhmaro are already exerting a similarly unwelcome influence. Take the company that knocked up a website and lifted Georgia Catskiing’s pitch in a bid to siphon off their business.

This, it transpired, was the group that had scooted past us on that final morning — which helped explain Shota’s furious reaction.

“These people just want money,” he says. “They make a website, copy the name, and start selling. They’re cheaper. But they don’t think about safety or responsibility.”

For Shota, this is Bakhmaro’s doomsday scenario, especially given the very real avalanche risk in the valley.

“Mistakes out here mean serious problems. Some people don’t even have rescue equipment. There are people doing this without proper training. If something happens with an unlicensed guide, it’ll affect everyone.”

There’s also the question of capacity. By Shota’s reckoning, anything over 180 skiers and snowboarders on any given day and the valley will be maxed out.

“How many were on the hill during our week?” I asked.

“The busy day? Two hundred.”

In grappling with this growth-or-management dilemma, then, Bakhmaro is facing the same juggle as countless other prized surf and snow destinations, from Kuta to Niseko.

That’s why Komakhidze is on a mission to ensure the valley avoids the same fate.

His plan is bold: devise a regulatory system based on existing European and North American models, adapted for Georgia, so that visitors choose certified, responsible operators.

“I want something sustainable. Regulation is essential,” he says. “We’re trying to introduce a licensing system with rules that only qualified operators can meet. That way only responsible companies can operate.”

Shota wants to shape, rather than stop, growth - ideally within the next two years. The first step is gathering data and developing guidelines that all operators in the valley must follow.

It’s a progressive idea, especially in a country without strong central control. Any regulation would require cooperation between government and the mountain guide association, and support from competing operators.

“It’s not easy, but there is some progress. The other companies understand that regulation is in everyone’s interest.”

Shota’s urgency is palpable. Without action, the fear is that the valley could become another Niseko: crowded, lucrative, but stripped of what made it special in the first place.

“We’ll earn money,” he says. “But the experience will be gone.”

Over the years I’ve been on countless travel press trips, and the deal is always PR at its most transactional: hosts provide the best possible time; you write the place up glowingly; they get more visitors.

So to be invited on a trip where the unspoken goal is “controlled, safe and sustainable” growth, as Komakhidze puts it, rather than unfettered, damn-the-local-consequences growth that can still be a huge part of the travel industry’s MO, makes a change.

And it’s here that Shota’s decision to invite journalists to the valley in the first place seems strategic, rather than contradictory. Driving the kind of cultural and regulatory change he’s after will require political will and leverage. And coverage in an outlet like The Times could certainly provide it.

“We knew nothing. We were so naïve.” — Kevin Naughton, Looking Sideways, episode 077

In the end, my belated pilgrimage to Georgia was a reminder that the journeys we take in pursuit of scarcity shape the places we visit in ways that far exceed their influence on the romantic surf and snow stories we like to tell ourselves.

In Barbarian Days, Finnegan invokes Joseph Conrad - a writer who spent his life exploring these impacts and tensions on the grandest scale, in works like Heart of Darkness and, in this case, Lord Jim:

“We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.”

When I first read this passage, I assumed Finnegan was referring to the kind of ‘did-I-waste-my-life?’ pondering that comes to anyone who spent their twenties chasing waves or snow around the world.

But now I can see another interpretation: that the ‘account’ to be rendered from these trips also runs in the other direction, and in different ways — some negative, some positive.

The turns and memories I immortalised in an Instagram carousel and Reel (the one above) I edited on the plane home (and the “Looks insane! I’m gonna go there!” messages that followed) are one obvious manifestation.

But then: so is the local restaurant being squeezed out by a multinational, undercutting prices and shipping profits offshore.

Or, as in this case, a local operator grappling with the profit-versus-preservation conundrum as he attempts, Canute-like, to influence the course of ‘progress’ in the valley he loves.

“We are adept at saying what we make of places but far less good at saying what places makes of us.” — Robert Macfarlane

So will Shota’s gambit work?

Infrastructure and regulation will certainly help.

But ultimately it will depend on us. And whether we can learn to see the places shaped by our search for scarcity as active participants in the stories we tell, as opposed to mere backdrops.

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1. I think my latest Looking Sideways episode with Julie Maughan and Chris Hines, in which we discussed the recent series Dirty Business, the scandal of the privatised water industry in this country, and the death of Heather’s daughter’s Julie after she contracted E-coli from raw sewage, is without question the most emotionally impactful and important episode of Looking Sideways I’ve ever released.

Here’s a short clip I recorded here in Normandy this morning (above) explaining why, and here’s the episode below so you can have a listen:

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

2. My friends at Huck Magazine just celebrated their 20th anniversary, which means they have successfully navigated the advent of social media, a global recession, COVID and now AI. No mean feat, I think you will agree.

So allow me to use this occasion to give you my semi-regular nudge to support independent media. In an era of increasingly centralised media AI slop, we should be supporting this stuff more than ever. After all, we’ll miss it when its gone.

More simple ways to support Looking Sideways - use any of these codes and I’ll get a small commission 🫡

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off any order from Finisterre

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for HUGE savings on ski and snowboard hire with Intersport this winter.

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LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any Albion purchase

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for a whopping 20% off anything from Goodrays.

3. My friend Keme Nzerem delved into the whole sorry saga Ye/Wireless saga on this excellent Channel 4 podcast.

4. Got to be honest, I think Harry Styles’ Meltdown lineup looks kinda banging…

5. So ace to see CJ Mirra going through a bit of an imperial phase right now. He was a guest on Zakia’s excellent 6 Music show this week, and was interviewed about his brilliant new soundtrack for My Father’s Shadow alongside director Akinola Davies Jr and fellow composer Duval Timothy in this Clash Magazine piece.

6. The trailer for Undercurrents, Maddie Meddings new film about Laura Crane and Imari Hearn, is great - watch it above. And get tickets for a limited run of screenings in Bristol, Newquay, London and Braunton here.

7. It’s pretty difficult to do something new in the podcast (ahem) space these days. So big up Bjarne Salen who’s gone down a really interesting path, and clearly invested a lot of time, love and energy, for his new series Fika with Bjarne.

His first episode with Jeremy Jones is out now - watch it above.

8. I enjoyed this reflective piece by on finding another type of creative validation. I shared it in a Note, which turned into an interesting back-and-forth with Sidetracked editor Alex Roddie on the same topic - click the image to check that out.

9. Updated: my evolving 2026 playlist, with new songs from CJ Mirra, Her’s, Bill Orcutt, and, er, Laurel and Hardy.

10. Also updated: my 2026 reading list, which includes this brilliant historical novel that I’m enjoying as much as anything I’ve read for as long as I can remember. ‘Like a Plantagenet Adrian Mole’ sums it up well.

And don’t forget that you can see what the LS community have been reading, and share your own recommendations, below:

PLUS! There’s still time to apply for one of the two roles we have going at my agency All Conditions Media. Find out more about the type of work we do above, and apply here.

Which of these stories did you enjoy this week? Let me know ✌️

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1. Our pal Christina is on her way to the moon!

I’ve been very excited and tickled to see the great Christina Koch finally take off on Artemis II this week. One of my fondest memories of recent years was meeting for lunch in London in February 2023 (above) and asking her how work was going: “Well, looks like I’m off to the moon in a year or so”.

If you’ve yet to listen to my episode with Christina, in which we discussed her experiences as an astronaut, and why she loves surfing so much, catch up below. (And yes, I will be inviting her back for a second round once she’s back down on earth).

10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.

So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.

2. My agency ACM is hiring. Know anybody out there who’d be suitable for this, or who might want to come and join our team? Click this link to find out more.

More simple ways to support Looking Sideways - use any of these codes and I’ll get a small commission 🫡

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off any order from Finisterre

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for HUGE savings on ski and snowboard hire with Intersport this winter.

LOOKINGSIDEWAYSXDB for 15% off anything from Db

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off any Stance order

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any Albion purchase

LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for a whopping 20% off anything from Goodrays.

3. Congratulations to the gang behind Hotpipe Hillbillies for winning the Best Emerging Talent award at the recent North East Surf Film Festival, which sounds like it went right off last weekend.

4. Speaking of Sal McGee from Yonder (one of the organisers of last weekend’s event) this is a really nice back-and-forth between her and Easkey Britten on Finisterre’s excellent Broadcast blog.

5. Rest in peace, The Face magazine. Again.

All At Once by Dr. Len

Who Gets to Be an Early Adopter

There’s a moment on every backcountry film expedition where someone looks at a pile of dead batteries, a cloudy sky, and six more days of shooting, and says something like, “I think we’re fine…

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4 months ago · 21 likes · 7 comments · Len Necefer

6. I know I’m sharing a lot of Len Necefer posts at the moment, but I’m finding his entire take on the AI conversation to be provocative and fascinating. His latest piece is another example - I would love to know what people out there think of the arguments he’s making.

7. I’ve been enjoying The Horrors on the BBC’s reliably excellent Artist in Residence series (UK only)

Yvette’s Substack

The Exclusive Nature of Inclusion in Conferences

This is a topic I have spoken with friends about so often for years now and it continues to be a real problem, especially as ‘Change-makers’ seem to be a sellable commodity and almost a business of its own…

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4 months ago · 1 like · 2 comments · Yvette - Wave Wahines

8. Interesting read from - if you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know I’ve been making this point for years now (notably here and here - and yes I made my usual points in the comment section of this piece).

Interestingly, I’ve yet to hear anybody responsible for organising these conferences credibly defend the practise.

9. This week I read the most remarkable piece by Jamie Brisick about the 2019 Woolsey Fire that took all of his possessions.

Naturally, being by Jamie, our most talented surf writer, it’s about so much more than that.

Reading this story took me back to the first time we met in person, which was in Malibu in 2019, a few months after the fire.

We sat in the ashes of his former home and recorded a beautiful and honest Looking Sideways conversation about life, love and loss; and how he was processing the impact of this cataclysmic event.

At the time I remember being struck by the generosity with which Jamie approached what must have been a really difficult morning with two people he didn’t really know. Owen captured this moment in a series of typically brilliant pictures, which I’m sharing here.

Since then we have stayed close, and his support and friendship have become increasingly important to me.

I love the fact that we tend to only see each other in fairly random and impromptu places( Malibu, Santa Monica, Biarritz, London); that our conversations take flight in unexpected directions each time we meet; and that he’s such a champion of my own work. Listen to our conversation below:

10. It’s always a slightly discomfiting experience to find a beloved book a bit ‘meh’, which has been my experience with Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. Anybody else out there read it? What am I missing?

Which of these stories did you enjoy this week? Let me know ✌️

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In this episode of Looking Sideways, I speak to Julie Maughan and Chris Hines about Dirty Business, the recent Channel 4 drama that exposes the state of the UK’s water industry since privatisation, and the real-life tragedy at its centre.

The story of eight-year-old Heather Preen, who died after contracting E. coli following a sewage spill on a Devon beach, forms the emotional core of the series, and is what really makes this such a powerful piece of storytelling.

Because what Dirty Business does so effectively is remind you that behind all of this - the corporate failure, the regulatory collapse, the wholesale extraction of profits, the outrageous cynicism - there are devastating, long-lasting human consequences.

Julie, Heather’s mother, has spent nearly 30 years campaigning for justice. Alongside environmentalist Chris Hines, she has worked tirelessly to hold those responsible to account and bring national attention to the issue.

In this essential, riveting conversation, we explore Heather’s story, the long-term impact on her family, and the wider context: how the UK’s water system reached this point, why it has been allowed to continue; and what it reveals about privatisation, regulatory failure, accountability, and public apathy.

This is an urgent look at an issue that affects us all, and what might be the most emotionally impactful and important episode of Looking Sideways I’ve ever recorded. Don’t miss it.

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