The ultimate book for both hoops fans and sneaker obsessives, A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakersis a celebration of the iconic shoes and superstars who have defined the sport. Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, Reebok Pumps, Air Jordans and more, each chapter breaks down how each sneaker represented an era, transformed the culture, and changed the game.
A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers is written with authority by former Complex and SLAM magazine editor Russ Bengtson. With full-color sneaker photographs and detailed illustrations throughout, the book is a kaleidoscopic celebration of the players, styles, and iconic moments that have shaped hoops both on and off the court. Read More
FROM TOP: TOM CURREN, 1981; AL MERRICK AND STUDENTS, 1980; AL MERRICK WITH ONE OF HIS INNOVATIVE TWIN FIN SHAPES
Shaping Surf History: Tom Curren and Al Merrick, California 1980-1983, a new surf book from Rizzoli, documents a brief but influential period in surf history in Santa Barbara, California. It was an era that saw an extraordinary mix of innovation, individuals, and epic surf conditions on the back of a record-breaking El Nino — beautifully captured by author and photographer, Jimmy Metyko, in a visual encapsulation of one of the most fertile periods in the sport.
With dramatic action shots and personal vignettes, Metyko follows the rise of young legend-to-be and future three-time world champion Tom Curren, whose preternatural wave-riding abilities would help establish California at the forefront of contemporary surfing. He puts us on the waves with a remarkable view and insider’s perspective of the sport’s evolution embodied by this young surfer, whose singular style was enhanced by revolutionary board shaper Al Merrick of Channel Island Surfboards.
We recently chatted with Metyko about this era in surf history, his own evolution from surfer to photographer, and the compilation of work in his first book… Read More
On Christmas Eve 1944, two all-star football teams took the field to play the game of their lives. They were former collegiate players, record breaking All-Americans, and team captains from schools like Cornell, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, and Brown who represented one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled. They should still have been playing at these universities, but instead here they were in the middle of the Pacific ocean, on an island called Guadalcanal. Now U.S. Marines, they were training for what would be the bloodiest battle of WWII, the battle of Okinawa. That football game became known as “The Mosquito Bowl”.
“It was over a few beers that former collegiate football players in the 29th Regiment of the 6th Marine Division stood toe-to-toe with former collegiate football players of the 4th Regiment and made the emphatic claim that the 29th would kick the 4th’s ass if there was ever a football game between the two”, writes Buzz Bissinger in his newest book The Mosquito Bowl, “which of course was preposterous in a place like Guadalcanal with a war going on.”
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. “If you merged the players from the 29th and the 4th into one team, it would not only have posed a challenge to any National Football League franchise, with proper training it most likely would have beaten most of them, as the aggregate included sixteen players who had already been drafted by pro football or would receive offers.” Read More
IMAGES FROM TOP: SURFER MAGAZINE: 1960-2020; INTO THE WILD; AFROSURF
From the beaches of Southern California to the shores of Africa, a summer swell of photographic surf tomes — SURFER MAGAZINE: 1960-2020, INTO THE WILD, and AFROSURF — celebrate and explore the rich history and culture of the sport through a diverse spectrum of lenses:
In its six decades in print, Surfer magazine was considered “the bible of surfing” before it ceased its print edition in 2020. SURFER MAGAZINE: 1960-2020, culls together the most iconic covers and pages from the magazine’s history to create a curated anthology on the evolution of the sport, and its style, design, and culture.
INTO THE WILD is a vibrant celebration of surf life captured by fashion photographer Matthew Brookes, who followed a group of young surfers from Venice Beach on their adventures up and down the California coast. The result is a documentary of van culture, and the story of youth who follow their passion — living for the simple joy of surf, travel, and freedom as they chase the waves.
AFROSURF showcases the beauty and diversity of African surf culture in a rich and colorful collection of profiles, essays, photographs, and illustrations that for the first time showcases the surfers of Africa’s vast coastline — from Morocco to Somalia, Senegal to Mozambique, South Africa and beyond. This vibrant book is the creation of Mami Wata, a Cape Town surf company dedicated to the power of African surf. Read More
For decades, the Bonneville Salt Flats has welcomed various extraordinary automobile events, among which is the World of Speed. Every year in September, amateur and professional racing teams settle on the salt for a week to pursue their speed record dreams. In LANDSPEED 2, photographer Julien Roubinet explores this iconic gathering and otherworldly destination, embedded in the American car and DIY culture.
About 12 miles long and 5 miles wide, the Bonneville Salt Flats are a 30,000 acre expanse of hard, white salt crust on the western edge of the Great Salt Lake basin in Utah. The seemingly endless expanse creates a surreal environment, the perfect surface and location to reach speeds nearing 500mph. Read More
I’ve run the NYC Marathon 3 times. 26.2 miles is a heck of a long way to run, not to mention the hundreds of miles you log training for it. At no point on any of these quests did I think to myself, ‘26.2 miles just isn’t enough… I really wish it was longer’. But in the booming sport of ultramarathons, races are 50, 100, 135 miles, and even longer. Equally as grueling as the distances are the conditions in which they are run.
Dean Karnazes is often credited with that booming popularity, and putting the sport of ultrarunning onto the map. For him, a marathon is a training run, and he usually runs one before breakfast. Karnazes completed his first ultramarathon in 1993. His first 100-miler was the famed Western States Endurance Run, a race that has become the marquis event of the sport. With just 369 spots, there are nearly 10 times the number of applicants. It’s the ultramarathon everyone wants to run, and comparable to the NYC Marathon, there is a lottery to get in. Karnazes is an 11-time 100-Mile/1 Day Silver Buckleholder in the event, which is awarded for completing the race in less than 24 hours.
In addition to other unfathomable challenges is the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon. It is run across Death Valley in the height of summer where temperatures have climbed as high as 130 degrees. Karnazes won it in 2004, in addition to five other top-10 finishes from 2000 to 2008. At the opposite end of extreme, he has run a marathon in the South Pole, with temperatures as low as -40 degrees. He has run across the United States from Disneyland to New York City in 75 days; 50 marathons in 50 states on 50 consecutive days; and, just this summer, 1000 miles across Australia. Read More
Born and raised in Kauai, surfer and photographer Daniel Fuller has spent his life in, on, and surrounded by water. He is regarded as one of surfing’s preeminent big wave riders. Fuller has become a lauded photographer as well. It is no surprise his images focus on the ocean, captured in an ethereal and mystical way. His intimate connection with the aquatic world brings a unique perspective to his photography, now published for the first time in Liquid Horizon: Meditations of the Surf and Sea. This retrospective showcases an opulent collection of abstract seascapes created from 2007-2020.
Fuller’s nocturnal images of waves and water are photographed evocatively by moonlight with slow exposures. While soulful, they exhibit a creative discipline, repeating and evolving a single idea over time. As art writer and gallerist Adam Lindemann describes in the preface, “The ocean and the shore are abstracted beyond recognition, to the point that what we see is just color; the composition is a transition from one to the other — dry land merges into the water and the image becomes a part of the liquid experience.”
Whether on a surfboard or with a camera, there are both similarities and differences in how Fuller captures a wave. We spoke to him about his process and vision, and the expression of his experience with the ocean into his art… Read More
Our favorite coffee table books of the year make the perfect gift too — featuring every sport from surfing to climbing, football to golf, skateboarding to skiing, and more. And for the sneakerhead, there’s the ultimate guide!
The popularity of the sneaker has become a cultural phenomenon with a huge international audience clamoring for the latest drop. This encyclopedic book features 1000 full-color images of the sneakers that have most influenced the global sneaker culture — a visual history of the world’s most coveted and popular kicks. From early Keds and Converse All Stars, to Air Jordan and Air Force 1, to Royal Master Pro-Keds and Sk8 High Vans — throwbacks and new shoes alike — every major sneaker is covered, as well as the athletes and celebrities who made the shoes famous. 1000 Sneakers features detailed reference sections for collectors, histories of leading brands and designers, and anecdotes from the worlds of sports, fashion, and hip-hop. It’s the perfect gift for sports, design, and street fashion enthusiasts alike. $19.59 on Amazon Read More
Breathe In, Cash Out is the debut novel by 27-year-old Madeleine Henry that offers an inside and satirical look at both the finance and yoga industry. The book tells the first-person story of a young Wall Street banking analyst, Allegra Cobb, who plans to quit her job as soon she gets her year-end bonus to pursue her real dream of becoming a full-time yoga guru.
What may seem like pursuits at the opposite end of the spectrum – yoga and banking – start to narrow when Allegra meets famed Instagram yogi, Skylar Smith, whose manipulative actions jeopardize whether Allegra will even get that bonus. Both industries get skewered, coming off equally self-absorbed and self-serving.
Ivy league grad and analyst at a top-tier bank – author Madeleine Henry’s career path has not been so different from that of her leading character. She herself went to Yale, and after to Goldman Sachs. Unlike Allegra however, her passion for yoga started after she left banking. As one can see Madeleine is a serious yogi, and with her own impressive Instagram following (@madeleinehenryyoga). Read More
Astrodeck, San Clemente, California, 2015
Photo: Rafael Pulido, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive
Now on view at Gagosian in New York is the exhibition The Fletcher Family: A Lifetime in Surf, celebrating the soon-to-be published tome of the same title by Rizzoli. The legendary surf and skate dynasty that is the Fletcher family – Herbie and wife Dibi, their sons Christian and Nathan, and grandson Greyson – has been an institution in the action sport culture for decades, with an influence that extends beyond to the worlds of fashion, music, streetwear, and art.
Spanning fifty years of epic stories, photographs, personal ephemera and memorabilia, The Fletcher Family: A Lifetime in Surf is a visual memoir of this immensely colorful “first family” of surfing. Dibi narrates each chapter, accompanied by personal anecdotes about the family from notable contributors such as artist Julien Schnabel, photographer Bruce Weber, surfers Gerry Lopez and Kelly Slater, and the son of one of Vans founders, Steve Van Doren.
CLOCKWISE TOP: HERBIE, MAALAEA, HAWAII, 1976. Photo: Art Brewer, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive; HERBIE AND NATHAN, 1977. Photo: Art Brewer, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive; DIBI AND HERBIE, NORTH SHORE, HAWAII, 1970. Photo: courtesy Fletcher Family Archive; HERBIE, NORTH SHORE, HAWAII, 1969. Photo: Art Brewer, courtesy Fletcher Family Archive
In addition to selected imagery featured in the book, Gagosian has installed artworks by Herbie Fletcher called Wrecktangles. These large sculptures have been made from the surfboards ridden — and broken — by the greatest contemporary surfers at the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii. The board theme recurs in the Wall of Disaster series, which feature masses of skateboards mounted to the wall in anarchic accumulations. Similar to their surfboard counterparts, they form a cacophony of logos and images. Read More
A new breed of sport magazine has hit the newsstands. These bespoke publications are not the product of a big media conglomerate, but published by and tailored to those passionate fans who want a different point of view than your typical sports magazine. With an artful approach, bold yet unconventional photography, and words spoken softly over the roar — each of these delivers those stories that often go untold with a journalistic and visual appeal that transcends the sport itself. Read More
All photographs by Julien Roubinet from Ice Cream Headaches
For most who envision the life of a surfer, images of board shorts and bikinis, blue waters and sunny beaches, or Hawaii and California come to mind. Unfamiliar to many however, are the intrepid surfers who call the beaches of New York and New Jersey their home break, braving the frigid winter waters of the Atlantic in thick hooded wetsuits for a few fleeting moments inside a murky barrel. Theirs is the hardcore, diverse, and vibrant cold water surfing community that is celebrated in the newly released tome, Ice Cream Headaches.
Writer Ed Thompson and photographer Julien Roubinet met surfing at Rockaway Beach and spent four years logging more than 4,000 miles from Eastern Long Island to Cape May, NJ, interviewing and photographing the surfers, shapers, artists, and documentarians who make up the scene. From local legend and Montauk fisherman Charlie Weimar; to Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Finnegan; to professional surfers with global followings such as Quincy Davis, Mikey De Temple and Balaram Stack, the New York surf community is as rich and colorful as the metropolis at its center. Read More
Super trainers Bob Harper and Stacey Griffith have been friends for over 20 years with a lot of history between them. Two of the most recognized faces in the fitness industry, they first met at Crunch Fitness in West Hollywood in 1996. Stacey was there to take Bob’s spinning class as part of the audition process to be an instructor. Crunch was looking for a new star, Stacey told the audience in a conversation between the two at the 92nd Street Y, someone to be the next “Bob Harper”. Bob jumped in aghast, “Isn’t that awful? I would have said, I don’t want to be him. I want to be me!” Stacey would get the gig, and go on to be that fitness star by being her. Bob and Stacey were recently on the 92Y stage together to talk about their new books. Stacey’s first book,Two Turns from Zero: Pushing to Higher Fitness Goals — Converting Them to Life Strength is now out in paperback; and Bob’s newest book, his fifth, The Super Carb Diet: Shed Pounds, Build Strength, Eat Real Food was published in December.
Stacey Griffith is one of the founding Senior Master Instructors at SoulCycle whose popularity helped create the boutique fitness behemoth the brand is today. With a cult-like following whose classes are sold out within moments of sign-up, she is an expert motivator and self-empowerment guru. Stacey was a featured trainer on one of Oprah Winfrey’s “Live Your Best Life” tours, teaching to audiences of more than 15,000, and now a motivational speaker as well, regularly invited to lecture at various universities and corporations. Not bad for one who admits she didn’t even go to college. Read More
“A surf shack is not built around what you think you need, so much as understanding all the things you don’t”, says writer Nina Freudenberger in the introduction to Surf Shack:Laid-Back Living by the Water, a beautiful new coffee table book that takes us inside the bungalows, trailers, cabins, and beach homes of those lucky enough to call themselves surfers.
Surfing is a way of life reflected in the homes of those who live it. Freudenberger moved from New York City to Venice Beach, California in 2012, and became so enamored of this relaxed and easy going lifestyle she traveled to 18 cites in 4 countries to bring us inside the homes of such lifelong surfers and dedicated newcomers as: Blake and Heather Mycoskie of TOMS; hotelier Sean MacPherson and family; Jawbone founder Yves Behar and Sabrina Burell; and longboard pro Kassia Meador.
“Surfing is a natural filter for life’s nonsense”, says Freudenberger, and what these homes have in common is a style that prioritizes “ease over elegance, good vibes over any grand vision.” They are less about impressive architecture and more about cultivating truly authentic spaces that embrace the life spent in between surf sessions.
With vibrant photographs of design details and bright beaches — from Malibu to the Rockaways, from Japan to Australia — this book captures the soulful milieu of a lifestyle we all aspire to, in and out of the water.
The new coffee table book, Yoga Bodies, celebrates 80 yogis of different shapes, sizes, ages, skills and backgrounds — their stories distilled by author, Lauren Lipton, and favorite poses captured by photographer, Jaimie Baird. Yoga Bodies showcases real people and their yoga stories — humorous, heartfelt, and profound – told to entertain as they enlighten.
CHAD IN HALF LORD OF THE FISHES VARIATION ~ CLAUDIA IN HAPPY BABY POSE
“The last thirty years was the practice of yoga; the last three years has been the application of yoga. Getting my son dressed and out the door in the morning is a daily test of patience and compassion and trying to not react in a knee-jerk way. I invite any Buddhist monk who has been studying in a monastery for however many years to take care of a three-year-old for a few days.” -CHAD Read More
American society girl Minnie Cushing carries her surfboard under her arm. Sprouting Rock Beach Club, Newport, Rhode Island, September 1965. All photos by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Now on chic coffee tables everywhere is Slim Aarons:Women, the newest monograph of Slim Aarons photographs. As chronicler of the lives of the rich and aristocratic in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s, Slim Aarons was unrivaled. His photographs are the embodiment of “the good life”, which of course includes the sporting life. Skiing in Austria, waterskiing in Antibes, surfing in Newport, canoeing in Lake Tahoe, and snorkeling in Bermuda are a few of the “leisure” activities, as Aarons refered to them, featured in the book.
Princess Lucy Ruspoli stands in front of a colourful wall of old skis in Lech am Arlberg, Austria, February 1979.
Aarons served as a photographer in World War II, and when it was over turned his camera in the opposite direction. According to the author of Slim Aarons:Women, Laura Hawk, who was Aaron’s assistant for over a decade, it was “people seeking pleasure” that inspired him, and he absolutely loved shooting sports. What became his niche of photographing the super wealthy was by accident, but it was there that he found the splendor in these activities and he was always looking for a new sporting angle. Hawk described one of their many trips to St. Moritz, when Aarons had heard about a new sport called “ski joering” at the famed Palace Hotel, where skiers were being across the ice pulled by a horse. He couldn’t wait to photograph it. Recalls Hawk, “Slim ran out into the middle of the track to get it head on. He was like a child about it. He loved the adrenaline rush!” Read More
Recently published by TeNeues is the fabulously chic book series, THE STYLISH LIFE, with the subject of each volume the lifestyle, fashion, destinations, and iconic athletes of six different sports. Tennis, Golf, Skiing, Equestrian, Yachting, Football (soccer), each book is a photographic compendium featuring a stunning array of images, vintage and contemporary, that highlights what makes each of these sports so uniquely stylish.
THE STYLISH LIFE: GOLF
This bountiful tome features the world’s most fashionable golf destinations, from tropical islands to prestigious country clubs, and takes the reader on a photographic tour of the finest courses and clubhouses. The Stylish Life: Golfdelves into the illustrious pedigree of this leisurely sport with its high-profile players, chic and quirky dress code, and highlights why socialites, captains of industry, and celebrities are drawn to this sylvan sport.
The Stylish Life: Skiing is a nostalgic and glamorous journey through alpine history that features the sport’s pioneers, superstars, celebrities, and the evolution of its resorts, fashion, equipment, and more. It looks at both the technical side and cutting-edge equipment that has evolved skiing into a fiercely competitive and popular sport, as well as the cultural side and jetsetter destinations that have created this distinctively aspirational lifestyle.
I discovered the SI VAULT a few months ago, where the cover of every Sports Illustrated issue ever published is on display. Sports Illustrated was first published in 1959 and founded by Time magazine patriarch Henry Luce. Prior to that there was no general sports magazine with a national following. At the time, many believed sports were not worthy of serious journalism, much less a magazine of their own. Read More
STYLE OF SPORT is the website that celebrates sport and the intersection with fashion, design, art, news and culture. It features editorial and shopable content, curated for the sophisticated sports enthusiast. READ MORE
