Watch: Red Bull Airborne Highlights Pack!

Two minutes of puffy buff-and-snuff!

Did you watch Red Bull Airborne live from France two days ago? It was, and is, the idea of former WCT surfer and two-time “world air champ” Josh Kerr who says it’ll be a WSL series in 2019.

I liked it.

There was something soft and moist and welcoming to Red Bull Airborne, like a woman, to quote Nabokov, with noble nipples and massive thighs.

These couple of minutes show a tremendous energy and spirit and will leave you feeling like you’ve just come home from summer camp – brown and warm and slightly drugged.


Watch: Leo Fioravanti in “Waiter! There’s a kook in my soup!”

Come to the adult learner capital of the world! Hossegor!

In my more lucid dreams, I see myself living in the French town of Hossegor, there in the Bay of Biscay’s starboard quarter. I have a house at the base of the sand dunes at Les Culs Nuls and three refined surfboards to suit the varying beachbreak conditions.

Sometimes the waves are very small, sometimes too big, but like the fairytale with the kid and the animals, mostly the waves are just right.

But then I climb the dunes and the tableau is ruined by the rude wind of thousands of adult learners from all over Europe. You’ve never seen such a thing!

As the Australian shaper Maurice Cole, who put Hossegor on the map surf-wise, told me last year, “There are more people in the water than you’ve seen in your life. Here, there are 1,615 people down at Siegnosse taking surf lessons. It’s in the newspaper. It’s incredible. Being really small, every hundred meters, there’s a fucking surf school. I went out the other day, offshore, nearly shoulder high on the sets, and there were 60 people out, and no one could surf. The only thing keeping me laughing was riding a longboard and playing the slalom course, much to the distress of the other bastards. And, pretending that I couldn’t surf. I’d do an “el spazmo” and people were throwing their boards away in horror.”

Of course, if you’re Leo Fioravanti, the twenty-year-old former WCT surfer who relocated to Hossegor from Italy, and whose step-daddy is Kelly Slater’s keeper, Stephen “Belly” Bell, you have the necessary skills to navigate this slalom course.

In this pleasingly short edit, we see Leo’s hurried smears, his reconstruction of lips and his transfer of weapon from box to pocket.

There’s an innocence and a frankness to Leo’s surfing that, I predict, will enable him to poke and cut his way back onto the WCT.


Watch: Newport Beach and Hurricane Rosa in “Confessions of a White Male!”

Swinging afro-beats hit all-white Newport Beach…

Earlier this week, Newport Beach, California, threw its jazz hands in the air at the beckoning of Hurricane Rosa, the seventh major hurricane of the 2018 season. Oh it was a big one alright, flash flooding and deaths in Mexico and the evacuation of a little town in Arizona after its damn threatened to burst.

In this short film from Jack Coleman, Benjamin Ginsberg and Alex Kilauno we see notable surfers, including the competitive grappler Joel Tudor, whose domain is usually the reefs around San Diego, stepping into Newport’s breathing tubes.

A piece of Afro-funk called Eda, by the Nigerian Peter King, completes the swinging tableau.

Do watch.


Watch Jamie O’Brien in “My breasts can always tell when it’s going to rain.”

Want an incentive to get off the couch? Out of your cube? Come live the JOB way!

Did you know that Jamie O’Brien, the flame-haired star of the world’s heaviest wave (Pipeline, if you had to ask), used to have the nickname “The Little Fat Sausage”?

And that his pants used to wear out in the middle because his little pink legs would rub together?

“I wasn’t obese, just chunky,” Jamie once told me.

Orange skin. Red hair. It isn’t a recipe for popularity but as King of the Pipe Jamie says, “I have been accused of being a bit of a spitfire, so in that way, I absolutely live up to the stereotype. The red hair suits my personality.”

In this episode of Jamie’s fortnightly-ish vlog, you might get struck with a little of that ol deja vu. Watch Jamie and pals get smashed at Sandy Beach, acid drops in Waikiki and so on Yeah you seen it, but unless your heart is stone you’ll get swept up in his wet animal scent.

“People respond to the underlying message which is, let’s do stupid stuff! Let’s surf and have fun!” says Jamie. “Everyone embraces it. I have five-year-old kids coming up to me. I have people older than me coming up to me to talk about Who Is Job. I do what I do and I surf and my friends may not be the best surfers abut we have the best time. I just love it. Every day I wake up and think, this is so fucking rad, man. I just think of the stupidest things to do and get shacked.”

I think, watch. 


Griffin and “Bill” Crosby Colapinto star in “Hey Griff! Want me to run your board up?”

Seven-and-a-half minutes in is the single greatest act of kindness ever seen in pro surfing!

In this fifteen-minute cut from the Colapinto brothers, we see rookie Griff as he unnerves his much older competitors at Jeffreys Bay with earth-rattling power and a style that emphasises his expressive potential.

Watch Griffin in his red wetsuit as contest footage is married to a swinging jazz track. He actually seems to be having…fun.

I think my favourite moment in the film happens when Griffin comes running out of the water mid-heat to go back up the point and the hardboiled photographer Jimmy Wilson begs to carry his board for him.

Griffin looks momentarily confused, these pro crafts weight only a few pounds afterall and he’ll have to stop and hand the board over losing a couple of seconds anyway, but being terribly polite he consents.

“Uh…sure.”

It’s a mesmerising moment.

Of course, not all pro surfers are so kind.