Feel the divine nature of surfing fill your bones…
This relatively long-form cut of the child prodigy Jackson Dorian, who enjoyed his thirteenth birthday in September, was shot, mostly, and edited by his daddy, Shane Dorian, a former world number four.
In this video, forty-seven-year-old Shane toggles between surf footage and scenics as the little family travels through Australia, Indonesia, the Maldives and Mexico with a fitting exhibition and climax of wave jumping at the pool in Waco, Texas.
Given the age of the film’s protagonist, expect little in the way of sadistic gore and lurid sex, but do expect to feel a sudden, desperate urge to grab your surfboard and dive headlong into the ocean.
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Big Daddy Ho, sixty-two, the California-born son of a Waikiki Beach Boy. Surfing since he was three, bringing the electricity into his boy Mason and his lil girl Coco.
Watch: Big Daddy Ho and chillun in “Hush up your blasphemin’, Lucifer, and let me loose!”
Sixty-two-year-old former pro Mike, and his kids, Mason and Coco, sweep away the debris in any lineup…
Yeah, I know, y’seen plenty of Mason and Coco and Daddy Ho zipping through traffic on the North Shore.
Six days ago, it was at Pipe, watch here, today it’s at that locals-only wedge with the roll-in takeoff just north of Sunset and that no man, especially no white man, dare say its name.
(In stage whisper, Velzyland…)
I would recommend viewing of this four-minute short for several reasons. One, the crossovers between Mason and Mike, and which are recorded from the land and from Mason’s flotilla of GoPro POV units, the Mick Jagger-like pomp in Coco’s flashy surfing (did you know Coco is working with Jagger in New York?), Mason’s trigger finger popping hither and yon and the miracle of a man in his harvest years, sixty-two, still exhibiting the daily conditioned skills that long ago almost swept him into contention for a world title.
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Mike Feb, an explosion of warmth and good will.
Watch: Mike February in “This surfboard ain’t got no wrong notes!”
Lines are as perfect as a rapt baby rocking gently on a swing…
Two months ago, the surf writer Mr James Brisick, sometimes of Malibu, sometimes NYC’s lower east side, wrote a story for TheNew Yorker that read, in part, “(Mike Feb’s) 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.”
I think, correct when Mike’s on a throw-back craft because what else is there to do except go straight and be sexy, but, as you can see below, on a regular board, in this case a CI Happy, his lines are as perfect as a rapt baby rocking gently on a swing and as hard to argue with as a Saint Bernard dog guarding his master’s bicycle.
Mike’s surfboard, if you care about such things, which I do, measures five feet and eleven inches long, nineteen and three-sixteenths inches wide and is two and three-eighths inches thick for a grand total of twenty-nine litres.
Daddy Mike and little girl Coco. “I was ‘fun dad,’” Mike says. “I’m like, ‘Surf is good, let’s go surfing. Okay, no school today.’ Yeah, I was bad. I was a bad, fun dad.”
Watch: Mason, Dez, Coco and Mike Ho in “You know I can’t hear you when I’m in the tube!”
Your favourite vagabonds, in the one spot, at the one time!
Looking out, open-mouthed, at very square tubes at Pipeline and Mason and Coco and Uncle Dez and Daddy Mike trading sets, well, it reminds me I’ll never be anything more than a vibration rather than a solid.
In this five-minute edit by (the fabulous) Rory Pringle, Lachlan Peanut Mckinnon, Chaddy Witz, Andrew Schoener and Justin Rutherford and scored to a Hendrix soundtrack from Mason’s mammy, Brian (yeah, yeah, it ain’t a traditional name for a woman), we see the fam treading a familiar pasture.
A little history of the Ho’s, if it’s necessary. Mike Ho, with his Chinese-Hawaiian-American heritage, was 30 years old and on his last tour circuit when his girl, Brian, a Caucasian American, became pregnant.
Mike’s dad was pure Chinese. His grandmother pure Hawaiian. Mike’s mom, Mason’s paternal grandma, was from Oregon. The brother of one of Mike’s good friends was named Mason. Mike dug it. He threw a little Hawaiian in there, Kaohelaulii, a middle name that’s been carried by the Hos since Mason’s paternal grandfather. It means: “New little bamboo shoot coming out from the old. It bends and it’s hard to break,” says Mike.
Mike had bought land up there at Backyards, Sunset, and a small house was constructed. The marriage broke up after the birth of Mason’s sister Coco, two years later. And soon, the jokester and former-pro surfer was in the serious biz of being a single parent to two kids.
“I was ‘fun dad,’” Mike says. “I’m like, ‘Surf is good, let’s go surfing. Okay, no school today.’ Yeah, I was bad. I was a bad, fun dad.”
Unless it was Pipe. “‘Go to school. Dad’s going to surf Pipe today.’”
Mike plays it down though.
It ain’t easy when the spigot of cash from pro surfing is off and you’re thirty-something-years-old and your marriage is done. But, says, Dino Andino, “No matter how hard it got, no matter what he was going through, or doing, he always had ’em to school on time, dressed and fed. He never faltered. Ever. Mike Ho is an awesome, awesome dad.”
And, look at ’em now, all meticulously walking the Pipe tightrope.
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Whatever you think of wave tanks, y'gotta admit, this is about as dreamy as a lineup gets. And it's Bristol.
Bristol wavepool: Watch Kanoa Igarashi and Travis Rice in “Robust enjoyment at a very expensive sanitorium!”
A new angle on the British Wavegarden tank. Better, worse, than you might imagine.
After eight months of cold labour in the English city of Bristol, one of the better cities in a country populated by people with fish smell on their breath, hideous raven hair and guinea pig faces, we have The Wave.
Recently, the Red Bull surf team, which includes Japan’s Kanoa Igarashi, had a day negotiating the artificial seaside and The Wave’s glistening trajectories.
A cameo from Travis Rice, the champion snowboarder, is welcome for it gives the everyman a feel for what he’ll be able to manage on the two-foot waves.
The backwash and onshore winds are perhaps not quite so appreciated.
Suggestion: If you’re booking a session at a pool, get the first wave. Always the best.
