There’s been a lot of talk today about bad neighborhoods in Brooklyn, on Long Island and throughout the boros. Debating which neighborhood is safer than the other is almost like talking politics or religion. Still, it got me thinking about some close calls, some thefts and some lucky escapes.

In fact, just last week I left my car running for over four hours while at work, only to have a contractor come in to our building and inform my co-workers that a Pontiac was idling outside all morning. Four days of waves in a row and I’m just giving the car away. I sure got my balls busted for that one, but no one took my car. Other close calls and thefts include:

• Leaving my sunroof open overnight while my car was parked illegally in Alphabet City. Both the car and the radio were there in the morning. Never mind that this occurred a week after all of my stuff - and I mean all of my stuff - was stolen out of my work truck, which was parked AND and triple padlocked outside the old Lox Around the Clock restaurant, while I worked on its roof.
• Someone snatched a GQ Magazine while I took a quick snooze during a haircut, but you know I had no business reading GQ anyway. Tip of the cap to the thief who pulled it off right in front of the barber.
• Got a weather radio stolen out of my truck in Brooklyn, but they left the surfboard. I doubt it would happen that way today. They broke the window and of course the door was unlocked.
• Some sonuvabitch walked off in my sandals in Long Beach. I remember this day like it was yesterday. The surf was pumping and I was so excited I literally ran out of my sandals, leaving them by the car door. The poor guy didn’t even know I had a real bad case of athlete’s foot.

I’ve gotten some weird vibes on the street many times, but the closest I ever got to actually being held up happened when I was around 11 years old. Every day during the summer, my mother would make me go to the corner store and buy her two packs of Parliament 100s. But this one day she was feeling a little under the weather and she told me to get get her a can of chicken soup - no smokes. A car pulled up to the curb as I was walking out of Sal’s deli and this girl rolls down the window and says “What’s in the bag?”, to which I replied “Soup.” She stared me down a little and then motioned to the guy behind the wheel to drive away. Sometime later I thought back on that moment, and laughed thinking only in NY could you get jacked by a girl for a can of chicken soup. Lucky for me she wasn’t sick.

When I told my wife to go ahead and buy my daughter that talking parrot for my birthday, she thought I was generously giving up my birthday budget. Little did she know I already blew the budget over a month ago on this 8′0 Skosh shape by Josh Hall, for the next couple of years.

I was surfing this spot the other morning, and this photo of Long Beach surfers Richie Miller (left) and Phil Cusano popped into my head. Taken around 1967, it was originally posted by James Treuhaft last year, at the time of Richie’s passing, and it brought back a few memories from those who knew him, and from those who had vintage cars.

Chicken got his Coop couped, and posted these pictures of this 6′0 x 19-1/2″ x 2-5/16″ quad shredder, shaped for his friend Theo. This ain’t your father’s Cadillac.

Do a bit of searching on the internet for “Golden Ratio“, and you’ll probably find a couple of things: 1) A picture of Mona Lisa and 2) lousy explanations - that is unless you’re a Math Major. I could probably tell you simply that the Golden Ratio allowed my son to fit his entire thumb into my left nostril last night, and that the ratio of blood pouring out of my nose to the total amount in my body equaled exactly 1.6180339887.

A quick Google search for “Golden Ratio Surfboard” brought me to an HBO viewer’s observation that Ramon’s concrete drawing in Episode 7 of John From Cincinnati resembled Phi, even though he wrote Pi, and also to Surfresearch.com, which defined the sweet spot of a surfboard as being “usually 2/3 from the nose (the Golden Section)” - which is pretty damn close.

But mostly today I was just fishing around. Well, mathematically speaking I was on a hybrid (with a swallow tail), but something tells me that during the 2-plus foggy hours of semi-closey and fairly clean surf, the ratio of surfed waves to scattered peaks equaled…

I’ve been dealing with a minor toothache ever since I plowed through some grandma-candy during the 2006 holiday season. My wife wouldn’t touch the stuff, so I got to sample an entire pound of assorted minty treats. On Monday I could barely get through a Chicken Cutlet/Broccoli Rabe/Fresh Mozzerella hero when it became a major toothache.

Last night that $2 tub turned into an $1100 root canal. Prior to performing a Marathon Man session on my face, my dentist informed me that I grind my teeth. I wanted to tell him I stopped doing that when I was 25, but I was more interested in getting the gas going than continuing the small talk.

This morning during a kinda fun/kinda painful session my pulp-less tooth reminded me, consistently, just how much I grind my teeth when I paddle.

On the Side: AH miraculously avoided the Van Wyck and looks really comfortable on his 7′6 bonzer egg.

Photo Courtesy: Poul Ober / www.poulober.com

On Monday, August 13th 2007, a group of Surfers, led by legendary watermen Gerry Lopez and Darrick Doerner, paddled around Manhattan to raise money Surfers Healing and Surfers Environmental Alliance. In the group were Joel Tudor, SEA Executive Director Andrew Mencinsky, and local surfers Justin Schwartz, Mark Temme and Alex Karinsky. The event capped off a week’s worth of fundraising events geared towards raising awareness about Autism. For more information, visit Seapaddlenyc.org, which also has a nice photo album from the event.

Nineteen Seventy-Seven has been getting a lot of press lately, and Yesterday, August 20th, marked the thirtieth anniversary for the launch of the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Oddly enough, Voyager 1 launched 16 days later on September 5th, 1977. I was five years old and I can remember sitting on my terrace in Brooklyn during the blackout, and vaguely recall my mother freaking out about the Son of Sam - but that’s about it.

Other notable events:

• Shaun Tomson was the 1977 World Champion on the International World Surfing Tour.
• Scientists identified a bacterium as the cause of Legionnaires’ disease.
• We had a lousy Hurricane Season
• Snow fell in Miami, Florida, proving that the weather has always been weird.
• Fleetwood Mac released “Rumours”.
• Led Zeppelin played their last U.S. concert in Oakland, CA.
• Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees won
• Elvis left the building

“Maxwell Roach was born on Jan. 10, 1924, in the small town of New Land, N.C., and grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He began studying piano at a neighborhood Baptist church when he was 8 and took up the drums a few years later.

Even before he graduated from Boys High School in 1942, savvy New York jazz musicians knew his name. As a teenager he worked briefly with Duke Ellington’s orchestra at the Paramount Theater and with Charlie Parker at Monroe’s Uptown House in Harlem, where he took part in jam sessions that helped lay the groundwork for bebop.”

Max Roach
(January 10, 1924 - August 16, 2007)

Excerpts from Drummerword: Max Roach

Mark Petrocelli of Faktion Surfboards continues to produce and impress with this Army issue quad fish. I think I’ve surfed four days since June 20th, and none were above waist high. Ok, I’m not depressed.