Let's get to know Droid! A Californian surf star with… layers!
Andrew Doheny is your typical 20-something surf-star from Newport Beach, California. He is anxious around strangers, enjoys speed-walking, drinks whiskey and Diet Coke on aeroplanes and admits to getting… bummed…quite a lot.
BeachGrit likes Andrew aka Droid very much. We liked his cameo in Cluster (but too short!), we like the flavour of his surfing (drop-knee slides) and we like his alternative pro surfing universe (sometimes contest, not always contest).
We think you’ll like too.
Below, is a fine documentary-style piece by French magazine Desillusion.
… and below that,
his movie Metal Neck…
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Sean “Poopies” McInerney…skis… six-foot Off the Wall. "I'm so afraid of big waves," he says.
Pipeline’s Jamie O’Brien tows best pal Poopies into six-foot OTW… on water-skis!
Who needs pals like Jamie O’Brien? In the latest episode of Who is JOB 5.0, we see the thirty-something Jamie towing his younger pal Sean “Poopies” McInerney into a series of bombs at Off the Wall on…water-skis.
Now this ain’t particularly friendly OTW.
It’s six-ish feet, a little wild. And Poopies, the kid from Carlsbad who has made a career as Jamie’s fall guy in the online series Who is JOB, actually nails it.
When I’d interviewed Poopies back in April, he’d told me, “I’m so afraid of big waves… I’m not a big wave surfer. Jamie is, but for me it’s terrifying. I just try and make the best out of it and charge as hard as I can.”
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.”
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!
You can see what Quiksilver’s smoking next week at the Agenda Tradeshow in Long Beach, California.
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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
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!
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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!
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.”
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!”
