Yesterday I finally had a chance to visit my good friend and artist Scott Chenoweth at his community art space in Long Beach, CA to snap photos of our new t-shirts. We always use the ground at Scott’s space Open Long Beach to shoot our merch — but we hadn’t been able to head over no thanks to pandemic life. When I got there yesterday, we didn’t have a steamer, so the shirts look wrinkled but we got the job done. This was our first chance to at least show you what they look like without using Photoshop. That is me removing the fourth wall. Things continue to be unpredictable.

I’ll be honest: it’s been tough to talk surfing. There is urgency in the air and some progress being made in the fight against rampant racism on this planet and I love it. I’ve personally been doing a lot of educating both alone and with family and friends about what’s going on in America and the world. Talking about our new film and surfing has felt small and insignificant in comparison to the beautiful raging against the white machine going on in the streets and at the community gatherings I’ve been seeing and experiencing where I live.

I’ve been dying to tell you about the great music (Run the Jewels new album RTJ 4,), videos and films (Jane Elliot’s eye color test, Anthony Bourdain at the Waffle House in Charleston, South Carolina, I Am Not your Negro by Raoul Peck), and books I been consuming (The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale, If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance by Angela Davis), but I had work to do first myself before I shared anything. And I hope you did a bit of the same and I look forward to you sharing your experiences and discoveries (send them to: hello@inherentbummer.com).

The response to our new movie “Surf Film” has been really good and the odds of us doing another one right away are very high. Hopefully we can get out and film it in the wild this time, and most importantly: throw a massive party to release it with all of you in attendance. We’ll get there.

As we roll out of another week of continued chaos I hope you’re learning and doing your part — whatever that may be — as anything and everything is progress. We’re here to keep discussing, involving and including everyone we can. I’ve been so delighted by the work Former and Welcome Rivers are doing. While the silence and inaction from most legacy surf brands is disheartening, it means those of us here, too small to fail, have no problem taking the reins and building our own underground networks to fight against institutionalized racism in our white-washed surf space. We’ll be here chanting “It’s not the end of the world” together. Because it’s our world. Fuck the racists. Fuck the fascists. Fuck police brutality. —Travis Ferré

[Pictured above: Florynce Kennedy, lawyer, feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer, activist]

Here’s those wrinkled new IB t-shirts: Get one here.