Watch: Noa Deane, Ozzie Wright and Ryan Burch in “Who’s the panty-washing pedophile freak now?”

A dirty New Zealand road trip! Get gut-punched!

The anti-establishment surf brand Volcom has had a long association with New Zealand courtesy of its Australasian arm being run, and run beautifully, by John Clapham, now a substantial landholder at Raglan.

In this sub-five minute short, Volcom team surfers Noa Deane, Ozzie Wright, the San Diego shaper-experimentalist Ryan Burch and perennial WCT wannabe Mitch Coleborn do the camper van thing and rip hell out of NZ’s famous lefthanders.

In one pivotal scene, Coleborn drops to his knees like a self-flagellating monk and rides a boogieboard drop-knee, an ancient and long forgotten art.

By all probability, you’ll appreciate this diversion.

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Watch: Code Red Swell Hits Lake Superior!

"It's a phenomenon of nature!"

Come, come chase a Code Red swell with Puerto Rico’s Dylan Graves to… Minnesota! A fabulous state which is home to the largest diaspora of Somalis east of Africa and backs onto the Greatest Lake of ’em all, Lake Superior.

(Ain’t no fresh-water lake in the world as big as Lake Superior.)

You remember Dylan, yeah? He’s mid-thirties now but he used to be on the Quiksilver roster, the clean-looking Young Gun playing cute foil to the hoary champ Kelly Slater.  Tween Young Gun and now (Old Bum?), Dylan took on the WQS (ain’t much success) before settling into that ever-warm freesurfing zone.

(Once when I interviewed Dylan, he said he liked to swish his long hair around women’s breasts, sometimes head-butts his friends when he’s boozed, and likes it “when girls aren’t afraid to let some dirty shit come out. I just like it when they say fuck.”)

Editor’s update: Dylan just texted to ask me if I had proof of the interview and to remind me that “a little more work might be required than a 10-year-old interview. Thanks for an unnecessary chat with the mrs. Shitty journalism for the sake of making a name for urself. Who wins?”

He’s right, of course, although the ol never-said-it argument rarely works and only serves to shrink the proprietor in front of his audience.

Anyway,

In this thirteen-minute “short feature”, Dylan exits the tropics to fly to the state of Minnesota to surfs a network of waves one local surfer points out is a “rare phenomenon” of rocky points, reefs and beachbreaks.

Dylan says the cold water feels like being hit by a neuralyzer, the device used in the Will Smith vehicle, Men in Black.

“Mind eraser,” he says.

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Re-Watch: A new cut of Chippa Wilson tearing hell on 20 softboards!

Twenty soft boards, twenty tricks. This time around, we've identified the boards as they appear in the film… 

One month, or thereabouts, ago, BeachGrit joined with Chris “Chippa” Wilson for a very summer challenge: nail twenty tricks on twenty different softboards over the course of one morning.

Did you watch when it came out the first time?

On surfboards one would hardly consider able to fly, Chippa nailed shuv-its, 540s frontside and backside and a 1440, proving anything is possible on these friendly beasts.

What was missing, in the first version, was any sort of ID on the boards as they appeared. You’d see a backside 540 and you wouldn’t know if Chip was on a Drag, a Softlite or an MF. In this version, the name of each board appears on the screen.

It adds a great deal, I think, to the viewer’s satisfaction.

Boards used: Catch Surf 7’6” Odysea, Catch Surf 5’6” Odysea, Drag Dart 5’6”, El Nino 7’0” Cruiser, GSI 7’6” Beach Cruiser, GSI 5’6” Flounder Pounder, MF 6’0” Beastie, MF 5’2” Little Marley, Mullet 5’2” Fish Finger, Softlite 5’6” Mad Lab Beaker, Drag Drumstick, Mullet Spade, Softech 4’8” Kyuss King, Softech 5’2″ Mason Ho twinDrag 7’6” Coffin, MF 5’6” Eugenie, GSI Seaglass Pro

Watch! 

 

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Watch Filipe Toledo in “I went to Hawaii and all I got was a lousy almost-ten at Pipe!”

A four-minute slice of world number three Filipe Toledo's North Shore campaign…

It isn’t a secret that BeachGrit is making a longish-form film that documents Filipe Toledo’s quest, and it is a quest in the sense that it’s a long and arduous search for something, to unlock the secrets of heavy waves.

Here’s the trailer.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq0Qv0CgX1A/

Shortly before the Tahiti Pro, Filipe stayed and surfed with the teenager who raises hell at Teahupoo, Matahi Drollet, to learn some about the famous, and famously difficult to master, reef.

In Hawaii, Kelly Slater took up the reins and showed the twenty-three-year-old father of two where to sit and what to look for at Pipe.

It worked, least it worked in his heat against Kelly: Filipe threaded a Backdoor set that would’ve scratched a ten if he hadn’t been clobbered by the flap of the dog door.

Anyway, it is, as they say, a process. Early days.

But he’s coming. Oh yeah, he’s coming.

Watch. 

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(Re) Watch: Rob Machado’s Turn as Julius Erving in Taylor Steele’s “Focus”!

Feel barely legal Rob's hot breath of your stomach, almost!

Yesterday, the surf filmmaker who defined the nineties, Taylor Steele, announced he’d be gradually uploading his entire catalogue onto his YouTube channel, The Momentum Files. 

So far, there’s an intro to the channel, Kelly Slater in Momentum II and, I think my all-time favourite Taylor Steele part, Rob Machado in Focus, released a quarter of a century ago.

Immediate thought: put ’em in the right waves and long, narrow and curved surfboards…work. 

Second thought: Is Rob in black face/body?

Simpler times!

Watch! 

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