Best Moments of Summer 2013 so far

Picking Mangos with Danny Chambers

Eating the most mangoes I've ever eaten in my entire life

Discovering what the Hawaiian Slang term Choke meant while choking on a mango

Surfed my favorite surf break by myself on a Big Windy Day of Double UPS
I turned into a sea creature.


Wrote an article for NYskateboarding.com about Nimbus Skates.
Interested to see how it comes out.

shooting a skate ad for IN4MATION with John Hook

Basically, I eyed a tree stump hump for like 6 months always imagining to blast an ollie off it.

I did it one day with wifey Marisa watching.

I called my favorite photographer John Hook to find him stoked to take the shot.

we met out there at 8am on Sunday Morning and got the first shot which I pitched to Jun of IN4MATION. He was stoked on it Jun gave me a bunch of shirts and we went back and shot my first skate ad with me in it for first time in all my 32 years of skateboarding.

The other photo is a sneak peak of the ad I have yet to see. 

(I'll post it the day it comes out.)

The only bummer is that I bought the Gonz deck to do the ollie and I was skating in my neighborhood yesterday and cracked it. In all my 30+ years of skateboarding, I have only cracked one deck and that was a Kelly Rosecrans. I am in the process of requesting a replacement from the shop. Wish me luck.
I spent my hard earned cash and paid full price for that deck.

Thats it for now.

-Manny Aloha

Mangoes, Waves and Quality Peoples

Dear friends and family. I've poured a glass of wine at 1am to sit and write some words off the top of my head.

Days have been rad and lovely. Summer in the Northern Hemisphere brings out good feelings- fertility. Summer in Hawaii brings choke mangoes and choke waves on the Southern Shores. In Hawaii, if you didn't guess, choke means a lot. I have been blessed to have neighbors that share their mangoes.  No one family could eat all the mangoes off a bountiful tree. It would make them sick. 

One average size mango tree can supply many mouths with the delicious fruit and if you have a tree and don't share, then that means, a lot of wasted mangoes.

I live on the South Shore. My favorite thing to do these days is surf, and my favorite fruit in the whole world is the mango. So life is good.

But what is more important to most? Making a dollar bill and having high quality things. I do love riding my aunts convertable BMW on Sunset Blvd, but I do also love going for a bike ride with my homeboy Danny and a fruit picker, hunting for mangoes. Or waking up at the crack of dawn to surf a board I made from a broken longboard I found in the trash. 

What I love even more is surfing my home break with a big crowd of people and knowing exactly where to sit in the ocean for the wave to come right to me, and not to them. Knowing what exact board to ride that will best suit the wave condition, and thus provide me with the most fun and intimate  play with my favorite wave. 

I love surfing without my leash and becoming one with my board on a sunny day with glassy crystal clear water. 

I love putting the ocean water in my mouth and squirting it out.

While sitting in a crowd of surfers, I love shooting my board out to the horizon toward the incoming set and swimming under water to my board to emerge and mount my board just in time to catch the wave that comes right to me. Drop in and fly down the line carving with the attitude of Johnny Depp in the Hunter S. Thompson movie Fear and Loathing, Saying "Awhhh YEAH". Then sitting inside waiting for my homey Johnny E. to catch his last wave so we can paddle in and discuss where we want to get a cup of coffee and talk about art and design.

Its 2am and I'm fading. Time to catch some Zs.

-Manny Aloha Signing off.