Toobs.com

	Wisdumb
	ASR Trade Show-San Diego, late '80's (5-02-04) Back in the day, my friend Glenn got the semi-dream job of writing articles for Bodyboarding magazine. His big assignment at the time was the epic “Gear Guide” dispatch so he was all pumped up. Any good article, worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, requires a fact or two, so he got us hooked up with passes for the Action Sports Retail trade show in San Diego. I was approved as a necessary partner because I “used to live in San Diego and knew my way around.” These passes were better than gold in that they got you through the gates to the castle’s royal vault of free goodies. They are the kind of thing you hold tightly and wave in the face of lesser groms as they snivel. It really was immaterial that I had been to San Diego one time as a small child and only remember checking out some fancy boats or something. I was told we were going to Sea World. To make things more certain, we bypassed Glenn’s car of questionable reliability and prudent top speed and settled on a compact rental car. We bailed San Luis Obispo at about 11PM. I had mentioned something about being sure to stay awake to help him stay awake while he drove with some lively conversation and anecdotes. So by about Avila (7 miles) I was out cold. At about 2AM I was rudely awakened by the car coming to a stop in the Disneyland parking lot or very nearby. Nothing to worry about in that it was only a “restroom” break in some bushes. Not long after I had fallen back asleep did we pull into Glenn’s friend’s house at about 3:30AM. For the uninitiated, San Diego is normally a solid 6 hour drive from SLO, depending on traff**k, so um, we made good time while no one was looking... Since we arrived so early his friend and their friends were still up drinking and mildly goofing around. As I scanned the room with my bleary eyes, I started getting an uncomfortable feeling. One of their bro’s made some shallow comment about my longer hair at the time when it suddenly became painfully clear that we were in a fraternity house! Luckily it was pretty late and their powers to turn us into cloned sheep with sport coats and cheap ties were diminished. A few secret handshakes later, we were out the door and off to the land of plenty. We find the giant building with little fanfare due to my San Diego experience and background. After a brief ceremony putting our coveted ASR passes around our necks we venture into the fury of an industry gone MAD. Slightly disappointed that they misspelled my last name with too many r’s, making it sound like a pirate would pronounce it, we snake our way down the long isles of booths. There are free goodies everywhere! Stickers, magazines, posters, hats, Frisbees, sun block, surf wax all FREE and all for ME. They even had bags for the loot because they know you will need it. I had a hunch that they gave free stuff away in hopes that your company or store would buy a lot more at a later date, but it was mere speculation. I was just about to further pursue my treatise on macroeconomics when a girl wearing only a bikini walked by. But I was not there for philosophy or pleasures of the flesh. I was there for information. We find our first bodyboard booth by Challenger. They seemed to have a nice product being promoted by a nice man. Glenn and I traded off with a barrage of questions about designs, materials, and visions for the future and the like. After laying down the groundwork and getting what he needed for the article, we went a little ‘freestyle’. As we were about to leave we would simply ask in a chummy way “and if you don’t feel like carting all these boards back to the factory, we’ll take some off your hands!”. The responses varied. All were positive to some degree except Morey, which is ironic since that is my last name (spelled correctly) so I felt a degree of entitlement or something. I believe the guy from Challenger who clearly didn’t surf replied “well, how many do you need?”. Wave rebel stoked us out and BZ gave us some used team boards. I am sure that if Toobs existed back then, they would have certainly added to the thick stack. While securing our booty of boards, we were amassing a fat bag of other goodies. It was fun strutting around with an air of aristocracy with our badges reading Mark Morrey, Surfing Magazine (owner of Bodyboarding Mag). Maybe you have heard of Surfing Magazine, Mr. A. Jerk from Small Change Surfshop in Anymall, U$A perhaps, as I tried to look down my nose while lugging 8 pounds of stickers and magazines. I made sure to hide my badge and be discrete while grabbing a few issues from the Surfing Magazine booth… At the end of the day, we made the rounds and collected our new boards. Since there were a number of potential criminals disguised as surfers, the security guard stopped us at the door as we trembled under the weight of our loot. He asked to see a receipt, which seemed pretty funny and all I could say was to “watch these boards for us, we need to go back and get the rest”. The rent-a-cop snapped to attention while I drained the rest of the board booths of any more. Glenn ran to get the car. According to my math skills, we got about $1000 worth of boards. Since the things tend to last for quite a while, we had more boards than we could use. We did our own test trials with our meager skills and found that some boards sucked and others were quite good. More recently, I attended another ASR trade show to try to get free goodies for prizes at a Surfrider fundraiser surf contest at Rincon but with much less success. The stickers on the other hand did last for years and came in real handy at the airport in Bali as the police were about to tear my luggage inside out. I somehow put the bag of goodwill stuff for the local kids on top. When the police picked it up they asked and I said they were for them. They all got a sticker and once again, I got the VIP treatment. more stories >>