former niceness crew out there?

I was a dedicated lurker. Never once posted, though. Really enjoyed the site, E's photos, and his prose. Really miss it.

btw, I should add that the vibe was the complete opposite of the vibe on SR, which probably explains why I never came out of hiding there...

I consider myself former blakestah, thank you very much.

edit: wait, is it the same guy that did both? I can't even remember now.

Hey sticker. this is e from niceness. glad you enjoyed the site. keep shredding!

This post made me register. I lurk, yet I don't post. I am waiting for E to fire it back up. And no, E and Dave 'Blakestah' Blake are 2 entirely different people. BVB is still the same person tho.

Hi Bob! See ya soon.....

e & Kaiser! Damn, man, what good memories of reading y'all's stuff. Awesome.

And heh, bvb and his various personae never last long here thanks to SR's eject-o-matic post & comment rater.

I was a regular on e's niceness site (with the same username). e always killed it with his expression sessions! And now that kaiser is on board, i'm sure SR will fall into a pit of gratuitous bikini shots. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing....

< muffs > Onions < / muffs >!

I lurked on niceness. It's cool that the site is still pretty much all online (or was last time I checked). As @tcannon mentioned recently, it's worth reading niceness to see how much stays the same...

If you look back at those threads, you'll see some familiar nicknames.

Just joined so I could comment here- I was a daily niceness lurker, occasional poster. Great blog, e's stuff always entertained, as did the ridiculous smack talking and completely random yet hilarious posts that seemed to pop up. But really, the little OB prose pieces that e wrote were very cool...props.

If anyone remembers, I was the guy with the "I got punched in the face by a Santa Cruz local" story...ahhh such fond nastalgia...

Daily niceness reader, very occasional poster. Remember the site very fondly. E's DP prose was always a great way to start the day....

numbersign or pound sign is not an allowed character , so I am not the same as Friend #1.

I lurk here, and I hate this site.

But I still lurk.

The doof also lurks but not as much as me.

We both refer to this site as the dork report.

One of the good things about E's site was it mirrored the actual experience of surfing in terms of how you relate to others while doing it. Some are friendly, some are not.

Here everyone is friendly, and if they are not, then they get booted.

That is not exactly how it works in the water.

I was a daily niceness lurker (got busted by my IT guy looking at some of the occasionally posted porn shots) and miss E's posting and of course the other lurkers and lurke'es. I posted only a few times.. Bring it back E.

Who posted porn? That ain't right.....

i'm with friend #1. this place is like sour milk. or the smell of your own fart. i take that back. farts are way better.

It is a lot like being on MDA, the precurser to mdma or xtasy.

Back in college, I dropped some with my gal and spent a day on the beach down in SoCal. When we were ready to leave, I shook out our towel, and got sand all over some girl laying out next to us. She said, "thanks!", in the most sarcastic tone possible. And I said "You're welcome." as sincerely as possible.

"I lurk here, and I hate this site."

You know what I hate? You know how sometimes you put a meat thermometer in your ear and then whack it wit a ball peen hammer?

I hate it when that happens.

@tcannon: lol ... one really has to wonder ...

interesting fact of the day: if you run a report that compares troll activity on stokereport to the use of the site (pageviews/day) you'll see a very strong correlation. trolls are very active readers of the site. i guess they've got a weird love/hate thing going ...

Niceness: committed surfers, surfer jobs, traditional surfer ethos

StokeReport: committed newbie surfers, tech jobs, web 2.0 ethos

I enjoy(ed) both sites.

?

!

Not sure how negative comments and/or smack talk adds any value aside from sophomoric shits and giggles. More bizarre to me are the people who lurk here and then comment about how lame the site is. Is your life so open ended and unfulfilling that you can spend time on a site you don't like? WTF? If you don't like it, leave. No one is begging you to stay. If you want a site that is committed to hardcore surfers who thrive on negativity, get off your ass and start it. You can then talk about all the losers at Stoker Report. It'll be great.

Things i like about stoke report (though i've only been reading it a few days):
- Multiple authorship. More like a forum than a blog.
- thumbs-up/thumbs-down - fun to rate posts, though it's disheartening that comments i like seem to have negative ratings and posts that make me cringe often have positive ratings.
- stoke-reporters seem stoked on surfing!

Thing about stoke report that i disagree with:
- Posting reports about sensitive spots!
This makes no sense to me. If you've ever surfed a spot with a tight takeoff area you'll agree that every person in the water makes a difference.

I've talked to people who would never have considered surfing a spot on a particular day but read about it on stoke report and went the next day.

IMHO, reporting on conditions of a sensitive surf spot is unethical and a slap in the face to anyone who puts the time in to those spots.

Shred on shredders!!

@H20MansLibrary +1

"kloo" here.

I agree with E... on the sensitive spots... Report the sh#t outta OB, lindy and HMB and some of the other high-pro spots but for gods sake use code-word X or something like they did on niceness..

@f#1, we're clearly looking for different things in our online communities. I got enough stress in my life, and surfing is my stress release. I'm never more happy, relaxed, and stoked than when I've paddled out. The last thing I would want would be to come online to read about surfing and have it stress me out (and given how this site has evolved, I'm not alone). The reality is that, unfortunately for e, niceness was 10x more negative & mean than anything I actually ever encounter in the water, so it really wasn't a reflection of real life. It was an amplification of a small minority's reality & negativity.

I enjoyed reading your stuff on e's, so it's too bad you can't enjoy the community that exists here.

And, it's been rehashed a million times, the reporting argument, but I do agree w/e's & mheye's POV on small-takeoff-zone spots, which is why I "report the sh#t outta OB" but remain silent when I end up elsewhere.

SURF!

Stokers,

Since you sucked me in to post, let me just throw some things out there from personal experience on E's site. One of the reasons I am doing this is that I see a similar evolution on SR that was encountered on E's site which is kinda cool in a lot of respects. That said, there are repercussions which might be suffered as well.

First off, assume there are a crapload more lurkers then posters. Merely because a small minority are posting, doesn't mean a similar group are reading. I think at the peak, E had like 1000 unique IP hits a day. Consider this when you post something.

Next, don't assume you REALLY know any of the people that post until you meet them in real life. People still think I am a 16 year old, pimpled face dude, which happens to have an affinity for Reef models. The last part is true....the other points are not. I'd venture to guess that I've actually surfed with many of you given how small the surf community is around here. The fact is, you likely don't know who I am. And I promise some of you probably don't like 'the dude that was riding X board....because he took my wave".

3rd point - and likely the most controversial - is that there IS a certain unwritten protocol to naming names and claiming spots, conditions or otherwise. I certainly don't follow all aspects of this 'code', no one does. Hell, we all have cell phones and even the most local of locals calls their buddy occasional to tell them, 'its rippin bro brah!'. Consider this post here: http://stokereport.com/rant/yet-again-someone-has-issue-public-reporting. LKilpatrick has no idea if the person that kindly emailed that to him has been surfing that spot for 30 years. Shit, maybe he is 70 years old and that is the only spot he surfs and he likes to surf it alone. Maybe he is a 15 year old HMB high school kook that will let the air out of your tires. You never know....so be wise to what you post and how you post it. There are more people watching then you know (see above) and accepting some of the 'code' wouldn't be a bad thing at times.

From afar, I think most of the peeps here have a cool sense of community and the like. Keep doing what your doing and most importantly, stay stoked on surfing!

- Kaiser

For my fans out there: (you know you've missed me...)

I do accept parts of the code, I did not give the exact spot locations in my post as I do respect the locations, however the point of saying its good in Half Moon Bay is like saying its good at OB. I never mentioned where I was in the video and just mentioned a few names of other spots in HMB, if you didn't know the area they would mean nothing to you.

I just get frustrated with being told not to share with people I think would enjoy it. My general rule is that if the spot is on surfline then its fair game to name and say your broadcasting from it. If its not then vague is the word. I would never post a report on some of the spots that I surf south of HMB or I would use a pseudonym IE: http://surfergrrrl.blogspot.com/2009/06/seal-point-13-june-2009.html

This is the whole anonymous of the internet that is an issue, its so easy to call someone out online and then hide rather than to just enjoy the video and if you can get out and snag a wave on an empty beach, go for it.

I had a love/hate relationship with the Niceness Blog and Blakestah's predictions. The posters would give up their favorite spots like a 3rd grader with a secret. B's reports would lock me into the winds. Unfortunately it had the same effect on many others. All the sites really did was produce crowding in the water at peak times. In the end, when they went away I found all spots in the area opened up and were less choked. That was great, and I found I really didn't miss the blog and forecast.

Surfers/people are lazy. They like to have the the wheres and whens spoon feed to them. I fear that this site is going in that direction.

I love seeing the stoke part of surfing here, but let the individuals figure out the where and whens themselves.

Switching gears in response to @kaiser's post. I like girl # 8. What is up with #10's crazy knock knees?

I used to bike race when I was a student at UCSC (long long ago) and as a result I trained on Hwy 1 from West side to Devils slide..
What I recall was seeing these pickup's driving along with boards and then disappearing off into some side spot..
I did not surf then but I did get curious. After my second almost fist fight on public land linked with some jerk trying to ping me with his rearview as he drove by cause he'd seen me ON MY BIKE checking out the scene I realized a few things.
~ Some people are jerks
~ Secrecy/Anonymity can breed really bad behavior
~ It way to easy to feel entitled

Having said that I do respect the code for the most part and never post "mile marker 99999 was great at ebb tide with a 4' E swell in the water and a WNW howling wind."

But I do worry when I paddle out, show respect, wait my turn (not for the best wave of the set) and STILL get the huge stink eye/rude comment tossed my way like they own the freaking ocean.. I worry because entitlement is not a good thing as near as I can tell...

H2O - I counted from the goofy foot side and had no idea what you were talking about...
ahem on the knock kneed part...

i take it you saw the numbers they are holding ? :)

what numbers....
oh wait I never looked that high..
it's never as funny when you have to explain

wow, this seemingly innocuous post certainly pulled a lot of lurkers out of the wood work (including me).

Hey E - since you're here, what happened with niceness anyway!?