Warshaw as a beautifully cut aqua-boy in 1972! | Photo: courtesy Matt Warshaw

Meet the brave little “aqua-boy” who grew up to become surfing’s cultural heart-beat, “I wanted it to come through my eyes, my skin, and my blood, and my hands!”

"You're the f**king leader of the free world!"

Sometime last summer, an email appeared in my inbox.

Would you like to write a profile of Matt Warshaw for Emocean magazine?

It took me exactly five seconds to reply. Yes, of course, I would like to write a profile of Matt.

The story is available now in Devotion, Emocean’s fourth issue.

 

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It has been a joy to work with the crew at Emocean, who love surfing and making print media as much as anyone I’ve ever met.

I’d love to see the magazine thrive. If you’d like to buy a copy, and I feel like you most definitely do, you can buy it here.

I feel like Matt does not need much of an introduction to you.

He is surfing’s devoted historian and spends his days in Seattle sifting through the ruins of our strange and beautiful past time. He says he’s motivated by an effort to assign meaning to his own story and to understand why he’s spent so many hours of life obsessed with riding waves.

How did he arrive here?

Matt’s life has intersected so many interesting characters and places in surfing. Matt learned to surf in Venice Beach with Jay Adams, competed in the first Katin Pro/Am, edited Surfer Magazine — and that was just the beginning.

Here’s a short excerpt from the longer profile.

When Warshaw went to work for Surfer in 1985, he arrived during a surf media golden age. “It was a really wild and fun period,” says Jamie Brisick, who was a pro surfer at the time. “This was the period of Tom Curren, Tom Carroll, and Mark Occhilupo — the surfers were still characters.”

Advertising money flowed, and the magazine was fat with the work of writers such as Derek Hynd and Dave Parmenter and photographers such as Jeff Divine and Art Brewer. “Had he been the editor at a different time, he might have come out of it a different person,” says Brisick.

Shelved in publisher Steve Pezman’s office were bound copies of the entire run of the magazine. Warshaw read them all from start to finish. “I wanted to absorb it completely. I wanted it to come through my eyes, my skin, and my blood, and my hands,” he says. “I’m not a fast learner, but I never don’t get better.” Soon Warshaw was managing editor at Surfer.

When he made editor-in-chief, Warshaw’s future in the surf media looked assured. He was less certain. His younger brother Chris had traveled widely and gone to the University of Chicago.

All Warshaw had ever done was surf.

“There is a real risk of intellectual suffocation in surfing,” says Lewis Samuels, who wrote the widely read blog PostSurf and was a senior writer at Surfer. “I think you’re more likely to suffer some form of intellectual suffocation than to die from drowning.”

In a long-shot move, Warshaw applied to UC Berkeley. To his surprise, they agreed to admit him as a junior after adding up the miscellaneous credits he’d accumulated.

Walking up the trail at Trestles one evening, Warshaw encountered Sam George, who wrote for Surfing and had somehow learned of Warshaw’s disaffection.

He tried to change Warsaw’s mind.

“You’re the fucking leader of the free world! You’re the editor of Surfer Magazine,” George recalls saying. “What is wrong with you? Revel in this!” But George was too late.

In many ways, Warshaw had already left.

Not long after that conversation, Warshaw sold the house he had bought near T- Street and packed his bags. He had been editor of Surfer for just five months.

In January 1991 at age 30, he arrived in Berkeley to pouring rain.


John and Kelly, thirteen Pipeline wins and thirteen world titles between 'em. | Photo: Kelly by @sensitiveseashellcollector, John by @pauly-matt-war-shore

Surf fans delivered new thunderbolt as John John Florence and Kelly Slater withdraw from upcoming Vans Pipe Masters, one day after bedevilled contest lost world champs Toledo, Medina, Ferreira and Gilmore!

Pressure y’think from the WSL or a sort of malaise at the idea of spending two weeks before Christmas riding empty Pipe?

Surf fans delivered new thunderbolt as John John Florence and Kelly Slater withdraw from upcoming Vans Pipe Masters, one day after bedevilled contest lost world champs Toledo, Medina, Ferreira and Gilmore!

After suffering a horror blow to its lineup of invitees, losing current world champ Filipe Toledo, greatest female surfer of all time Stephanie Gilmore, three-time champ Gabriel Medina and 2019 world champ Italo Ferreira, the Vans Pipe Masters will now proceed without John John Florence and Kelly Slater.

The Vans Pipe Masters, which will pivot away from only scoring barrels and apply an equal weight to turns and aerials, is an invite-only event which runs from December 8 to 20 and is not to be confused with the WSL’s Billabong Pro Pipe, which’ll open the 2023 Championship Tour on January 29.

Medina, Toledo and Ferreira have all cited injuries for not taking their invitations, while Gilmore, eight times world champion, pulled due to a “scheduling conflict”.

Today’s bombshell, no John John Florence, the two-time world champ, four-time winner of the Volcom Pipe Pro and 2021 Pipeline Master, nor Kelly Slater, eleven times world champ, seven times Pipe Master and winner of this year’s Billabong Pipe Pro.

Helluva lot of WSL drawcards suddenly pulling out of the event.

Pressure y’think from above or a sort of malaise at the idea of spending two weeks before Christmas riding empty Pipe?

Also out is Jackie Robinson, former Volcom Pipe Pro champ, due to appendicitis.

The invite-list now is,

Men

Seth Moniz, Barron Mamiya, Griffin Colapinto, Mikey Wright, Yago Dora, Billy Kemper, Koa Smith, Mason Ho, Nathan Florence, Ivan Florence, Shayden Pacarro, Eli Hanneman, Makana Pang, Koa Rothman, Eli Olson, Jamie O’Brien, Matt Meola, Noah Beschen, Imaikalani deVualt, Jackson Bunch, Kala Grace, Kaulana Apo, Tosh Tudor, Eimeo Czermak, Kauli Vaast, Balaram Stack, Nic Von Rupp, Joao Chianca, Al Cleland Jr, Crosby Colapinto, Riaru Ito, Rio Wada, Eithan Osborne, Josh Moniz, Shane Sykes, Craig Anderson, Mikey February, Harry Bryant, Noa Deane, and Rasta Rob

Women

Carissa Moore, Moana Jones-Wong, Coco Ho, Zoe McDougall, Betty Lou Sakura Johnson, Tatiana Weston-Webb, Pua DeSoto, Bethany Hamilton, Aelan Vaast, Caity Simmers, Sierra Kerr, Tyler Wright, Bella Nalu, Vahine Fierro, Maluhia Kinimaka, Luana Silva, Sophie Bell, and Laura Enever, Gabriela Bryan, Molly Picklum.


Cast of The White Lotus Season 2 (pictured) toasting Kelly Slater. Photo: The White Lotus.

Surfing credited in success of smash hit The White Lotus!

The 25-year storm.

There is a very great chance that, while patiently waiting for the World Surf League to get its 2023 Championship Tour underway, you are watching The White Lotus. HBO’s sneaky smash hit highlighting the fortunes and foibles of wealthy folk on vacation has taken the globe by storm with both critics and average folk hanging on every scintillating turn, each tension-packed moment.

The show’s debut featured Hawaii’s Valley Isle in starring role, with a death being revealed in episode one only to have viewers attempting to discern who it was who died, and why, as the storytelling flashes back.

Its second season takes place in Sicily, off Italy’s boot, with a similar early death exposed, same flashback, duplicate intrigue in discerning which character it might be.

Of interest, the program’s creator, writer and director Mike White has credited surfing in relationship to all the wild success. White has had a long history in Hollywood as both and actor and writer, crafting Jack Black vehicle School of Rock amongst others but none coming close to The White Lotus acclaim.

In a recent interview, the possible albino declared the secret to success was introducing death at the beginning, declaring, “When that first season became such a water cooler show [that] people were talking about, I was like, had I only known if I’d put a dead body at the beginning of Enlightened, maybe people would’ve watched Enlightened. You realize these kinds of hooks do actually get viewers.”

I never watched Enlightened.

But back to surfing, White added, “I just feel like I’m like a surfer who’s been in the ocean for, like, 25 years and suddenly caught a wave.”

The whole business may be taken as odd and out of context except the internet is littered with White throwing appropriately loose shakas.

Like, legitimate ones.

Has he, in fact, been a surfer in the ocean for 25 years, or thereabouts, who just caught his first wave?

If true, World Surf League CEO Erik Logan should certainly take note, pocketing his inappropriately tight shaka and refusing to catch waves for the next 25 years, or thereabouts.

If he did the work maybe just maybe all his bullish (read: false) predictions of success would come true.

8 million (and counting) viewers materializing?

Dirk Ziff? Are you reading? Tell your boy to hang it up?


Al Pacino (pictured) as Dr. Death. Photo: Kevorkian film.
Al Pacino (pictured) as Dr. Death. Photo: Kevorkian film.

With Para Surfing championships underway, Canadian Paralympic athlete shocks by revealing government offered to euthanize her instead of installing wheelchair lift!

Extremely harsh.

We grouchy locals, we unwanted crusty bits, can grouse and grumble about almost everything. Almost everything except para surfing. Those brave men and women who are missing a limb, two, three or four and yet still find joy out on the waves, still toss on a singlet and compete, are pure distilled inspiration.

As anti-depressive as it gets.

You may know that, right now, the International Surfing Association’s World Para Surfing Championship is underway in Pismo Beach, California.

A truly miraculous show and, hopefully, a step into the Paralympic Games.

While Pismo is not an ideal competitive location, it is much better than Canada where the government has come under recent fire for offering to euthanize a para athlete who complained about delays surrounding a wheel chair lift being installed in her home.

According to reports, Christine Gauthier, who is a retired Army Corporal and Paralympian, testified before Canada’s Parliament saying that after she brought up the stall in her lift, a caseworker with the veterans affair department responded, “I have a letter saying that if you’re so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying.”

Extremely harsh.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was, at least, disturbed declaring, “We are following up with investigations, and we are changing protocols to ensure what should seem obvious to all of us: that it is not the place of Veterans Affairs Canada, who are supposed to be there to support those people who stepped up to serve their country, to offer them medical assistance in dying.”

Maybe Canada can host the next World Para Surfing Championships in Tofino, there on the beautiful west coast, flying athletes in etc. to make amends.

The least that could be done.


Medina and Toledo, main photo, Gilmore and Ferreira, insets. Thirteen world titles between 'em and not one of 'em in the Pipe Masters.

Surf fans left dumbfounded after bombshell news four world champions simultaneously declined invites to historic Pipe Masters citing unspecified injures and “scheduling conflicts”!

The mood on the street is like bowels turned inside out!

The upcoming Vans Pipe Masters has suffered a horror blow to its lineup of invitees after three Brazilian world champions, Gabriel Medina, Italo Ferreira and Filipe Toledo, and eight-time women’s champ Stephanie Gilmore, all pulled out of the event, which runs from December 8 to 20. 

The Vans Pipe Masters, which will pivot away from only scoring barrels and apply an equal weight to turns and aerials, is an invite-only event and is not to be confused with the WSL’s Billabong Pro Pipe, which’ll open the 2023 Championship Tour on January 29.

Medina, Toledo and Ferreira have all cited injuries for not taking their invitations, although a cursory stroll through their IG accounts finds little indication any of ‘em have been hobbled. 

On the contrary, Ferreira is swimming with sharks and working away on waves like a billy goat and Medina has been giving hell to the plates and stationary bike at his gymnasium.

Confronted with so much concrete evidence of reigning world champ Toledo’s fear of heavy-water reefs, the surf fan might’ve hoped he would relish the opportunity to drive a sword through his naysayers. So hot and potent in waves six-feet and under, irrelevant in everything else.

In the women, Stephanie Gilmore, eight times world champion, greatest ever and so on, has pulled due to a “scheduling conflict”.

In Gilmore’s case, she’s smart enough to know there ain’t a place on earth that highlights her weaknesses and for the sake of legacy, pride, fear of being redundant, irrelevant, whatever it is, is out. 

Griffin Colapinto, Yago Dora, and Mikey Wright will replace the Brazilian champs; Molly Picklum, a twenty-year-old from country Australia, will take Gilmore’s invite.