A four-minute slice of world number three Filipe Toledo's North Shore campaign…

It isn’t a secret that BeachGrit is making a longish-form film that documents Filipe Toledo’s quest, and it is a quest in the sense that it’s a long and arduous search for something, to unlock the secrets of heavy waves.

Here’s the trailer.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq0Qv0CgX1A/

Shortly before the Tahiti Pro, Filipe stayed and surfed with the teenager who raises hell at Teahupoo, Matahi Drollet, to learn some about the famous, and famously difficult to master, reef.

In Hawaii, Kelly Slater took up the reins and showed the twenty-three-year-old father of two where to sit and what to look for at Pipe.

It worked, least it worked in his heat against Kelly: Filipe threaded a Backdoor set that would’ve scratched a ten if he hadn’t been clobbered by the flap of the dog door.

Anyway, it is, as they say, a process. Early days.

But he’s coming. Oh yeah, he’s coming.

Watch. 

Brazilian jibber and tuber finds ramps and cabanas on his annual North Shore vacay…

Surfing, I think, is lucky to have the Brazilian Yago Dora in its stable. Yago, who is twenty-two years old and the current world number twenty-one, presents as a mix between Craig Anderson and Noa Deane wrapped up with a sort of Chippa Wilson-esque aptitude for x-rated frivolity above the lip.

In this four-minute short, which was filmed on the North Shore in late 2018, we see the glamorously raging Dora (whom you first thrilled to in the 2015 Volcom film Physic Migrations) proving there is no joy in playing it safe.

Watch!

Flame-haired King of Pipe leaves swell of the year to go tanker surfing in New York with the vlogger Surfer magazine hates!

Of all the Jamie O vlogs, this captures, I think, the essence of the weekly video: a mostly pointless snapshot of famous surfers squeezing often unripe oranges for whatever juice they can get.

Here, we see a cross-pollination of surf vlog stars Jamie O’Brien and Ben Gravy as Jamie and filmer cross the Pacific Ocean to meet Gravy in New Jersey and, later, to travel together to New York.

Gravy, you know as the vlogger Surfer magazine ghosted at their annual awards last month when they refused to include him among the nominations for best web series, which was eventually won by Rip Curl’s The Search.

“(Rejection) formed me into the person I am today. I am a self-made person. I started that way and I’ll probably end that way,” said Ben.

Jamie’s vlog, of course, is a guilty treat like taking out your surfboards and laying them tenderly on the bed or hard kisses that leave little flecks of blood on your lips.

Watch as Jamie goes to New Jersey, gets cold, goes to New York, follows squirrels and, as a finale, rides a one-foot wave next to a tanker.

A highlight of the episode is his response to subscribers’ questions.

Morgan King writes, “Jamie comes off as a self centred tool to be honest.”

Another asks how he handled being dropped-in on at Pipe by a bodyboarder.

Watch!