Watch: Lochie Rombouts in “The Gun-Slinging Size Queen!”

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:

As soon as he was old enough he moved closer, but along with the increase in surf time came the trappings of being a young man fresh out of school, living the party life. Lachie struggled to balance the so-called good times on land with the actual good times in the water and eventually his mental health nosedived. Until, one day his home break lit up with the swell of a lifetime.

He’s one of the good ones. Watch.


Jamie O’Brien in “I just drove seven hours to get kicked out of Rick Kane’s Arizona Wave Pool!”

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.


Chris Ward in: “Nothing makes a man want you more than thinking you’re an unpopped virgin!”

A lil backside tuberiding clinic at Desert Point from tattered former top tenner…

Did you think that one day Chris Ward, that tattered San Clemente surfer better known for his flashes of temper than his preternatural tuberiding, would end up face-down in a ditch? He just fights and fights and fights, no cause too small, no sex too weak etc.

Ward, who turns forty in December, is the protagonist in this surprisingly satisfying five-minute short filmed at Desert Point by Ricky Serrano during the so-called swell-of-the-decade three weeks ago and just before a series of earthquakes that sent a hundred or so souls into Allah’s arms

There’s a middle-aged softness to Ward now. He has the stomach of a drinker or someone who eats cider-cured pork loin for every meal. He still enjoys cigarettes (who doesn’t, let’s be honest) and his tube wrangling skill is so refined it pays any surfer to examine and study.


Ben Gravy Vlog: “I’m the best daddy you’ll ever have!”

Original surf vlogger drops clip every single damn day. Here's Wednesday…

The New Jersey surfer Ben Gravy, who is thirty, has cut himself a semi-lucrative slice of the ol media pie.

A couple of years ago, the college grad (bach in film) figured if he could film and cut and deposit one surf clip on YouTube every day he’d get a little traction among the two hundred thousand or so surf fans around the world.

So far he’s got 43,000 subscribers on his channel and a total of nine million views over a thousand-ish clips.

“I’ve learned that the true recipe for success through this is honesty.” Ben told Surfer last year. “I’m 100 percent transparent online. I’ve cried in my vlogs, multiple times. I’ve shown sadness, joy, epicness…I’ve shown it all. Sometimes, yeah, it’s heavy. I get 99 percent positive comments, but when one person comes at me…it’s tough. They go for my throat.”

Consistency varies, as it does on such a prolific channel. Some will produce an unsettling gas; others stroke your stomach and whisper in your ear.

This eighteen-minute featurette shows Ben with his surfboard sponsor SuperBrand cruising the relatively secluded beaches around Leucadia, a couple of hours south of Los Angeles.

The waves are small but good, the water’s warm and green and the little children light up when they see the famous vlogger (who inspired Jamie O, Brett Barley and Kalani Robb to follow suit).

For me, it wasn’t a slam dunk, so to speak, but a courteous ass fondle.


Fifty-Eight Furious Seconds of Taj Burrow! It’s called “Acidic Ejaculit!”

Well-shorn clip of Taj Burrow's dive bombs and bursts of lightning…

He may be as leathery as a sow’s purse but put just-hit-forty Taj Burrow on a wave and he’ll make you come so hard your eyes will knock loose! Hoo-ee etc.

Two years ago, rated sixth in the world and a mathematical possibility for a world title, Taj Burrow retired after nineteen years on tour. Can you imagine sitting at the same desk, in the same office, for nineteen years? Sure, swinging your bag on the tour ain’t working in the office cubicle at an insurance company, but all the same travel routes, all the same faces, all the same jokes, the same parties, it gets old real fast. Twenty years of it is a haul.

Of course, we miss his surfing terribly. The moving and heaving. Dive bombs. Bursts of lightning followed by thunderclaps that made everyone jump.

Therefore, even a sub-one minute promo clip for his new Lost model, the Beach Buggy 2, is enough for a little relief and sufficient release.