Short version:
TWLOHA shirts are now available at Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
Long version:
Hello from Australia.
Yup, i’m still here – big fan of this place. Stuck around after Soundwave for a few days of semi-vacation. i’m staying on the Gold Coast and cheering for friends who are here competing in the Quiksilver Pro at Snapper Rocks. This is the first event of the 2009 professional surfing season and it’s pretty awesome timing that this happens to be happening right after Soundwave.
i’ve been a surfer my entire life. i am the son of a surfer. My parents grew up in Long Island but moved south to Florida before i was born, mainly because my dad fell in love with the warm and waves at Sebastian Inlet. After a few years, they ended up in Emerald Isle, North Carolina and opened a surf shop. i was born and after a few more years, we headed south to Florida.
i grew up six miles north of Sebastian Inlet, which is arguably the best place to surf on America’s east coast. For as long as i can remember, i’ve been around the ocean. Even now, if i’m away from it for more than a couple weeks, something in me starts to feel off. It’s hard to explain but it’s like part of me has gone missing. i don’t usually realize it until i’m back home, or surfing somewhere, and then i begin to feel myself letting go of stress and questions. There’s just something peaceful in it for me. That might sound weird, but it’s become part of me being healthy. i don’t mean that in some weird mystical spiritual way – i just mean it’s become part of my story – it’s part of who i am and it’s something that i love…
i worked at our local surf shop when i was in high school. After that, i worked for Quiksilver as an assistant in sales for four years. After Quiksilver, i worked for Hurley for four years. i handled all of their sales in Florida, which basically meant that i spent most of my time on the road, visiting surf shops all over Florida, making sure they had all the Hurley stuff they needed. Hurley took a pretty huge chance on me, offering a big job to an unproven 22 year-old (who liked to daydream and doodle and talk to people, but wasn’t much for waking up early or paperwork). i learned so much in my time there, met amazing people and made amazing friends.
A lot of people, myself included, assumed that i would work for Hurley for the next 20 years. It was a really good job and surfing and the surf industry were pretty much all i’d ever known, especially when it came to “career”. But then three years ago, i met a girl named Renee and the five days that followed moved some things around in me. i wrote a story called “To Write Love on Her Arms”, made a MySpace page to give the story a home, and ordered 200 t-shirts as a way to raise money for Renee’s treatment. The surprising response to that humble beginning led to something of a crossroads and in July of 2006, i decided to quit my job at Hurley to pursue TWLOHA full-time. The rest, i suppose, is history. (If you’re not sure what i’m talking about, It’s pretty much all here in the archived blogs.)
One of my favorite things about my job at Hurley was Ron Jon Surf Shop. It’s the biggest surf shop in the world and it’s located just a few miles from where i live. People come from all over to see it – they follow the billboards along I-95 to a sea of boardshorts and t-shirts and bikinis. When i was with Hurley, i would go to Ron Jon every Monday to straighten up our section and to see what they needed. In the process as the years passed, the people there became my friends. There was a sense that beyond the business, there was caring in the room. It was nothing unusual for important meetings to begin with talk that sounded more like friends catching up over coffee.
So when i left Hurley, it was really hard to say goodbye to Ron Jon. It was so hard that rather than call, i sent an email, which is probably the equivalent of breaking up with someone via text message… We did talk soon after and we did promise to stay in touch…
Well, the exciting news is that i was back at the Ron Jon office a couple weeks ago, but this time it wasn’t for Hurley and it wasn’t even just to catch up as friends. i was there for a meeting about TWLOHA… It meant a lot to be able to bring them up to speed on everything that’s happenened over the last two and a half years, how things have grown from a simple beginning, the surprising doors that continue to open, where the journey has taken us… It also meant a lot to hear their kind response.
The exciting news is this: TWLOHA shirts are now available at Ron Jon Surf Shop.
We live in a world where everyone wants to label everything, put everything in a box where they can make simple sense of it. Well, TWLOHA is a few things at once and one of those things, in my opinion, is that we’re a brand. We’re also a non-profit, a conversation, a story, a collection of ideas, and maybe even a movement (though that’s a very big word that shouldn’t be thrown around.)
Anyway, Ron Jon is home to a lot of popular brands such as Hurley, Volcom, Quiksilver, Roxy, Billabong and Element. There are a lot of popular brands in the world but it’s rare that a brand has something to say. We believe that we do, that ours is a message that attempts to move people toward real hope, real help, real change. Toward conversations that heal and toward lives filled with real compassion. That’s what we’re aiming for.
We’ve also given nearly $500,000 to treatment and recovery, and with every TWLOHA shirt that someone buys, that number grows.
We’re excited about the Ron Jon news because thousands of people visit Ron Jon, and our message is one for people. It’s a message of hope, help, honesty and community. We talk about issues that affect people so we like to bring our message to places where people go. We’ve been able to see that happen everywhere from universities to concerts in clubs to churches, even Hot Topic and NBC Nightly News.
We’re excited to add Ron Jon to that list and we hope you are too. If you’re planning a trip to central Florida, or you call Florida home, we hope you’ll check out the TWLOHA section at Ron Jon. Right now, it’s just one rack, but with your help – who knows? Maybe we can make it grow. Like the rest of our surprising story, we make this stuff happen together.
Oh and if somebody asks why TWLOHA shirts would be sold in a surf shop, tell them not to overthink it. People are always the most important thing. People go surfing. People go to the beach. People wear clothes. People wrestle with questions and pain. We want to continue to show up where people show up. We want to continue to surprise people.
We’re honored and grateful that Ron Jon would invite us. We hope to see you soon.
Peace to you, from the Gold Coast.
jamie
PS: i wrestled with this one being kind of long. Decided to share that stuff about my history with surfing and the surf industry as a way of explaining where this news comes from and also as a way of saying that this one means a lot to me. Thanks always for reading. Thanks for letting me write.