I decided to head out to Linda Mar today for a surf session. I didn’t expect much given the forecasts. Gloomy weather, moderate onshore winds, mild swell. What surprised me was an empty summer lineup at Pacifica. There was one other surfer in the water with me for the first half-hour or so, and he was easily 100 feet north of where I was positioned. The next two hours I had the ocean all to myself. Took a fun board out and caught a few really good rides. Fun day. Came out of the water, got dressed, then saw this sign.

Having been involved in the action sports industry for the better part of a decade, I have somehow managed to not once attend the industry’s largest trade show, ASR (Action Sports Retailer). With an exciting new business venture about to get underway, the time was now to attend what was once an action sports retailer expo and is now an action sports extravaganza of epic proportions.

General Motors is hitting overdrive on their marketing campaign for the soon-to-be-released Chevy Spark, GM's answer to the Mini Cooper. The new Chevy Spark Woody, which is wrapped in wood-colored vinyl, is part of GM's attempt to connect with the youth culture. The specially-designed model of the Chevy Spark was introduced on the southern coast of Great Britain at the annual Boardmasters surf, skate and music festival in Newquay, England, with a surfboard attached to the car's roof.

Seriously, does anyone watch the X Games anymore? The event’s been in HelLA ten years too long, yet the idiots who run this campaign think that holding the event in SoCal year after year is the way to go. Never mind that the X Games generated massive publicity when they changed cities every two years. To top things off the organizers fail to take advantage of a key SoCal advantage: Surf. They haven’t had a surf contest for a few years now. Combined with a lack of dramatics and heavy corporate influence, either we’re getting too old for this sh!t or the X Games need a major makeover. The one highlight came from the stands, when a betty decided to flash her fellow X Games spectators. One particular boy was very pleased by the spectacle.

Ben Harper joined Cyrus, Steve & Omar right after his first time snowboarding on April 20th 2006, plus talked about introducing Jack Johnson to the world, and his skating and surfing roots.

The folks over at Ruse Entertainment created this hilarious and savvy video introducing the newest way to roll: Tarp Surfing. Santa Cruz surfers Homer Henard and Nic Lamb, with special assistance from Omar Etcheverry, show the world how to Tarp Surf with style. The perfect way to get barreled during the summer doldrums, when surf is either too small, blown out, or just pure crap.

UFC superstar Chuck Liddell joined Cyrus & Steve on January 17th, 2005 to talk about owning and bouncing the same bars that Cyrus & Steve used to frequent during their college days in San Luis Obispo, how he became one of the top fighters in the world, and brought along The Ultimate Fighter participant Chris Sanford.

Note: This story is a special contribution from Nugable.  Go to his website for hilarious, insightful and honest surfing revelations.

International Surfing Day came and went like a dream that is forgotten after a second cup of coffee. The day proceeding the first day of summer was not exactly memorable, although the water was warm. Warm like a lightly toasted hot dog bun on Independence Day. Or a sweaty pair of September thighs. The June gloom hung around like a hobo smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, waiting for a train going Anywhere But Here.

Each week Whenever we get around to it we here at T.E.S. will provide you with a look at the web traffic numbers* for most of the action sports industry’s websites (huge changes since our last report, including unprecedented traffic increases for Go211 and GrindTV, and expected drops in snowboarding sites due to seasonal change). If we missed a site, please leave a comment below and we’ll be sure to include it in the following week’s report. The numbers are based on daily unique visitors to each site, taken from a monthly average. The number in parentheses represents a change from the previous week. Websites are listed in order from highest amount of visitors to least amount of visitors.

Within every tragic story exists a silver lining. In the case of the recent Nashville, TN floods, the silver lining came from an individual who decided to use the flooded city streets for a wakeboarding session. Political satirist and comedian Stephen Colbert not only showed strong support for the wakeboarding exhibitionist, but went on to reveal a picture of himself in all his wakeboarding glory.