Dru Adler smears egg on much-loved, if racist, surf website's face!
Kickflips and surfing have been the strangest of bedfellows. Do you remember when Volcom offered a $20k prize for the first surfer to pull one and then Zoltan “The Magician” Torkos did and it looked so dumb that Volcom pretended they didn’t offer a prize? Relive the drama here!
But if you are a girl who lives in the present, more kickflip fun was had just hours ago! Dru Adler, a video analysis surf coach and brand ambassador from Australia’s Gold Coast posted one too his Instagram. “Finally pulled backside 180 kickflip!” he wrote and there was the video to prove!
Except many people instantly called fraud. Derek Rielly, in Bangkok catching flight to the Holiest Land (Hava Nagila!), texted me furiously. “Go to Dru Adler Instagram! Everyone saying his kickflip is fake…” followed by “No one else has! Scoop! Just boarding plane. He has an identical standard air rev from week before. I hope you can confuse my confusing texts!”
I was, of course, sleeping soundly in the mountains. But upon waking, jumped to! Straight on Dru’s Insta to feast!
But the man had lifted the curtain just minutes before, writing:
It’s not read. Sorry I thought it would be funny. Turns out it looks a bit too real! Mucking around with my digital media effects. But I’ve always wanted to pull it. Hoping it’ll inspire!
It did! It inspired the much-loved, albeit racist, volk at The Intertia to post:
BREAKING: WATCH THE FIRST-EVER BACKSIDE FLIP ON SURFBOARD
A surf coach and aerial specialist from the Gold Coast of Australia by the name of Dru Adler just set the bar of surf progression by being the first person ever to successfully land a backside flip on a surfboard. And he couldn’t have done it any cleaner. It’s what our skating brethrens would call “bolts” (a textbook landing).
Oops! It’s a good thing Thinking Surfers™ don’t actually surf or else I would have been busted for sleeping on the job!
Next time they should just ask Ozzie Wright. He was sitting next to Derek Rielly and said:
I thought his board had jittered through the air and wasn’t a kickflip. I filmed it in slow motion off Instagram and…it looked sorta real. It wasn’t one hundred percent convincing…it did hold my attention for two minutes. Which is an eternity nowadays…
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I fell for it! But seriously, how could Australias version of Chucky Rigano possibly Backside Kickflip!
My local on BeachGrit!
Sorry but this article led to me to this. Fucks sake
My goodness, it’s worse than I thought.
david f, always up to something
Now I know how to make it as a surfer….CG
SO FAKE!!!!!
https://www.facebook.com/ma…
Great article Chas, it’s what my thinking surfer brethren and I would call “bolts”
Th’nersha could never get away even trying to play the skate game, they’d be eaten alive, their corpse sexually assaulted, dismembered and hung on street signs throughout LA.
Usually I’m internally amused by comments on this site. I’ve never laughed out loud until I read this.
I’ve officially arrived as a productive member of this vulgar, facetious, cynical madhouse of thinking surfers.
Getting a bit Malcolm Tucker, Mario, which is a supreme compliment. PS – I don’t have enough time to log on/ find out for myself – why is The Inertia racist etc?
Maybe it was the article about burning crosses on the beach as a form of meditative surfing ritual? Or maybe it was because their entire editorial staff has in some way contributed to gentrification and running the black community out of now-hip areas of south LA?
Thanks, I’ll hold off logging on until I’ve had a really bad day and can feel the invective rising.
Regardless of whether or not it’s a “kickflip” (ughhhhhhhh), it is CERTAINLY not a “backside flip” or a “180 kickflip.”