Along with his wife Lauryn, baby Dez, and on various legs his brothers Ivan and Nathan, John John, who is a magnificent and well-fed young man with a wide and shiny rump, gets up in the morning, eats his cornbread, and begins dealing with the issues of the day.
These include boat repairs, navigating treacherous channels, teaching Dez to fish, but, most of all, huntin’ waves.
Not a lot of success, wave wise, gotta be said, but there has always been something so perfect, so precise, so dazzling in his boat life that it’s impossible to look away.
And, finally, we are rewarded.
“When the waves started to pick up we couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” John John writes.
CARRIBEAN DES(S)ERT
In the Caribbean, John John surfs a wave, alone, and purrs like a kettle on the boil.
It is a savage and arrogant dance, taunting the wave in his warlike way. A provocative call to all who call themselves worthy of a world title.
Absolutely essential.
Tom Curren, as graceful on a wave as a wren on a morning zephyr. Out of the water a little banged-up, yes.
Senior citizen Tom Curren shocks with jaw-dropping show at Spanish wave pool
By Derek Rielly
“His surfing is as timeless a piece of surf film art as there ever could be."
Time don’t slow for no man and, for some among us, the revelation that Thomas Roland Curren, the three-time world surfing champion, who was unbeatable for most of his carer and who popularised the modern Fish, is a stately sixty-one years old might come as, well, an existential shock.
And yet here we are, Occ about to hit sixty, Tom Carroll, 64, Kelly Slater, 63 almost 64, Pottz, 60, Nick Carroll, 71, even little John John Florence, a tween for so long, is a thirty-three-year-old daddy and so on.
Too old to surf?
But, lest you think the end is nigh, Tom Curren is here to remind you that although there does come a time when you must close the book or else look like a clownish old jack-in-the-box deserved of all the scorn shovelled upon him, her, by the junior surfers with their unfrozen hips and scar-tissue free shoulder girdles, it doesn’t mean you can’t postpone the inevitable.
She commissioned the same purple and black suit from Rip Curl and a replica 6’6″x18 1/4 x 2 5/16 thruster, complete with its sexy little bonzer channels, from Australian shaper Mark Rabbidge, who made Curren his J-Bay quiver.
“I recently rewatched Searching for Tom Curren and it was more profound this time around than ever before,” writes Stephanie Gilmore. “His surfing, brought to the screen by Sonny Miller, is as timeless a piece of surf film art as there ever could be.”
Dizzy Graves, gives hell to man-made wave at Surfers Paradise.
World record surfer Dylan Graves examines Surfers Paradise’s “bizarre” man-made wave
By Derek Rielly
Graves, who at forty-two, might have gained a bit of the dreaded matronly demeanor that comes with maturity, is, in my opinion, more beautiful than ever.
But, and this must be said, a few days back they did finally recognise Dylan Graves’ most turns on a wave, achieved some years ago at an Indonesian tidal bore.
The adventures ofPuerto Rican Dylan Graves in his pursuit of the strangest waves on earth have been assiduously documented on BeachGrit, a website that may be counted as Graves’ biggest fan, first in his ongoing series Weird Waves and, now, as he traverses the world solo.
In this episode, Graves travels to Queensland’s Gold Coast, specifically Surfer’s Paradise, where sand-replenishment works has created an island-like bank in front of the towering, Miami-like skyscrapers that cast their ominous shadows over the beach every afternoon.
Graves, who at forty-two, might have gained a bit of the dreaded matronly demeanor that comes with maturity, is, in my opinion, more beautiful than ever.
As the most coveted Puerto Rican export since Daddy Yankee, Dylan Graves gets better with age and shows no signs of slowing down.
Trans surfer Westerly Windina neé Peter Drouyn, often mistaken for Harry Bryant. The Life and Death of Westerly Windina
New documentary follows surfer Harry Bryant’s transition to “woman in her fifties”
By Derek Rielly
"A lot of the American folks are shocked at the Australian way of life."
If you didn’t know, Harry Bryant is an almost thirty-year-old male Australian surfer with a blunt-cut hairdo who is often mistaken for a woman in her fifties despite an albino moustache that twinkles like glitter on a burlesque dancer’s corset.
Harry Bryant first appeared on the radar of BeachGritalmost one decade ago when he good-naturedly choked an overzealous security guard at Stab’s inaugural aerial event at Waco in Texas.
“All I remember was seeing Chip getting head-locked by that security guard,” Harry Bryant told BeachGrit. “He (Chippa) was sitting down talking to someone, there was some debacle, and then Chippa was in a headlock. My instant reaction was to put him in one and then, before I knew it, I was in one.
“It was a trilogy of headlocks. No one was hot-headed or wanted to fight. It was all in good spirits. It was hilarious. I think a lot of the American folks were shocked at the Australian way of life. We were all having so much fun, everyone was one the beers all day, and the Americans were a bit eye-opened by that.
“Me and Jay and all those boys were having a slap contest, slapping each other in the face, stuff that you do when you’re an Australian. You’re not fighting your mates. It was blown out of proportion. People thought I was going to jail. I had a smile on my face the whole time.”
New Documentary Follows Surfer Harry Bryant's Transition To "Woman In Her Fifties" 7
Harry Bryant also said that America can be a troublesome place for an Australian.
“You can get into a lot more trouble for little things. Even just walking down the street in the evenings and needing to do a piss, you have to go to a public toilet. But there’s no public toilets ’cause all the bums sleep in them. Even drinking a beer in the passenger seat in a car you can get in trouble for.
“In Australia it’s a way of life. People coming home from work will stop at the bottle-o and buy a long neck for the drive home. It’s so natural in Australia. Of course, you have to respect the rules in other countries but when you’re not aware of the rules, you can run into a lot of trouble.”
HARRY BRYANT’S NEW FILM IS “FEISTY”
Harry Byrant’s new film, Roasted, which isn’t a documentary about him transitioning into womanhood, if you want that and one with a real kick at the end you must watch Brisick’s The Life and Death of Westerly Windina, shows little Harry flying like a hummingbird, deftly and delicately.
New Documentary Follows Surfer Harry Bryant's Transition To "Woman In Her Fifties" 8
There is recklessness, too.
Harry Bryant’s film Roasted appeals to me because, honestly, when was the last time I surfed waves this good or with such sudden, almost masculine, movements?
Watch for his wave from Natural Selection, this righthander made lightly famous by Kelly Slater back in 2012.
Harry Bryant says it’s “one of the best waves in the world on its day. I’d love to see it in all-time conditions. It’s definitely prone to swell but when you’re prone to swell you’re prone to all the elements. I saw the Florence lads went there a couple months prior and it looked similar: super windy, too big, real ledgy, deep water, super hard to surf. It’s really hard to navigate, to know what to ride.
“I haven’t been to many waves like that. You can’t compare it. Teahupoo is the closest thing. It’s so ledgy. It comes out of deep water and this is a similar takeoff to Chopes but you’re locking into a kilometre of a long, long stretch of reef. On a perfect say, offshore winds, good swell direction, you could easily get the longest tube of your life.”
Ricky Baker, king of Skuxx Living, and Dylan Graves, wilder of waves.
Dylan Graves chooses Skuxx Life in wild, cold-water surf trip through Dunedin, New Zealand
By Derek Rielly
“Like a sheep trapped in a maze designed by wolves.”
I believe in purity and goodness and there’s something about Dylan Graves’ total beauty, the restless and lonely independence of manner, the proud serenity in the way he moves, that make a man fall in love over and over and over again.
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.
The adventures of Puerto Rican Dylan Graves in his pursuit of the strangest waves on earth have been assiduously documented on BeachGrit, a website that may be counted as Graves’ biggest fan, first in his ongoing series Weird Waves and, now, as he traverses the world solo.
In his latest instalment, Dylan Graves travels to the New Zealand city of Dunedin, a wild, windswept, cold-as-hell Scottish-Maori metropolis that stretches from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Otago hinterland.
CoRE sUrF sCeNe in NEW ZEALAND / AOTEAROA (South Island)
Dylan Graves immerses himself within the local surfing community, surfs as many different waves as he can during his stay and lionises the local surfers with the best clips of their lives.
“Definitely as core as it gets, here,” says Dylan Graves. “All the locals willing to do the mahi as many times as it takes to get the treats. And you can’t help but be all in on that vibe when you’re here. Yes, it might be cold. You might have to drive far, sea lions may confront you, penguins may be elusive, but you have screensaver views everywhere, and a good crew of people, all pushing each other, trying to be the best version of themselves, in or out of the water. Rain, shine or sea lions, this crew is on it. Gloves optional.”
