"I still go hiking, I still catch rattle
snakes, and I will still swim in the ocean."
There is little that gives me as much pleasure as he
shit and the bickerings of the human world. I have tabloid
fever bad and it is reflected, I think, in my choice of
stories.
Earlier today, it was reported by every major news agency that
Colorado man Dylan McWilliams, a part-time bodyboarder and “outdoor
enthusiast”, had been hit by a tiger shark while on his lid in
Kauai.
“I saw the shark underneath me. I started kicking at it – I know
I hit it at least once –and swam to shore as quickly as I could,”
Dyan told the BBC. “I didn’t know if I lost half my leg or
what.”
Last July, while sleeping outdoors on a camping trip, Dylan, who
is twenty years old, woke up with his head in the jaws of a
bear.
“This black bear grabbed me by the back of the head, and I was
fighting back, poking it in the eye until it let me go.” After
stomping on Dylan the 300 pound bear walked off. Later, it was
caught by park authorities where tests confirmed Dylan’s blood was
under the bear’s fingernails. The animal was subsequently
destroyed.
And three years ago, Dylan was attacked by a rattler while
hiking in Utah.
“I was walking down a trail and I thought I kicked a cactus but
couldn’t see one, and then saw a rattlesnake all coiled
up. There was a little venom so I did get a bit sick for a
couple of days. We have to respect [animals’] boundaries but I
don’t think I was invading or provoking any of the attacks – they
just happened.”
After the three-pack of bites, Dylan says he’s still enthral to
the poetry of nature.
“I still go hiking, I still catch rattle snakes, and I will
still swim in the ocean.”
As you may, or may not, know I have spent
the past two-ish years working on a documentary about the wonderful
Lisa Andersen. During this period I have thought constantly about
documentary films. About what makes them good and what makes them
bad. About triumphs and pitfalls. It is a deceivingly difficult
genre, I think. The narrative seemingly writes itself but each
decision along the way colors the truth and either alters or
focuses history.
My favorite documentary of all time is The Kid Stays in the
Picture.
My favorite documentary of the year is Wild, Wild
Country.
They are as brilliant as they are beautiful and if you have not
watched I highly recommend.
My least favorite documentary is any that falls headfirst into
hyperbole. Sport’s documentaries are particularly plagued by this
disease. On the field exploits somehow get magnified through the
camera lens and turn into momentous, earth shattering,
never-before-seen-or-imagined events. Athletes turn into world
re-shapers. It is unfortunate, I think, because the amplification
of everything to “totally, once-in-a-millenia amazing!” means that
nothing is totally amazing. When the dial is constantly at 11 where
else can it go?
And so it is with a bit of wincing that I anticipate the
upcoming Momentum Generation documentary. You, of course,
watched the original surf films by Taylor Steele and starring Kelly
Slater, Rob Machado, Ross Williams, Paul Roach, Benji Weatherly,
Shane Dorian etc. For surfers, these films form an important part
of the canon but let us read a touch from Rolling Stone,
who interviewed some of the boys while they play in New York.
A crew of surfers who helped change the sport tumble into
each other’s company in a new clip from Momentum Generation, a
documentary executive-produced by Robert Redford (among others),
that’s set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The film tracks the rise of athletes who eventually “win
world titles and forever reshape worldwide culture in the 1990s and
beyond,” according to a statement from the directors, Jeff and
Michael Zimbalist.
In the Momentum Generation teaser, the surfers come together
as a group for the first time. “We all knew each other from surfing
different amateur events,” Rob Machado says. “But it wasn’t until
we stayed at Benji’s house that we became a posse.”
The fact that Benji Weatherley had a house ideally situated
for surfing was actually accidental. “My mom and dad split up,” he
remembers in the film. “She went to Hawaii on vacation. She came
back and said, ‘hey boys, get in the car, we’re moving to Hawaii.’
And it happened to be the north shore of Oahu.”
“We didn’t even know that Pipeline and Waimea Bay and Sunset
Beach [all popular surfing destinations] were down there,”
Weatherley’s mother adds. “This was how naïve we were.”
That changed quickly. Ross Williams and Shane Dorian were
two of the first surfers to start visiting Weatherley’s house
regularly. Soon the group of aspiring stars ballooned to include
Kelly Slater, who went on to win 11 World Surf League world
championships, Taylor Knox, a member of the Surfing Hall of Fame,
and many others.
Oh I want to see, I want to like, but the director quote,
“…forever reshape worldwide culture in the 1990s and beyond…”
worries me. Did Benji et. al. really forever reshape worldwide
culture in the 1990s and beyond? Do mothers in Tibet’s isolated
mountain villages name their sons Conan Hayes Namgayl Wangchuk? Do
fathers in the Congo’s dense jungle regale their daughters with
stories of a longhaired man named Donovan Frankenreiter? Has
anyone, literally anyone, on earth who is not a surfer and/or
related to a surfer ever heard of Ross Williams?
Or am I just being a picky bastard?
You tell me!
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Meet and greet with Brazil's biggest stars, world champ
Gabriel Medina and maybe 2018 champ Filipe Toledo! | Photo:
@tsherms
Six hundred bucks buys three-day "privileged" pass
with meet-and-greets and all the booze you can drink…
Are you packing for Rio? For tour event number
four?
Are you willing to raise the coffin lid of your Californian
boredom with a shrivelled white hand to go to the city where,
as Vincent Cassel,
said, “People still live with “a big charge of poetry
on a daily basis?”
Forget museums, it’s a beach.
And, as revealed today by the Brazilian promotions company IMR
MKT, you can buy access to an ultra-VIP “and privileged” area for
as little as $US230 per day (rounds one to three) and up to $US340
for the quarters through to the final.
You want the whole event in your gilded cage? A little less
than $US600.
IMR MKT, whose social media footprint is as light as a mouse
which does ring a faint alarm bell, promises,
An open bar with beer, soda and snacks.
A meet-and-gree with professional athletes.
A tour of the contest site.
Exclusive photo wiht the trophy.
Photo in the podium area.
Gifts.
Exclusive awards area.
An open bar with beer, soda and snacks. (Just in case you
missed it.)
It sure beats the theatre of the “media area” where anyone with
a pen and laptop is shunted away from meaningful or even accidental
contact with “professional athletes”.
How about you?
Would you peel off a couple of c-notes for a day at the beach,
with the beer, the soda, the snacks and the meet-and-greet?
A better part about traveling, as you well
know, is discovering regional traditions. The particular music or
architectural quirks. Ways of saying hello or goodbye. Food and
drinks that exist few other places. I am currently in New Jersey
working on an up coming BeachGrit wetsuit tale with
locally famous surfer Tommy Ihnken and he insisted that I eat a
pork roll this morning for breakfast. Now, I did not know what a
pork roll was nor had I ever heard of it but when the diner lady
laid it on the laminate tabletop I was pleasantly surprised.
More than pleasantly surprised even. The pork roll is a New
Jersey delicacy that pairs egg, cheese and a roll with what appears
to be Spam. I dumped a little hot sauce on the side, took a bite
and almost fell out of my plasticine chair. The American cheese,
melting over the processed pork was perfection and I had not been
so smitten since… since… since Foodland on the North Shore some
fifteen years earlier.
For it was then and it was there that I reached a younger hand
under the warming lights and pulled the warm Saran wrapped Spam
musubi into my heart and into my life. Spam musubi, for the
uninitiated, features a bed of rice and a bit of seaweed wrapping
holding a lightly teriyaki seasoned piece of Spam. That first bite,
all crispy and salty, brought tears to my eyes and I thought I had
discovered culinary heaven.
But now, some fifteen years later, I am locked in an ugly
quandary. Which one is better? New Jersey’s pork roll or Hawaii’s
Spam musubi? Which holds the crown for Best Pork(ish) Product on
Earth?
I am lost. I am stuck. Can you help me decide? I think whichever
wins is also The Official Snack of Surfers Everywhere (excluding
Israel, Indonesia, Morocco, etc.)
Vs.
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“Italo is all natural ability. Guys like Italo have the
freest mind to go where they want,” says his shaper Timmy
Patterson.
A delightful pastiche of six-two meets five-eight
by San Clemente’s Timmy Patterson…
It’s a little after seven on a cool Spring night in
southern Orange County. Timmy Patterson, shaper to the
Brazilian tour leader Italo Ferreira, has just downed tools at his
San Clemente factory across from Biolos and the gang at
Lost.
In 2014, Dino Andino, who is very good at recognising such
things, came up to Timmy and said, “Who is that Italian guy? He’s
doing floaters on eight-foot closeouts on grinding beachbreaks and
making ‘em. He’s going to be on tour next year. That guy’s a
freak.”
The following year Italo was on the tour. He made the
semi finals in Rio, quarters in Fiji, Tahiti and France and, with
Filipe Toledo, turned the world in its head with their final in
Portugal (Filipe won). Rookie of the year, easy.
Last year Italo, who is almost twenty four, tore ligaments in
his ankle and missed three events. Finished twenty-second.
It ain’t his natural habitat.
In 2018, after two-and-a-half events, Italo leads the world. And
that Bells win? I was on the phone to Maurice Cole and he
whispered, “Have you seen Italo’s fucking boards? The back third
is… dead straight. It’s really fucking
simple. He’s riding the fastest boards. You gotta talk to
Timmy Patterson about ‘em.”
Timmy kicks open the CAD file of Italo’s boards. It’s a 5’11” x
18 9/16” x 2 1/4”, 25.6 litres. Tells me the outline is a six-two
at the back end with a five-eight’s nose. Translation: fuller in
the nose, narrower in the tail.
“Italo is all natural ability. Guys like Italo have the freest
mind to go where they want,” says Timmy.
“Look at how centred he is,” says Timmy. “Surfers are usually
forward surfing or tail heavy and he’s so centred. He
lives at this spot with a rightander that peels and he gets boards
to fit into tight little pockets. The flat spot is right between
his feet. He can get speed out of anything. He’s got those low
centre of gravity tree-trunk legs. I mean, when you watch him, he
doesn’t pump or wind up. He stiffens his legs, pushes it and he’s
gone. He’s not really sinking his board, just planing.”
It’s the intermediate surfer’s lot to attempt to find a secret
weapon in a surfer who’s suddenly become chic. The thing about
Italo’s boards, however, is they’re classic Timmy Patterson. It’s
all Timmy’s schtick. Beautiful, neutral boards that go fast, that
fly, if y’got the chops.
“Italo is all natural ability. Guys like Italo have the freest
mind to go where they want,” says Timmy.
As it happens, Italo had flown through California on the way
back to Brazil. Did he talk… sharks? Well, sure. Italo pointed out
how…creepy… it was there, how unsafe it felt.
“I surfed my whole life in Dana Point, never saw sharks, and
then last year they showed up,” says Timmy. “To see White shark
fins and to see ‘em breaching, when it’s actually happening in
front of you, you would never go in the water. It’s that
menacing.”
(Watch Italo in his breakout performance at Portugal in 2015
here!)
