Tkb’s Editor starts off last year with a vehicular adventure somewhere in the middle of Baja.
Tkb prints somewhere in the ballpark of 30-34 in-depth stories each year; a smattering of biographies, interviews, adventure reports and opinion pieces. Since we are embarking on a new year, we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a day to reflect on our favorite stories from the issues we published in the last four quarters. If you have the time, take a break in between kite sessions and give some of these a read. I think you will find that we will always have more to learn about the people and places of this wonderful sport we all share.
~Brendan Richards
Winter Vol. 12, No 4
Chris Gutzeit and I were sponsored by the same brand back in the day and when I ran into him earlier this fall at Leo Carrillo, Santa Barbara (dorking it up on our foilboards), he told me about the infinite portal art he had been making. I always knew Chris was an artist in addition to being one of the most talented kitesurfers to come out of the Central Coast in the early days, but the beauty of these objects and the adventure in the making is a great story that sits squarely at the top of my list. (Read it here)
Fall Vol. 12, No 3
As a magazine editor you tend to get frequent photographic submissions from a couple key creatives and one of the benefits of this job is you get to see the full scope of their work. I always enjoyed the depth and variety of Vincent Bergeron’s photo pulls and when I finally met him in Baja last year I caught a glimpse of him as a character in his element. Vincent takes his roll as a photographer and our sport very seriously and I wanted to capture his contributions to the visual storytelling of our sport. (Read it here)
Fall Vol. 12, No 3
I remember when Coleman first started showing up in Santa Cruz: First a quiet kid on the periphery, then a wacky hair-brained inventor, and finally a talented athlete by his own right. I always had a great respect for Coleman’s energy, but when I hung-out with Coleman during one of his brainstorming sessions with Tony Logosz in Hood River last summer, I was inspired to write a story about mentor-ship, R&D and intellectual property. Instead, the story that made it to print ended up more about Coleman’s entrepreneurial adventures in developing the first rigid framed kitesurfing harness. It’s a very engaging story and worth the read. (Read it here)
Spring Vol. 12, No 1
I don’t remember when I first heard Rich Sabo and Brandon Scheid talking about “Dork Tricks,” but when I sat down for breakfast with these two in La Ventana last winter I knew there was something deeper going on here. The classic dialogue that followed ended up as the transcript for this feature, but aside from the humor of these two guy’s colorful off-the-cuff dissertation on Dork Tricks, it lends insight into the interplay between wakestyle’s quest for legitimacy and the natural fun factor that is inherent in kiteboarding. (Read it here)
Spring Vol. 12, No 1
There’s no end to the pile of kiteboarding travel stories that land on my desk and I could probably lump 99% of them into one of four categories. Bad Luck Bananas is a textbook example of the “serial tragedy and misfortune” genre. Seth Warren is the photographer/documentarist behind this trip and he does an excellent job of photographing the sheer beauty of Madagascar and the unbelievable misfortune that occurs when one (Jalou Langeree in this case) disregards superstition. (Read it here)
