"Darwin's a goofy!"
If ever proof was needed of Alex Florence’s cool mama, and now grandma, bona fides it has come in a series of short videos on the still glamorous fifty-six-year-old’s Instagram account and which you can watch here.
Baby Darwin in his Thrasher cap and Vans, Carhartt dacs, replica Rolleiflex around his neck is shown the mechanics of dropping in, weight on the front food kiddo, like, just believe, by his grandma, also wrapped in skate attire.
“He’s a goofy!!!” as Jon Pyzel points out.
You’ll remember, two years back, when surf champ John John Florence and his horticulturist wife Lauryn Cribb welcomed a baby boy, Darwin, into the North Shore-based flock, named after the towering British biologist who gave the world the theory of evolution via his knockout bestseller Origin of the Species.
In a nutshell, Darwin theorised, and with plenty of evidence, how species change over time, driven by natural selection and the wild ol’ game of survival.
Traits that help organisms thrive in their environment get passed on, while less helpful traits fade away.
It must feel like it was yesterday the New Jersey-born Alex Florence was doin’ the same for her now thirty-three-year-old son John John, that little canary-haired boy raised on peanut butter and Wonder bread, who enchanted the world as the first tweenie to ride Pipeline and who was later credited with saving the surf industry,
And they’re all there on the North Shore, in their pretty beachfront houses, cash in the bank, late-model cars in the garage ’cause mama Alex made the decision to split Ocean Grove, New Jersey, in 1986 and strike out for the North Shore, on a wing and a prayer as they say.
(Note to reader: Download the movie North Shore and check out the Halloween party scene 20 minutes in. Sure is a scene. Laird Hamilton is in lycra pants and his bare torso is painted in purple and lime zinc. A bearded Gerry Lopez is the Hui leader Vince, sullen, supping beers and looking evilly serene in a red bomber jacket and yellow tee. And, there, but don’t blink, is Mom John squeezing past the female lead Kiani and the Arizona wave pool champ Rick Kane. Yep, that shoulder length tangle of permed blond hair in the leopard skin lycra is the same gal who, five years, later would birth the first of three remarkable kids.)
Cool? Yeah.