As the camera swept over the crowd, the
viewer's attention was drawn to the heroic profile on Vaughan
Blakey, brother of commentator Ronnie, and one half of the
long-running Ain't That Swell broadcast team squawking
ecstatically, as if he wanted to seize Ryan in his arms and pull
him down between his thighs.
Ain’t That Swell’s Vaughan Blakey and Jed
Smith dagger fingernails down Newcastle surfing’s spine in stunning
new documentary!
By Derek Rielly
"A glorious madhouse full of absolute
lunatics… "
An oddly electric moment yesterday during Newcastle
surfer Ryan Callinan’s post-heat presser.
As the camera swept over the crowd, the viewer’s attention was
drawn to the heroic profile of Vaughan Blakey, brother of
commentator Ronnie and one half of the long-running Ain’t That
Swell broadcast team, squawking ecstatically, as if he wanted
to seize Ryan in his arms and pull him down between his thighs.
This documentary by Vaughan and his ATS co-host Jed Smith
celebrates what Vaughan describes as “the skitz energy of this town
and why people from here are legends. It’s a glorious madhouse full
of absolute lunatics but they’re all down to earth, really good
people. Nowhere like it.”
Plenty of whiz and fluff and bludgeon strokes of Vaughan’s
sucker ding dong.
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Mason Ho at Newport Beach's The Wedge.
Newport beachgoers flabbergasted at
legendary Hawaiian aristocrat cavorting in fat cones!
By Derek Rielly
Classic supersonic Mason Ho…
In this, the two hundred and seventy-fifth instalment of
Mason Ho’s winter and spring, our innards are yanked out by Mason’s
capacity to sit cosily inside Newport’s The Wedge as if it
was a luxurious lodge and he was warming himself in front of a
fireplace.
“The thing with style,” says Mason, “is that style truly does
come out when you don’t give a fuck. Right when you truly don’t
give a shit what your surfing looks like, that’s when some sort of
style comes out. As soon as you let go of everything, you’re
styling. When I was growing up, I copied all of my favourite guys
but I was never as good as them. Once I got the theory down and
stripped it back…boom…finally…something came out. There was some
style. Finally…”
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Cowboy Kemper, back in the saddle.
Big-wave world champ Billy Kemper finds
absolution after the multiple tragedies, Erik Logan’s tears and a
busted pelvis in final episode of ‘Billy’!
By Derek Rielly
The tear-jerking conclusion of a wonderful six-part
series…
In the struggle and turmoil that agitate the USA today,
Billy Kemper seems to belong to a remote and silent
past.
Kemper, almost thirty-one, a four-time Jaws winner and the 2015
Big-Wave world champion, is a nobleman of the old school where
struggle is hidden in some remote world of quiet contemplation.
You know the story, of course, or you should by now.
Billy is belted to within an inch of his life at a
Moroccan ledge right at the start of the COVID pandemic, the
hospital there don’t know what they’re doing, wrong drugs are
administered, humiliating episodes of diarrhoea and so on, and so
WSL Erik Logan moves heaven and hell to get him back to the US.
There follows much rehabilitation, which includes cameos by
Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reece, and, today, his return to Jaws.
It ain’t the best episode, if we’re to be frank, but it still
meets with high approval.
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When Jake was 18 I would have been a 29… just
had my first kid, Quiksilver had just gone bankrupt, I was trying
to figure out what’s next. Still filming and making a surf movie
which would become Chapter 11. My time to surf became scheduled and
limited. Clips became harder to capture. Crowds increased. When
Jake was 18 I would have been a 29… just had my first kid,
Quiksilver had just gone bankrupt, I was trying to figure out
what’s next. Still filming and making a surf movie which would
become Chapter 11. My time to surf became scheduled and limited.
Clips became harder to capture. Crowds increased. And there’s Jake.
And his friends. At the beach every goddamn day. Full of energy and
zest for life.
Former world number four surfer famous for
his “go-for-broke” style details battle with loneliness and a
bitterness that threatened to eat him alive: “They have an
eagerness that I can’t relate to… full of energy and zest for
life!”
By Derek Rielly
"And they have friends. Friends they give surf
reports to. Friends they surf with, and they laugh with each other
and they surround me with their youthful exuberance."
In this, the tenth episode of Dane Reynolds’ newly
launched vlog Chapter11 we find Reynolds, a former world
number four surfer famous for his “go-for-broke” style lancing a
bitterness that threatened to eat him alive.
Hard to imagine, yes?
The still-best-surfer-in-the-world’s homeostasis upset by the
arrival of a younger, prettier, more popular and more energetic
man?
Reynolds writes,
I used to hate Jake.
It was no fault of his own I was just being an
asshole.
So here’s what happens – Every bright eye’d young kid with
an NSSA win under their belt and a sticker on their nose eventually
gets a drivers license and graduates high school and if they’re
lucky enough to be earning a buck off said sticker they likely have
no college or job or other responsibilities and are at the beach
every goddamn day.
And they have friends. Friends they give surf reports to.
Friends they surf with, and they laugh with each other and they
surround me with their youthful exuberance.
When Jake was 18 I would have been a 29… just had my first
kid, Quiksilver had just gone bankrupt, I was trying to figure out
what’s next. Still filming and making a surf movie which would
become Chapter 11. My time to surf became scheduled and limited.
Clips became harder to capture. Crowds increased.
And there’s Jake. And his friends. At the beach every
goddamn day. Full of energy and zest for life.
There’s a pattern with each new crop of kids. They first
start showing up when the waves are good and then figuring out
swells and wind and when to be at what spot and they have an
eagerness that I can’t relate to and I feel like I can’t shake em
and we surf the same peak every day and step on each other’s toes
trying to do tricks for the camera and i get annoyed…
Then when I finally get to know them I feel like an
asshole.
Jake turned out to be a fucken cool kid. As most of em
do…
Here’s my highly evolved and mature fresh perspective
–
I owe a lot to the older generation of surfers that accepted
my group of friends. Virs and Purps would drive us around. Dunk us,
burn us, introduce us to filmers and photographers take us to
contests. Point out locals, rocks and other hazards. Miss those
days. A part of why I wanted to start Chapter 11 tv is to rebuild
that sense of fraternity and give the guys that i surf with an
outlet as the surf industry evolves and becomes more
fickle.
Jake lost his main sponsor last year and is handling it like
a champ. He surfs cause he loves it and when there’s no waves he
takes jobs as a PA on production sets. No bitterness. That’s
something I admire.
John (John) turning off the top, working that
action-figure swivel waist to sculpt a perfect bowl into the face –
nature, body and board combining in perfect unison; poetry in
300fps motion; the gratifying blend of synergy and symmetry.
Be wooed, again, by two-time world surfing
champion John John Florence in striking ultra-slow motion edit,
“I’m serious about the matter of good taste!”
By John Miskelly
Being a two-time world champion in your field
grants one a certain license to naval gaze.
Posting six-and-a0-half minutes of oneself doing
anything at 300 frames-per-second might come across as a bit
self-indulgent, but then again what’s social media for if
not a bit of narcissistic self-aggrandisement?
And being a two-time world champion in your field must grant one
a certain license to naval gaze.
My personal favourite frame is the frame grab that fronts this
story, taken at the roughly twenty-five second mark: John (John)
turning off the top, working that action-figure swivel waist to
sculpt a perfect bowl into the face – nature, body and board
combining in perfect unison; poetry in 300fps motion; the
gratifying blend of synergy and symmetry.
The flight of a hummingbird.
The leap of a cat.
The ripples on a lake from the first drop of morning rain etc.
etc. and so on and so forth.
