1. Mr Big News
“I got big news,” Sid says. His voice is hoarse, nasal, regionally northeastern. He talks with his gnarly, tatted hands, arms spread wide like he’s holding the news.
It’s not an unusual thing to hear him say. In the way of all incorrigible dreamers, Sid always seems to have something ecstatic looming on his horizon. Over the past half century, he’s fostered an improbably hardcore surf community under the banner of Water Brothers, the world’s oldest underground surf brand, right here in his hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, a place not known for its waves. Along the way, he’s broken bread (and bottles) with surf & skate royalty, holding basement jams with Tom Curren’s Skipping Urchins and halfpipe sessions with Tony Hawk. He’s even dipped a…