Watch Zeke Lau in “Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut”

Muscle and moaning and crippled waves…

The Hawaiian rookie Zeke Lau is, unlike most tour debutantes, neither wispy nor weak.

At Bells this year,  Zeke was a “lion” who “monstered John” .

“It was thrilling and almost wincingly painful to watch, like a David Attenborough documentary where the elegant ruminant gets savaged by a lion then has its insides ripped out by a pack of hyaenas,” wrote Longtom. “The champ looked so helpless. All that insouciance at the Gold Coast was gone and in its place was a  lonely blond-haired kid being frowned upon by an older man on the stairs who shook his head sadly as the siren sounded.”

Zeke. Zeke. 

The European leg of the tour, the most strategic of all, when the contenders close on the summit, was a little below par for Zeke. A thirteenth in France; a ninth in Portugal.

He is rated eighteenth in the world post-Euro leg, two spots above the fancied Griffin Colapinto and four above Yago Dora.

This three-minute short emits a tremendous effort, rails and fins pushed, amid the ramparts and so on of ancient Europe.

Watch if you feel suffocated by airs.


Watch Creed McTaggart and Wade Goodall in “My libido depends on the size of my glands!”

Swinging tubes with location of dreamboat wave kindly revealed at end!

This is a two-and-a-bit edit that won’t mutilate your work day and is a joy ride you’ll thrill to.

It features the Australian surfers Creed McTaggart, Wade Goodall and Ellis Ericson (who didn’t make the headline for space reasons) vigorously dissecting a wave in northern NSW, where all three now live.

Did you know of Australia’s great surf migration? All roads lead to Byron Bay and surrounds. Wade recently sold his house in nearby Bangolow as he searches for even more deluxe digs and Creed followed the songlines from his home in Western Australia.

When he isn’t surfing or performing in his band Wash, Creed makes an excellent interview.

On coaches: Coaches fucking piss me off. I did four ISAs and I just fucking hated it. It’s such a weird vibe. So intense. It didn’t feel real. It felt fake and I hate coaches telling you where to put your arms when you surf. I’ve always want to surf how I wanted to surf.

On driving cars: It’s really scary for me. I feel like I don’t belong on the road. If there’s someone tailgating me, for example, I freak out and speed up. I’m semi-dyslexic and I always to forget to fucking turn on the lights and the windscreen wipers. All that pressure! Once you’re on the road, you’re part of a family, a whole family, but no one likes you and everyone gets road rage. It’s this one giant seething organism trying to get to this place and that place and  I’m stuck in the middle cutting people off, totally oblivious, just trying to learn. I just fuck with my own head, really. It’s probably not like that. I get really nervous and anxious.

On heaven: There’s a heaven I enjoy by myself where I’m lying in bed and it’s thunder storming outside and I’m all cosy and I’m reading a book or listening to music and there’ll be moments where I think, fuck this is heaven. And then there’s the other type of heaven with your friends, having beers in the afternoon. I get a lot of flashes of heaven. More heavens than hell, I try to make it.

Now hit play…


(Almost) Discovery in India: “It was the best lineup I’ve ever seen in my life!”

"No tourists go there because it's a bizarre place!"

Spain must be in more economic strife than I could’ve ever imagined given the wanderlust of its people.

In this episode, which must be the sixtieth or so short featuring Natxo Gonzalez, Kepa Acero and, or, Aritz Aranburu surfing an empty righthand sandbar, we are on an island near India. Dressed in the costume of the late twentieth-century surfer, jaunty cap, boxy tee, rough cotton shorts and plastic backpack, the trio hire a fishing to make the illegal crossing to the island.

It is the biggest swell in twenty five years to hit the joint, thanks to a cyclone, but…just as they’re about to leave the harbour…a cop shows up.

Bust. 

Cops tell ’em they can get a permit for the next day, after the swell.

What happens? Do they find the wave etc?

Watch, watch, watch.

It’s beautiful, even as disaster throbs.


Watch: Russell Bierke in “The Perilous Magic of Nymphets!”

Barely a man, Australian big-waver thrusts himself to the hilt at Cloudbreak!

In this four-minute film, which I regard as something worth nuzzling, we see Russell Bierke returning to Cloudbreak, Fiji, for the first time in four years, since he busted his foot in three places.

Russ has been surfing Hawaii’s outer-reefs since he was thirteen, won 2016’s Cape Fear contest at Ours and is one of only two Australians (the other is Jamie Mitchell) on the WSL Big Wave Tour.

Last April, Russ, who lives in Ulladulla in between his dragon-slaying adventures around the world, survived a two-wave hold-down at Port Campbell, in Warrnambool, Victoria.

The waves were fifteen-to-eighteen feet, clean as anything, the sun warm, and after a day tooling around with his pals Tom Carroll, Ross Clarke-Jones, Ryan Hipwood and Kelly Slater, Russ stole into a smaller insider.

Took off, got hit by his board, knocked unconscious.

“It’s super vague,” Russ told Warrnambool newspaper The Standard from his hospital bed. “I remember seeing a wave coming and then I was on the beach on all fours spewing (up water).”

In a world of tough kids, he impresses.


Inspiring: Watch Surf Brawl Survivor Jordan Montgomery’s opus “Sandbar”!

Virginia Beach surf filmmaker dusts himself off after"world's lamest surf assault!"…

Regular readers will be aware, by now, of the “world’s lamest surf assault.” To bring everyone up to speed, as they say, a light collision in one-foot waves resulted in one surfer being arrested and cuffed at his workplace and, briefly, jailed.

“The funny thing is, I fell off my board. I was avoiding a collision,” said the accused attacker, Alex Burdett. “If you look at the video, I’m on a five-two twin and he’s on a ten-foot longboard. He puts two hands on my shoulders and I jump over his board. I didn’t physically touch him. I’m goofy and he’s regular. I can’t jump backwards.”

Watch here.

His accuser, the filmmaker Jordan Montgomery, told BeachGrit, “I did what I had to do to protect myself…He laid a hand on me and in the United States you can do that. Surfing is a recreational sport and I’ve been surfing for fourteen years.”

Eight months after the “world’s lamest surf assault”, Alex and Jordan fronted court where a not-guilty verdict for assault and battery was reached. BeachGrit believes that both parties signed no-talkie agreements hence no more quotes from the two men.

Meanwhile, Jordan has gotten back to his business of filming other men surf.

In this attractive enough short called Sandbar, we see Michael Dunphy, Eric Geiselman and Evan Geiselman cabana hunting on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

So far, no charges have been laid.