Yep. Since I can’t quite spread my wings enough on social media and still relay all the rad shit we’re doing AND get my point across, I’m gonna do it here. Every day. Who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be thinking or writing or doing, but I’m gonna say it and we’re gonna do it together. Surf, work, skating, industry, travel, inspiration, music, aspiration, bullshit, literature or general WTF. Always honest and always right here. And always short. They’ll be just like the magazine intros, but much quicker. So let’s begin.

I thought I’d start with a quick acknowledgment of what I said last week about Surfing and Surfer Magazine’s Instagram posts (the ones with average photos and really bad captions). Since expressing an opinion gets everyone so hot these days.

The short of it is this: I expect a little more from “the pros.” In a social media age, we all have a voice, sure, but some of us spend most of our time invested in this and should rise above the rest of the noise and guide the way. “The pros.” They should simply have a little skin in the game. It doesnt take much to go from a useless commenter to a pro, but there is a difference. We have credentials more or less. And they may not hang off a lanyard, but you’re more than anonymous. And yeah, I like to think the pros at Surfer Mag could muster a little more on social media that day. Not much more, but a little bit more. I mean, if you have to struggle and flop around on the deck like that just writing a caption, maybe you should just rethink the post altogether? You’ve got a big following, so don’t make us all look so bad. Because even for social media it was bad. It was bleh. And we hate bleh.

I worked at one of these magazines for a long time [Surfing Magazine 2004-2011], and spent a good portion of my existence dedicated to making them and documenting the culture and surfing and I learned a lot along the way with some passionate people, which is why it pained me so to see that bleh. And it may seem petty to voice my opinion via social media like that, putting them on blast etc, — and believe me we’re generally too busy with our own shit storm to even notice these things — but I like this culture and surfing and all of you guys too much to let that slide. I know none of us are perfect or always “on” and hell, it’s just surfing and all that jazz, but you can’t phone it in from a business park in south Orange County THAT hard. Your magazine was started on a bench at San Onofre between surfs by a dude living it, how we’d all dream to, so next time, just dig a little deeper or hand the keys over and remember there’s actual people behind your follower count.

On the flip side, the positive side! we’ve already gotten a lot of rad new ideas for captions through our reinvention exercise, which we’ll be posting here on Friday, and if nothing else, we’ve sparked some change and discussion, and we may never know how to perfectly caption anything during this lifetime, we’ll at least promise that we’ll never disrespect you with something so useless.

The weather is warm. I hungout with my local shaper today (he’s been bellyboarding his way through a shoulder injury and couldn’t be happier, “I swear I found a sandbar as good as Desert Point on my belly,” he told me). The waves are all sorts of weird up and down the coast from all this ocean action and I can’t wait for tomorrow morning. Don’t forget. I”ll be here. —Travis