He never came back.

Apparently he got caught in a riptide and drowned. You can read about some details of his death (and his life) in these news articles . He made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle today. We all agree he'd be psyched that he's now going to go down in history as a cool surfer dude. (Eerily, the author of the first article was one of the people who noticed and pulled his body from the water. Today's article is more of a proper obituary.)

Sean grew up in South Burlington and went to UVM. He, Melanie and I all moved to San Francisco around the same time (1999) and we'd become pretty close over the past few years. He was basically Melanie's best friend. A bunch of us spent the day together yesterday commiserating and remembering. I expect we'll be doing that sort of thing for a while now.

Melanie's in close contact with his family (his mother and brother). As shocking as this is for his friends, it must be so much worse for his family; our thoughts are with them.

The image at left is a screengrab from a video I shot at his birthday party last December. Apologies for the graininess. I've now made a Flickr pool with much better images. If anyone has any photos or remembrances send them my way (alex at stinky dot com).

There will be funeral services in San Francisco (this Sunday, 1/29) and in Vermont (timing tbd). Send me email or join the seanfahey Yahoo Group if you want to be kept in the loop.