How Sugar Causes Inflammation and Messes With Our Bodies Photo by Valeria Boltneva  As many of you know from my blogs and newsletters, I’ve been struggling with some joint pain over the past few years, mostly from injuries that I’ve picked up from surfing and other activities. I actually have a number of friends who are in the same situation, and we often chat about our injuries and pain and how to do away with it. The other day I was chatting with a friend in the water, and he mentioned that his acupuncturist told him that one way to reduce or even eliminate pain is to cut out foods with processed sugar. Many of our joint injuries are exacerbated by inflammation, and as it turns out, sugar causes added inflammation in the body. I have spent the past few weeks cutting sugar out of my diet, and it does seem like my pain has gotten a bit better. Meanwhile, I told another friend of mine who has chronic hip pain about my new sugar-free diet, and she tried the same thing and also found that her pain was reduced. She wasn’t sure if it was because of cutting back on...

Thunderbolt & Firewire Surfboards Price Increase As most of you know, the global supply chain has been an absolute mess over the past year, between the COVID-19 pandemic, material shortages, the Suez Canal blockage, and huge backlogs in deliveries. Not only has this resulted in a shortage of finished products such as surfboards and other gear, but it has also affected the companies producing that gear, since raw materials have been in short supply. At the same time, super low interest rates and numerous rounds of government stimulus has seen the economy doing much better than expected, but the downside of that is that inflation is starting to creep up. As you can imagine, between material shortages and inflation, the price of raw goods has been rising, which is making surfboard construction more expensive. This holds true across the industry, so it’s only normal to see rising prices in finished surfboards from a number of different brands. Being one of the largest surfboard companies in the world with a huge production base, Firewire is one of the first brands to feel these price increases and has announced that Firewire and Thunderbolt board prices will be rising on October 15 to...

NEWSLETTER JUNE 2021 Hawaiian South Shore's Own Longboard Fin Line KAIMANA Here at Hawaiian South Shore, we are excited about a lot of things—surfboards, fins, longboarding, you name it! And every once in a while we get to take that excitement and turn it into something tangible and concrete. Recently, we combined a few of our passions and developed a line of Hawaiian South Shore longboard and mid-length fins. Made from a special form of G10 material that is even lighter and stronger than normal G10, and that’s pretty impressive, considering G10 is the industry standard for single fin construction. Renowned shaper Dan Mann once told me that he loves the feel of G10 fins, and also appreciates the fact that they don’t chip when you bang them on something, like normal glass fins. G10 uses epoxy and fiberglass laminate and is used in a number of different industries. Fins made from this material are extremely durable, but also offer the advantage of controlled flex in the tip, which helps your board adjust to the contours of the wave and accelerate out of turns. Our line of fins is called the Kaimana, which combines two Hawaiian words—Kai, which means ocean,...

NEWSLETTER APRIL 2021   A Quick Refresher on Surfing Lineup Etiquette Photo Credit to Jess We have done a few articles about surf etiquette in the past, and it is definitely a broad, complicated topic with a lot of factors and nuances to consider. Some of these issues deserved a bit more attention, and one in particular has led to a lot of problems that I’ve noticed in the lineup lately. Surfing has become incredibly popular over the past few years, and the number of surfers in the water has increased even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many people in the water, collisions and interferences on waves are becoming commonplace. But one of the best ways to ensure these don’t happen is to paddle out in the right place. I have seen tons of people trying to paddle out in the middle of the peak this year—and more often than not, they end up getting in the way of the surfer riding the wave. Instead, they should be paddling out on the shoulder or in the channel—in an area where people aren’t riding waves and they aren’t likely to get in the way. Of course, it’s not always...

NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2020   How to Face Your Fears in Bigger Waves *Photo Timmy Reyes With all of the heavy-water antics that the best in the world are doing these days, it is easy to become desensitized to big wave surfing. These days it can often seem like if you aren’t charging 50-foot Peahi, then you aren’t charging at all. But the reality is that we all surf at different levels, and that big waves and the fear that comes with them are largely relative. While it might take a massive Mavs bomb to get Aaron Gold’s blood pumping, for the beginner surfer who has only been at it for a few months, a head-high wave can feel huge. Part of the appeal of surfing is the experience of immersing ourselves in something that is so much bigger than we are, and part of that experience is the thrill that comes with leveling up and pushing our boundaries. No matter what level you surf at or what “big” waves mean to you, it is possible to up your game by becoming more adept at facing your big wave fears. Here are a few tips for becoming more comfortable in heavy...

NEWSLETTER MAY 2020 Surviving the Surf Shutdown How the Surf World Dealt Withthe COVID-19 Quarantine It has been a rough couple of months for the world, with COVID-19 infecting millions and effectively shutting down the economy. Andalthough our troubles might pale in comparison to those who have lost family members and friends to this pandemic, it’s been a prettyrough couple of months for the world’s surfers. Here in Hawaii we were allowed to surf throughthe quarantine, but in most areas of the world lineups have been empty, due to government bans on surfing. As you can imagine, people have been going a little stir crazy. Professional surfing took a bit of a hit as well. A lot of major brands had to close doors during the shutdown, and a lot of sponsored athletes saw their contracts get cut in half, if not voided altogether. Meanwhile, the WSL cancelled the first three world tour events of the year, and all of the QS, longboard, and junior events in April and May. Whether the competitive year is able to start in June or ends of being cancelled completely still remains to be seen. But it wasn’t all bad in the surf world....

NEWSLETTER APRIL 2020   A Busy and Exciting Month at Hawaiian South Shore It has been a pretty exciting month here at Hawaiian South Shore, with a bunch of new arrivals, some celebrity visitors, and lots of stoked customers! The month started off with a big shipment of new Firewire models, including the most anticipated El Tomo and Sci-Fi 2.0. The staff here was super excited to get our hands on these boards, and so were the store regulars, who quickly came in to check out the new models. Right around when the boards were delivered, Chris Grow from Firewire happened to be stopping through Oahu. He came straight from the airport to the store to check out the inventory, and then we ended up doing an official launch on the Slater Designs Instagram page. It has been fun developing a relationship with Chris Grow over the past few months. I got to know him at the Surf Ranch when I was there late last year, but apparently he knew about Hawaiian South Shore long before we met. He had been following our surf industry news videos that we used to do with Kaipo Guerrero, and those videos were actually...