Craig Anderson
Raw, honest and undeniably Quicksilver! We like! | Photo: Quiksilver

Just in: Quiksilver wants you to “Stay High!”

International mega-brand debuts edgy new creative direction! We like!

Today Quiksilver unveiled their new “raw, honest, and undeniably Quiksilver” creative direction, introducing their brand narrative “Stay High!” (Our emphasis.)

“Our lifestyle is about finding positives,” Quik’s recently added CEO, Pierre Agnes writes. “Getting Stoked. Keeping the high. It’s Quiksilver’s Job to remind everyone of that spirit. Stay High!”

It’s a not-so-well-kept-secret that most of the major surf brands were built on serious drug money. But what a bold move for Quiksilver to absolutely own it!

According to the company, the new direction’s “creative blueprint echoes the fertile environment of Quiksilver and the surf community in the 70s and 80s as the company approaches its 50th anniversary.”

Oh, those fertile ’70s and ’80s! After a decade wrought with tough financial times, not to mention the loss of Kelly Slater, it’s not surprising that Quik would look back upon the 50-year-old brand’s “fertile” infancy with rosé-tinted prescription lenses.

But can a stoney nostalgia make Quik’s barren fields bare fruit?

The new line will debut in Spring of 2016, and is split into AM and PM collections inspired by a specific surfy destination.

For the first season, Quik’s team “immersed themselves in Rio de Janeiro and drew their inspiration from the unique culture of Brazil – from the brighter colors of São Conrado beach to the darker side of the Rocinha Favelas.”

Quiksilver Stay High
Quik’s team “immersed themselves in Rio de Janeiro and drew their inspiration from the unique culture of Brazil – from the brighter colors of São Conrado beach to the darker side of the Rocinha Favelas.”

 

Oh, what a surely debaucherous “inspiration trip” must have ensued! Quik does Rio! If only those favela walls could speak!

QS_2016_S1_Brazil_Heywood-1035_low

You can see what Quiksilver’s smoking next week at the Agenda Tradeshow in Long Beach, California.


Captain John Shawcross
Captain John Shawcross is a relaxed and humorous man who commands the Ratu Motu, previously known as the Indies Trader IV. For many years, he was the super-yacht captain billionaires begged to hire. First, Shawcross skippered the 114-metre $100 million Octopus in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. Later, a very rich Russian for whom no words can be spoken nor written due to a confidentiality agreement, sought his rule. In a darker time, this master mariner would be hauling Sperm Whales alongside for slaughter. | Photo: Derek Rielly

(Audio): I was robbed by pirates in the Amazon!

Mentawai boat cap’n on the time he was robbed and lined up to be shot, execution-style…

Having the barrel of a gun shoved into your head is a helluva game. Years back, on Australia’s Gold Coast, I was robbed at gunpoint, the villain pushing the barrel of his shotgun into my gut, first, and, later, when I baulked at handing over my precious twenty-dollar bill (this was the nineties! I was poor!) into my forehead.

That feeling of a person you’ve never met having the ability to extinguish your life in an instant is something I never want to feel again. The hopelessness, the stupidity, the injustice.

And just when you think you’re about to die, you have a thought: if he ever gets caught, he’ll weep for the judge, be out in ten years, while I rot in the dirt.

Anyway, two weeks ago I was enjoying the company of the very well-regarded international boat captain, John Shawcross, during a Mentawai vay-cay.

Captain John Shawcross, now don’t that have a regal ring to it! 

For many years, he was the super-yacht captain billionaires begged to hire. First, Shawcross skippered the 114-metre $100 million Octopus in the Mediterranean and Caribbean.

Later, a very rich Russian for whom no words can be spoken nor written due to a confidentiality agreement, sought his rule. In a darker time, let’s say a century ago, this master mariner would be hauling Sperm Whales alongside for slaughter.

In the wheelhouse of the Mentawai-plying vessel the Ratu Motu (formerly the Indies Trader IV) Shawcross told me about the time he woke up on the super yacht he was skippering for a German billionaire with a gun to his head.

Pirates!

At one point, he, the crew and the dozen or so guests were told to kneel and prepare for execution.

Yeah, he’s here, so he didn’t get it, but what a story!


Reubyn Ash
Reubyn Ash, number one surfer, or maybe number two, in all of Britain, yes? No! According to archival evidence! | Photo: Paul Evans

Revealed: Best British surfer is 125-year old lady!

Did you think it was Reubyn Ash?

The British are known for many things (India, Rolls Royce…) but not their surfing acumen. Until recently, it had been thought the best surfer the country had ever produced was Surf Europe editor-in-chief Paul Evans followed closely by aerialist Reubyn Ash but new evidence has come to light. The best surfer in British history is famed mystery writer Agatha Christie!

Christie, who died in 1976,  has sold over two-billion books but what really turned her on was the shred. In 1922 she became one of the first Britons to shred, getting her boogie on at South Africa’s Muizenberg Beach.

“The surf boards in South Africa were made of light, thin wood, easy to carry, and one soon got the knack of coming in on the waves…” she said at the time. “It was occasionally painful as you took a nosedive down into the sand, but on the whole it was an easy sport and great fun.”

Agatha-Christie-007

Months later, in Honolulu, she moved from riding prone to standing up, just like Dion Agius. She wrote of the experience in her autobiography, “I learned to become expert – or at any rate expert from the European point of view – the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board!”

Just like Dion Agius!

Here is Ruebyn Ash, Britain’s third best surfer:


John John Florence
Justin Jay has the ability to be surrounded by photographers, fans with GoPros and iPhones and still find that… moment… that eludes everyone else. | Photo: Justin Jay

Soon: Justin Jay’s North Shore Photo Show, NYC

In the Bagel? Come and see the best of surf photojournalism at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club…

Each year there are two principal behind-the-scenes photographers on the North Shore. The Californian Steve Sherman, naturally, and maybe not so naturally given his geographical base, the New Yorker Justin Jay.

Justin Jay, yeah, that guy, the one whom I’ve given plenty of press in Stab magazine, first, and lately, BeachGrit. The same one who’s shot P Diddy and Jay Z.

Justin is one of those photographers y’can’t ignore; who catches moments, photos, that blur the line between artistic expression and candour. With an ancient fixed 35mm lens attached to a relatively modern Canon body and with an artist’s eye for colour correction, his photos arrest the eye.

Every year when he flies to the North Shore to independently cover the contest season, he carries a box of prints in his backpack to give to surfers he’s previously shot.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” says the 42-year-old from the Lower East Side. “A picture does take a little bit of your soul in a sense, it’s why famous people wear sunglasses all the time. So if you take someone’s photo, you need to give something back, you have to make sure they get a print. Everyone has a fucking iPhone and no one has any physical prints any more. When you give someone a print from a year ago, they feel amazing.”

Montgomery Ernest Thomas Kaluhiokalani aka Buttons
Montgomery Ernest Thomas Kaluhiokalani aka Buttons shortly before he died in 2013.

Opening this Saturday night at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club and running until July 6, is Justin’s exhibition 1000 images, all shot from his half-dozen or so seasons on the North Shore.

Gabriel Medina
Emotion? Jay’s photos got ’em.

If you’re in town and don’t mind a little ride on the subway, Justin promises a warm welcome, a little chilled booze and photos that’ll make you believe surfing is the most happening show in town.

Coco Ho and Quincy Davis
Hawaiian Coco Ho and New Yorker Quincy Davis and one of the famous North Shore turtles. Even something as potentially cheesy as two gals in a bikini with a reptile is filled with enough…what is it, intent, skill… to please the eye.
Ross Williams and Benji Weatherley
Momentum stars Benji Weatherley and Ross Williams (now the ace in the WSL commentary team) laugh at the absurdities of life and the brevity of fame.
Joel Parkinson and Steve Sherman
The other great behind-the-scenes shooter Steve Sherman and Joel Parkinson in an unguarded moment, typical of Justin Jay’s body of work.

If you want to hear Justin Jay talk about the game of shooting photos, click here. 

Justin Jay exhibition
In town? Swing by the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.

Hoverboards
Fuck nostalgia says the writer, but why fuck when you can join! “Lexus has worked with experts in super-conductive technology to create one of the most advanced Hoverboards the world has seen.”

Here: Hoverboards!

You like the idea of surfing on… air? Hoverboards are sorta here! By Lexus!

Fuck nostalgia. Fuck the good ol’ days. Today is the best time to be alive in history. Why? Because shit like this comes across your desk:

“Lexus has worked with experts in super-conductive technology to create one of the most advanced Hoverboards the world has seen.”

That’s the second sentence of an oddly amateur-looking press release I received today. Lexus, purveyor of slightly-better-than-Toyota cars and SUVs, has tried their hand at The Most Advanced Hoverboard the World Has Seen.

Is it coincidence that the hoverboard heavy world depicted in Back to the Future 2 was a fictional 2015?

Anyhow, Lexus worked with superconductivity vets, hoping to use magnetic levitation with conductors cooled by liquid nitrogen and permanent magnets. The result?

“Frictionless movement.”

Imagine, literally floating in air, frictionless.

Alas, there’s a catch.

Two catches, actually: One, it only hovers in a controlled environment. I imagine one with a magnetic surface? And two, like cruel fucking assholes, Lexus and co. won’t be selling these slick sleds.

Hoverboard
Lexus worked with superconductivity vets, hoping to use magnetic levitation with conductors cooled by liquid nitrogen and permanent magnets. The result? “Frictionless movement.” Imagine, literally floating in air, frictionless. Alas, there’s a catch. Two catches, actually: one, it only hovers in a controlled environment. I imagine one with a magnetic surface? And two, like cruel fucking assholes, Lexus and co. won’t be selling these slick sleds.

The Hoverboard  was developed as part of Lexus’ new Amazing in Motion campaign, which is one big PR wet dream—Lexus’s engineers get to live out some childhood fantasies, everyone guffaws at their bold, brash ingenuity, and in the end they don’t have to actually make anything that is actually production-ready.

Here’s how EVP Mark Templin laid it all out: “At Lexus we constantly challenge ourselves and our partners to push the boundaries of what is possible. That determination, combined with our passion and expertise…” and it sort of goes on like that for a while. Whatever.

For all the self-congratulatory edicts, there’s not actually any footage of anyone riding one of the things. The promotional video shows a skateboarder rolling up on a trusty four-wheeled steed, then dismounting for the Hoverboard. His black, crepe-soled shoes threaten to light upon the Hoverboard’s deck, a plume of dry ice smoke rising from its seams.

And then, like so many dreams, it cuts to black.