Looking Sideways: 10 Things
This week: oil-washing in surfing, Wavelength becomes a CIC, and a new playlist.
1. Proud and stoked to have been invited back as a member of the Selection Committee for the 2025 Natural Selection Tour.
Deliberations with my fellow committee members will begin soon - let the high level snowboarding geek-off commence for another year….
2. There is growing disquiet in the surf community at the news that Surf Abu Dhabi (where homosexuality is illegal) will be a stop on the 2025 tour.
Ben Mondy rounds up the issue well in his latest post, while ongoing conversations between Yvette Curtis and Sal from Surf Yonder have resulted in a petition you can sign here.
3. What does the discovery of Andrew Irvine’s partial remains mean for Everest’s greatest mystery?
4. Further to the BBC TV doc about the Brighton Bomb I posted last week - this absolutely brilliant twelve-part radio documentary, which really does go in depth into what happened. Highly recommended.
Use my code LOOKINGSIDEWAYS at checkout for brilliant discounts from Db Journey, Goodrays, Finisterre, Stance and Intersport.
5.
’s important Motherload report is a vision of ‘the future of advertising (not) forcing mothers to adapt—it lies in redesigning the system to support, accommodate, and celebrate them. After all, if the industry can’t figure out how to value mothers, it can’t claim to value true creativity or progress’.Read the post, and find a link to the report above.
6. Super interesting and encouraging news from Wavelength, who have taken steps to become a Not-for-Profit CIC ‘to empower the British surfing community’. More here.
7. Red Bull Rampage went down, and the commenters are not happy. This time, it’s the course and the judging.
8. An intriguing/perpelexing story about Ash Dykes’ Coppename Expedition, which has been garnering Insta-props and a lot of UK headlines - although, strangely, not this particular headline, about how Surinamese locals and government official are up-in-arms at the group claiming to have ‘discovered’ two waterfalls, and subsequently renaming them after expedition members, in classic clout-chasing colonial fashion.
9. It’s been a while, so here’s my 2024 playlist, almost ten months in. As usual, there is a LOT of random stuff on there. If you need some new music, hit shuffle (and scroll down for a gander at what’s on there).
10. OK, so looks like nobody is using Substack Chat lol. How about Notes? Anybody on there? Let me know using that one above, if so. Right on.
What did I miss? What did you think of this week’s list?
Here Matt, Rory Carroll has written an interesting book on the Brighton Bombing. It’s called Killing Thatcher. In case you’ve not read it.
On this crisp autumn day 40 years ago I called round at a friends house in Sheffield for a days surfing on the east coast . Some of us felt an ambiguity about the morning news of the bomb in Brighton during the preceding early hours. It is strange how some events stay with you over the years. The surf was fridgid and enticing.