1. John John is the best surfer in the world (sorry, Dane).
2. Competitive surfing is soooooo dull.
The contrast between the front half of this clip and the back is
startling. John wins Haleiwa surfing to maybe
fifty percent of his abilities. He then loses at Sunset with
aggressive, committed surfing and flunks at Pipe because of poor
wave choice.
But the second half of the vid… by gosh some of the best surfing
I’ve seen. Better than Dane in Sampler, better than Jordy in
…whatever his movie was called. It’s just fantastic! Full speed,
full-rail, full commitment in waves of power and pain. No one looks
more comfortable on a surfboard than a jersey-less John.
At the end of the clip he states, “I’m gonna go after another
world title, one-hundred percent.” While this thrills part of me —
for I want nothing more than a decade-long duel between John and
Gab, wherein the white man eventually reigns supreme — another part
can’t help but wonder what we’re losing in that pursuit. I know I’m
not alone in that.
For instance, Albee Layer had this to say after
being asked about his and John’s battle to land the first backside
540/720: “[John] showed me a clip of him over-rotating a backside
spin, and I showed him one of me doing the same thing. So it
started a bit of a battle. I mean, I think if he put half the
energy I did into it he probably would have made it, but this year
he just shifted his whole focus onto contest surfing. Which
personally, I just hate [laughs], thinking about the progression he
could do for surfing.”
John is great for competitive surfing, but he’s an even greater
barometer for what’s physically possible in the sport. If he’s
working towards titles, that means he’s at least partly forgoing
the pursuit of progression. Woe is me.
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"I like how you can feel the raw and beautiful energy
of the ocean. It's like the image is alive," says the Hawaiian
photographer Brandon "Laserwolf" Campbell. "My friend Casey
Decotis, who got me into photography, once told me that a good
photographer can bring anything to life through a photo." | Photo:
Brandon "Laserwolf" Campbell/@laserwolf.photo
Is this the best big-wave shot ever?
By Derek Rielly
Has a drone reshaped the game of big-wave
photography?
Have you seen this photo of
smallish Waimea Bay doing the
rounds? It was shot a weekago
by the North Shore-based photographer Brandon Campbell (aka
Laserwolf) and posted on the website Surfline. I saw it and felt a
twang and I ain’t felt since the daring Rosy Hodge wore
underwear for a Stab shoot three years
ago.
Best big-wave photo?
Yeah, I can’t think of anything remotely as filmic, as textured
or as spectacularly dramatic. When I asked Laserwolf about it,
turned out it was only the second time he’d ever flown a drone
(“Call it beginner’s luck,” he says), that he used to think drones
were a tool of oppressive governments (“I was convinced it was a
government conspiracy to get us used to the idea of them buzzing
around all the time before Big Brother really gets in our grill”)
and that there’s actually a hierarchy in the sky among the drone
operators, something he found out when another photographer’s bird
flew under him.
“I’ve put in my time and earned my spot in the hierarchy at
Pipeline but what about the air?” he says. “Am I a newbie all over
again? Will it be another five years before I’m established and can
bark at invasive droners?”
“Corey Wilson was getting some really cool photos this winter,”
he says. “He definitely inspired me to mix it up. A photographer
like myself can’t just be posting the same beautiful, blue tube
shots all the time on Instagram. Also, a lot of the brands I work
with have been asking If I can shoot drone stuff. I think it’s
becoming the new standard to have in your arsenal. Full on weapon
of mass creation. I broke my hand really bad back in September
(Editor’s note: more on that tomoz!) and have to go in for
one more surgery so I’m stoked I’ll have something to keep me
occupied while I’m out of the water.”
What kinda drone gets you a photo like this? Laser got in close
to the entry level with a the DJI Phantom 4 Pro. With a stock 20
meg camera, a few batteries (they last 25 minutes each), a screen
and a controller, he spent two-and-a-half gees. A good investment?
Yeah, he’s thrilled.
If you look real close at the photo, you can see Mike Ho,
Reef McIntosh, Ross Clark Jones, Eden Saul and “the usual Waimea
suspects,” says Laser, adding, “I just really like how you can feel
the raw and beautiful energy of the ocean. It’s like the image is
alive. My friend Casey Decotis, who got me into photography, once
told me that a good photographer can bring anything to life through
a photo.”
How big is it? This is where the drone angle deceives.
“It wasn’t huge, maybe ten-to-twelve feet, but still plenty
of energy,” says Laser.
Not that he’s claiming it deserves to be in the pantheon of
greatest big-wave shots. “I’m honored you like it,” he says, “but I
think the best big wave photo ever taken was of Sion Milowski by
Daniel Russo at one of the outer reefs here in Hawaii. Sion was on
a big, vibrant blue gun shaped by rhino chaser extraordinaire Bret
Marumoto. The wave looks one hundred foot and Sion is
absolutely sending it. I surf that wave a
lot but I’ve have never scored it bigger then twenty feet and
I don’t think I want to either. I can’t even imagine it any bigger
then that. It must have been such an incredible thing to witness in
person.”
Maybe this shot of Sion Milosky at Outside
Himalayas in 2010 is the best big-wave photo ever?
Laser thinks for a moment.
“Wait, I take that all back,” he says. “The best big-wave photo
ever taken was that iconic shot of Greg Noll standing on the beach in front of a
pumping Pipeline, shot by John Severson.”
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Sockie, Biggie and Sabre Norris. Startling! | Photo:
Campbell Brown
BeachGrit TV: Sabre Norris’ Sugar
Dreams!
By Derek Rielly
Come visit the family who defeated
ordinariness!
It was two days before Christmas when an
eleven-year-old girl called Sabre Norris gifted me the true nature of
family. While my own house of cards was collapsing in
a welter of sorrow, the foundations made rotten by poor husbandry,
hers was exalting in each others’ complexities.
The mother of the four remarkable kids, Brooke, looked at me at
one point, maybe we were talking about home-schooling or maybe it
was when I walked into the backyard and was in the shadow of a mega
skate ramp and three other smaller half-pipes, and said,
“We’re actually very straight. We’re not alternative at all.”
In the surf, I’d asked Sabre, whom you’ve seen on
Ellen, Today Show etc, what grade
she was in.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never been to school. I don’t
even know what it looks like in a classroom.”
For the Norris kids, Nazzie, Biggie, Sockie and Sabre, family is
a shelter, the walls steeled with respect and love. Each kid has a
role, each parent has a role (Brooke is the firm matriarch, pops
Justin the juicy clown), and the pack just… succeeds.
I figured a story on Sabre would make a slight
diversion in our Like Bitchin‘ TV series. I brought along
the director Luke Farquhar and photographers
Stefan Hunt and Campbell
Brown to spotlight, in documentary form, the path the
family has taken, and Sabre’s virtuosity at everything.
Watch!
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Gerry Lopez: Rekindling the Flame at
Uluwatu!
By Michael Ciaramella
Thirty years later, a surfing legend returns to an
entirely different Bali
Gerry Lopez is a living legend. He was a Pipe
Master before that was an official title, was one of the first
Americans to surf the storied Indonesian reefs, and he’s Bendier
than a day-old Twizzler. That was an obscure dual reference to his
yoga proclivities and current place of residence in
Oregon.
Back in June of 2015, Gerry took a trip back to Bali — his first
time in thirty years. As you can imagine, much has changed since
his initial sojourn to the Spice Islands, wherein the Bukit
Peninsula was only sparsely populated and surfers had just began to
discover the wonderful waves on Bali’s southern tip.
Gerry’s return was sparked by a yoga convention that would
be held atop the cliff at Temples and led by Gerry himself. The
program was presented by Project Clean
Uluwatu, an initiative that encourages local people to
keep the sacred temple immaculate through proper sanitary and waste
management techniques. So far, they’ve succeeded in construction
bio-septic systems and creating wastewater gardens for the Uluwatu
region.
The More Things Change (below) was made possible by
Patagonia, a company that seems to do everything right — ethical
manufacturing, maintaining stringent environmental standards,
donating copious cash to charity and providing exemplary customer
service — and still manages to stay afloat. I’m not sure how they
do it, but more power to them.
The film is beautifully filmed and produced, and offers direct
insight to the mind and body of a surfing hero. Take a half hour
out of your day and give it a watch. Regret this you will not.
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Question: Is WSL discriminatory?
By Chas Smith
Does the World Surf League reflect our
diversity?
Let’s get right to the point today. Let’s not
come in with some sort of pithy lead, some sort of vaguely clever,
but only vaguely clever in the moment, introduction. Let’s just put
our heads down and ask a very difficult question.
Is the World Surf League discriminatory?
Think of all the waves on tour and when they occur. Snapper
(summer), Maggies (summer), Bells (fall), Rio (perpetual summer),
Fiji (tropics), J-Bay (winter), Tahiti (tropics), Trestles (indian
summer), France (fall), Portugal (fall), Pipe (Hawaii).
And how many of them are cold-ish?
One. Maybe sometimes Bells and Portugal too.
And how many of them are proper cold?
Zero.
Does the league think that fine waves don’t break in proper cold
water? Does the league believe that “surfing” only happens
warm?
For shame. And let’s stand behind our brothers surfing in the
upcoming Cold War in winter New Jersey. They say you will not
experience a colder cold. Very freezing etc. Let’s stand behind
them and glare at the draconian, discriminatory World Surf League.
Let’s shout NOT MY PRESIDENT! I mean…. ummmmm GO TO HELL PAUL
SPEAKER! Or….. wait. Something angry but pithy.
