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The idea of Pitpilot came about after seeing the denial of British surfers in other British based magazines, I sat down and thought about all the other countries and how they all have a surf mag purely for there own countries e.g.: South Africa has Zig Zag, Australia has Tracks and ASL, France has Trip surf, Portugal has Session Surf, so we should we be any different all other British surf mags only seem to feature the ozzy’s, Hawaiians and Septic tanks (yanks), and do they put us in their mags? Do they fuck!, without British surfing being documented people are unaware we even exist and how are we to improve and create a tight army of British surfers that have respect for each other and the areas we live in, that’s why other country do it and so should we. After tranceing out day after day humping blocks around a building site day dreaming thoughts and ideas I decided fuck it, now’s the time I’m going do this, its long over due and its something the British surf community deserve. So next morning I was up and on it enquiring and checking shit out to see if it was going to be possible, I had to produce a business plan and with the help of the Princes trust and the bank we were off, it was time to hang up the work boots and give it a whirl.
As a grommet I had taken a photo of Russ Mullins doing a sick layback snap
and it was published in Surfing roots magazine which was the core roots
mag more than ten years ago, a year later done my work experience
placement at Wavelength and then done bits and bobs at Carve so I’ve
always had a strong interest in surf mags even though I had no
qualification after school, but as a surfer of 16 years I felt I was
qualified enough to start a surf mag. I went to see a friend of mine Ben
Abbott who is a ninja designer on the old computer and in the old days he
used to rip surfing, with Russ Winter and Ben Baird but then packed it in
and went slightly off the rails I told him my plan and he was stoked to
come on board, Ben has got back into his surfing recently and isn’t shy of
busting the odd kick flip on a Sk8 every now and then. We started on the first issue which was funny not necessarily perfect but a fucking good effort for a couple of cowboys, we done issues one and two between mine and Bens bedrooms and then moved into a small office space in town. We got all the boys involved from all corners of Britain who I had become friends with over the years and got them writing bits and bobs as they know what there talking about rather than some big fat fuck who don’t known shit about surfing, plan was to get the real surfers involved. Most surfers at sometime or another have been into their skateboarding so it seemed obvious to keep a slight skate feeling to the mag and after meeting (getting twisted) Matt Pritchard at the SAS ball he was stoked to be part of it.
We have many of contributors to whom we are very grateful one practically comes to mind, I got an email off a girl called Kate Ardron who offered her services on work experience agreement and after a couple of weeks of free labour it was obvious Kate was no dip shit and proved to be a valuable part of the team, so we kept her on for a couple months then she buggerd off to university and could not be talked into staying but she’ll be back after she has drunk the uni bar dry. By this time we have started on issue five and shit starting to get hectic the work load increasing I started to get snowed under and missing opportunity and decided to introduce someone new to the team even though I couldn’t really afford it, we were regularly visited at lunch times by James Dart who worked for Volcom at the time, and we never thought he would leave Volcom but to our surprise he enquired about the position available and a couple of weeks later he was on board under the title production manager, James is a good surfer and has proved to be a vital part of the team reminding us to work harder so we can surf more, the only problem is since he started the surfs been shit. With the work load piling up and my cowboy approach to the account side of the business we decided to get a book keeper in to stop me wasting money, so I asked a friend of mine called Amie Pinfold to come on board and she agreed to attack the massive task, its early days but Amie is doing a grand job.
Well this is the story so far and with Pitpilot just over a year old and
firmly established as the core British surf magazine we will continue to
bring the mag to your coffee tables and computer screens, we are always
looking to improve as we have done from issue one.
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Also in it from the start was a cheeky young lad called Andrew stone, son
of the man that doesn’t age Jed Stone, and with Andrews passion for
surfing and design it was a pleasure to have on board and to take some of
the wait off Bens shoulders, he loves to come into the office telling us
off and to get my arse in gear.