The beautiful Coffin brother attacks a wave like popping candy jumping in the palm of your hand.

Watch: Conner, Bobby, Dane and Co beat hell out of Rincon in “Life is just a bowl of pits!”

By Derek Rielly

6 years ago

A swinging five minutes of Channel Islands' R and D with full team in Santa Babs…

Let me tell you this. If you had said I’d be able to sit through five minutes of Rincon without wandering off to polish my teeth or prepare a breakfast of French fries, coffee and steak, I would’ve spat on my finger and rubbed it all over your face.

I ain’t kidding.

Lazy, slow-ish point, no hiccups or wedges to make it interesting.

Who’s got the time? Snapper don’t do much for me. And compared to the sparkling Gold Coast, Rincon is like an old man asleep at the back of the titty bar, smelling of alcohol and urine.

However, and I know you saw this coming, Channel Islands have constructed a video short of their team, Dane Reynolds, Conner Coffin, Bobby Martinez and so on, in good waves at Rincon and have jazzed it up with a forty-year-old song from all-black Detroit punk band Death called Politicians in my Eyes as well as a little time-lapse, drone angles and retro-cute fast-zooms.

The reveal of each riders’ board dimensions makes my nostrils widen for some reason, too.

Mental note: Must get ex-team boards of Dane Reynolds and Dane Gudauskas.

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Eisbach local Tao Schirrmacher's 360 shuv-it. Frame grab courtesy Tao Schirrmacher

Watch: Dylan Graves and Tanner Gudauskas in “The Munich Beer Hall Putsch!”

By Derek Rielly

6 years ago

Come to historic German city and world's most localised river wave!

What a rich history the German city of Munich has. If we swing back to November 1923, we would find a very young Adolf Hitler, a baby-ish thirty-four, and thousands of his fellow national socialists raising hell, killing cops etc.

All the gang was there. Göring. Hess. And so on.

It all went to seed, of course. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sent to the can for five years where he would write the best-seller Mein Kampf, Chas Smith’s inspiration, ninety years later, for an issue of Stab.

Five years after Hitler’s release, the nat socialists embarked on an ambitious program to rule the world, ceding the Pacific, including Australia and the USA, to the Japanese Empire.

It ended with a bang etc.

In this episode of the Vans series Weird Waves, Dylan Graves (dirty talk, hair swishing back and forth over bosoms, head butts etc) and Tanner Gudauskas visit the Bavarian capital and are fed a golden pass to the world’s most famous stationary wave.

Did you know the joint is crowded? That localism is a thing? That Kelly Slater got told to go home by an arch local known as the House Meister? And so on?

And watch a man nail a 360 shuv-it, that ain’t something you see every day on a river wave.

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Julian Wilson and his coach Andy King.

Watch: A jazzy behind-the-scenes look at Julian Wilson’s title showdown in “Close to a Dream !

By Derek Rielly

6 years ago

How's it feel to to go splat at the final hurdle?

It takes a hell of a man, or gal, to survive the final lunge for a world title. A round one loss at boardriders and after convulsing with sadness I take my surfboard and go home to curl around my pillow.

This eleven-minute documentary, which was made by Julian’s best pal and filmer Jimmy Lees, is instructive in the simplicity of Julian’s world title campaign. Julian, who has just turned thirty, hangs out with wife, kid, changes nappies, goes for walks, surfs out the front at Pipe on days when others are too panicky to paddle out, and, eventually, makes the final of the Pipe Masters.

The title equation wasn’t difficult to understand.

If Gabriel made the final, didn’t matter what Julian did.

And Gabriel, who tormented his fellow competitors like a mosquito buzzing violently in your ear, did make the final, did win the title.

“Close to a dream,” said Julian.

Watch!

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My immediate impression of the pool is that it lacks a little, cough, cough, finesse.

From the mysterious orient: Come see China’s First Wavepool!

By Derek Rielly

6 years ago

Oh she's a peach!

There ain’t a lot the Chinese can’t do, those clever and beautiful bastards with the Oliver Cromwell hair helmets and ability to mimic anything that comes out of Europe or the US.

And, here, revealed for the very first time, is China’s first wavepool, which you’ll find in the ancient city of Anyang (population five million) in Henan province.

You might come for the emperor’s mausoleums, the Wenfeng Pagoda and the Tomb of Fu Hao, but you’ll definitely stay for the country’s interpretation of the modern, foil-driven surf tank.

Although the film reveals little of the pool’s finer details, would you say it’s closer to Wavegarden or KSWaveCo?

And on a side note: did you know that the Chinese have a word for their cheap imitations?

They call it the shanzhai.

My immediate impression of the pool is that it lacks a little, cough, cough, finesse.

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Michael Muller

Watch: Mason Ho and Yago Dora in “I sit on his face, jerk him off and I got me 25 dollars!”

By Derek Rielly

6 years ago

Lost team, Waco pool, pretty after-dark lights!

A little while ago, I took a call from, or maybe it was to, the San Clemente shaper Matt Biolos. He’d told me about his recent trip to Waco, pre-brain gobbling amoeba drama, and said that he’d employed the photographer Mike Muller to do something a little different at the pool.

Can’t remember how much each private session was, maybe $US2500, but Matt threw 5k or 7500 at his team’s sessions.

He told me he wasn’t sure what was going to happen to the footage. A little movie in a few months, maybe.

Here it is.

Muller, according to a recent interview in Surfer magazine (Hello Peter, Todd etc.), “had always wanted to apply his lighting techniques to be able to illuminate waves (and surfers) in the dark of night, but he needed a controlled environment to test out the equipment. So when shaper and Muller’s good friend Matt Biolos invited him to tag along for a …Lost team trip (comprised of the high–flying crew Mason Ho, Yago Dora and Michael Rodrigues) to the Waco wave pool, Muller jumped at the chance and packed his one-of-a-kind underwater strobe lights.”

It was also Mason Ho’s thirtieth birthday. Thirty, can you believe!

No one is little forever. Ain’t that sad.

Yago Dora and no-punch M-Rod were there, too.

A fine cassette to throw in the ol Walkman.

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Eat beach grit spam!