“The way that it all started off is that I literally saw a suit and thought it would be pretty silly and pretty creative,” said Kalani Robb. “I picked a picture out that I liked. I sent it to Andrew at 7TILL8, and 24 hours later I had the suit.”

Kalani Robb reinvents biz suit rubber!

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

Have you ever come up with a fantastic idea years after it was already invented?

Do you remember when Quiksilver Japan loosed a wetsuit you could wear in the salt, and in the dank, stale, filthy air of the office boardroom?

As BeachGrit‘s intern Ash Goggans reported at the time,

Today my life changed. Today all is right in my world. Because today Quiksilver Japan unveiled their new wetsuit/apparel mash-up: TRUE WETSUITS!

Quiksilver Business Suit Wetsuit — Gorgeous and slim! And 2015!

That’s right, modern suits, complete with crisp-looking button down and and a tac-sharp tie. They even offer a tuxedo model! I can’t imagine how Bondian one must feel getting barreled in a tuxedo!(Come to think about it, they should sell the suits with flasks! That’s my second grievance with surfing! There’s few options available for mid-session boozing! And I surf so much better shithouse drunk!)

Yesterday. in a sponsored post on TheInertia under the headline, Kalani Robb Wears a Badass Suit To His New Job, the wetsuit company 7Till8, which is under the creative command of the former world tour surfer and sometime actor, has come up with…exactly…the same idea, but two years later.

As reported,

One day in the not-too-distant future, lineups might look a lot different. A lot more fun, to be precise. Right now, it’s black wetsuit, game face, game time. But if Kalani Robb, who just took on a new role as Creative Director at 7TILL8 Wetsuits, has his druthers, surf spots are in store for a little spice. Enter business suits with red power ties, movie-themed suits, unicorn and rainbow graphics, and generally happier people riding waves. It’s simple. Just change the uniform.

7TILL8 Wetsuits, which began in 2016 as a custom-tailored wetsuit business, brought Robb on board in July to tap into the trademark good vibes that he’s made a staple. Think Catch Surf escapades meets wetsuits. His first project: the business suit, of course.

Is this a case of great minds colliding by coincidence?

Have you ever come up with a fantastic idea years after it was already invented?

Is it a straight steal?

Does TheInertia have only a very short memory?

And who does it better? Quiksilver Japan in 2015 or 7Till8 in 2017?

Here’s Kalani.

And here’s how it was loosed in Japan!

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Help: Find a poor brother’s eyeball!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

We're all part of the same tribe!

We’re all part of the same tribe, as dear Kenny Powers once said, and it is true. Sure we may bitch and moan and complain about crowds, we may appear to actually hate each other but deep deep deep deep deep deep deep down inside there is love. We’re surfers. Brothers!

And a brother in Florida needs our help. Let us learn of his plight.

A Florida surfer’s wife is asking beachgoers to be on the lookout for her husband’s missing prosthetic eye.

Carolyn Pandolfi told WKMG her husband Raymond Davidson was surfing at Daytona Beach Wednesday and wiped out when he encountered choppy water. His prosthetic eye disappeared in the ocean.

“It would be amazing to find it in the ocean,” Pandolfi said.

Pandolfi said her husband had the prosthetic for 20 years. “It is a hazel green color and looks like an Eye he was surfing in front of the band shell,” she said. “These things are expensive so if someone finds it can you please message me.”

Daytona beachgoers were sympathetic to their predicament. One stranger was kind enough to start a GoFundMe account to cover the cost of the eye. The goal is to raise $1,800.

According to WKMG, Davidson has an appointment with an eye doctor on October 6.

Do you live in Florida? Can you help? I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to find just one.

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"Every single wave spat its guts out, sometimes more than once," says Justin Cote, the slightly more robust and rugged of the famous Cote brothers from Encinitas.

Little Namibia Comes to the OBX!

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

Come ride a user-friendly version of Skeleton Bay!

Two weeks ago, and a day before a surfer was pulled dead out of the water in the same spot, the Superbrand team lit up a left that was, how do you want to call it…

Exhilarating? Transfixing? A little Namibia?

The Outer Banks, if you didn’t know, is a fabulous two-hundred mile stretch of sandpits between North Carolina and Virginia. Real famous as a shipwreck graveyard. The Wright Brothers got their bird in the air on the OBX too.

If you surf, it’s where you got to get shallow, sand-bottom tubes. At the end of September, the Superbrand team flew across the USA to Virginia to get some of it, waves powered by Hurricane Jose.

How good?

“Every single wave spat its guts out, sometimes more than once,” says Justin Cote, the slightly more robust and rugged of the famous Cote brothers from Encinitas.

This short film is their triumphant account.

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A little tail-whip or throwing the tank? Who deserves to be lit with nines?

Beschen: How to score backhand surfing!

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

A note to the judges from a former world number two.

Just two months ago, Shane Beschen, a former runner-up to the world title and a regular foil to Kelly Slater, was described here as “the least huggable pro of all.”

“Like Medina with less fucks given,” said the surf historian Matt Warshaw.

Beschen, who was on the world tour between 1993 and 2005, had a bit of the Bobby Martinez’ about him – poisoned by the feeling he never got the deals or results he deserved and quit the tour a few years too early.

“I feel like a black person in South Africa 50 years ago, and all the judges are white,” said Shane in 1998.

What we may not appreciate about Shane, who is forty-five years old or one week older than Kelly Slater if you want perspective, is how lucid he is about technique and competitive performance. His two boys, Koda and Noah, are all products of a pappy who knows the game.

And, yesterday, when Beschen lip up Facebook with a note to the tour’s judges on how to score backhand surfing, well, it behooves a man to listen, don’t it?

“I have posted 4 photos starting with the highest degree of difficulty and working down to the lowest,” wrote Beschen. “Julian Wilson demonstrating an extreme throw tail where his entire board is out of the water and only the tip of his nose is touching. This is an ‘excellent’ backside maneuver with the highest degree of difficulty.

“The second photo, to the right of Julian, shows a backside throw tail in which half of the surfboard is out of the water. This is also an ‘excellent’ maneuver with a high degree of difficulty and should be the starting point in which a maneuver is deemed progressive.

“The third photo is called a backside release and as you can see there is very little if any of the tail out the back of the wave. This should be deemed a ‘good’ maneuver as the ‘degree of difficulty’ is much less than the first two photos.

“The fourth photo is a backside carve and although it could still be deemed a ‘good’ maneuver it is much less difficult than the first three photos.

“In conclusion. To further push the level and excitement of surfing within the WSL there should be a points cap on ‘good’ surfing. A combination of ‘good’ turns should never be rewarded an ‘excellent; score. If competitors know they can reach an excellent score with good surfing they will not take unnecessary risk.

“Solution. A cap of 7.5 – 8 points should be set on good surfing so competitors will push their performance to achieve excellent scores. An excellent score should have at least one excellent turn performed during the ride. In turn, the @wsl and all of the fans will enjoy more exciting performances from their favorite surfers. This can only be a positive for the @wsl and its loyal surf fans.

“Please leave your thoughts and keep them constructive.”

You like it? I do.

And no need to be constructive.

Fight it out, y’sonsofbitches.

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Review: Who is JOB 7.0!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

Jamie O'Brien's latest offering is perfect. Don't let the elitist fun police tell you otherwise.

The genius is not in how much Jamie O’Brien does in “Who is JOB 7.0″ but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn’t include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among online surf serials, “Who is JOB 7.0″ is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

The series creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music. It is meditative. It does not cater to us, but wants to inspire us, enlarge us. Bali surf boxing? Poopies’ rodeo? A barrel contest over eyebrows? The challenges are perfection. Simple, joyous perfection.

Only a few shows today are transcendent, and work upon our minds and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape. Most are about characters with a goal in mind, who obtain it after difficulties either comic or dramatic. But here we see genuine fun playing out. Genuine fun minus the strictures of Venice Beach and also Venice-adjacent.

“Who is JOB 7.0” is not about a goal but about a quest, a need. It does not hook its effects on specific plot points, nor does it ask us to identify with the elitist too-cool-for-school fun police. It says to us: We became men when we learned to think. Our minds have given us the tools to understand where we live and who we are. Now it is time to move on to the next step, to know that we live not on only land but among the waves, and that we are not flesh but intelligence.

I must admit that I am proud to see this 7.0 iteration. Proud beyond words for it was I, Chas Smith (back when I was a younger man named “Charlie”), who directed the original film “Who is JOB” some 7 years ago.

And nearly 7 years after it was made, it has not dated in any important detail, and although surfing maneuvers have become more versatile in the modern age, my work remains completely convincing — more convincing, perhaps, than more sophisticated maneuvers in later films, because it looks more plausible, more like documentary footage than like elements in a story.

“Who is JOB” is a classic in the genre, one of the better surfing films ever made and “Who is JOB 7.0” sets the bar for the people. For this is what we want, 1% be damned.

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