Watch: Mason, Dez, Coco and Mike Ho in “You know I can’t hear you when I’m in the tube!”

Your favourite vagabonds, in the one spot, at the one time!

Looking out, open-mouthed, at very square tubes at Pipeline and Mason and Coco and Uncle Dez and Daddy Mike trading sets, well, it reminds me I’ll never be anything more than a vibration rather than a solid.

In this five-minute edit by (the fabulous) Rory Pringle, Lachlan Peanut Mckinnon, Chaddy Witz, Andrew Schoener and Justin Rutherford and scored to a Hendrix soundtrack from Mason’s mammy, Brian (yeah, yeah, it ain’t a traditional name for a woman), we see the fam treading a familiar pasture.

A little history of the Ho’s, if it’s necessary. Mike Ho, with his Chinese-Hawaiian-American heritage, was 30 years old and on his last tour circuit when his girl, Brian, a Caucasian American, became pregnant.

Mike’s dad was pure Chinese. His grandmother pure Hawaiian. Mike’s mom, Mason’s paternal grandma, was from Oregon. The brother of one of Mike’s good friends was named Mason. Mike dug it. He threw a little Hawaiian in there, Kaohelaulii, a middle name that’s been carried by the Hos since Mason’s paternal grandfather. It means: “New little bamboo shoot coming out from the old. It bends and it’s hard to break,” says Mike.

Mike had bought land up there at Backyards, Sunset, and a small house was constructed. The marriage broke up after the birth of Mason’s sister Coco, two years later. And soon, the jokester and former-pro surfer was in the serious biz of being a single parent to two kids.

“I was ‘fun dad,’” Mike says. “I’m like, ‘Surf is good, let’s go surfing. Okay, no school today.’ Yeah, I was bad. I was a bad, fun dad.”

Unless it was Pipe. “‘Go to school. Dad’s going to surf Pipe today.’”

Mike plays it down though.

It ain’t easy when the spigot of cash from pro surfing is off and you’re thirty-something-years-old and your marriage is done. But, says, Dino Andino, “No matter how hard it got, no matter what he was going through, or doing, he always had ’em to school on time, dressed and fed. He never faltered. Ever. Mike Ho is an awesome, awesome dad.”

And, look at ’em now, all meticulously walking the Pipe tightrope.


Bristol wavepool: Watch Kanoa Igarashi and Travis Rice in “Robust enjoyment at a very expensive sanitorium!”

A new angle on the British Wavegarden tank. Better, worse, than you might imagine.

After eight months of cold labour in the English city of Bristol, one of the better cities in a country populated by people with fish smell on their breath, hideous raven hair and guinea pig faces, we have The Wave.

You read about last week’s opening day, here.

Recently, the Red Bull surf team, which includes Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi, had a day negotiating the artificial seaside and The Wave’s glistening trajectories.

A cameo from Travis Rice, the champion snowboarder, is welcome for it gives the everyman a feel for what he’ll be able to manage on the two-foot waves.

The backwash and onshore winds are perhaps not quite so appreciated.

Suggestion: If you’re booking a session at a pool, get the first wave. Always the best.

If you’re swinging to England soon, book here. Forty quid an hour.


World Premiere: Time-travel wetsuit comedy “Once Upon a Time in New Zealand”

What if a surfer from the future time travelled back to Raglan in 1984 with 2019's best wetsuits?

Time-travel Wetsuit Comedy is not the most crowded genre in the world and therefore we can be confident in announcing that our new film is among the better in its category.

Once Upon a Time in New Zealand was filmed entirely in New Zealand and features Raglan shredder and comic Luke Cederman (aka @raglansurfreport) and his troupe of surfer-actors Sam Mathers, Elliot Paerata Reid, Tux Servene and Jordan Griffin.

Last year’s wetsuit film was A New Jersey Wetsuit Fairytale starring slab-hunter Tommy Ihnken surfing around Asbury Park and cut to covers of Springsteen songs.

The conceit of this year’s film is time travel.

To wit, what if a surfer from the future time travelled back to Raglan in 1984 with 2019’s best wetsuits?

What would it mean thirty-five years on?

Would we be wearing wetsuits with wings? Purple wetsuits? Invisible wetsuits?

The film features suits from Billabong, O’Neill, Rip Curl, Feral, Quiksilver, Vissla and Xcel whose donations made this film possible. It’s a measure, a reflection, I think, of a company’s connection to surfing when they cut generous cheques to make little culture bites that may not bounce straight back onto the bottom line but do add to the game, as a whole.

We thank, therefore, Buzz Bonneau and Alex Salz (the two surfers from Ocean Beach, San Francisco, who started and who still run Feral), my former work-pal at Stab, Mimi LaMontagne, the legendary Neil Ridgway and Sam Hopgood (Rip Curl), big-wave wrangler and surf-spot pioneer Evan Slater, and Cyndal DeVasto (Billabong), O’Neill’s Technobutter™ genius Brian Kilpatrick and enduring surf star Rob Bain (O’Neill), cute-as-a-button Rob Flick (Quiksilver), team players and shredders Corey Brindley, Vince De La Peña and Steve Neiley (Vissla) and Lance Varon, Greg Wade, Courtney Kincaid and Ed D’Ascoli, whose genius keeps the New Jersey-born Xcel ahead of the curve.

Wetsuits featured:

Rip Curl 4/3 Flashbomb Heat Seeker Steamer, Billabong 5/4 Furnace, O’Neill Hyperfreak FUZE DH 4/3, Feral 4/3, Quiksilver 4/3 Highline Plus, Vissla 4/3 7 Seas, Xcel Radiant Rebound X2 4/3 

Cover versions of eighties classics I See Red, Computer Games and Not Given Lightly by master-producer and performer Pauly B, who also makes all the funny noises for Ain’t That Swell.

Filmed, edited and co-written by San Francisco’s Jack Boston.


Cavort behind-the-scenes at the Freshwater Pro with Kelly Slater!

A fascinating study of a man with everything who still wonders why…

“How did I get here?” wondered eighties band Talking Heads.

Watching this new episode of the WSL’s excellent Sound Waves series, which features Kelly Slater at the Freshwater Pro, his backyard pool, you get the feeling that it don’t matter if a man has a late-model Cadillac, flawlessly tailored ice-cream silk suits and a Kewpie Doll wife with a reddish tan and platinum hair, he will always be beset by feelings of inferiority, anxiety, confusion.

To wit, Kelly Slater.

Eleven titles. Millions of shekels. Sweet girl.

Owns a piece of the world’s most perfect wave.

And, yet, the terror of losing aches his gullet.

It’s a few hours to Portugal, so let’s watch the behind-the-scenes machinations of the greatest surfer ever dealing with the internal torment of a career in its twilight.


Coming soon: Relatively funny time-travel wetsuit comedy, “Once Upon a Time In New Zealand!”

Spectacular costumes, adult themes, some mild drug use…

This Thursday at two pm, LA time, and, Friday, eight am, Bondi time, we gonna loose our new wetsuit film.

Last year it was A New Jersey Wetsuit Fairytale starring slab-hunter Tommy Ihnken and cut to covers of Springsteen songs. The conceit of this year’s film, starring Raglan shredder and comic Luke Cederman (aka @raglansurfreport) and his troupe of surfer-actors Sam Mathers, Elliot Paerata Reid, Tux Servene and Jordan Griffin, is time travel.

What if a surfer from the future time travelled back to Raglan in 1984 with 2019’s best wetsuits?

What would it mean thirty-five years on?

Would we be wearing wetsuits with wings? Purple wetsuits? Invisible wetsuits?

The film features suits from Billabong, O’Neill, Rip Curl, Feral, Quiksilver, Vissla and Xcel whose donations made this film possible.

Cover versions of eighties classics I See Red, Computer Games and Never Lightly by master-producer and performer Pauly B, who also makes all the funny noises for Ain’t That Swell.