WE DON’T SURF MAGAZINE

#4

I always wanted to visit this skate-park because of the late 90s playsta-tion game Tony Hawk Skateboard-ing. . . It’s in marseille right next to the Mediterranean Sea . . . In fact it’s on the beach !. . . . It was smaller than the game had visualised it but it was as smooth and wavy as i used to carve and backside grind with the joy pad .

- Sam Doyle

SouthernLife with Sam

“Whereas graffiti is commonly consumed with bombs, throw-ups and elaborately sprayed tags, Roller Bombs take the forefront of creative street works here. These pictures only brush the surface of the talent to be spotted on the tips of some of Montpellier’s highest buildings. Spots that don’t seem reachable by any means are somehow transformed from dull gable-ends to master pieces of the household paint roller. They’re coming out, crawling to crazy heights, before people start to rise for their lethargic 9 to 5 and creating really incredible pieces…without getting caught!”

For Issue #4 We Don’t Surf caught up with Waterford Based director Gary Kenneally of Kenneally Films. We gave Gary, who regards film as a fine art, some questions about his trade.

Meet...Kenneally Films

What made you venture into the world of filmmaking?When I was younger I used to be drawing pictures the whole time and at some point down the line I started filling in words and dialogue and captions all around them. Vice versa whenever I’d write something I’d draw pictures and diagrams on the same page to go with what I was writing. This eventually transitioned into doing funny comic strips and things like that. I loved going to the cinema in Patrick Street [Waterford]. I always loved the huge, big, epic movies like Jurassic Park, James Bond and everything like that. Anything that came along and caught my eye, I went to see it. Around 1999/2000, looking at films like Star Wars The Phantom Menace and so on, that’s when I thought to myself “this is what I want to do”.I still regard it as fine art. Rambo, Mission Impossible and the Bourne films are up there on the same level as anything by Da Vinci or Rubens or Rembrandt in my opin-ion. I wrote extensively on that topic in my thesis in college. That was a view that was and still is very unpopular among art academics. They won’t accept it or stand for it. A lot of them prefer to polarise cinema away from the rest of art. The reality is that they realise the power of the medium, but they can’t control it. And what they can’t control, they fear. And what they fear, they deny. And what they deny, they reject!

What challenges do you find shooting in Ireland?The reluctance of certain boards and councils to support more adventurous projects. They want to play it safe. I could talk extensively on this but would rather not. I’d only rant. All I’ll say is they definitely don’t want a crowd pleaser. They don’t want some-

thing couples can go to at the weekend. They don’t want anything a group of friends can go to, or parents can bring their kids to see. They want to finance some ponce contemporary type film that’s going to be screened once in Galway or Dublin, in some community hall on a Tuesday afternoon, then get put on a shelf somewhere. They can justify the €100,000 expenditure of that, but only in their own minds. They can’t justify it to normal people. And I think they should be held accountable. That’s why I don’t get excited about a lot of Irish films. Simply because there’s nothing to get excited about.

With the release of “The Revenge of Shinobi” scheduled for the final quarter of the year, do you think things are on schedule?We shot the majority of the film over three months in 2013 and I’m just back from another project in the United States, where I put aside a few days to shoot a lot of exteriors, cutaways, location and back-ground stock for Shinobi out there. The remainder of production will be finishing up in June and July of this year, which will accommodate re-writes, location and green screen re-shoots, touch-ups, and most importantly seven brand new scenes that I’ve recently written to improve the continuity of the film and develop some of the characters a little bit more. Its a bless-ing to have a great cast who are willing to come back a year later to do whatever it takes to make the movie even better. It’ll be good to get back into that world again. As I mentioned before, the editing and visual effects on this film are absolutely out of this world. We’re doing the Eastern Dragon in this film. I’m very excited about that. Its an updated 21st century version of a very popular character. I’ve worked

a lot with hand-drawn and stop-motion animation in the past, but the Dragon will be the first fully CGI-animated character we’ve ever had in Kenneally Films. That’s just one of many epic effects shots that are in the movie. The second trailer will be out in August and you can get a glimpse at some of these scenes in that!

I’d say we’re very much on schedule at the moment, but we have no exact premiere date set in stone yet. So if this summer’s add-on shoot runs over by a week or two or three, or if I get any more crazy ideas, we’ll do them. The guide date doesn’t mat-ter. The movie is already huge in scale, but if we can make it even bigger and better we’ll do everything we can to achieve that.

What are your plans after the release?After the initial premiere, there’ll be screenings of Shinobi at a lot of the bigger inter-national festivals, some of which we’ve done before like L.A. and Melbourne. Next year will be an exciting year as we take it out on the festival circuit and shop it around to distributors at the world film fairs.

In terms of future projects, I’ve got a 20 page outline for a new feature-length futuris-tic sci-fi thriller called “Legend Of The Hunter”. That’ll probably be my next film after Shinobi, but who knows. In my spare time between movies I’ve been working on a six-part series in the style of my 2012 animated film “The Cineplex” called “Waking Tiger” which is an animated sitcom following a family in early Celtic Tiger era Waterford. The first episode is almost finished and it begins with a very dramatic event over Christ-mas 1993. We follow the members of the family through to about 1997. Its mad stuff altogether. A lot of it is inspired by real life and you’ll see a lot of the classic Waterford characters show up in it. They’re all done in stop motion animation. It’s Chaos Billy!

If you enjoyed this extract from our interview with Gary, you can check out the full interview online at:

http://www.wedontsurfmagazine.com/blog/2014/5/23/five-for

Hi Sam,thanks a lot for you email.I m sorry but I m working on several projects that take me a lots of time those days and I m also leaving for a long trip with my girlfriend to kind of disconnect from my artist life and actually from my emails...So I don t feel doing that interview with you for the moment.. I m sorry but I really need a break from that commercial part of the job...Sorry again and I hope you ll understand my pointLong life to your magazine My best ..T

We Don’t Surf Magazine’s attempts to interview a great, Frenchgraffitti artist were met by this nicely worded rejection letter.Classy act from a ‘vandil’.

We Don’t Surf’s were trying to catch an interview with class French Graf artist, we got a no, but it was a classy no we feel worth sharing.

Hi Sam,Thanks a lot for your email.

I’m sorry but I’m working on several projects that take me lots of time those days and I’m also leaving for a long trip with my girlfriend to kind of disconnect from my artist life and actually from emails...So I don’t feel doing that interview with you for the moment.. I’m sorry but I really need a break from that commercial part of the job...Sorry again and I hope you’ll understand my pointLong life to your magazineMy best..

In this issue we caught up with SSICK a group promoting skateboarding in Cork City, some info on a scene that people think is dying out in Ireland.. Here is what they had to say

Tell us a little about your page?

Well it all started with me posting a few skate spot pics here & there on Facebook. Then one day a friend suggested i start a skate page,so i said feck it why not like! Show all the moaning skaters that there is skate spots in Cork if go looking for them jano!I post pics regularly and make skate edits of the local rippers & share them on it the pg too!

Does sick not mean puking?

S.S.I.C.K stands for Skate Spots In Cork kiiid –It’s also a skate term eg. that was sick (awesome,impressive etc).

To non skaters it looks like a bunch of photos of outdoor steps , slopes and rails for the elderly? . . . Explain to a non skat-er reader what theses obstacles are for?

If your not a skater & ya see my page you’d think I’m a weirdo taking photos of random steps and places but they have another use if you’re a skater! We are always searching for benches/ledges to slide,handrails to grind & steps to jump down! We treat the city as an urban ob-stacle course using what others consider

everyday boring objects for our own fun!

Your favourite terms in skating and there explanations for non sk8rs ?

My favorite skate terms are Tre Flip-mean-ing 360 kick flip, Gnarly-meaning you did something hard/scary, Sick-meaning you did something impressive.

Is your page just for cork?Ya the page is pretty much for Cork city & County. But if I go on a skate trip some-

where outside of Cork if I see a good spot id post it and say where it is so others can go rip it up!

How is the skating scene surviving?

It seems graaaaaaand at the moment like but definitely not as popular as a few years ago when the opera house was jammed everyday with all sorts of local skaters.

What has the cork scene been like over-the years?The Cork scene has had its ups & downs but its kinda picking back up a little now. Quite a few young rippers on the scene

now putting up pics n videos keeping the scene alive! Alot of the guys my age (26) & older are either abroad/injured/ or still on the never ending party session, buts major props to the guys that are still skating into their old age like myself!Ha ha

Are soccer players wimps compared to skateboarders . . . How?

Ha ha yeah man, soccer players are a com-plete waste of time and a bunch of absolute cry-baby-whimps. Nothing but diving & fake injuries galore. Try lobbing yourself down a handrail & call skaters pussy’s then ye gomies! We bust ankles/wrists/shins/

skulls but we get the trick & don’t com-plain about it! We are happy with props & the feeling you get from landing the long awaited trick!

What do you hope for your skateboard-ing knowledge of spots and the page?

I hope that the S.S.I.C.K pg can show the skaters of Cork that there are spots out there to skate if you get out on your board & find them. Hopefully it will inspire some kids to take up skating. If the page got 1 kid into skating id consider it job done in my opinion.

Skaters to check out from Ireland?

Check out: Cian Eades/Brian Esmond/Peter Murphy/Sam Frahill & Cork young guns Ross Doyle/Dave Murphy/Eoin Hegarty

Shout Out: Darren Bob Fieldy/Sean bubba o connell/Ian butros McCarthy/Shimmy LoveAlso shout out A-BOMB keep filming & keep making edits keep the scene alive kiiiid AAAAAAAHHHH HA Ya Big Ape Ya

Any details on a park in Cork?

The Hubba HIdeout, open 7 days a week mon-fri 3-9 Sat/Sun 12-6, (you can find them on the book

In this issue we present to you the work of Irish author Karl Ryan. Karl who was born in Ireland resides in the United States where he produces his beautifully written pieces, here is a short story; Kennet loses his way amidst betting stubs and smoke rings.

Quickly now, through the Temple bar district and on up the wide expansive avenue of Dame Street. His strides grew longer, as he pulled the ground beneath his feet, each step taking him further and further away from the bustle of down town, further away from the cyberized, modernized, Euro-centric new Dublin. By the time he reached the Thomas Street Market, just past the medieval cobblestones of Fishamble Lane, the ‘new’ seemed to have vanished almost completely, leaving instead the older more solid Dublin of his youth. A Dublin filled with the diesel fumes of double-decker busses and over flowing rubbish bins. An environmentally unfriendly city where factory fumes billow unashamedly upwards, blending with the Guinness hops and the Liffey stink to make a unique and wondrous perfume that hangs eternally in the coal burnt sky. The whole of Thomas street, from where he stood all the way down to Saint Patrick’s Cathe-dral, perhaps even as far as the royal canal, seemed to have escaped modernization. To Kenneth’s delight everything seemed to be as it was years beforehand. The old sweet shop, Casey’s, had somehow survived, still selling lemon drops by the pound and a run down Department store was selling an assortment of hideous fabrics by the yard. All

along both sides of the street the merchants of the past had endured, struggling no doubt to survive but none the less unchanged. Martin’s Family Butcher has a window full of meats, and from inside the sound of chopping and bargaining flows out to the street. Looking in he could see the floor sprinkled with saw-dust and above the stout scrubbed face of the butcher himself, blackboards promised the most tender and freshest of bargains. Back outside a group of hard-nosed youths made their way from one side of the street to the other, their glances always eyeing some new mischief. The walls of abandoned properties were every inch graffittied with proclamations such as ‘ decko rules’ and counter declarations claiming that ‘Decko’ was actually ‘a wanker’ and presumably didn’t rule. The old brownstone houses, the tenements of yesteryear were not yet torn down and some it seemed still had gardens, their walls mounted with broken glass to discourage intruders, namely the aforementioned hard-nosed youths. Over the top of one wall Kenneth could see the heavy limps of an apple tree, the shiny green apples matching the glass shards that topped the wall. Moving on he passed a bookie shop, it’s door held open with rusty black iron on the floor. An old man perched on a stool inside caught his eye as his wrinkled face squinted up at a small TV that was bolted to the wall. Others watched the blackboards closely as odds shifted and changed and others still examined their newspapers, circling items with stubby pencils as if their studious approach somehow justifies their rash investments. He’d seen that look many times before. The attempt to make a reckless act seem somehow scientifically based and thereby less reckless. The floor inside was littered with the torn white tickets of defeat, a confetti of fourth place nags and lame dogs. As a new race got under way, the television droned lazily the names of horses. The sound made him drowsy like listening to bees in summer. The men watching, for it was always men, stood up off their stools, waving their rolled news-papers, yelling periodically the name of their horse, trying desperately to will it to the front of the pack. The commentary continued.“And as they round the final stretch its Hansel Rag, followed by blue boy and on the inside Roberts Way and Lenny’s Girl neck and neck,”Excitement builds in the room. Everyone is on their feet now as the voice calling the race raises an octave. The lazy bee has become an angry wasp.

“And at the line its Hansel rag by a length, followed by Blue boy and Roberts Way.” The commentary winds down suddenly like a plane whose engine has stalled falling from the sky. More torn white tickets are thrown and dance in the air like little rectangular white leaves, spinning and falling to the floor.“Winner all right, winner alright” the final confirma-tion. Men curse under their breath and shake their heads. Others curse more loudly, the ones who lost too much. One old man focused his gaze directly at Kenneth, as if Kenneth watching had changed his luck for the worse. His eyes were dark like glass beads; his lips were tight in a loser’s grimace and for the briefest moment Kenneth could see his father there staring at him, full of inexplicable rage. His father too had been a great man for the horses and it was never good when he lost. He got so mad. He’d stare at the newspaper as if there was some detail he’d missed, as if some injustice had been committed against him, as if some lie contained there in the print has cheated him out of his winnings. The last time he ever saw his father he had that very look on his face. A look he would remem-ber forever but never understand, a look he then saw as rage but came to realize was shame. He’d spent most of that last night looking for him, peeking in and out of pubs. When he got home he found the old man staggering around the street his jacket over his shoulder, mumbling and cursing. His mother had locked the door and his father cursed her name from out on the street. Kenneth tried to help him walk but he pushed him away. “Get your fuckin’ hands off me” was all he said. Then he stared at him with a look of utter defeat. Kenneth remembers being caught in that awful gaze.“What are you lookin’ at?” he slurred.“Nothin’ Da,” Kenneth remembers the conversation word for word. He often goes over it in his head won-dering if he could have said something that would have changed events.“It’s all fucked Son,” his father said at last, looking at him with his sad brown eyes. Kenneth said nothing. He didn’t say, ‘no Da’ or ‘don’t worry Da,’ he just stood there staring at his father, perhaps knowing that the old man was right.When no reply came his father took a lighter from his pocket, an old brass lighter that his father, Ken-neth’s grandfather, had given him and he held his jacket up in the air, carefully setting it alight with his free hand. He watched it burn. It caught slowly at first but then it quickly built into a blaze. His eyes

shone darkly in the firelight. He held the burning coat out at arms length and when it was fully engulfed he dropped it to the ground and walked out of Kenneth’s life forever. Kenneth stood there watching the coat burn and peering into the darkness where his father had vanished. Eventually the coat extinguished itself and there was nothing but the black. The pale white street lamps shone far above his head but they too seemed an extension of the darkness, their soulless white light at least as empty as the blackness in-between them. Something in his father’s eyes told him he was leaving and he often wonders why he didn’t run after him that night, why he didn’t cry and beg like a young boy would be entitled to do. Perhaps if he had things would have been different. Maybe that’s what the old man wanted him to do, to beg him, to plead with him. His mother was clearly indifferent. “Good riddens to bad rubbish,” she said. Although she cried when they found him. Washed up in Clontarf like a piece of driftwood. A drowning accident they called it. A neighbor broke the news to his Mammy and she cried and Kenneth stormed out of the house and ran down to the Dolly Mount strand where he stood screaming and cursing his fathers name until his voice was gone and even then he cursed him some more in a silent scream.The TV commentator started up again.“Ready at the gate…aand their off…” Another race was under way. The man in the bookies was no longer cursing at the floor but now was staring back at the TV screen and whispering the name of his next ‘hopeful’ softly under his breath, scared that if he said it too loud God would hear him at make it fall.Kenneth turned on his heel, bothered now by the visitations of the past. The face of his father now was stuck in his head, an image he rarely conjured up. He had forgotten what he looked like or at least he thought he had until now! The bastard! He continued on his way till he came to Nolan’s pub on Parkgate Street. He fancied a drink might sooth his ‘ teaming brain’. He darted inside and was pleasantly surprised to find it old and shabby and run down. The woodwork was dark brown almost black from years

of wear and varnish. The back of the bar was a wall of frosted mirrors and bottles and the windows and the ceiling were yellowed with age and nicotine. The air was thick with cigarette smoke that seemed to hang in the air like strokes of paint, even though he could see no one smoking, and lined up on the bar were five dark black pints of stout. The barman wore a white shirt and a black bow tie and resembled a boxing referee, which he probably was if things got out of hand. Shafts of yel-low sunlight filtered through from outside filling the air with dancing smoke and swirling dust. Kenneth sat at the bar and taking a cigarette from his pocket lit it and took a deep drag. He noticed his hand was trembling slightly but the smoke felt good, calming.“Is there names on all those pints sir,” he asked the barman pointing to the drinks that were settling on the bar.“Not yet, is that your fancy?”“Oh but it is sir,” said Kenneth in a low, almost lascivi-ous voice.The barman finished pulling one of the pints and sat it up in front of him. Kenneth studied it closely as it continued separating, the millions of tiny dark beads rushing up through the glass. He smiled patiently. In a place like this, in Nolans on Parkgate Street, they un-derstood what pints were about. The layers of pleasure. Watching it, anticipating it. Then when it has settled, wiping the condensation from the glass with the back of your finger, revealing the impossibly black lure of the stout below. Letting the perfect creamy head sit on your lip as you take that first long draught. Listening to the solid sound of the glass as you place it carefully back on the mat. It was impossible not to smile. He pulled deep-ly again on his Camel cigarette, watching it's blue gray smoke drift lazily up toward the old tin ceiling. Then he blew careful rings, which hung in the air as if they might never disperse and watched them, as he drank. Behind the barman’s head he noticed a sign, which read ‘ No Mobile phones!’ and a picture of a phone with a red x over it.“What’s your name Mister barman,” asked Kenneth.“Brian Nolan, at your service.”“Well Mister Brian Nolan I think I’ve just found my new regular,” he extended his hand and the barman shook it with a friendly smile. There were things to do, calls to be made, squirmy little idiots to be smacked around, but all that could wait till later. Right now he would breathe deeply and relax into the velvet folds of the stout, safe in the ageless calm of a snug at Nolan’s public house.

“Le Punk Chien” - Sam Doyle

Mac invited us on to his first radio show with Tramore Community Radio, where we had a

great night and nice chat with Mac, we appre-ciate what he has done with us! Thank you Mac for promoting small time independent

musicians, artists and ourselves in your short time spent with us. We have learned a great deal from you and hope to use all we have learned in our future endeavours. Never be

forgotten.Keep on with that “Bang! Bang! Rock n’ Roll!!”

In Memory of David “Mac The Punk” McNamara

We Don’t Surf Magazine were in contact with Aga Romańska, a young concept artist who is still finding her niche and trying her hand at dif-ferent areas in the digital art-world. Aga, who has had work featured in

Abandoned Comics and Rírá sent us on some examples of her work and a little piece on what she has been up to.

My name’s Aga and I’m an amateur concept artist. About a year ago I decided to move away from manga and tried my hand in realism. Despite studying jour-nalism, I still aspire to become a charac-ter concept artist, for games especially. My art is a mixture of fanart and original pieces, and the main theme is almost always science ficition, unless I’m doing a commission. I’ve also done my own comic for a couple of years, but it is can-celled, as I’ve figured that comic drawing isn’t really for me. In the past I’ve worked for Zenpop Com-ics, a small indie comic online magazine. Also thanks to working for Rira, I met very interesting writers and artists, such as members of the Abandoned Comics.

Rira is a small series of comic issues pro-moting the Irish language, run by Aidan Courtney. Our work together began when he published my short comic strip a few years ago, I’ve also done a cover for one of the issues. I think the Irish comic scene has a lot of potential. I’ve met many writers and art-ists with great ideas, and they definitely need more recognition. Irish Comic News is a great website for promoting those comic creators and they regurarly update their Facebook page about new comics. Even though for now my work with comics is finished, I still design some of the characters for different writers, like Martin Greene from Abandoned Comics. -Aga Romańska

I am still finding my feet up here, getting my bearings, but I did notice that Limerick has really embraced the love for equestrianism. Almost every housing estate I pass— there are some nicer areas— looks like a very modern Wild West scene, horses in front gardens, just wandering around an open green beside a busy road. Yes, you do see this in Waterford, but it is usually out in quieter areas of the town!

In front of what used to be a construction site outside our apartment block there are close to 15 horses wandering about, and every now and then you will see a group of bull’s (or bullocks? I don’t know the difference)

strolling nearby. Just 15 minutes away, in the UL campus, it is like another part of Ireland, beautiful nature walks, storks, ducks, swans a beautiful river flowing through.

We realise we are in the middle of Ireland,

so we are making it our goal to see all the beauty it has to offer, A couple of weeks back I finished college early enough and we jumped in the car and drove to the Cliffs of Moher – a couple hours in the car is all it takes, and a little bit for petrol. It might take a while, but we’ll knock everything off our list.

Who knows, maybe we will embrace this wild wild mid-west lifestyle so much we might take to the equestrian beasts ourselves.- Chan Bling.

LOST... In Limerick

FOOD

Inspired by the Mediterranean, the reptiles I see and any other fauna we usually wouldn’t see in ireland.This is Sam’s way of fusing his cookery and art for a strange aesthetic feeling. This in turn creates “an oddly juxtaposed in-edible dessert.”

Creative cooking on the south of France

A lay-man’s review: Arch CoffeeBack in Waterford for an evening, I see there’s a new coffee shop open. Two things I do in Water-ford when I’m home are: 1) get a haircut 2) stop in town for a coffee.Hair freshly cut, I stop in Arch Coffee on St. Georges Street; it is the only coffee shop on this street (there are sandwich shops, but none that focus on coffee). Like all consumers I note the pricing, it seems reasonable prices between 2-3.50 euro (ish). So I order from George, one of the two owners working in the store. He tells me a bit about 3FE coffee which they use, a bit about where their roast comes from, it is always a bit positive when the person making your coffee has a decent product knowledge. I am not a coffee expert, I like coffee, I drink it a lot; my drink of choice is a double espresso macchiato no sugar. Usually my first sip has a bitterness to it and sends me reaching for a glass of water. This time it’s different, a nice fruitiness, it doesn’t taste like any other coffee I’ve had. This goes down a treat and get’s our seal of approval (not that it’s worth anything), definitely be stopping in when in Waterford again. . .

“The Kid, The Chap and The Lad” sent us this short comic strip

We Don’t Surf Magazine is currently going through a rennaisance moment. We are here at issue #4, and since issue #3 founders Sam Doyle and Cian Reinhardt have moved from Waterford. Sam to the beautifully sunny south of France, surrounded by inspiring art and architecture; and Cian to Limerick (he says it isn’t too bad).It has been a long road from #3 trying to work out the logistics while we are settling into our new surroundings. We would like to thank our readers old and new for the support and to those willing to give us interviews and contribute.Contributers in this issue include:Kenneally FilmsSSICKKarl RyanAga RomańskaThe Kid, The Chap and The Lad.

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