Madcap scenes at Waimea as Hawaii’s
whip-slicked queen of taboo Mason Ho attempts to ride wildest
rivermouth waves ever seen, “Ho is pyrotechnic, lifting off the
screen in a blast of concussive booms!”
By Derek Rielly
Brilliant lunacy!
It’s been a wild ol December on the North
Shore, “40mph storm winds, massive waves, torrential rain
and even hail.”
These conditions conspired to create the scenario at Waimea Bay
where Oahu’s Waimea River, which flows from the back of the valley,
becomes so swollen all it takes is a bunch of shovels, a little
sweat to bust it open and let it hit the oncoming surf to create
what y’see here.
Mason fares poorly, which is rare given how strategic and
methodical he is when it comes to these sorta novelty waves and at
one point is washed out to sea.
Jamie O’Brien, whose shuck and jive you know well, wins the
day.
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Pipe King Jamie with brave little Ivan
Florence in the background.
In world first, carrot-topped king of
Pipeline delivers heart-stopping POV angle from Vans Pipe Masters,
“Jamie O’Brien remains reliably close to perfect!”
By Derek Rielly
For a man of almost forty years who looks like a
hamburger on a griddle, an overgrown Annie doll, Jamie O continues
to delight.
The 2003 Pipe Master, who is 190 pounds of rock hard
muscle with 40 pounds of sturdy protective fat, and who once told
me, “A big gut helps you breathe bigger and better” and
who leaves no muffin unbuttered, has delivered a world first by
recording his heat at the Vans Pipe Masters with a camera on his
helmet.
For a man of almost forty years who looks like a hamburger on a
griddle, an overgrown Annie doll, Jamie O’Brien continues to
delight.
And, though the heat, which opens the day, is slow and operated
under a day when the breeze is so light even the peach trees aren’t
stirred, Jamie appears maddeningly cool.
We meet Nathan and Ivan Florence in the pre-contest crowd, we
see the tiny ant people distant on the beach and we feel the
turbulence of several wipeouts.
More than essential.
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"The crowd factor is off the charts. The
danger factor as well. It truly is a modern gladiator pit."
Hawaii’s Queen of Crazy Mason “Little Lulu”
Ho in teeth-clenching form as he tames opening day at The Pipeline,
“It was a completely ridiculous orgy where everyone is
clothed!”
By Derek Rielly
"The crowd factor is off the charts. The danger
factor as well. It truly is a modern gladiator pit. Truly No
Country For Men.”
It is very difficult to complain about a visually
stunning eleven-minute short that documents adrenaline-pumping Pipe
antics by pec-flexing alpha males.
On the eve of the Vans Pipe Masters, a controversial event that
would deliver in spades despite its myriad doubters, Mason “Little
Lulu” Ho stuns at the famous wave, riding a seven-foot-six
surfboard proudly painted in the colours of trans-and-queer
inclusion.
As Mason’s surfboard shaper Matt Biolos said after watching,
“Surfing is the only sport/activity/endeavor where one must
compete just to get a chance to simply participate. Unless you’re
in a wave pool, or possibly in the Arctic Circle, just catching a
wave usually requires competing with others, for positioning and
priority. There’s no finer example of this than out at the Banzai
Pipeline. Mason and Rory’s latest edit hammers that home, pretty
clearly. The crowd factor is off the charts. The danger factor as
well. It truly is a modern gladiator pit. We often surf in similar
crowd density down at Lowers, but geeze, it’s in mushy, head-high
waves, with zero consequence. Halfthe surfers are intermediate, one
quarter are old and soft (like me) one eighth (or more) are little
kids and finally one-eighth might be pro-level fast and fit
surfers. But, this Pipeline crowd is insane. One hundred fast, fit,
strong and psycho, expert to pro-level surfers, hucking themselves
over and under the ledge….and no taking turns. Ruthlessly
Competing. Truly No Country For Men.”
Essential.
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“There is towering dignity, yes. But the
self-effacing bit is nonsense. Or not nonsense, exactly. It is
strategic and disarming."
Greatest surfer ever at Pipeline Gerry
Lopez stars in revealing new documentary by Stacy Peralta, “He is
incredibly calculating and shrewd. He’s the last mysterious man in
surfing!”
By Derek Rielly
"Lopez rode Pipeline like Audrey Hepburn stepping
out of a cab on 5th Ave.”
Did you know that the Hawaiian surfer Gerry Lopez, who
is seventy-four, is the star of a new documentary made by the
award-winning filmmaker and former skate star Stacy
Peralta?
Oh of course you didn’t.
We eat up our stars, lick the bones and then go back to our
crass TikTok lives.
A seventy-four-year-old man? Eee-yew!
Gerry, of course, ain’t no ordinary surfer.
When I hit surf historian Matt Warshaw about Gez, he left little
doubt to his explosive influence at Pipeline.
“He catwalked the hell out of it,” said Warshaw. “He invented
it. Nobody catwalked Pipe before Gerry. Jock Sutherland, my
third-favorite surfer as a kid, rode Pipeline like he had a stick
of dynamite up his ass. Lopez rode it like Audrey Hepburn stepping
out of a cab on 5th Ave.”
A little misstep in the film, small, not fatal, is reference to
Lopez’ supposed modesty.
“There is towering dignity, yes. But the self-effacing bit is
nonsense. Or not nonsense, exactly. It is strategic and disarming.
Lopez, and I say this with the utmost respect, is incredibly
calculating and shrewd,” says Warshaw. “You only ever see what he
wants you to see, when and where he wants you to see it. Which
makes him, in this live-streaming tell-everything age, all the more
attractive. He’s the last mysterious man in surfing.”
As for his surfing,
“At the height of his powers, if you’d stacked the reputation of
every other big-dick surfer into a pile, it would have come up just
below Gerry’s chin.”
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"Holy shit, what the hell!" says Nathan.
Sexy Only Fans star and powerlifter dubbed
“world’s smartest surfer” releases barely fathomable POV footage of
an Irish big-wave session even he describes as “unrideable” and the
wipeouts “hectic!”
By Derek Rielly
Grotesque, but hypnotizing!"
In the dying light of a winter’s afternoon in County
Clare, Ireland, we find Nathan Florence,the Only
Fans star and brother of US Olympian John John,
challenging the noted Irish big-wave Rileys.
Florence, who is a twenty-eight-year-old married powerlifter,
says he “rode barely any waves” and that the sets were only useable
via jetski assist.
“Towing was Russell Bierke, Conor Maguire and Ollie O’Flaherty.
They were absolutely sending it. They did offer me the rope if you
were wondering, I declined to tow, just wasn’t feeling it. Almost
no waves were made so just made a decision to not push at this
time, sometimes gotta listen to the gut!”
Yeah, this short is eleven minutes of waiting for something to
happen, but the POV angle during these sessions is a favourite
theatrical genre of mine.