Trans-surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson en route to Melbourne wave tank!

Watch: Trans-surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson rides Melbourne wave pool before joining John John Florence in NZ

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

"As I walk my journey through the turmoil of people that want to spread misinformation, I’ve found myself wondering why do people hate me for existing!"

It’s been several months since BeachGrit last reported on the inspirational trans surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson neé former men’s longboard champion Andrew Egan. 

You’ll remember, last year, when Sasha Jane Lowerson, who turns forty-seven in August, was banned from surfing in the women’s div of a longboard contest after the founder of American Longboarder Todd Messick got wind she’d entered the HB Longboarding Pro.

Messick, a former pro surfer hisself, didn’t fuck around.

“Right now, we’re going to support biological males and biological females in their divisions respectively,” he said in a video posted online, which quickly earned four thousand likes.

“If you were born a female, you enter in the women’s. If you’re born a male, you enter in the men’s.”

He added, nothing personal to T-Girls but,

“I want to offer an equal playing field for all athletes and that’s the stand we’re taking so I hope that everybody respects that and allows us to just do our thing. This whole thing is about traditional longboard surfing and supporting that so that’s what we’re here to do.”

Messick’s dream of bio-gals only in the women’s div was overturned by the California Coastal Commission, with the LA Times’ Hanna Fry writing:

“Sasha Jane Lowerson just wanted to surf.”

In response, and fresh from facial feminisation surgery in Cordoba, Argentina, Sasha posted a lengthy screed on Instagram calling Messick’s decision “shameful and shady”.

As I walk my journey through the turmoil and the implications of people that want to spread misinformation, I’ve found myself wondering why? Just why do people hate me for existing!

Anyway, water under the ol bridge, as the saying goes, and today, we can celebrate Sasha Jane Lowerson giving hell to the Melbourne wave tank on a shortboard before bolting across the Tasman to join John John Florence and Kelly Slater in New Zealand. 

Sasha goes to a single-fin contest in Christchurch while tour truant John John Florence and the forcibly retired Kelly Slater frolic up north. 

Essential. 

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Chinese-Hawaiian surfing superstar Mason Ho, still loose enough to titillate younger audiences.

Stephanie Gilmore joins Hawaii’s “queen of crazy” Mason Ho at wild North Shore bacchanal

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

The film’s biggest surprise is none other than Harry Bryant, who was once a pro surfer too, until he saw the writing on the wall.

The world’s greatest-ever female surfer Stephanie Gilmore and the Chinese-Hawaiian surf superstar Mason Ho, along with little sis Coco, have been filmed together in an all-star “sandbar party” at Rocky Point on Oahu’s North Shore.

Also involved in the session are Dion Agius, a man who makes enough hive in his honey to support a nomadic lifestyle, Harry Bryant, an Australian with a bushy hairdo and albino moustache that twinkle like glitter on a burlesque dancer’s corset and Mason Ho’s boy buddy Baby Bear.

Wafting around the edges of Kai Neville movies since his initial impact in the early 2000s, Dion is a heartbreaking study of the dreams and disappointments of a disillusioned, washed-up former surfing sex symbol. Whatever he had when he was fresh and beautiful is gone.

The film’s biggest surprise is none other than Harry Bryant, who was once a pro surfer too, until he saw the writing on the wall.

Mason, Stephanie shine, naturally, and leave the viewer panting for more.

Essential viewing.

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Come swing with, from left, Mason Ho, Kelly Slater and the Baby Bear.

Kelly Slater joins BIPOC surfing icon Mason Ho and pals in, “Poly wanna party!”

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Watch and be transfixed!

In this nine-minute short from the studio of Riordan Pringle, the viewer is gifted Kelly Slater and Mason Ho, as well as Mason’s daddy Mike and guy-pal the Baby Bear, manipulating waves, one after the other, at a chip-shot reef east of Sunset Beach.

Kelly Slater, who recently turned fifty-nine, and Mason, thirty-six, both sport healthy bronze glows on that their famous faces making you feel as if you’re looking at the world through spun sugar. Both surf with a dazzling jitterbug.

Slater can sometimes appears as empty as the emptiest bottle, and as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there’s no current to plug into, but here he is alive, kicking waves in the shins. Mason, as well as Mike and the Baby Bear, surf with a highbrow compositional style reflective of their island upbringings.

I watched this video and was transfixed.

Essential.

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"Watch as I take you along the ride with my POV visions in some of the shallowest reef and clearest water!"

“World’s sexiest surfer” Koa Smith charges like a bull at perfect out-of-season Cloudbreak!

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

"A positive trauma!"

The runner-up to Zeke Lau’s Ultimate Surfer, Koa Smith, has thrilled surf fans with a long-form edit of chasing down and barebacking the hell out of an out-of-season swell at Fiji’s Cloudbreak. 

The best season for surfing Cloudbreak, of course, is the southern hemi winter, which runs from May to October with June to August being the peak. Cloudbreak thrives on winter southwest swells which are plentiful that time of the year.

Koa Smith, who was a star of MTV Cribs when he was just a fourteen-year-old twink, was born in Kauai twenty-nine years ago and quickly became a student of elder statesmen Bruce and Andy Irons. 

His tuberiding bonafides are without question. He charges like a bull. Two years ago, he came heartbreakingly close to completing a one-minute tuberide at Skeleton Bay.

The prized fashion model was last on these pages when he described witnessing, first hand, own eyes, the miracle of the lame and crippled being gifted back the use of their legs.

“A positive Trauma!” writes Koa Smith. “Swell bender hits Cloudbreak! When Cloudbreak turns on it’s one of the dreams of a surfer and we scored multiple days and many conditions of this mythical beast! From oil glass to pumping off shore winds! Watch as I take you along the ride with my POV visions in some of the shallowest reef and clearest water! As the swell arrived we started getting caught in the wave impact zone, breaking boards and having to walk barefoot over the razor sharp reef! This trip will be burnt into my memory forever!”

Essential.

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Bruce Irons with his Rising Sun Pipe gun.

Surfing enigma Bruce Irons cameos at Pipeline 20 years after being named “best surfer in the world!”

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

“Bruce is back! Bruce is back at Pipe and Backdoor!”

One week ago, the too-good-to-be-true rumour that Bruce Irons was the mystery surfer making a return to surfing at the highest level turned out to be, yeah, way too be good to be true.

Irons, who is forty-five, “burst onto the scene in the late 1990s with thrilling performances at Pipe, taking it to the greatest athlete to ever live twice (Pipeline and France), and, once, Freddy Patacchia for the 2008 Rip Curl Search event in Uluwatu. He also took the 2004 Eddie with one of the better rides in the Super Bowl of Surfing’s proud history.”

Last year, Bruce Irons delivered a profoundly sad confessional from a psychedelic assisted rehab joint in Cancun, Mexico. 

My name is Bruce Irons. I’m a 44 year old professional surfer. My brother was world champion He’s the baddest motherfucker that ever lived and I’m doing this for him and all my other fallen brothers and fucking friends who died who’ve had a fair shares of ups and downs and losses and mental health problems, you know depression and drugs came to this place in Mexico.

The mystery surfer, as was subsequently revealed by the World Surf League, was not Bruce Irons, Matt Wilkinson or Kelly Slater but Julian Wilson, who pivoted off the tour five years ago and into hard-edged multi-functional fashion with his brand Rivvia Projects.

But while surf fans were left disappointed with the reveal, Bruce has made a rare cameo in a YouTube short by Koa Rothman, joining the Jewish-Hawaiian champ in a late-afternoon session at pumping Pipeline. 

The camera lingers on Bruce preparing his surfboard, which features the imperial Japanese flag, the same World War II graphic his brother Andy famous on his best-selling Billabong board short.

(The Japanese Imperial Flag, aka the Rising Sun Flag, which was proudly flown by the Japanese military during its failed attempt to own the Pacific, sits alongside other controversial flags as the Soviet Hammer and Sickle, the Nazi Swastika and, ooh-wee-ooo, the US’s own Confederate Flag. Jackie Robinson got into a little strife at the Olympics over it.) 

Bruce is still movie star handsome and with that classic elevated pompadour reminiscent of a nineteen-fifties gang leader he fizzes with a deep-seated cool. 

There is a lot of board preparation by Bruce Irons. 

He meticulously waxes his surfboard, including the tailpad, running his hands across the surface to ensure maximum grip, although after his affixes his leash to the tail-string, Koa discreetly examines the job to ensure Bruce completed the task correctly. 

The session is short, one wave apiece, but to see Bruce, in the water, on a wave, however briefly, is worth the time spent glaring at a screen.

Essential.

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Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto
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