Candid: Italo Ferreira’s private tour of his Baía Formosa hideaway; happy tow-ins via his hundred-gee beach buggy!

Here, in this little fishing village, the world champ is an absolute king.

It might come as a surprise that James O’Brien, the chubby red-haired daddy of surfing’s guiltiest treat, is a serious entrepreneur who has built a lucrative career around a YouTube channel.

Talk to James and you don’t get the goofy clown, you get hard kisses that leave little flecks of blood on your lips. A serious person with both eyes on the future.

In this episode of James’ weekly vlog we get part three of his journey to world champ Italo Ferreira’s Baía Formosa empire.

Here, Italo is the absolute king.

He owns the lineup, the best house and a hundred-gee beach buggy that can, and is, employed as a vehicle for towing in.

James, meanwhile, is bright, smart and happily demonic.


Battle of the sexes: Documentary reveals hippie surfers’ visceral hatred of women, “Get off my wave, bitch!”

More proof hippies are the worst!

Here’s a story as old as time, compelling as ever.

Women stuck under the jackboot of the male patriarchy, denied opportunity to flower, harried at every turn etc.

A new documentary by Dutch filmmaker Juul Hesselberth called “Just Go Fucking Surfing follows four Gold Coast surfers, with emphasis placed on their struggle.

One of the surfers, Audrey Styman-Lane told the ABC, “Male surfers do drop in on women surfers a lot and, when you ask them why, they say, ‘oh, sorry, but I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

Her twin sister Grace said old hippies were the worst.

“They’re like, ‘save the planet, peace brother’ — and then ‘Get off my wave, bitch.'”

Both said they’d lost sponsors ’cause they didn’t want to wear revealing swimwear.

“We want to be seen as professional athletes,” Audrey told the ABC. “Not sex objects.”

Jess Grimwood said she had to hide her homosexuality while competing.

“When I was doing it you couldn’t be a lesbian. All the chicks that were gay, were behind like secretly gay,” adding the WSL was planning a women’s surf contest to coincide with Sydney’s Gay Mardi Gras.

Watch trailer here.


Candid: Take a private tour of world surfing champion Italo Ferreira’s beachfront palazzo in Baia Formosa!

Beachfront palace with infinity pool, Mad Max-style four-wheeler, dreamy righthand point. Come see Italo in natural habitat…

Jamie O’Brien is an insanely popular thirty-six-year-old vlogger from Ehukai in Hawaii; Italo Ferreira, twenty-five, is the rags-to-riches Brazilian who beat Kelly Slater and Gabriel Medina at eight-foot Pipe to win the world title two months ago.

In this episode of his weekly YouTube series, Jamie, who coached Italo at Pipe, jumps on eight flights over thirty-plus hours to visit Italo at his beachfront palazzo in Baia Formosa, a fishing town in north-east Brazil, population eight thousand; a joint where the only paved roads are the ones that lead into the village.

It is something that we still know so little about the sport’s reigning king, whom we last saw dressed like an Orthodox Jew and meeting Formula 1 hero Lewis Hamilton.

And this video, which takes you through Italo’s house with the infinity pool, into his Mad Max-style four-wheeler, out the suicide garage door and to the dreamy point where he grew up surfing on a drink cooler lid, peels the curtain back just a little.

Part two next week.


Watch Kelly Slater in: “Be overwhelmed by the most terrifying sensation of lust that is possible to imagine!”

Kelly rides bareback in Hawaii!

Who would’ve thought, twenty-two years ago when Kelly Slater retired from the pro tour with six world titles, that he’d be darting around on the tour, and putting us all in a merry spin in his freesurfs, in his forty-ninth year.

This two-and-a-half-minute short shows Kelly in Hawaii and performing bareback gymnastics that, I hate to admit, would seem beyond the reach of most men his age.

I watched this and was transfixed.

The sheer animal ferocity of the man is frightening.


Watch: Mason Ho give his Tommy Peterson Fireball Fish a tubesteak shine!

Duck season on the North Shore!

There was a time in the mid-nineties when the idea of owning a Tom Peterson-shaped Fireball Fish would send you crying, with happy, into the silk folds of your kimono.

And, as fate would play it, Tom, then known as the little brother of the very famous Michael aka MP, had his shaping bay around the corner from my first job.

Tom would visit every day, terrible breath but a lovely spirit, and regale with tales of his brother.

I didn’t buy one of his Fireball Fishes because, then, as today, money finds it hard to escape from my zippered pockets, much to my regret etc.

Mason Ho has never had to buy surfboards and so when family friend Tom hand delivered a Fireball Fish, which is a channel bottom fish with a step-tail, cut to Mason’s especially little dimensions, all he had to do was wax and ride.

Which you can watch below. Includes very good, if brief, cameos from daddy Mike and little sis Coco.