Tabla de contenidos para April 2018 en Surfer

Cultural movements are slippery things. It can be hard to pin down the exact moment when a belief held by a handful of eccentrics makes its way into the current of mainstream thought. What may feel like an overnight change is more often a culmination of years of conversations, individual acts and public events that add up to a larger transformation. Sometimes a movement goes from fringe to mainstream so gradually that it’s only after a moment of reflecting on the past that you realize you’ve entered the future. I had one such realization at Blacks Beach in San Diego, California during a recent run of hollow, head-high surf. Paddling out after catching a nice, long South Peak peeler, I watched as a teenage ripper got to his feet on…

You always seem to be riding left-field surfcraft. What was in your boardbag for this trip? I brought a 5'3" fish, a 5'5" flex-tail twin fin, a 6'2" twin-fin step up, a 5'10" winged-swallowtail twin, a 9'9" noserider and a mid-length. But my favorite board was a 5'9" asymmetrical pickle-forked twin fin. What’s the benefit of a pickle-forked nose? It compliments my asymmetrical boards, which are really narrow—18 inches wide—and don’t have a lot of curve in the outline. So the nose helps extend the straightness of the rail line. Lately I’ve been doing split-tail boards that have twin fins and a pickle-fork nose. The width in the nose creates balance, but the cut-away between the points in the nose helps when you get them in the air on late…

You started surfing pretty late, right? I was around 14 when I got into it. I was really devoted to playing football when I was young and I was going to play in high school until I found out there was surf P.E. Then I decided that would be better than getting yelled at by a football coach every day. My friends and I started practicing every day at Blackies in Newport Beach, which is how I became friends with Alex Knost. Most kids at that time rode paper-thin, tri-fin shortboards. Why’d you gravitate toward logs? It was the best board to ride in the waves we surfed. Blackies is a longboarding wave; you don’t want to ride a thruster out there. I was also really drawn to the Southern…

In a lot of ways, you really paved the way for most of the guys on this boat trip in terms of what path they could take in professional surfing. What’s it like surfing with these guys who have picked up that torch? It was really cool. Now that I’m older, I get to do heaps of trips with kids who have looked up to the way I’ve done things. It feels like a good accomplishment to inspire such a cool group of people. If I played any little part in what kids are doing in surfing today, I’m pretty stoked because I think surfing is in such a good place. These days you’re known for your artwork as much as your surfing. When did you first tap into your…

“Normal.” For years now, that word has been front and center in advertisements for alternative surfcraft, mostly fish or fish-influenced hybrid shortboards. “Ride this shape a couple inches shorter and an inch wider than your normal board,” the ads typically implore. Sometimes “normal” is replaced with “standard,” but, of course, the idea remains the same: That there is a Platonic ideal of a board that all of us can easily point to, nod in unison and agree, “Yep, that’s a normal surfboard right there.” But lean back, close your eyes, and picture a “normal” surfboard in your mind. What do you see? A wafer-thin, high-performance thruster? A twin-keel fish with a psychedelic airbrush? Maybe a single-fin log with a thick redwood stringer running down the center? Or how about a…

Last summer, filmmaker Thomas Campbell invited a group of surfers to join him on an Indonesian boat trip to gather footage for his upcoming film. Campbell has always been attracted to documenting surfers who draw idiosyncratic lines, and who have an openness to experiment with a wide range of surfcraft. For this trip, Campbell called up a freewheeling cadre of characters: Alex Knost, Craig Anderson, Ryan Burch, Jared Mell, Ozzie Wright and Bryce Young. Each of these surfers have carved unique paths through surfing, and some have left indelible imprints on the surf world at large. Over the span of ten days, the crew bounced between perfect reef breaks, swapping boards (many of them handshaped by the surfers themselves) and drawing inspiration from each other’s distinctive approaches to riding waves.…

How different do lineups look around Newport now compared to when you started surfing, in terms of what people are riding and exploring? I was so young that I didn’t have any visibility—everything just seemed natural, and quite comfortable. What’s a lineup? It’s a reincarnation of past generations. Blackies has the same hotbed of talent now as it did long before, and 56th Street and River Jetties are much the same. Only difference now is there is no segregation. Acceptance is something that mirrors oneself. You’re one of the only people who rides alternative shapes to surf Slater’s pool. What kind of board was that and how did it suit the wave? Do you think those designs are more versatile than people give them credit for? The wave is its…

“I have been driving up and down this stretch of coastline for decades now and when you get moments like this, you realize how fickle a wave can be,” says Josh Mulcoy, slotted here along the cold fringes of the Pacific Northwest. “Even when the forecast looks good, I never believe it until I am actually on the beach and it’s firing. This was the best I have seen this spot and there was no one around, which was a bit shocking. It seems like it has become way more popular for surfers to adventure to cold places. I still remember when I first started going to Alaska and the ticket agent asking me, ‘Why would you go to Alaska to go surf? Why not Hawaii or Southern California?’ You…