Steve Sherman’s Quiksilver Pro photo of the day: “Brother and Daddy Dino!”

"They get into these intense moments of conversation…"

There is very little that separates the work of sporting photographers. A slightly different angle here, a different lens there.

Any sorta lifestyle shot is perfunctory, at best.

Surfing is very lucky to have Steve Sherman, a skater and surfer from southern California. His photography is a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the kind of things you get from a good movie.

More than any other surf photographer, Sherman has a sense of living history.

Over the course of the Quiksilver Pro, we’ll run a different shot of Sherm’s each day.

One, ’cause no one does it like Sherm and, two, ’cause our brother runs off his own cash express and if we can peel a note or two off to keep him hitting the shutter, well, ain’t that just a good thing.

Today, Kolohe Andino aka Brother and his Daddy Dino at D-Bah.

“You can see when Dino and Kolohe get in conversations, how Kolohe takes it all in,” says Sherm. “He listens to his father…a lot. Intently. More than the average son. And that’s impressive. They get into these moments of intense conversation really quickly. They talk about everything: the way he was surfing,. what’s going on in surfing, this board, that board and what the fuck Kelly is doing. But…everyone…does that!”

It’s a relationship that’s gotten softer over the years.

“When he was younger he started rebelling but, now, I rarely see any tension between them. If Dino is saying something Kolohe is listening. I think he realises his Dad still has a lot to offer him.”

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Cherry blossom season at the Bu.

Surfer sliced to hell by leashless surfboard at Malibu!

Owner of leashless board cries and says, "Fuck that guy! I hate him!"

Today’s project is surf injuries. Earlier, you thrilled to the SUP pilot, whose face now resembles a treasure map, and, now, a Topanga surfer who was drawn a third armpit by a leashless surfboard at Malibu.

Will Milner, 47, is an artist who calls First Point, Malibu, home. When he’s not in his art studio in West Adams he shapes boards, mostly hulls.

Let’s hear his story.

I was enjoying a small early south swell pulse two sundays ago at the Bu. The lineup was kind of jammed, first sign of summer… the surf was inconsequential, waist maybe chest, good but no big deal.

Anyway, I had been noticing this girl burning people most of the morning…  not to mention incessantly running to the nose…  I had avoided her pretty much until she lost her board. This all happened really quickly… The girl once again burning  a dude on a a set wave, she ran to the nose, arched her back, her board got hung up and tossed with the momentum of the breaking wave, tail first.

I kind of scolded her for a minute and she yelled to me and her boyfriend sitting next to her, “Fuck that guy, I hate him” and ran away to the parking lot crying.

I attempted to roll to avoid it hitting my head, but the tail/fin slammed and snagged my whole right side… her board, the dude’s board and my board to the beach… I knew I had been basically stabbed, I could feel cold water in the wound… Swimming in I told the girl her board  slammed me and it’s not good… she started crying… on the beach, more of the same.

Holding her stomach and crying. I didn’t see her get hit, but idk. I kind of scolded her for a minute and she yelled to me and her boyfriend sitting next to her, “Fuck that guy, I hate him” and ran away to the parking lot crying.

So I asked the boyfriend where they were from, didn’t get too much info… needing to take care of my wound, the lifeguard, Carter, super cool and nice, helped me out, I couldn’t see the gash, he looked surprised maybe shocked, , so I knew it was probably bad… he offered to call an ambulance.

Fortunately my girlfriend was with me… and drove me to the emerge care in Malibu… they wouldn’t see me because my insurance company website was down, drove to the one in Calabasas, two-hour wait. I insisted that the nurse at least check it out… she obliged and said it was bad and maybe the muscle is torn and sent us to the ER in West Hills… 20 staples.

I don’t know the protocol on this, but if I had lost my board and wounded someone, I definitely would offer to help etc.. the girl was a brat.

Maybe her ego was bruised, embarrassed? And didn’t want to admit she was wrong? 

It’s a good story, yes?

Two questions: Would you cry and say, ‘Fuck that guy, I hate him’ if you’d carved out a new piece of real estate on another surfer?

And what sorta country sends a wounded man back on the street because “the insurance company website was down”?

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"Two facial surgeons spent nine hours working on him, during which time he was cut from ear to ear and his face peeled forward allowing the perforation to be patched with muscle." | Photo: Steve Bowens/Swins.com

SUP Pilot Blows Out Eye Sockets, Cheeks, Brain etc on small-wave wipeout!

Bones imploded, cerebral fluid polluting water etc.

Some stories need little embellishment, like a celebrity whose past is rich in love affairs or erotic episodes.

Like today’s story lifted from the British tabloid, The Daily Mail.

A SUP rider was belted in the face by his giant craft and broke his nose, both eye sockets and right cheek and, says the pilot, Steve Bowens, ‘the impact had imploded the bones which make up the sinuses, this had forced air around my brain, and created a hole from my skull to the outside world through which cerebral spinal fluid now flowed.’

According to the Mail,

Two facial surgeons spent nine hours working on him, during which time he was cut from ear to ear and his face peeled forward allowing the perforation to be patched with muscle.

His cheek also had to be rebuilt and his eye suspended on titanium mesh.

As the wave came to the end it sectioned. I bottom turned but misjudged it and took a tumble.

‘The wave was not big, about 3ft. However I landed in the wrong place at the wrong time and the board hit me square in the face, right between the eyes. The sensation was as if someone hit me with a baseball bat. It was violent and as I came to the surface I knew that I was likely to pass out. As soon as I surfaced I climbed back on, thinking that at least if I passed out I would have some chance of keeping my airway out of the water until the next wave. Looking down at the board it was like someone was pouring red paint from a bucket onto the deck. I had never seen so much blood before. I then started shouting, I didn’t care who saw me, only that someone would see where I was and that I needed help.’

A concerned surfer paddled over to Mr Bowens and asked if he needed help.

He added: ‘I told him I needed to get back to the beach, but he seemed unsure of how to help. Fortunately the next wave caught me and I managed to prone surf back to the shore.’

On reaching the beach Steve struggled to stand and was helped to the car park, where his wife Sally, a doctor, was called to take him to A&E.

He added: ‘The shock of the accident started to set in. I sat there, shivering, with blood still pouring from my face. The pain was fairly intense and I just wanted to be anywhere apart from sat there.’

Y’ever been hit that hard?

By board, human hand, reef, concrete?

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Hot Hogs for Sexy Studs: Harley-Davidson becomes official motorcycle of professional surfing!

Feel the thunder!

How do you feel about motorcycles? Do you love the ride? Wind in hair? Bending around hairpins etc.? I’m not ashamed to say I love them, and love them very much, though have never owned a proper proper one. Never owned the motorcycle of my dreams.

Right after college I took semi-ownership of a friend’s Kawasaki 900 and drove it to my teaching gig which was on the other side of a good sized hill. The brakes went out one day and I downshifted to an eventual stop after many close misses.

I was proud of myself.

Later I bought a vintage Honda, basically a child’s bike, painted it black and flipped the handlebars upside down. It broke often and I tried to fix it myself but made everything worse.

In Lebanon, during the 2006 war, my best friend and I tried to get motorcycles but could only find motorscooters, which we were riding when getting nabbed by the PLO then handed over to Hezbollah. They would have respected us more, I feel, had we been on better machines.

In Yemen, less than a year later, the same best friend and I planned to ride Royal Enfields from one end of the country to the other then back again. Once we landed in Sana’a, though, we realized the only sorts of bikes that exist in Yemen are nasty little 90cc Chinese things. We painted them black and flipped the handlebars upside down and rode 3000 km, which must be a record on little 90cc Chinese things.

And that is my history with motorcycles which brings us back to the World Surf League.

How do you think they look on their new Harley?

More importantly, which motorcycle brand would best fit the League’s general vibe?

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Gabriel Medina
The back half of the heat draw looked like it might be a let down after the first half. Medina had set the pace, as expected. Non-forecast dependent. Non-location dependent. He threw the opening manoeuvre on his opening wave up towards the wall, twisted like a pickle fork in the breeze and carried on as if 2018 never ended. | Photo: WSL

Day One, Quiksilver Pro: “Medina and John John come out of gate hot as hell!”

A good opening day…

Even at it’s absolute worst D-Bah is still a great venue. Ronnie was pondering with Pete Mel the preponderance of champion surfers on the Gold Coast.

They neglected to mention the obvious fact that was right in front of them.

Through onshores, tidal ranges, wind squalls and every other vicissitude of wave and weather D-Bah throws up surfable peaks. As it does every day of the year, so it did today.

The swell line is split into multiple wave trains as it runs across the Tweed River tidal bar. Separated swell trains arrive at a multitude of angles, some of them bouncing and refracting off the river breakwall. Tell me, did you see a single straight closeout today? That is why.

Pete Mel said he had been studying waves in the off-season as part of his pre-season training. He came up with refraction and convergence.

I know you are reading Pete, Phase enhancement is the term you are looking for.

The swell line is split into multiple wave trains as it runs across the Tweed River tidal bar. Separated swell trains arrive at a multitude of angles, some of them bouncing and refracting off the river breakwall.

Tell me, did you see a single straight closeout today? That is why.

WSL came out cock-a-hoop for the opening day of 2019.

Taking stock: the QS is thriving, the WSL has merged with it’s former mortal enemy RedBull and is producing slick content with them and on its own terms. New three-year deals have been inked with Quiksilver and Rip Curl for Snapper and Bells, Margies is locked in for two.

All of a sudden, with Sophie G’s hand on the tiller it looks more solid than ever. With Redbull in the tent the chance of a Rebel Tour is nil. As Steinberg observed of Lyndon B Johnson: “(She) has learned to seize authority from the lazy or slow, threaten and storm the weak, flatter the vain, promise the greedy, buy off the stubborn, and isolate the strong”.

I’ve been thinking about Kelly’s legacy a lot.

It’s an appropriate past-time for surf writers. It presents us all with many facets of contradictory feelings, that even a great artist could barely give expression to. For one, the strange incongruity that despite decades of dominance there is barely a hint of his style or approach in any of the top 34 surfers on Tour. No one looks like him. There are no imitators. His influence, even as his time on Tour winds down looks to be weirdly understated.

There is legacy – what Wikipedia and the casuals will think when they hear his name – and legacy. Let us be honest: pro surfing is a sport for the very few. It is those few who decide the legacy.

Or is it silly to make that distinction?

The back half of the heat draw looked like it might be a let down after the first half. Medina had set the pace, as expected. Non-forecast dependent. Non-location dependent. He threw the opening manoeuvre on his opening wave up towards the wall, twisted like a pickle fork in the breeze and carried on as if 2018 never ended. A power down-carve and sped-up nose-pick reverse was adjudged (rightly) as the only excellent scoring wave of the day and in so doing established a template for good surfing in 2019.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvx6YvDATLv/

The biggest turns of the day belonged to Michel Bourez, who had trained for onshore D-Bah surfing Teahupoo thereby “getting the good waves out of my system”. Soap around the bath-tub cutbacks with a Baryshnikovian rebound and exaggerated sprays were the foundation of his heat win.

Kiwi battlers > Aussie battlers. Like many I rooted for Ricardo Christie who earned a second go around at being a rookie. Unluckily for him, a Brazilian battler on a clear board, Michael Rodriguez and noted Aussie battler Wade Carmichael, who ran his closing wave “wet and deep”, pushed him into relegation. Christie needs nothing more than some luck to run his way.

A slovenly D-Bah threw on a touch of mascara for heat 11 as an offshore wind spruced up the lineup. I had made a bold prediction that Kolohe’s unfashion with judges would be balanced out this year by more favourable views.

Such it was as he got highballed for a series of cutbacks into first place. Luke Egan was in the booth with Ron Blakey. Luke’s normally deeply somnolent style had been injected with extra vim and vigour. It was not an unpleasant coupling.

It was good to see Travis Bickle picking up his contest jersey for the last heat of the day.

Caught you out too?

I had to go on my own training program for this year, and I’m glad I did because a lot of people got very emotionally exercised when I suggested JJF’s opening heat, his opening wave, was crucial to his re-integration into the Tour.

It was just an obvious point that to keep up with the new front-runners of the Tour he needed to come out of the blocks firing. Somehow that made people very angry.

Opening turn, opening wave John, launched an awkward air reverse. A stray foot couldn’t kill it. A flat five was awarded. Mikey started hacking away with a classic Aussie power-squat stance that is somehow derided as unstylish when performed by Gabriel Medina.

Thirty seconds to go and John is in danger of being shunted to round two – where, let’s face it, a loss would put his 2019 into Rigor mortis – he catches a weird looking peak, pumps for speed and launches a difficult to land air reverse away from the wind.

That, sports fans, may be the most crucial wave John rides this year. Good opening day.

A bold and beautiful move by a newly confident WSL to take it to D-Bah.

For the first time the Tour did not look dependent on either Kelly or John for star power.

The locus of leverage has shifted.

Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast Round 1 Results:
Heat 1: Griffin Colapinto (USA) 10.26 DEF. Soli Bailey (AUS) 9.83, Owen Wright (AUS) 8.23
Heat 2: Jack Freestone (AUS) 10.67 DEF. Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 10.47, Jordy Smith (ZAF) 5.03
Heat 3: Yago Dora (BRA) 14.33 DEF. Italo Ferreira (BRA) 11.93, Kelly Slater (USA) 9.70
Heat 4: Joan Duru (FRA) 11.10 DEF. Filipe Toledo (BRA) 9.53, Caio Ibelli (BRA) 7.60
Heat 5: Seth Moniz (HAW) 11.17 DEF. Reef Heazlewood (AUS) 9.50, Julian Wilson (AUS) 8.36
Heat 6: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 13.84 DEF. Ryan Callinan (AUS) 13.57, Mateus Herdy (BRA) 7.23
Heat 7: Adrian Buchan (AUS) 10.13 DEF. Conner Coffin (USA) 10.00, Jadson Andre (BRA) 8.40
Heat 8: Michel Bourez (PYF) 13.27 DEF. Jeremy Flores (FRA) 8.90, Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) 7.57
Heat 9: Michael Rodrigues (BRA) 13.17 DEF. Wade Carmichael (AUS) 13.07, Ricardo Christie (NZL) 12.67
Heat 10: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) 12.73 DEF. Deivid Silva (BRA) 12.00, Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 8.03
Heat 11: Kolohe Andino (USA) 11.00 DEF. Jesse Mendes (BRA) 10.90, Willian Cardoso (BRA) 8.40
Heat 12: Mikey Wright (AUS) 12.10 DEF. John John Florence (HAW) 10.93, Peterson Crisanto (BRA) 8.36

Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast Round 2 Matchups:
Heat 1: Julian Wilson (AUS) vs. Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) vs. Mateus Herdy (BRA)
Heat 2: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Ricardo Christie (NZL) vs. Caio Ibelli (BRA)
Heat 3: Owen Wright (AUS) vs. Peterson Crisanto (BRA) vs. Kelly Slater (USA)
Heat 4: Willian Cardoso (BRA) vs. Sebastian Zietz (HAW) vs. Jadson Andre (BRA)

 

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