Including the two of the best airs you've seen in
ages!
Not two hours ago, noted surf writer Chris
Smith penned these very words:
Former has been live, now, for almost a week and have you
watched Craig Anderson’s Luxury29.99? Is it not the surf edit of
the year? It totally is! Near perfect!
Little did Chris Smith know, Julian Wilson was about to drop the
true edit of the year (below)! An absolute masterclass in
technically sound, totally radical waveriding. Craig’s
clip can’t hold a candle to Jules’ blitzkrieg attack.
In fact, Wilson felt so confident in his ability to dissect
the praying mantis that he brought Craig on a surf trip
to Cloudbreak, a left, and completely embarrassed the goofyfoot!
Talk about cruel and unusual.
I have called Julian Wilson to win the title for three years
running, I think. Oh he has it all… Fearless in bigger waves, still
above average air game, experience, the last threads of youth,
style, etc. All the markings of a potential champion and yet the
grand prize has eluded him. Could this be the year?
And does the clip below, Wayward, not prove Chris’
stance to a T? The scene begins at pumping Cloudy, where
Julian fearlessly charges bigger waves. It then heads to Bali and
the Goldy, where Julian flaunts his still (very) above average air
game. The experience, youth and style bleed through the entire
clip.
However the answer to Smith’s concluding query is
no. Julian will not win the title this year. I think…
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Help: We were bullied by skate mags!
By Chas Smith
Dane and Craig's Former knocked around by
Thrasher!
Former has been live, now, for almost a week
and have you watched Craig Anderson’s Luxury29.99? Is it not the
surf edit of the year? It totally is! Near perfect! Oh the clothes
themselves may be a touch uninspired/uninspiring but early days and
let’s hope it is smooth sailing from on out. Let’s hope no more bullying from the
nasty surf media.
But wait. What’s that I hear? Is that the skate media piling on?
Oh drat. And this news just came in from our wonderful reader Cap’n
Haddock.
Thrasher magazine, extreme sport’s only
thriving media property thanks to Justin Bieber etc. loving
the Thrasher look, gave Former a knock on
their news show Skateline. You can watch the host twist
those nipples here or just read the transcript:
Shakas up high give it a wiggle, go head touch it. Wiggle
it, yeah. Austyn Gillette starts a brand called Former with some
surfers. And I know you’ve got surfer buddies but they got you here
looking like a douche, my nigga. Embarrassing us n shit. No more of
this! Look how ridiculous you (Austyn) looks in this photo. I’ve
never laughed at your face before!
Dane and Craig have both shifted heavily toward the skate look
over the years, embracing the hard + cool urban vibe and so I
wonder if this unkind bullying from a magazine respected by Ryan
Gosling etc. hurts twice as much?
I hope not. I hope they feel comfortably superior in their
hearts knowing that surfers have always been better and always will
be better.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Relax: It’s ok to kill bull sharks!
By Derek Rielly
Surfing banned on Reunion because of non-threatened
fish. Absurd?
The bull shark is a real son of a bitch. Eats
anything. Dogs. People. Turtles. Dolphins. Other bull sharks. Won’t
let go either. You can belt it in the snout, jam your fingers into
its eyes, rip at its gills, but it ain’t gonna release those jaws.
The bull, or zambezi or whatever you want to call it, is
indestructible. Lives anywhere, freshwater, saltwater, ocean,
river, shallow, deep.
Endangered? Threatened? Not even close.
On a scale of one to seven, with seven being extinct, the bull
shark comes in at the second-lowest rung, Not Threatened,
just above Least Concern.
Oh you’ll find them everywhere. Up the Mississippi, in the Gold
Coast waterways, Sydney Harbour, in the Amazon, Maryland etc, and,
pointedly, as masters of the marine reserve in Reunion Island.
Reunion is a pretty volcanic island of almost one million people
off the east coast of Africa. Lives off sugar exports, mostly, as
well as the benevolent hand of the largely socialist French state.
Richest island in the Indian Ocean.
A decade ago, a twenty-kilometre marine reserve was created
along Reunion’s west coast. Preserve the environment? A no-brainer,
right? Except like a lot of well-intentioned government policies,
this one loosed a hell of a problem.
As Jeremy Flores told me a couple of years back after a rash of
fatal shark attacks.
“From generation to generation there were always fishermen and
then people from overseas, environmentalists, came and they stopped
fishing in a 10-kilometre area where all the shark attacks are now
happening… By the time they stopped fishing the sharks didn’t have
anything to fear anymore so they started coming and now it’s dead
territory. They ate everything. There is no more life. There is no
more turtles. There is no more fish. No more nothing. No more reef
sharks. Because the bull sharks have eaten everything. And now,
because there’s nothing left to eat, it’s the surfers”
The movie Jaws? It was based
on a two-week period on the Jersey Shore in 1916 when it was most
likely bull sharks (or maybe Whites) fatally attacked four
swimmers.
The situation on the ground in Reunion is loony. Surfing is
banned on all but two netted beaches. Swim or surf outside of the
nets and there’s a good chance you’ll die.
The teenage kids of some pals of mine have RIP this and RIP that
scrawled in texta all over their schoolbags. It took me a while to
realise they weren’t saying their pals were shredders but had been
killed by sharks.
You heard, read, the hysteria after Kelly Slater gently
suggested it wouldn’t be the end of the world to fish bull sharks
after Reunion’s twentieth shark attack since 2011, eight of ‘em
fatal.
“I won’t be popular for saying this, but there needs to be a
serious cull on Réunion and it should happen every day,” said
Slater. “There is a clear imbalance happening in the ocean there.
If the whole world had these rates of attack nobody would use the
ocean and millions of people would be dying like this. The French
government needs to figure this out ASAP.”
When Elio Canestri was killed in 2014, I called Jeremy
again.
“All these sharks, bro, fuck, it’s the real deal,” said the
Reunion-born WSL surfer. “Perfect waves. Sunny day. Eight kids in
the water and the shark attacked in the middle of everyone. Can you
imagine that? Can you imagine how those kids feel?”
Jeremy’s mom phoned him an hour after the attack. Her friend
lives in front of the break. Saw everything.
I can’t tell you how many times I surfed that place by myself,”
said Jeremy. “When I heard it was a young kid, thirteen years old,
I started shaking. I could picture myself at the same age, frothing
with all my friends, just trying to get a surf. On Reunion, it’s a
small surfing community, everyone knows each other, and I’ve lost
some really close brothers to shark attacks, but this time, to be a
thirteen-year-old, one of the best surfers on the island, with all
his life in front of him. To die like that, so young, is
terrible.”
The following year, Jeremy flew to Reunion for two weeks to see
old pals and family. The surf pumped. And he didn’t touch
his surfboard.
“It wasn’t worth it to take the risk. It took a long time for
people to realise how bad the situation is. People thought it was
like everywhere in the world. But, right now, we have the world
record for attack.
Jeremy ain’t down for environmental slaughter, he loves the
ocean, and said he’s “aware that sharks are everywhere and that I
could get attacked. But on Reunion Island, “it’s a 50-50
proposition.”
From a local.
“There are so many sharks in the water, it is traumatic,” said
Gilbert Pouzet, 55, who has surfed in Réunion for 30 years, told
the IB Times. “Sometimes, I go down to the waves and I am not sure
whether to go in the water or not; 80 percent of the time I go
back home. Most of the time they strike from the side and take your
hip and leg. They sever the femoral artery so you bleed to death in
two minutes. The tiger shark will sometimes take an arm or a piece
of leg and go away. But the bull shark becomes mad and finishes you
off. When the bull sharks attack, they come to kill.”
Of course, in a world where everyone signals their virtue on
Facebook and whatever else, Slater’s balanced, and intelligent,
response, was twisted to mean he demanded the worldwide eradication
of sharks.
He didn’t. No one does.
But on Reunion where a non-threatened fish has the population
standing terrified on the shoreline, and grommets killed when they sneak off for
a surf, the greatest absurdity is it’s even an issue
to fish bull sharks in the marine reserve.
They’re fished everywhere else. Australia. The US. Africa.
Everywhere. Killed. No tears. No snowflakes weeping over their
status updates on Facebook.
Even better, the bull shark tastes good, as long as you
skin ‘em quick before the ammonia is released. Cook in garlic
butter and ginger, wrap in alfoil, serve with a crisp Margaret
River white.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Kalani David found in Panama Jungle!
By Michael Ciaramella
Surf and skate prodigy back surfing, post-heart
surgery, in Bocas del Toro!
Recently I took a cab, boarded a plane, took a cab, then
boarded another plane to the Caribbean archipelago of
Bocas del Toro, Panama. The trip was designed for the sake of surf
and to earn another big, red pin on my proverbial world map. I
spent my first day, yesterday, finding a place to stay and dealing
with a quirky if slightly disconcerting hostel owner/roommate. The
following week should be interesting.
This morning was my first session at Bocas’ most notorious
break, Playa Bluff, a wave that would send me home with a broken
board and a disproportionate sand-to-orifice ratio. But before
that, in fact just before the noted splintering of my sled,
something amazing happened. While performing my twice-minutely scan
of the beach (bags seem to walk away when left unattended in
Central Am.), I saw a young man running down the beach.
His on-land presence was telling. Fast, focused, committed.My
instincts screamed “good surfer”.
No one runs into a four-foot shorebreak like that unless they
know what they’re doing, and how they’re gonna do it.
When he gained the lineup, maybe fifty meters from me, the guy
turned on the first wave that came his way. It was a chunky, ugly
closeout. No way he goes. He went. Finally emerging from
the brine, he gathered his board and did it again, and again. I
inched towards him.
Who is this lunatic? Closer and closer I crept until –
Aha!
Kalani freaking David! Surfing a lonely, awful-looking
Panamanian peak well past the groomed morning hours! What are the
odds?
On top of being surprising, the Hawaiian’s presence was, to me,
strangely coincidental. I’ve been trying to get a hold of Kalani
since his heart surgery back in
January.
Aside from that debacle, he’s recently launched a new website,
lost his sponsor of eleven years, and his Instagram has raised some
personal questions that I’ve been dying to ask.
I am oh-so-positive that Kalani has an interesting story to
tell, and this chance encounter was my best opportunity to make it
happen. A cursory chat in the lineup fortified my beliefs.
I’m still at risk of having seizures – I actually had one on the
plane ride over here. So surfing is yeah… a little sketchy I
guess.
What are you doing here?!
I just drove down from Costa Rica. I was visiting my family
there, and my sister and I decided to come over here for the
swell.
How’s the whole heart situation?
It’s been a pretty crazy ride. For a while I was on all this
medicine that was making me act without thinking. That was a weird
time, but it’s over now. Done.
(Kalani catches another shitty wave and returns)
Sorry, I haven’t surfed much lately so I’m all
wired.
Are you fully cured? Like, is it safe for you to be
surfing?
I mean it’s definitley better, but I’m still at risk of
having seizures – I actually had one on the plane ride over here.
So surfing is yeah… a little sketchy I guess.
After promising me an interview over the next few days, Kalani
took one more closeout and snapped his spanking-new Lee Stacey. At
the rate he was going, it was inevitable.
Julian Wilson discusses winning it all and also
maybe losing it all!
I have called Julian Wilson to win the title
for three years running, I think. Oh he has it all…
Fearless in bigger waves, still above average air game, experience,
the last threads of youth, style, etc. All the markings of a
potential champion and yet the grand prize has eluded him
Could this be the year?
He gave a nice interview to Australia’s Yahoo7 news about maybe. Let’s
read!
I am past just ‘taking it as it comes.’ I feel like I have
had some really good years on tour and I have learnt a lot and I
just really want to go for that world title now. It is really what
motivates me, I know it is achievable and I just want to apply
myself as much as possible to get that goal.
I feel like for myself (the world title) is more achievable
than ever. That’s the main thing, if I believe in it and I can see
it happening, that’s when you get closer to it and I have that
feeling now more than ever. It’s very much about consistency. I
think I have had five finals in the last two years without a win.
Obviously getting a win is a great goal to have but it is all about
that consistency.
I feel like I am comfortable enough at all the stops on the
tour to be making heats and beating those guys and giving myself a
really good opportunity of getting that No.1 goal.
And that sounds like a winner talking, don’t it? Sounds like
he’s got his head screwed on tight. There was only one little part
of the interview at the end that left me wondering. When asked
about Kelly Slater still being on Tour he segued into the pool in
Tulare County.
Obviously the whole world has seen the quality of that wave,
it would be a great addition to the tour. WSL has gone and bought
the rights from Kelly so they are looking at it and planning for it
and I would love to compete on a platform that was consistent. You
could put rails in there and do rail slides and airs. There is so
much exciting stuff that could be done there.
And haven’t we learned anything from Chris Coté and his patented
Rail of Death? Are we doomed to repeat our ghastliest errors? Our
gravest mistakes?
Or wait. I can’t remember. Was the ROD fun and awesome? More on
this developing story as it breaks.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros