Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 i Surfer

We first discussed the idea of centering an issue on John Florence in a staff meeting a few months back. On one hand, it made perfect sense: Florence is without a doubt the best surfer in the world today, and he’s on the cusp of releasing what could be the greatest surf movie ever made. On the other hand, the idea made me a little nervous. Florence is a notorious surf addict, and we’d be putting all our editorial egs in a very unreliable basket. With pro surfers, you can set a time and place for a meeting, but if the wind switches offshore or the swell comes up a foot or two, then they vanish in a poof of froth, only to reappear when the ocean goes flat. A…

I always saw my kids as little buddies. I wasn’t really grown up yet when I had them. I was still kind of a kid myself. Being able to go to the beach and be outside all the time when they were little definitely made it easier to raise them. It helps to have a guardian angel. Things seemed to fall into place for me when I arrived on the North Shore. It was still a bit of the Wild West there when I showed up and yet I never felt threatened or alone. I met a lot of uncles who looked out for me. Real and good people. Later they would become positive influences on my children. There are so many positive people on the North Shore. I’ve always…

What can I say? He’s Kelly Slater. He’s the best surfer that’s ever lived. Kelly surfs every wave so well, but that’s especially true when it comes to Pipe. He has such a deep relationship with that wave and you can see that every time he surfs there. Any time he’s competing at Pipe, he’s probably the most exciting guy to watch. It’s crazy what he’s pulled off in heats and how many Pipe Masters he’s won. He’s also the only person on this list that isn’t from Hawaii, but he’s been coming here for so many years and has spent so much time in the lineup that he knows the reef as well as anyone. Plus, when you’re Kelly Slater, you can pretty much adapt to any wave like…

FS When John Florence wanted to get off the beaten path in search of obscure waves for his movie, A View from a Blue Moon, he turned to longtime friend and South African charger Frank Solomon for guidance. That’s because Solomon has a knack for finding waves along the fringes, and he’s gone to great lengths to be in the right place at the right time. But living your life at the whims of swells isn’t always easy, as Solomon can attest. He’s been stranded and penniless in foreign countries, slept in a van for months on end, and worked whatever odd job he could to stay in the water. But it was all worth it, according to Solomon, knowing that perfect waves were always around the corner. TP How did…

TOM BLAKE WAS MOODY and asocial, frequently broke, unlucky in love, and, as far as I can tell, kept the darker parts of his psyche unknown not just to others, but also to himself. The original surf photographer, in other words. He was well connected, another fine and essential thing in a surf photog, having bought his first camera (a Graflex Speed Graphic 4×5) from friend and mentor Duke Kahanamoku in 1929. He was ambitious, mailing off his very first batch of photos not to the local beachfront gazette, but to publishing heavyweight champ National Geographic. Above all—and it was always this way with Blake—he was innovative. In order to put his viewer right there in the Waikiki surf zone, Blake crafted a spar-varnished pinewood box, roughly 2 feet by…

PRECISELY 39 SECONDS into the trailer for John Florence’s new film, View from a Blue Moon, Florence stands oh-so-stylishly in the mouth of a yawning turquoise barrel. This envy-inducing scene was filmed from the channel at the Box on a stateof-the-art RED camera. The man who sat behind the lens, bobbing in the cold, shark-infested waters of Western Australia, was Erik Knutson. Knutson, who grew up surfing and competing with Florence on the North Shore, considers himself lucky to capture moments like these. But if good fortune has had anything to do with his success as a filmmaker, his studious mind and consummate desire to learn have been equal drivers. Roughly three years ago, before he was crisscrossing the globe with camera in tow, Knutson was attending the University of…

Any time you got to see Andy surf Pipe, you saw something amazing. The one thing that always stands out in my head is when he was surfing in the 2006 Pipe Masters final and came back in the last few minutes to combo Kelly for the win. That was one of the craziest moments I can remember from any contest out there. I was a bit younger when Andy was in his prime, so when we surfed together, I wasn’t out there going for the same bombs that he and some of the other main guys were going for, but it was definitely inspiring to watch. I think every kid in Hawaii idolized Andy, and they still do to this day. He’s the last surfer from Hawaii to win…

If you think about it in the proper headspace (let’s say three beers in), the relationship that mainland surfing has had with Oahu’s North Shore for the past seven decades or so looks an awful lot like a youthful, hot-blooded love affair—one that burns brightly at first, grows cool after time and familiarity, and then, with a quiet flicker and a wisp of smoke, extinguishes. Except, after all these years, we’ve kept our flame alive. Here, I’ll lay it out for you. When we first really fell head over heels for the place back in the ’50s (seems like just yesterday!), it was like nowhere else we’d ever surfed. Blissfully warm waters, perfect tropical climate, everything smelling of plumeria, with turquoise waves spilling over sugar-sand beaches. Right away, like a…

People say there’s a bit of a rivalry between us, and I guess that’s kind of true, but it’s funny because I basically learned everything I know from Jamie. I watched all the best Pipe guys as a kid, but I probably watched Jamie the most. He’s almost like an older brother to me, and he loves to battle me for waves, mostly because I think he just likes to bother me. I actually try to avoid surfing with him now because he wants to take every wave I go for, but watching him surf and learning from him has been a really cool experience. It’s weird to surf against him in events now because we have such a similar approach. We’re after the same waves, and we probably want…

A lone in the lineup, John Florence rose to his feet just as the right-hand slab pitched toward shore. He locked into a highline, eying a crumbling section ahead. Knees slightly bent, arms quiet at his sides, he bottom-turned, launched above the lip, and floated 2…4…6 feet out of the water. It was the kind of massive aerial that only a handful of surfers in the world are capable of, yet Florence has a knack for making high-altitude punts look as easy as a Sunday in sweatpants. But just as he reached the apex, an unseen force took hold of Florence and flung him off his board and out to sea. It was as if he’d been slapped by a giant invisible hand. The blow didn’t come from an angry,…

WHEN JOHN FLORENCE WAS RECRUITING cinematographers for his film, View From a Blue Moon, he wanted to work with the very best. Naturally, he turned to Sonny Miller, the legendary surf filmmaker behind such classics as The Search, Feral Kingdom, and Searching for Tom Curren. But it wasn’t the first time they worked together. Years before, Miller shot one of Florence’s first trips to South Africa, and the experience made a lasting impression “I was just a kid, and I remembered being really excited to take a trip with Sonny,” says Florence. “Searching for Tom Curren was one of my favorite movies growing up, and Sonny was such a positive, high-spirited human.” Miller joined Florence and friends on a trip to Tahiti for View From a Blue Moon, so if…