Kneeboard Surfing USA Community Forum

Issue No. 300 just out.
The current editors put together a list of surfers who accumulated the most photo editorial space in the magazine over the years.
the guys listed below all made the top 300 list.

Peter Crawford
George Greenough
Ken Horton
Dave Parkes

Steve Zoeller of Energy surfboards and Clean n Natural kneeboards featured in a story about Simon Anderson(another sometime shaper of some fine kneeboards) who was No. 1 on the list.

Yeah Jamie, another fine issue of a great magazine. The guys in charge at SW these days seem keenly aware of the weight of history the mag carries. They also have the will to produce a good read each couple of months. That the revamped SW has included kneeboarders in several issues now is demonstrative of the fact that the mag is becoming a pretty well-rounded reflection of the experiences and interests of the average Australian surfer. There are several world tour focussed, youth oriented, short attention span surfmags looking pretty ordinary by comparison. Could it be that "surf journalism", along with surfing itself, is maturing? I'm wishing SW all the best for the New Year ... which should mean another half dozen magazines of fantastic photos, solid editorial content and interesting subject matter.

Purchased the said magazine yesterday ... quite impressed with SW ... they have been putting out a very good quality publication ... and kudos to them for lifting the game and taking the higher road.
Nice to see the aforementioned Kneeboarders receiving some well deserved recognition ... George Greenough ... now there's a book waiting to be written.
I was surfing this morning ... a sloppy cross swell beach break ... in between waves I was watching the plethora of surf craft entering and exiting the sea ... lots of fuller nosed short wide swallow tailed and similar ... lots of quads ... interestingly I think there has to be some connection between this current phase in design and what guys like David Parkes and Co have been doing for quite a while. An example of this is the Quad phenomenon that has been building a fair bit of momentum within the mainstream of surfing ... apart from a few people ... like Bruce McKee who has been driving the quad bus for a long time (and often in the past ridiculed by the insecure and unimaginative members of the surfing fraternity) ... one group of shapers and their clients have been carving quad driven lines for decades ... the kneeboarders.
Funnily enough in the past few years Bruce McKee has gone from being somewhat of a pariah to the quad god ... Mission Quattro has landed. Mind you a number of the worlds best surfers have been McKee converts for quite some time ... Curren and Carroll to name just two.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Albert Einstein.

Albert may have penned the phrase ... but it could well have been George Greenough ... Bruce McKee ... Peter Crawford ... Steve Lis or any number of the free thinking surfers and shapers that we as surfers owe a huge debt of gratitude to for thinking outside the box.

And hats of to Surfing World for honoring the innovators and the history of surfing.

How about a link?

http://www.surfingworld.com.au/content.aspx

A teaser only. You'll need to track down the actual mag somewhere. Cool article by Derek Hynd to open.
Later, Hugh McLeod includes this: "The surfing scene as I see it now is in a pretty healthy state, especially the experimentation with boards and a revitalised alternative culture." The photography, as usual, is mindblowing.

The list is fascinating in that it ranks photo appearances in the mag only, and doesn't include paid appearances (advertising). PC was the only kneelo in the top 50, coming in at 32.

Elsewhere on this site we've discussed surfers who let their surfing do the talking. Top 5 on the SW list: Simon Anderson, Terry Fitzgerald, Rabbit, MR, Mark Warren. Other highlights: Col Smith (Narra) - 11; Terry Richardson - 12; Cheyne Horan - 18; MP - 20; Richard Cram - 22; RK Slater - 25.

No doubt a US mag conducting the same exercise would have a very different list. Would love to see the points in common though.

The kneeboard surfers mentioned are truly worthy and Surfing World has and will hopefully be the one to expose kneeboarding excellence to the masses in the future
It led the way in the 70s mainly through the input of P C and enlightenment of Bruce Channon and Hugh Mc Leod but what i cant figure out is how Nov and Simon Baden didnt crack it or was that do with the editorial shift in the 80s and 90s onwards to kow tow to the corporate $ hey thats business
Give me KSUSA no subscription great photos informative articles and very few infantile jibes not that theres anything wrong with that ,im probably guilty now coz i only browsed n didnt buy