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News

DirtQuake 2017

Stay Wild

My Personal Agenda

Stay Wild

Confessions of an amateur industry outsider.

Words by Justin “Scrappers” Morrison

Photos by Sera Lindsey

When I make the trip to Agenda Long Beach every 6 months I bring my business cards to exchange during businessy hand shakes, but instead I get my hair cut at Victorious, share family-style hugs, and witnessing the evolution of the industry. My business cards stay in the pocket.

Agenda is one of the last great trade shows standing in the ashes of a crumbling industry. I’m just an amateur industry outsider, I could be wrong, I’m surly over-simplifying things, I don't know shit, but it looks like the industry ecosystem has evolved and so has the trade show. 

RETAIL EVOLVED - Customers buy online directly from brands now, so big box retail is dead. The Amazon effect has spread. People spend more time in their social feeds then wandering the mall. The way we shop has changed. The “Buy Now” button has replaced the cashier. 

EXHIBITS EVOLVED - Exhibitors don’t need to meet face to face with retailers to line up huge wholesale orders at a table anymore. Booth space has become parking space for cool cars and art shows. The booth space has become ad space.

 

SPORT EVOLVED - Camping is the new sport of choice. Poler brought “Camp Vibes” to the action sport industry and those vibrations had a big effect. Leading surf and skate brands like Hurley, Sanuk, and Vans now make goods that appeal to road-tripping happy-camper hikers. Even brands like Patagonia, Yeti, Hydroflask, and Polartec have left the Outdoor Retailer trade show to exhibit at Agenda.

ADVERTISING EVOLVED - Brands create their own content and share their own stories, so advertising agencies and advertising outlets have no reason to schmooze in the booth now. Traditional advertising is dead. Brand manifestos and huge marketing campaigns are a memory. Fully-funded creative content scrolls past our eyes now. A good story told by a real person is more effective than a logo-covered billboard now.   

FAME EVOLVED - The sponsored competitive athlete lost the popular vote to the faceless side boob social media ambassador. Brands don’t pay surfers to surf in their name like they used to, they pay road trippers to tag them in photos. I've noticed the word “Performance” has been replaced by the word “Vibes”.

EDITORIAL EVOLVED - Magazines no longer need to be printed or be the voice to their readers, they can make more money as digital talent agencies. Livefastmag.com had a booth showcasing their new creative service wing of the business called Pepper. It’s their way of creating content for brands without being seen as a collaboration with the magazine. Is this the new ad agency model? I’m not sure, but it looks like brands are doing this more than they do traditional advertising.

AGENDA EVOLVED - The Agenda Show is fading away in the light of The Agenda Festival. This year the doors opened to the public selling tickets to over 10,000 people who wanted to see the exhibits on their way to the music stages to see big acts like Tyler the Creator, Ludacris, and Lil’ Dicky.

LONG BEACH DOESN'T CARE - Despite all the industry evolutions I see at Agenda, my favorite stuff is happened in the neighborhood. The independent shops outside of the trade show serve their community, not the industry. I met a lot of kind and friendly locals at Port’s ping pong paddle art show. They reminded me that I actually don’t give a shit about the industry and how it’s evolving. All I really care about are good vibrations from real people like you.

Maybe the biggest change is that things have become more personal?

Island Foxes

Stay Wild

 

Exploring One of California’s Forgotten Islands with the Stay Wild Adventure Club


Story by Justin “Scrappers” Morrison // @scrappers

Photos by Sera Lindsey // @portablesera

Julie Pinzur // @mokuyobithreads

Alex Seastrom // @mowglisurf

Renee Lusano // @wrenees


When we got back to shore, my colorful new backpack had been unzipped by island foxes, or Urocyon littoralis if you’re scientific. Using their tiny teeth, they pulled towels and water toys out looking for food, sunblock, or anything they could snack on. The joke was on them though — I left all of our food back on the mainland. Back at the grocery store. Back where I forgot to buy food for everyone on this camping trip to eat. Ha-haw! Take that, you cute snack-sized foxes. Take that joke and eat it!

The island fox, or snack fox if you will, is native to the Channel Islands. Most national parks have big hot geysers, giant waterfalls, thousand-year-old trees, and other majestic things like mountains. The Channel Islands National Park has snack foxes. All day long they roam the beach and campgrounds looking for cute bite-sized trouble to get into. 

The snack fox was standing on the edge of extinction not long ago when their numbers dropped below 100. Even though they are snack-sized, they are the largest native animal on the islands. The only critters bigger than them were the bald eagles who prefer to snack on fish, not foxes. When the island’s bald eagle populations died off due to DDT chemical insecticides, the fox-snacking golden eagle moved in. The golden eagle snacked so hard on the foxes that the foxes were added to the endangered species list in 2004. But hey, cheer up! Hard-working biologists and volunteers cleaned up the DDT, relocated the golden eagles, and reintroduced the bald eagles, restoring the ecological balance of things. By 2016 the snack fox numbers rose back up thanks to a captive breeding program. They became the fastest critter to be added and removed from the endangered species list. 

Today’s snack foxes are just listed as “near threatened,” but I think their legal status should be “damn cute.” Every trail we wandered had a snack fox running along it just teasing you like a sidewalk cat who wants to be picked up. While I got water from the campground spigot, a snack fox licked from the puddle. I could not resist reaching down and petting its soft fur. Sorry, national park rangers. I’m sure it’s illegal to touch them, but I swear we didn’t feed them. We didn’t have any food.

The friends on this trip have all lived in California for most of our lives, but none of us have been to these islands. It’s crazy to think that a national park is so close to Los Angeles. I think most Californians overlook it because you can’t drive to it. We took an hour-long boat ride from Ventura, stopping only to gaze at dolphins and blue whales jumping out of the water. We also stopped to pick up mylar balloons. 

Our campsite was only $15 and we reserved it a week before pitching our tents. Most Southern Californian car campers have to book campsites months in advance and pay up to $60 a night for a site that’s more of an RV parking lot than a camp. 

We hiked and explored the dusty trails snaking their way out of camp and up to epic lookouts. We smelled flowers and climbed trees. We had all kinds of dumb fun. Using collapsible ORU kayaks, Renee and Sera towed me, Julie, and Alex around the bay in a fun train of floaties. My floaty was the size of a toilet seat, so I had to swim along to be the caboose. A sea lion popped up and snarled like a protective dog. I stopped being the caboose and swam the fawk out of the ocean.

Water slapped the brown agates on the beach till they were wet and shiny. The rocks reminded me of those root beer bottle gummy candies. I skipped rocks shaped like perfect York peppermint patties. The vivid California poppies reminded me of that orange crunchy stuff inside a Butterfingers candy bar. Everything in nature can be compared to some kind of candy when you’re hungry enough.

Later on, the Island Packers ferry boat docked and unloaded fresh faces to the island. I smooth-talked my way to the galley and bought all the food I could carry in my tiny hands. Stumbling back down the beach to my hungry friends, I juggled granola bars, bruised bananas, oranges, and candy bars. We snacked hard like snack foxes. 


This adventure was made with help from our friends at Sanuk

Here's To Summer.

Stay Wild

Here’s to letting go of ourselves

and plummeting into the water below. 

Here’s to mosquito bites. 

Here’s to the water trapped in our ears. 

Here’s to looking at ourselves

in the water’s reflection

and truly learning who we are.

Words by Ryan Brower @beansricecheese // Photo by Jeff Luker @jeff_Luker