Living miles from the beach polishes a man's character… 

I remember when this shot of Lochie Rombouts electrified my spinal cord. It was a year or two ago. Didn’t know who it was. Figured it was some kid in Hawaii, maybe Pipe. The shot was backlit; I didn’t see the wetsuit.

It wasn’t until this short here, the second in O’Neill’s three-part O’Riginal series, that I learned the name of the pilot. Lochie Rombouts. A surfer from out in the sticks who took it upon himself to make the hour-and-a-half commute as a kid to the ocean. To learn. To fall in love with surf.

Lochie made his name as a surfer with guts when he took his twelve-foot gun out to big North Avalon and grazed circles all around its nipples. Grabbing waves in fast little nips as if he were grabbing pinches of salt.

From the press release:

Pipeline heartthrob and pals get booted from tank that starred in classic eighties film North Shore…

In this episode of Jamie O’Brien’s weekly vlog, we follow the gang, which includes the skater and snowboarder Skummy Diener, to the wavepool made famous in the 1987 movie North Shore.

The arrival of Jamie O, a Pipeline Master and mentor of John John Florence, makes the pool owners and staff very happy, caressing Jamie’s face, kneeling before him and kissing his hand. Moaning like self-flaggelated monks and so on. The biggest thing to happen to the shitty pool in shitty Tempe for thirty one years.

Or so you would think.

Instead, pool attendants’ hands are held to heads as if they are having a migraine, the arrival of the Hawaiians seen as the gravest adversity.

Jamie and pals, which also includes Ben Gravy, are told they have twenty minutes in the pool.

They are warned they are taking too many waves.

When Jamie finger flips his little Catch Surf foamie into the pool, a whistle is blown and they are told to leave, that filming must stop etc.

Absurd but indicative, I think, of a world full of little men and women boozed on power.

Earlier in the film, the gang goes skydiving and Jamie gets terrible nerves and vomits.