September 2009, Toes on the Nose teamrider Jesse Timm Featured in Slide Magazine's premiere edition in the US.
Slide Magazine was created by Alan Ashworth in 2002 to bring a voice to the New Zealand and International longboarding movement; to generate excitement in a rewarding style of surfing and to reinvigorate it for the younger generation.
For Jesse Timm, his journey as a surfer began in an unusual location. As a youngster, he got hooked on body boarding the shores of Lake Michigan in Holland, Michigan, USA, most notably the home of an annual Tulip Festival that dates back to 1847, when the first group of Dutch settlers arrived. Lake Michigan, where Timm began his soulful sojourn, is 307 miles in length and 118 miles at its widest part, and it is more than 900 feet in depth, so, Timm says, “It’s big enough to have wind swells.” The freshwater makes sur!ng there a very unique experience, too, as the lack of salt content in the water reduces buoyancy. “Your turns sink a little more than they would on a traditional saltwater wave,” he con!rms. Plus, no post-surf rinse o"s are necessary! Even though his family was clueless about sur!ng, Timm felt a passion developing to slide, ride, glide, and perform on waves. “Sur!ng seems to know how to !nd you and select you out of the crowd,” says Timm. “Sur!ng to me has been a blessing and a curse. It’s been the fork in my road.”
When he was12, Timm’s family moved from Michigan to Daytona Beach, Florida, where he had more exposure to better surf. Once the wave-starved teenager started gliding on the Floridian waves, Timm’s eyes were opened by a more consistent sur!ng world and his became a full-fledged obsession. At 16, after graduating from high school, he got his own apartment at the beach. “That pretty much intoxicated me,” he says. “I didn’t know anything other than going to the beach.” When he got a car, Timm and his friends would drive for miles up and down the coast, searching for that special little sandbar that was working and waiting for them.
He moved to the West Coast, Southern California, some years later, in search of better waves, but incurred a serious back injury while working construction. The injury forced him to consider less strenuous work. He returned to school and graduated with honors in a nursing program at a local college. Since, he has worked as a LVN—licensed vocational nurse— as a way to pay the bills and work in a rewarding field.
During his 20s, though, it hit him. Timm found what he needed to elevate his longboarding style. He began to receive unsought compliments for his traditional #air and maneuvers. In the lineup, other surfers who recognized his catlike cross-stepping and poised perches on the tip began calling him “Twinkle Toes” or “Hollywood,” but the nickname that !nally stuck was “Trim.”
At 5’10” and 150 pounds, Trim could easily ride a 9’0” highperformance longboard, but prefers heavy, Paul Bunyan-like logs of at least 10 feet, weighing 35 pounds, so he can dance on the deck in a manner that would make Mikhail Baryshnikov envious.
In Trim’s eyes, a good longboarder is all about the little details and style—foot placement, crossstepping, body English. “Walking to the nose or back to the tail of the board should be done in the same #uid manner, it’s more efficient and it looks better,” he divulges.
He also believes that style does not spontaneously occur, rather it is acquired through hard work, repetition, and discipline. “You might have talent, but in order to really excel, you need to have style. The two dovetail. Talent is raw and rough around the edges, unsure of direction. Style cleans it and smoothes it out with con!dence and commitment.”
In order to shorten his learning curve, Trim utilized any and all 1960s sur!ng clips to en?hance his unique #air and prowess. He watched !lm of his favorite surfers, like David Nuuhiwa, L.J. Richards, Henry Ford, Robert August, and Lance Carson, over and over, until the images were burned in his brain. “I now feel like I have come to a place in my sur!ng that I’m happy,” he insists, “I now feel I have created my own style with a ’60s #air.” Timm says the best advice he ever received was from friend and mentor David Nuuhiwa, who is known for his unmatched noseriding skills during longboarding’s golden era. Nuuhiwa told him, “The best longboarders make their movements look choreographed, as if every step and pose were scripted before the surfer got to his feet.”
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