Greg Weissel - Free Surfboard and Wetsuit Essay Contest Winner - 4/3 Men’s Hotline Wetsuit and Booties
Greg was an easy one to choose. Anyone who has the balls to Boogie Board Ocean Beach without a wetsuit has proven himself worthy. I’m sure anyone’s who’s surfed OB would agree…it’s kind of mental to trunk it out there.
Greg Weissel, Winner of 4/3 Hotline Wetsuit and Booties
I just moved back to California from Chicago where I spent the longest, coldest year of my life. After graduating from UCSC, I had kicked around town, working at True Art Tattoo on Soquel, helping to put on shows at the 418 while living with friends. It was a fantastic life, but one which could not last. I was living on 3rd and Main in a historic house when one night in December 2006, it caught fire due to a poorly installed water heater, and burned, taking most of my material possessions with it. So, for the next six months I did the only surfing I have ever done: couch-surfing. I stayed with friends in Santa Cruz, Live Oak, Capitola, Aptos, San Francisco, Berkeley; all while continuing to work at True Art.
The life began to wear on me. I could not get it together enough to find a place alone, and all my previous housemates had dispersed. A friend I knew in Chicago emailed me one day and told me I could get a job at the new bar her boyfriend was opening, and I knew of a loft where I could continue to book bands. By the end of the first week of June 2007 I had rented a car, stuffed what little I had left in the trunk and backseat and hit the 80, heading east.
Chicago during the summer was magic. All night parties with crazy kids, a bartending job that put more money in my pocket every night than I used to make in a week, and hot weather with huge open skies.
Unfortunately, summer ended, the miserable cold season began and the kids began to show their true faces. The mindset of the average mid-west Chicago denizen is much more closed off than any I had encountered in California. Racism, homophobia, gay-bashing - all were accepted, normalized, and to me, thoroughly sickening. The cold weather made me depressed, and the general attitude made it worse.
By summer 2008, I had put away enough money to finance a move back to California, this time to San Francisco in a great house a block from the beach. Since getting back here in the beginning of the month, I have been to the ocean every day. I forgot how much being able to see the Pacific meant to me. A used boogie board turned up in the house, and so, sans wet suit, I have been sponging every time the sun is shining. I haven’t found a job yet in my month of searching, so I don’t want to invest any of my future rent money in a wetsuit until I have some cash flow. I would however, love to have just one of those wetsuits and possibly the surfboard. I have never surfed, but the waves on Ocean Beach seem conducive to beginners and it is not so crowded that I feel I would be getting in anyone’s way. I have looked at the sizing at it seems that my 6′0, 175lb frame should fit a medium tall, like you are offering.
It feels so good to be back home, and being able to use the water only adds to my joy at being back on the West Coast. I hope you get some good responses, and if you decide to choose my entry I can pick up from SC, so just let me know!
Thanks!
Greg
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