Playing in the Sunshine

For the first issue in our 30th year of print, we lead off with an image as pure and irreproachable as the pursuit itself. Photo by Ben Thouard. The inner workings of TSJ 30.1 are framed by culture checks: Tracing the early 1960s surf-exploitation film genre, the underappreciated role sanders play in the surfboard-building process, and the recounting of the fantasy and realities of finding a surfing Eden by the always worth-reading Bryan Di Salvatore. Chart-plot pointbreaks in West Africa, rain-dodge in the Pacific Northwest, and take stock of Portugal’s ascension as a major surf destination. The high-action water photography of Laserwolf and the intimate illustrations of artist AJ Dungo present disparate but equally personal representations of the life.