“His hand jive, soul arches, and toreador-like flourishes play to the camera in a way that breaks the spell…"

(Editor’s note: Five years ago, The New Yorker ran a very good, and uncharacteristically raw, story by Jamie Brisick called, “Surfing in the Age of the Omnipresent Camera”, which described Mikey February’s surfing thus, “His hand jive, soul arches, and toreador-like flourishes play to the camera in a way that breaks the spell of the itinerant surfer in far-flung solitude. His style is as self-conscious as the duck-face selfie.”)

The most talked-about surfer not on the world tour, Mikey February, has delivered his latest riposte to that ol New Yorker story by BeachGrit’s favourite son Jamie Brisick that his surfing is the visual manifestation of an outsized ego etc.

When you see Mikey February you’ll understand that he’s a beautiful man in every sense. He has a beautiful heart, beautiful courage, a beautiful intelligence. For me, everything about him is beautiful, his smile, his expression, his face. And you should see him when he wears his hair short! He looks like a boy! But he’s no boy, he’s as real man etc.

In this video, Mike February, along with guy pals Dylan Graves (video coming soon!) and Aritz Aranburu, do the strike mission thing, chasing fairytales as it is, to snatch a few brief moments with that well-known, among secret wave aficionados, sandbottom righthander. More cock than rock, as it were.

The movements are scored to the Prince piano track from 1983 called 17 Days (piano and microphone), an old demo recorded at his Kiowa Trail home studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota, and discovered after the fruity lil pill-popping maetro died. The song explores heartbreak and longing, with lyrics about a lover gone for “17 days and 17 long nights.”

Beautiful and sad and wonderful.

Essential.

"Chaotic, beautiful, and downright ridiculous…"

For over one decade BeachGrit readers have enjoyed the sunny and generous persona of Puerto Rican Dylan Graves travelling hither and thither in search of weird, wonderful and perfect waves.

Click here, here, here, here and here.

And here.

Here.

Here, too.

And, here, where it all began.

Although Dylan Graves is of middle age, he’s no fat, shiny, liver-coloured man, but an example of who we can be if we don’t fall into the trap of remaining in our velvet cages of couch, device, home.

This video is a hybrid of his usual travelogue and includes a lightly comic tone of the absurdity, as he calls it, of the search for perfect surf.

“In this surf documentary-meets-comedy breakdown, I (Dylan Graves) attempt to unpack the chaotic, beautiful, and downright ridiculous process of chasing perfect surf, from over-analyzing weather charts to breaking boards on 7km sand points. This is The Absurdity of Scoring Good Waves, a surf journey told in four parts: forecasting, sand, endurance, and finally… the magic.”

The wave sought and found is one of Africa’s most elusive prizes and for all its perfection, it ain’t easy. Watch as some of the world’s most accomplished tube riders, with pinwheeling legs and flailing arms, fail takeoffs.

The reward, of course, is like a warm wind straight to the marrow of the bones.