Extreme Sports & Music Articles

Riding Soundwaves
The Rise of Surf Music (Unedited)

Play Magazine, December 2008

“Although your world wonders me with your majestic superior cackling hen.
Your people I do not understand.
So to you I wish to put an end.
And you’ll never hear surf music again.”
From Third Stone From the Sun, Jimi Hendrix, 1967

It’s crazy to think that if it wasn’t for a surfing wipe-out, Jack Johnson might never have pursued his musical career, and would still just be another surfer with a guitar instead of a world famous singer/songwriter. Once an aspiring professional, at 17 Jack entered a surfing contest at the notorious Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu in late 1992. Whilst practising for the event, a mutant wave smashed him headfirst in to the shallow lava reef, and he required 150 stitches to repair his mangled face.

Following a centuries-old traditional Hawaiian affinity for acoustic surf music, Jack had been picking at ukuleles and guitars since his early teens, and honed his strumming and songwriting further during his convalescence. Yet at the time he had no idea of the music phenomenon he would help create and take to the world, and aspired more toward making movies. He subsequently enrolled at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he graduated with a degree in filmmaking, eventually making two of the surfing world’s finest movies, Thicker Than Water and The September Sessions. However, all the while Jack had continued with his music, penning the scores for his own films and contributing to others.

Introduced to musician G-Love (of G-Love & Special Sauce) for a surfing lesson, Jack then eventually collaborated with him, and the debut Johnson track Rodeo Clowns featured on G-Love’s 1999 album Philadelphonic. Johnson’s four-track demo then got the attention of Ben Harper’s manager J.P. Plunier. Ben himself was also so impressed with Johnson (who in turn cites Harper as one of his main influences), that he eventually played lap guitar on his first album Brushfire Fairytales (which Plunier produced and was recorded in Johnson’s family beach house) and the rest is history...

Of course, surf-influenced contemporary music goes further back than Jack Johnson. From the era of Dick Dale in late ‘50s, from the Beach Boys in the ‘60s (see sidebar), the proximity of the waves of Southern California has at times had a profound effect on the LA recording industry. Whilst the 1970s were an era less definitive than the decade before, the strongest connection in this period was the choice of music on surf movies and a few eccentric musicians like Jimi Hendrix that, like dug the surfing trip, man. Pink Floyd reportedly loved hippie surf-filmmaker George Greenough’s pioneering inside-the-tube footage so much they provided tracks for his 1973 psychedelic surf movie Crystal Voyager for free (these are now on a Floyd release called Echoes).

During the 1980s, US thrash rock bands such as Agent Orange, Social Distortion, TSOL and The Surf Punks, as well as Aussie bands such as Midnight Oil (all surfers themselves), continued to create surf-tinged music. Then in the 1990s, the popularity of So-Cal punk bands like The Offspring, Pennywise, Sublime and Bad Religion (all of whom have surfing members) spread across the globe. This was in large part thanks to the fact that their independent labels, such as Bad Religion’s Epitaph, offered their music gratis to underground surf videos, earning these bands legions of new surfing fans worldwide.

By then, the surfing connection had also spread to the realm of conventional rock and grunge. The likes of Seattle’s Soundgarden (remember My Wave?) and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Jane’s Addiction and Porno For Pyros frontman Perry Farrell and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Keidis have all cited the sport as musical inspiration or mentioned it in songs. Surf-mad metal band Metallica recently even endorsed a boardshort with surf label Billabong. Chris Isaak can be found paddling out almost daily at his local break of Ocean Beach and says his Baja Sessions album was motivated by surf trips to Mexico. Ben Harper, too, has professed a love for the sport. “Surfing is something that I have become very passionate about,” explains Harper, adding that the track Younger than Today from his latest album Both Sides of the Gun, is influenced by surfing.

But it is on the mellower, acoustic side of things that the association with surfing has been strongest of late. In the ‘90s, professional surfers themselves produced a number of such albums, including multiple world surfing champ Tom Curren (a good friend of Jack’s), who released a couple of CDs (one recorded in a cave in Australia) to some critical acclaim. Other Johnson cronies, including nine times world champion Kelly Slater, as well as Rob Machado, Peter King (known as ‘The Surfers’) released a self-titled album in 1999, and lately top competitive surfer Timmy Curran has been enjoying success with his debut Word Of Mouth, and opened gigs for the likes of the Foo Fighters. In Australia, surfing musicians such Xavier Rudd have emerged, and here South Africa, Robin Auld lead the charge for many years, before passing the torch to Farryl Purkiss, whose album Chapter One, has garnered him a devout local and international fan base.

It is Jack Johnson though, who has by far experienced the most mainstream international success of any surfer-turned-musician so far, with sales of more than 500 000 copies of his ‘Brushfire Fairytales’ album and a string of successful follow-ups. Johnson constantly tours with the likes of surfing buddies Ben Harper and G-Love, and supports emerging talent, such as friend and former professional free surfer Donovan Frankenrieter (one of the first musicians signed to Johnson’s Brushfire label, who is now slowly gaining fame worldwide). Johnson also set an incredible example to the world recording industry by creating his latest album Sleep Through the Static on 100% recycled material, from his fully eco-friendly recording studio in Southern California, spreading the chilled gospel of the natural surfing lifestyle further across the world’s soundwaves.

The Birth Of “Surf Music”

In 1959, young Richard Monsour moved from Boston to Newport, California, assumed the name Dick Dale, took up surfing, formed a band called the Del Tones, and began experimenting with a new kind of music that matched, as he said at the time, “the feeling I had while surfing; the vibration and pulsification, and the tremendous power.” He then met one Leo Fender, who asked Dale to play his new creation, the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. When Dale picked up the guitar, Leo laughed, as left-handed Dale began to play a right-handed guitar upside down and backwards, changing the chords in his head then transposing them to his hands to create a sound never heard before – “surf music”. Leo Fender gave the Fender Stratocaster along with a Fender amp to Dale, who promptly blew out the amp and speaker. Leo Fender kept giving Dale amps and Dale kept destroying them, until one night Leo went down to the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa and stood in the middle of four thousand screaming, dancing fans and realised what Dick was trying to achieve. Fender then came up with an 85-watt output transformer that peaked at 100 watts when Dale would pump up the volume of his amp, creating the kind of noise levels that he dreamed of. Dale, who once famously actually surfed with his Fender for a print ad, had become the “father” of heavy metal (according to Guitar Player Magazine), and influenced generations of rock musicians to follow. To this day the Fender Corporation laud Dale’s Miserlou as the archetypal surf instrumental (listen out for it next time you rent Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction). The late ‘50s and early ‘60s were a time that “surf culture” boomed and along with a plethora of cheesy surf movies such as Gidget and Muscle Beach Party (which featured Dale and was also the debut of Stevie Wonder) and heralded the arrival of bands such as Jan & Dean, the Beach Boys and countless others. The Surfari’s and one hit wonder, Wipeout, for example has been played eight million times on the radio. “That song came to our drummer in a dream, so we went into the studio to record it, thinking we might make enough money to buy some instruments,” said Surfari’s guitarist Jim Fuller, who managed to pay off his mom’s house with the immediate proceeds. It is still an earner, four decades later. - Craig Jarvis/Masterson Media

Copyright Miles Masterson Media 2009 click here for menu

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Greg Long: Increments of Fear (Unedited)

Huck Magazine, October 2008

More than any other discipline of the sport, surfing in big waves is a game of numbers. When huge days dawn, critical miscalculations of wave size, board choice, angle of wind, swell or swell period can mean certain injury and even death. Bravado will get you far, if you are fearless or completely mad, which many big wave riders are. To do what they do, they kind of have to be. But beyond the cursory hedging of numerical bets, most are willing to do the basics and leave the rest to fate. Some, especially the few photo hungry slab tow-in post-millennial wannabes, don’t even do that, and just charge out there gung ho.
Yet, to truly be in contention to merely be considered among the very best in the world, big wave surfers have to take their physical fitness and preparation to a scientific level, much like a mountain climber or free-diver. Think Laird Hamilton, Mike Parsons or Shane Dorian, all notorious for their calculated attention to the minutiae of their big wave art and their subsequent undisputed mastery thereof.
With an XXL award and Mavericks and Big Wave Africa trophies bearing his name in recent years, San Clemente’s Greg Long, twentysix, is considered by most of his peers as the pre-eminent big wave rider in the world today, one whose dedication and achievements are beginning to overshadow those of the abovementioned big wave holy trinity, if they haven’t already. So it’s hardly surprising to find out that Greg has a reputation of checking his equipment to the point of compulsion, for example, and is a self-confessed control freak. “Some people call me anal,” he grins, self-effacing, “and I guess they are right. But at the same time that’s what works for me.”
Wearing a flannel padded shirt, jeans and hiking boots, Greg is relaxing on a couch in his room at a B&B in Hout Bay, South Africa, his home for a few months a year, not far from notorious big wave break Dungeons, where, in July 2008, he placed third at Red Bull Big Wave Africa behind Carlos Burle and winner Twiggy Baker. Greg scored a perfect ten in the semis with the biggest, baddest spitting tube ever ridden in the ten year history of the event (and indeed ever at the break), as well as towing Baker into the aforementioned 70 foot wave, the biggest surfed in Africa to date, at a deep reef outside Dungeons called Tafelberg, a few weeks later. Even though he didn’t actually ride the wave himself, for Greg it was a way to end a good the season, and capped his most successful stretch to date as a big wave pro.
In fact, was a bull run that was a long time in coming for a surfer whose destiny has always been to ride monster waves. Greg recalls how his mindset was instilled into him from pre-pubescence and laid the foundations of his ultimate calling. As sons of a head lifeguard and surfer Steve Long, Greg and his older brother Rusty learned earlier than most how to read the ocean, and inherited from their father a lifetime of ocean knowledge and intuition, and the advantage of always being equipped for anything it threw at them. “My dad was a serious waterman, diving, fishing, surfing, any sort of recreational water sports; swimming. He could have gone into an Olympic water polo player if he wanted to,” says Greg proudly of Steve, who recently retired. “[So] yeah, growing up near the ocean, we had... the whole junior lifeguard background. We had the best education about how the ocean works and how to conduct yourself when you are in heavy situations.”
Although he was proficient in field sports such as baseball and soccer, Greg says he decided early that he wanted to be a pro surfer, and at the age of 12, began to surf in local amateur contests with the support of his dad and mom, Jan. With their backing, but without any significant sponsorship, Greg gave contests a good crack throughout his teens, and eventually, at the age of 19, took out the NSSA (National Scholastic Surfing Association) Open Mens title in 2001. Although a dark horse, Greg had home break advantage at Lower Trestles, as living in the Trestles state park, a perk of Steve’s vocation, the spot was literally in Greg’s backyard. The win - an accolade long considered a precursor to pro surfing greatness - will always stand as a testament to Greg’s overall surfing talent and competitive savvy. “It’s a pretty interesting event,” explains Greg. “If you win this you’re marked as the next great thing... if you look at the past champs, Kelly Slater, the Hobgoods, Fred Pattachia, Andy Irons...”
Lead to great things the win did, but not how some might have expected. Despite the NSSA title, Greg confesses he was always a bit of an outsider in the SC contest scene (which spawned the likes of Dino Andino and Chris Ward, among many others) and the usually small, albeit consistent waves of the liquid skate parks at Lowers and surrounds. This was because Greg was regularly skipping events and had already begun his inexorable evolution towards becoming a big wave surfer. “My brother and I would always be looking for the biggest waves we could find in town,” adds Greg, “ and when I was about fifteen-years-old I really got into it.”
During the 1990s, when big wave surfing at the now-famous break Killers, on the Mexican Island of Todos Santos, was being taken to the next level, many of the standouts hailed from San Clemente. These included, among others, Greg’s eventual mentors such as Mike Parsons and the McNulty brothers, Terence and Joe - as well as Ventura’s Evan Slater, whom Greg also credits as being influential in his career. Greg and Rusty would see photos of these guys at Todos in magazines, and hear first hand from another San Clemente charger Jon Walla, their close friend, stories of sessions in 25-30 foot waves. So it wasn’t before long the Longs made the journey south across the border. “The first time he took me there out there it was probably 15-20 foot faces, couple of bigger sets, the biggest waves I’d probably surfed in my life,” recalls Greg. “It was the most exhilarating, thrilling feeling in the world for me and that session stuck with me. I can still remember vividly how I got caught inside by the biggest wave of my life at that time and got cleaned up and washed through the whole line up, with my dad right by my side, and came out at the other end... I just remember being so pumped at being able to handle it and saying ‘I want to do this again’.”
Although Parsons et al set the bar and paved the way for the likes of Greg and Rusty, at the time there was no such thing as a big wave pro. So the brothers pursued big waves on the mainland, in Hawaii and around the world, merely for the love of it. Thanks to his win at Trestles, Greg had secured a decent sponsorship from OP though, and with the company’s support began to carve his own niche in what he terms “this surf travel adventure thing”. Over the subsequent years, sometimes apart, but often together, with the likes of peers such as Hawaiian Jamie Sterling, the Longs roamed far and wide in pursuit of big wave happiness, and have ridden bombs in Ireland, Madeira, Easter Island and of course, Cape Town, South Africa, the eventual location of many of Greg’s most seminal surfing moments.
Tuned into the city’s prospects as a big wave destination by the likes of Mavericks local Grant Washburn, and encouraged to come over for the event by legend Gary Linden, who had been tasked to be contest director at the second Red Bull Big Wave Africa, the brothers visited South Africa for the first time in 2001, and were smitten. “I could see the potential of all the waves around the Cape Peninsula and was completely drawn to it,” smiles Greg. “I’d never heard of Dungeons but when I saw the footage I was just... ‘I want to go there’. There was one spot left to be filled, and as he was the older of the two of us, I said Rusty could have it and I’ll take the alternate spot.”
Although someone ended up pulling out, and Greg made the cut for the event, it didn’t run that year. Still, he got to surf Dungeons a fair bit, and secured his place on the invite list proper, and putting even more time at the break, eventually won the event in 2003. Ever humble, Greg credits luck more than anything for this victory. “It wasn’t as if I was charging harder than anybody else... I was still pretty green in figuring things out,” he says. “But if you talk to anybody who wins the event out at Dungeons and they will say that you know there’s a huge part of luck to play. You know, some days you just seem to fall right into the rhythm and have the waves come straight to you and that was it for me.”
Greg’s luck held. Thanks to his Dungeons win, he was invited to his first event at Mavericks, and as just as industry sponsors began to recognise big wave riding as an alternative to being a competitive pro or free surfing trickster, his path toward earning a living from it seemed secure. Unfortunately, during his debut event at the infamous Nor-Cal righthander, by his own admission, Greg kind of kooked it, but at the same time learned a lot about being prepared to compete at what he considers the ultimate big wave arena. “I remember I was just so terribly nervous,” he reveals. “I hadn’t put in my time up there – didn’t understand – hadn’t figured things out you know, to where I needed to sit, and ended up I mean getting fourth in my first heat. It wasn’t an epic day by any means, but still after that contest I was like ‘okay, well’; thinking, ‘did you blow your opportunity? They’re not going to invite you back next year’ and I just made a conscious decision that next winter I’m coming back up here and will be on every single swell.”
Greg’s work ethic bore fruit in 2005, when he was invited to the event again, and this time snagged second place behind Anthony Tashnick. “From that point the whole big wave thing for me went from a passion to a borderline obsession,” he admits, “to where you looking at the charts five times a day everywhere in the world, trying to figure out okay this wave in Chili, what kind of conditions does it work on... and yeah I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity and a sponsorship backing from the folks at OP, with the flexibility to travel and pursue that lifestyle.”
Sadly for Greg, this ideal scenario didn’t last. US retail giant Walmart bought up OP and the entire team, including Greg and his brother Rusty were dismissed. “Unfortunately it came at a really poor time,” sighs Greg of the loss of his major backer. “I had done alright the years before and I was able to save up a bit of money and carried on surfing and travelling the way that I had before, thinking ‘okay we’re going to be able to find someone to pick us up and get us back up on the road and carry on with this professional career of surfing’. But then one month turned into three, three months turned into six and six turned into a year, and towards the end of it, ended up being a year and a half.”
During this trying time, Greg stuck to his goals, and overcoming a few niggling injuries, not only won the Billabong XXL award in 2006 (for a 60-plus footer that Twiggy towed him into at Dungeons), but also finally achieved his aim of winning Mavericks in 2007. He then surfed humungous Cortes Bank with Baker (who he says pushes him more than anyone), Parsons and Brad Gerlach, in January 2008. The Cortes session, Greg naturally rates as the most intense experience of his life: from riding all the way out there on a jetski, to debating with Twiggy which of them would surf first (neither wanted to, which says a lot), to actually riding those mountains all afternoon and then, exhausted, making the return trip to the mainland.
The irony of Greg’s financial situation at the time didn’t escape the surfing world, but he says he was studying via correspondence as a Plan B, had made peace with the fact he could no longer count on his monthly stipend and vowed to continue. “I remember, I was at home I think just sitting in the backyard having a beer,” he says and it was thinking ‘you’ve made all this money, you’re spending on surfing [but] why would you want to spend it on anything else? This is what you love doing and what you want to do regardless’... I guarantee I would have found some way to balance the whole education, work and travel thing. I would still be out there surfing as much as I could, I mean obviously not to the same extent that I am now, but I definitely would still be in the water. And so I just put my head down and said ‘you can pull this off’.”
Fortunately, after searching for so long for a sponsor, Greg finally got picked up by Billabong in April 2008 and has been able to continue to wow the world with his prodigious surfing talent (and considering the fact that many of the greatest big wave riders are in their thirties and forties, still has a long way to go until he peaks). No longer feeling the pressure to scrimp his dollars, Greg is freer than ever to whittle away at those increments of fear and travel far and wide. Now he can just focus on making sure his equipment is ready (in his famously fastidious way), and most importantly, through his regime of yoga, training and healthy diet, ready his body and mind for whatever comes next, be it some thick backdoor slabbing barrel, or the fabled 100 foot wave (which Greg reckons could well be ridden at Tafelberg).
“What we do - I mean with the preparation and the training - we are minimizing the risks,” he says. “You know, I can’t stress that enough; people say to me you’re absolutely crazy, but we don’t go out there and we don’t just do this - we spend a lot of time researching and looking at things. As you can see we have the whole chart here of the [Tafelberg] reef in the room... I need to know everything is in order and as I like it. It gives me confidence, that every variable x-factor controllable is going to be working in my favour... because when you’re out there, you have to be prepared for any life-threatening consequence.”

Copyright Miles Masterson Media 2009 click here for menu

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They Know the Streets
Urban Longboarding in Cape Town, South Africa (Unedited)

Huck, June 2008

It’s a benign, sunny winter’s afternoon in the CBD of Cape Town, South Africa, yet a discordant racket reverberates across the tranquil urban veneer. The violent sound - scraping and abrasive - fractures into aural shards as it echoes through the inner city landscape. It cracks along the facades of the rows of the both dishevelled and lovingly restored Victorian semi-detached houses, packed side by side along the now mostly deserted, litter-strewn streets. It bounces around the adjacent churches and mosques, and through the man made gullies between the tatty factories, warehouses, hospitals, schools and corner shops.
Vagrants sleeping on cardboard boxes on the pavements stir as the unwelcome ruckus interrupts their cheap wine crapulence. Accompanied by backing vocals of primitive howls of approval, the noise is unfamiliar to most, but known and loved by every skateboarder alive: the screeching protestation of polyurethane wheels being forced, against their will, to skid at pace along black tarmac.
In this tough, gritty urban neighbourhood called Woodstock, a few passers-by gape at the spectacle. Among them are bible clutchers; Fez adorned men in flowing Muslim robes; ragtag street urchins with cheap surf hoodies (one oddly clutching a glittery hula hoop); and beer drinking locals chilling on a nearby stoop. They all look up the graffiti mottled street in obvious astonishment, as another skater drops in at pace and the chaotic cacophony begins once again. Dreadlocks flying, and sporting ratty mittens with perspex pads, he accelerates past them, throws his board into a frontside carve and with his face inches from the surface, slides further and faster along the tar than friction or logic should allow.
“SCCCCCRRGGGGGGG!” his wheels and customised gloves scrape the asphalt loudly. As the spectators’ gaze follows him, he contorts out of the slide and comes to a stop down far down the road, to the cheers of his peers. The innocent witnesses to the carnage continue to stare, and although some smile and clap softly in appreciation, most can only shake their heads. As he trudges back up the sidewalk, a small dog runs around the dread, barking a futile protest at having her canine afternoon so noisily ruptured. The skater high-fives his jubilant crew and points to a coiffed blonde guy, who is now tearing towards them.
Wearing an open, flapping studded leather jacket with Steve Olson steez, he’s riding an old school Jeff Kendall Santa Cruz board with matching day-glo blue wheels. These clatter as he charges over a manhole and then emit a primal, plastic scream as he cuts into a freaky stand up slide and then lays back, albeit on only one gloved hand, with all the style of Larry Bertlemann. With a grimace of menacing intent, he guides his board and body in a flurry of speed and clamour over the coal-coloured surface. Halfway through his slide however, a police car turns up into the street ahead of him and the blonde guy is forced to bail. He kicks his stick out, only for it to clatter as it crashes into the verge, and he careens ungainly on his butt and gloves, and comes to a gentle halt under the bumper of a parked vehicle.
Two or three skaters begin down toward him, but he gets to his feet quickly, dusts his thighs, smiles and gives a thumbs up to indicate he’s okay. Behind them, another skater begins grating slide and all attention is focused once again onto the street.

As alien to those on the sidelines as say, the caricatures in most Jim Phillips skate graphics, this scene, in the aptly named Mountain Road, is in fact just another perfectly normal session for the members of Cape Town’s underground longboarding skate fraternity. Weather permitting, this eclectic crew gather religiously every Sabbath to bomb and slide within the city limits like downhill demons.
It’s not surprising this kind of skateboarding thrives here. Visible from miles out to sea, the towering granite crags of Cape Town define life in South Africa’s “Mother City”. The flat-topped Table Mountain and its attendant sentinels of Devil’s Peak, Lions Head and Signal Hill embrace the natural amphitheatre of the central business district, a.k.a. the City Bowl, like comforting arms. The Cape Peninsula mountain range cleaves the greater city in two and plunges into the deep ocean at Cape Point, 80 miles or so to the south. Interspersed by the leafy suburbs clinging to its slopes, this vast, mountainous national park is lauded as a world natural heritage site and by many as a place of much spiritual power and energy of Gaia. For those addicted to the suck of gravity though, it is also an ideal place to revel in the natural source of stoke and adrenalin the numerous smooth-tarred roads in the city’s winding foothills provide.
It’s something Capetonian surfers and skaters have been doing for decades, and eventually lead to the now defunct Red Bull Downhill Extreme, or DHX, which ran from 1999 to 2003. This globally hyped race exposed the formerly isolated locals to the world’s best downhill racers and the latest equipment and since then, the scene here has bred a smattering of world ranked skaters, including inaugural DHX winner and 2004 IGSA (International Gravity Sports Association) world champion, Stuart Bradburn.
But whilst Cape Town’s reputation endures in the downhill skating universe as one of the sport’s most ideal locations and remains home to some of the planet’s fastest skateboarders, lugers and inliners (and still hosts two smaller IGSA ranked races every December), downhilling here is not just confined to racing leathers and stopwatches on deserted roads in the city’s outskirts. No, whilst many of them are of course among the most devoted competitors, the dedication of Cape Town’s urban longboarders here runs far deeper than clocking the best time.

“It’s just a different way of doing your thing,” describes the blond, leather-jacketed skater, Tertius Vivier, a twenty-six year old sales rep. A talented former street skater, Tertius attended an illegal downhill race a while back and, as he enthuses, “got amped from there”.
Cape Town, he explains, is notorious as a place where, despite the urban sprawl, there are ironically precious few places to skate street and all the decent ones are too damn far from each other anyway. Thanks to an overzealous metro police force, the city boasts a huge bust factor and as Cape Town’s one and only decent skate park also recently closed, Tertius was drawn to the rush of downhilling, as an alternative to banging handrails, flipping gaps and being harassed by cops. “The best part,” adds Tertius, who annexed his dad’s gardening gloves and his mom’s plastic kitchen chopping board to make his sliding gloves, “is that I have got my passion back. I feel young again. I’m so fired up sometimes I’ll go and look for new spots all night.”
Due to its pocketed geography and apartheid legacy of racially-based segregation, as well as the vast distances between its outlying suburbs, Cape Town also has a reputation as a cliquey place, where people don’t readily welcome outsiders and at the same time often develop contempt even for those from other parts of the city. It’s a phenom that has unfortunately permeated the politics-ridden street skating scene, but yet says Tertius - who hails from the all-white ‘Northern Suburbs’ - is almost completely absent among the longboard skaters. “Everyone gets along and there’s no attitude,” he continues, “and everyone encourages and motivates each other.”

Chilling beneath a poster of Bob Marley in the lounge of his small rented semi detached home, overlooking the city lights in Cape Town’s former Malay quarter, dreadlocked skater, Kent Lingeveldt, twentyseven, is drinking a cup of tea on a rainy Thursday evening. He echoes Tertius’ sentiments and reveals that, in fact, many Cape Town street skaters have begun bombing hills in the past few years. Their influx, along with their always-keen surfing cousins, has helped to grow the sport here to a core crew of around 30 to 40 serious riders, along with scores more who simply use their longboards to cruise and/or get around the city.
A sometime street skater and surfer himself, Kent describes how he commutes on one of his longboards to his day job in a music store downtown. He also recalls how, growing up in Woodstock, he always used to bomb hills on his regular street deck, but was exposed to serious downhilling during the first DHX, which he entered when he was nineteen. Kent has been a stalwart on the scene ever since, influencing many of his fellow local street skaters to take to longer boards. “They seem to be more open to it now,” he explains. “They used to be ‘ah, bunch of surfer hippies’ but now they see I’ll tackle sliding like I will a street obstacle... and that you actually channel that kind of raw aggression into longboarding as well. Plus it’s a bit easier on the body, which makes it more attractive to them as they get older.”
Ironically, for a guy like Kent, some of the best roads in the City Bowl for sliding and speed skating are in District Six, an infamous apartheid flashpoint, near Woodstock, on the east side of town. During the Sunday session, Kent points out the house his father grew up in, before his family was relocated by the then-government to the distant windswept Cape Flats (although his family later moved back). Part of the reason this area is so good to skate now, is that there are no buildings and thus few cars, as the homes and businesses of those that lived here, until the forced removals began, have long since been demolished. With slightly oriental features that reveal his diverse heritage, Kent would have been classed as second-class “coloured” citizen in those bad old days, as would about a quarter of his fellow Cape Town longboarders. Yet ethnicity is not something this urban tribe - Afrikaans and English; white and black; dreads and mohawks; Muslim, Rasta Christian or whatever - dwell on as they all hang together, united by the love of the glide. “There are no races now, you know,” Kent smiles.
Hailing a humble background as he does, Kent initially struggled to finance his downhill skating habit. He tells how the local crew originally obtained boards and equipment from international skaters attending the DHX, but thanks to the piss-poor exchange rate, this still worked out too costly for most of them. So Kent decided to attempt making his own decks under his label ‘Alpha’ in about 2000. “There wasn’t that much literature on it available then,” he recollects,” so in many ways I feel like I almost re-invented the wheel a bit, for myself you know; I had to sit down and figure out how to make concaves and things like that.”
Through years of consulting with wood experts and R&D conducted by Kent and numerous willing test pilots, he has been able to open a small, self-sustaining board factory near Mountain Road, where he grew up. Here Kent labours most evenings, coming up with functional designs for a variety of boards, including racers, cruisers and pool and street decks, and churns out about two or three a week, which he sells to cover his costs.
To save further, Kent only uses local material. “I find getting decent wood in this country is killer expensive,” he furthers. “I’ve checked out the best way to make as strong a board as I can from SA Pine. I do want to branch out into a better wood, but my boards last, the one I’ve had for five years. If you make do it properly and treat it properly it’s fine. Justin went full out though and he’s getting Canadian Maple and some Birch which is legend, I’m gonna get some from him soon.”

Kent is referring to the only other downhiller in Cape Town who makes his own boards, Justin Boast of ‘Project Speedboards’. As his label’s name suggests, twentynine-year-old Justin’s focus is on low centre of gravity, or LCG, boards that go very fast, and such is his reputation that he now exports his them to downhill skaters all over the world. Apart from making his boards though, Justin also produces a skateboarding zine ‘Effect’ and organises downhill skate races and meets - both legal and the illegal ‘Out Law’ variety.
“I started doing the Out Law series at the end of December 2006,” tells the tall, bearded skater. “Then in 2007, in addition to organising three legal races with SAGRA (South African Gravity Racing Association), I hosted another five Out Law speed races.” Justin explains how these underground events are usually held on a quiet suburban road just outside Cape Town and riders pay R20 (£1.30) to enter and the skater with the fastest speed takes the pot home. “Then this year there word was getting around that there was a whole bunch of skaters that were into sliding, so in May I put on the Outlaw Slide Comp and it was a big success,” Justin grins.
Held on the same backroads in District Six and attended by a few dozen skaters and hangers on, the event almost didn’t happen. Due to the fact there is a government facility of some kind nearby, police patrolling the area tried to shut them down. Turns out that the crew’s cars were merely blocking the road though, and after a few words with Kent, the guys moved their vehicles and the comp went ahead, with Kent taking the honours - and a brand new Project Speedboard - with a slide of 56.4 metres.

Unfortunately for Cape Town longboard skaters, not every encounter with the cops turns out so well. Although they don’t get harassed as much as their street skating kin, Cape Town metropolitan police have developed a fierce reputation and occasionally take it too far. Like they did not so long ago with another member of the crew, Wayne Moses. Wayne, twentyseven, has been skating since he was seven and also grew up in Mountain Road alongside his best friend Kent. As public transport in the city is so bad (and often risky), like many town longboarders, Wayne not only races and slides, but also uses his board to get from A to B.
One day he was cruising toward his home, minding his own business, when a police car pulled up next to him and asked him to get off his board and continue on foot. Like most skaters, not one to back down, Wayne politely inquired why they were harassing him and not out chasing criminals. “I also asked them why they even stopped me as there was a running marathon on and the road was actually cordoned off and empty of traffic,” says Wayne, who goes on to explain that this also was close to Gympie Street in lower Woodstock, home some of the most violent gangsters in South Africa. “I told them I’m not going to walk past there under any circumstances,” he adds.
Next thing he knew, Wayne was surrounded by seven cops and forced into a headlock so severe it popped his shoulder. Then, he reckons, he got teargassed and his head bashed into the side of the cop car before being arrested and booked for riotous behaviour. “My eye is still squint,” spews Wayne, who later obtained a medical letter detailing his injuries and tried to sue the Babylon. “The cop who hit me got a slap on the wrist,” he laments, “and the docket with all my witness statements conveniently disappeared.”
Fortunately, incidents like the one above are rare and Cape Town’s urban longboarders have more to fear from the city’s crazy drivers and being mugged by gangsters, than being nicked. Moreover, one of the perks of covering so much distance in the city grid is that they are intimate with the terrain and traffic patterns, probably more than anyone, and can thus quickly escape from any threat, official or not. “We know the streets so well,” laughs Wayne, who now avoids the police at all costs. “We know all the shortcuts and can predict the traffic like you won’t believe. No one can catch us. Now when the cops try, we just f*** off... we are, like, gone.”

During the Sunday session, even the presence of the police car doesn’t stop the crew from continuing their sliding frenzy. The cops shout half-heartedly at Tertius as he collects his board, but seem more interesting in the young girls parked in a BMW blaring R&B, outside the beer swillers’ abode. As Tertius, Kent and the rest of the crew ascend the hill, Wayne is the next skater to descend Mountain Road, skidding down it in a weird “superman” slide, in which he leans forward over his board instead of in the traditional frontside or backside layback styles. “Dude, that guy invented sliding in Cape Town,” comments someone as he flies by. On his way back up, Wayne relates, words tripping over one another, how once he hit 80 km/h sliding and was going so fast he made it through a cattle grid. “My wheels were smoking bru,” he laughs maniacally and snaps his fingers ghetto style.
The energy of the session is clearly peaking as Kent takes his last run. Now wearing a battered, stickered up white helmet, he drifts into his trademark toeside slide, bends his neck and pops his helmet on the road. For about 50 yards, his board, gloved hands and the top of his helmet scour it with a racket, and the dozen or so skaters and handful of bystanders scream with stoke. “That’s thinking with your head,” quips Justin and everyone chuckles. Following a group photo and some convoluted handshakes and the odd bear hug, the skaters then all disperse. Some melt away on their boards into the City Bowl and the rest climb into their cars for the drive home, under the shadow of Table Mountain.

Web Resources
www.projectskateboards.co.za
www.sagra.co.za
I love Alpha Longboards (Facebook)

Copyright Miles Masterson Media 2009 click here for menu

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Jordy Smith Huck Magazine (UK) May 2007

In early 2006 an 18-year-old South African by the name of Jordan Michael Smith appeared in Surfer Magazine’s special “Hot 100” edition.
The editors ranked Jordy a respectable eighth in their annual appraisal of the world’s best junior surfers. They also referred to Jordy’s debut video performance - the opening segment in Billabong’s Passion Pop - as “The second coming of Parko”.
Yet despite such praise, Jordy’s position could have seemed a tad high to the casual observer, considering his age and experience (most of the list’s top 16 were two to three years older), and relatively unknown status outside of his home country.
But if you were lucky enough to catch him freesurfing around that time, you too would have realised the kid’s potential. When someone, who is still too young to drink in a pub, can alternate air reverses, tube rides and lip thwacking, spray flinging hacks down the line with a mature style beyond his years, he is surely destined for future greatness. It is no coincidence his nickname is Superfreak.
Yet word of his incredible surfing abilities had yet to spread significantly. Besides world amateur surfing circles, where he had already accumulated a couple of world titles and assorted junior crowns, he remained an enigma. Even the hacks at Surfer admitted that Jordy was somewhat of unknown entity.
Mid last year though, Jordy began a succession of results that not only vindicated his placing on the list, but also made one wonder why had he not been ranked even higher. Then again, who could have predicted what was to follow? Warming up with a top five finish at the WQS Mr Price Pro in Durban, Jordy underlined his future capital with a third place in the Billabong WCT event, held in firing four-to-six foot waves at Jeffrey’s Bay in July.
As a sponsor’s wildcard surfing in his first WCT event, Smith took out some major scalps and in doing also became the highest placed Saffa in any WCT contest. His performance, which included multiple airs and massive carves, also elevated him to the status of the next potential prodigal son – and promoted him to realm of comparisons with King Kelly himself. Not bad for a teenager who cites reading Harry Potter books and making amateur movies as his downtime hobbies.
The confidence gained from this result sped up Smith’s momentum and the results kept coming. Through the remainder of the year he beat more WCT surfers to take the ISA World Title in Huntington slop and then ended fifth at the Haleiwa Op Pro. He then got another fifth at solid Sunset in the Xcel Pro and, surfing the event tenaciously with stitches in his foot, held the runner up trophy next to Parko at the O’Neill World Cup, also held at Sunset. With that result took he also took the Vans Triple Crown Rookie of the year accolade.
Incredibly Jordy then went on to win the Billabong ASP 2006 World Pro Junior Title at Narrabeen, Australia, in early January. Victory in that contest, often regarded as the soothsayer of events when it comes to determining future world titles, was one of the sweetest for Jordy, who admits to not having achieved a good result in Australia for some time.
Jordy blazed his way into the final at Carpark Rights and despite a narrow margin, emerged a popular winner, relegating good friend and WCT rookie Adriano de Souza to second, in what should emerge as one of the great rivalries of the future. “We are really good friends and it was good to have him in the final,” adds Jordy. “He’s a full Brazilian and he does froth out here and there, but he’s cool.”
Jordy, who says he listens to The Beatles to relax before heats, has been doing the WQS full time in 2007 and seeing as he is currently ranked first after a number of finals and wins this year, should easily qualify for the WCT in 2008, where he will get the chance to fulfil his ambition to be world champion. He gives as good he gets hassling-wise, and relishes taking on big names – be they his peers or established pros - and relinquishing them to the dust, so he should have no problem getting there.
One top pro, Taylor Knox, who tried to smack-talk down to the youngster, paid the price: “I had a heat with him once before at the Mr Price in Durban. I think he won and I got second,” recalls Jordy, with a grin. “Then I had a heat with him again at J-Bay a year later. As we were paddling out he said to me ‘Can you remember that heat in Durban?’ And I was like ‘Ya, I remember.’ And he was like ‘Well this is going to be a repeat of that’. And I said ‘whatever floats your boat’ and ended up smoking him in the first five minutes, so…”
As is often the case with successful athletes such confidence can often be construed as arrogance. For Jordy’s part, he comes across as a mellow kid who recognises how lucky he is and tries not to trip too hard on his talent, but also knows he rips and is not afraid to do what it takes to win. Not only is he super-talented, he has the steady support of his accomplished surfboard shaper dad Graham and manager mom Luellen, which he reckons helps keep him grounded. “My dad always tells me,” says Jordy. “Don’t get a big head and stay humble and you’ll be alright. And so I just stick to that and hope it all turns out good in the end.”
This kind of attitude is but one of the parallels that can be drawn between Kelly Slater and he who will (probably) be King. Both are natural footed and combine power, functional technical progression and smooth, aesthetic flow. Both come from humble backgrounds. Both are competitive machines and want to win everything.
Both enjoy playing golf and they also share the same birth date, albeit 16 years apart. However, clearly not one to dwell on such matters, Jordy is ambivalent. “I guess it’s just a co-incidence, one of those things,” he says. This astral duplication will be probably an inane question that he’ll probably have to deal with for some time yet from the pesky surf and mainstream media. But his response also reveals a pragmatic approach and a mature, level head that seems focused on only one thing: winning contests with the highest levels of surfing performance he can muster. “I’m just there for a reason and that is to do my job, which is to try and beat everybody. I don’t really care who they are,” he finishes.
Whatever the future holds, Jordy Smith will weave his particular brand of surfing magic on the world for many years to come.

Copyright Miles Masterson Media 2008 click here for menu

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Learning to Kiteboard

Gust Magazine Feb 2007

Beneath the azure sky and diamond sheen of the West Coast morning sun, head instructor Dimitri began the first the day of our kiteboarding course with a straight-faced warning about the inherent dangers of the sport.
Tales of even the most experienced kiteboarders being dragged across roads and into buildings, and of them breaking limbs and even worse, abound. So my fellow kiting novices and I listened to his stern warning carefully in the initial stages, lest we miss some crucial bit of information and risk a trip to hospital.
With that, our Windchasers Kitesurfing School instructors made us each step into our safety harnesses and tightened them tightly around our waists and we gathered all our equipment and bounced in the back of a bakkie down to the main beach at Langebaan Lagoon.

In the past few years, kiteboarding has gone from a sideline sport, practised by a handful of windsurfers and surfers, to one of the fastest growing extreme activities in the world. With our consistent winds and long beaches, South Africa has become one of the world’s premier kiteboarding locations, frequented by local riders and visited by hordes of internationals during the summer months.
Apart from the professional and recreational kiters - who can be seen performing their aerial stunts everywhere from Sodwana to Durban to Milnerton to Walvis Bay - a few entrepreneurs have opened kiteboarding schools across South Africa, in order to teach novices the basics of this dangerous and thrilling extreme sport correctly. The sport involves a lot of finicky equipment and often places one at the mercy of the elements. An understanding of the tools of the trade as well as respect for the wind and water can only help the novice avoid either losing their expensive kite, or becoming another crash horror story, and thus lessons are wisely advised for anyone attempting to kiteboard.
Preliminary warnings dealt with, on the beach our first lesson involved learning how to fly a “foil”, a scaled down version of the larger sails used for kiteboarding. Despite a few collisions with the ground, everyone managed to grasp this fairly quickly (as easy as flying a kite), so we moved up to the main kiting sail. Fiddling and sweating with all the additional intricate strings, I couldn’t help how thinking how complex this kiteboarding lark seemed and wondered whether it really was worth all the effort. Once we had sorted the strings, and laid the big kite out, we still had to cover it with sand (so it wouldn’t blow away in the strong wind) and pump it up.
I struggled to fly the big kite initially. I fought it and lost control as the kite crashed into the ground with disheartening thud. The kite is attached to the harness and you control it with a central bar, which is connected to the kite via the aforementioned strings. It’s a bit like steering a bicycle, but one that someone - the wind – is potentially fighting you for. To move the kite to the left, you pull the bar in with your left hand and push it out with the right, and vice versa. My lesson partner, Grant, seemed to grasp it more quickly, but I think Elana had to spend a bit more time with me and coaxed me into working with the elements and not against them. I seemed forget all I learned on the foil moments before and by now my hands and wrists were aching (and it didn’t help that the wind had become gusty).
If you get it really wrong, the kite pulls you into the air or drags you down the beach, which squeezes those old adrenal glands, believe me. Ultimately though, I ended competent enough under guidance of Elana, and later Dimitri. All the time the professional, Windchaser’s crew (all trained under the auspices of the IKO – International Kiteboarding Organisation), watched their charges carefully
The class left the beach pretty chuffed we had mastered rudiments of flying the kite and during lunch, chatted animatedly and compared notes. Everyone was anticipating next the lesson keenly: body dragging, which encompassed flying the kite in the water - without a board - across a four kilometre stretch from Kraal Baai to Shark Bay. But the prospect seemed increasingly more daunting rather than fun as we putted in the duck across the route in the shallow, cloudy aquamarine waters of the lagoon.
Setting the kites up on the destination beach, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one struggling already to remember where everything went, but under the ever-patient guidance of the instructors, we all got it together reasonably quickly. Confidently, Mike the Brit and Andreas, a Saffa-German windsurfer, grabbed the biggest kites, and as the two who seemed to take to flying the kites the most, took off across the water and became little dots under them. The rest of us had smaller kites and although some did better than others, were collectively struggling in comparison.
Once in the water, I crashed the kite a few times and tangled the strings and instructor Kobus had to almost take me through the whole process once more. Being in the water was less intimidating than the beach, but in this new element my brain just stopped working. Before I thought I was ready to go it alone though, Kobus moved on to help someone else… and then suddenly I got it, angling the kite up and down the optimum area. I launched out of the water and along it at speed. Once you finally get going with the wind’s power and crack flying the kite, bodydragging – literally being dragged at torso level across the water - is a naturally exhilarating feeling. Inevitably I pushed it to far again and crashed the kite, but I’d had a small taste and wanted more.
I awoke the next day with my body aching in new and unfamiliar places. Thankfully we had a bit of later start on day two, which dawned bright and clear and most importantly, windy - the trees outside bending under its gale force. Our team now headed down to Shark Bay, this time with boards, in the Windchasers bakkie and the first thing I noticed was that setting up the kites seemed easier. We then waded out into shallows, launched the kite and after a few refresher flights, learned to tack and fly kite upwind, then moved onto a quick bodydragging refresher.
Flying the kite, I started struggling again and really had to focus to relax and not fight it when steering the bar, but rather control it. Reminding me to be gentle with the bar and treat it like a woman, Elana remained patient, and then gave me a time out so Grant could have a go. At this point, he seemed to be getting it much easier than me. I became irritated with myself, but stopped thinking about it and instead studied the techniques of the experts enjoying their Sunday morning on the lagoon, while at the same time dodging the falling kites of ignorant novices nearby. Some of them clearly had no lessons, in what really amounts to a selfish danger to themselves and others.
Soon it was my turn to try it with the board, and now this extra element threw me completely once more. I found looking up at the kite caused me to fall off the board, and looking down at the board caused me to crash the kite. But by now I’d made sure I was having fun rather than stressing, and this chilled approach worked after a few false starts. In the kite part of kiteboarding, of course, you also have to focus on the sail, but as soon as I got used to the spatial dynamics of standing on the board, everything seem to click. I steadied the kite into a good position and carved a waterborne track down the lagoon, “kiting” properly at last.
Of the others, some had been more successful, some less. But we all stood on the board at some point and agreed the experience was well worth the effort and potential risk. Later, at the Windchasers HQ, as our class grinned our sunburned goodbyes, everyone received a small card proving we had mastered, and survived, the basics of kiteboarding.

Contact Windchasers on 082 079 0500 email info@windchaserssa.com or check out www.windchaserssa.com


Copyright Miles Masterson Media 2008 click here for menu

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Farryl Purkiss Huck Magazine (UK) May 2007

Farryl Purkiss hates Jack Johnson. Okay, no he doesn’t. In fact, the Hawaiian minstrel is has influenced Farryl in more ways than one. No, what actually grates this otherwise amiable South African is being compared to Jack, something he has had to endure through his recent ascent to fame in his home country.
“It is irritating, I won’t lie to you hey.” As he draws out the last word, Farryl’s smile is wry. “Now, unless they ask me I’m not going to bring it up. I’m a surfer and I play guitar, but the media stick immediately stick this label on me.”
The bearded muso, who is releasing his album and touring the UK in late April, then reflects for moment. “In the beginning it was an honour,” he adds. “It’s what the general public understand, so you just have to roll with. But also I’ve got my own thing going.”
Farryl’s reluctantly defines his music as “acoustic”, but his own musical tastes range from obscure crossover synth, to indie bands such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and of course to singer/songwriters such as Jose Gonzales and yes, Jack Johnson. Although Farryl says he hasn’t listened to the latter for a while, he recalls how he tapped into it early. “In 1998/99, the Malloy brothers used to come to Durban and stay with my friend Bob Cherry. They spent time at Jack’s place in Hawaii and had mini discs of them jamming. We never new who he was, it was just really cool music.”
Farryl’s self-titled debut album is a seamless collection of 14 velvet acoustic tracks, and whilst they occasionally remind one of Jack, remain uniquely Farryl Purkiss. He has already been nominated for awards in his homeland, and is this year set to tour Canada, the US, Oz (including headlining the Perth Big Day Out) and the UK.
But making a living from rock music is difficult in Africa and before he got his break, for a long time Farryl had to supplement his income by modelling, which he loathed. Then in 2003 - around the time Farryl was pondering deeply whether to pack it in - his cellphone rang. Farryl’s mate was on the line, urging him to get down to Durban’s Wave House pronto. “I arrived to find no one there but Peter, pointing at the D-Rex,” recalls Farryl. “On the right was Kelly Slater and on the left Jack Johnson.”
Jack eventually saw a gobsmacked Farryl standing in the rain and introduced himself. One thing led to another and they all ended up back at Farryl’s pad, jamming; and he and Jack began the rudiments of what is now one of the strongest songs on Farryl’s album, ‘Déjà Vu’.
“When he left I said to myself ‘if that is not a sign don’t know what is’. It was a big moment and I decided to go for it,” remembers Farryl.
So, if mellow, acoustic surfer-guitar rock is your flavour, then do yourself a service, get to a Farryl Purkiss gig or check out his CD. And if you see Farryl, say what’s up, bru.
Just don’t call him Jack.

Copyright Miles Masterson Media 2008 click here for menu

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Red Bull Big Wave Africa 06 Blunt Magazine August 2006

A Question of Character

Big wave surfers are crazy. You can’t watch them hurl themselves into ledging waves as large as a fleet of semi trucks without wondering what motivates them. And of course you need to include the word nuts when describing them, in more ways than one.
But who really knows what kind of drive it really takes to square up against the ocean and 17 of your peers? What kind of personality does it really take to give it a go?
As you bob up and down on the Nauticat to observe the spectacle of Big Waves, Africa style, you ponder this.
You see Capetonian Chris Bertish, replete with beanie and iPod, right hand forming a shark’s fin in front of his closed eyes in an intimate act of pre-event Zen. You see Twiggy Baker, fresh from a heat, shouting and throwing shakas, all Durban style cuzzin ekse, from a jetski at his mates on the boat. You see Andew Marr, far from his home in George, smiling and embracing his fellow surfers like long lost friends. Or Bluff boy Richie Sills: handshakes and stoked grins.
You also think back to what you know of the rest of these guys. The brash yet likeable confidence of New Pier scourges Jason Ribbink and John Whittle. The quietly spoken calm of J-Bay killer Sean Holmes, and of big wave champs Ian Armstrong and Mickey Duffus; and the apprehensive confidence of youth from fellow Kommetjie local Thomas King-Kleynhans.
Or the international contingent. Experienced, wild big wave heroes, Aussies Ross Clarke-Jones and the animalistic Paul Paterson and Brazilian Carlos Burle; fearless US Surfing mag editor Evan Slater and fellow Seppo Greg Long; or Pipeline Posse firecracker Jamie Sterling and the smiling Nor-Cal lifer Grant Washburn.
Like downhill skaters bombing rolling blue hills, these surfers all committed to set waves, when they came, on a disarmingly peachy Cape Town day in July, to the vocal support of the flotilla of spectators bobbing on the edge of the reef.
In their various approaches, you can see how their personalities manifest. Some paddle like demons for waves, and you can almost hear the snarling from the boat as they slap their feet on the board and lean over the precipice. Others appear more suddenly, chimera-like, easing themselves unnervingly into the quadruple overhead waves before you have even noticed them.
Some ride with aplomb, others eat their bravado, as they fall into the merciless pit.
On that note, there is one more defining character to take into account, that of the place herself. Any surfer will tell you that surf spots also have personalities, usually as tantalisingly mysterious and unpredictable as any woman.
The scale of Dungeons, queen of the Cape Atlantic spots, amplifies this. No matter how loudly confident, or quietly self-assured a surfer is, it comes down to the waves she lets you have, or indeed make it to the bottom of. Something both jet-lagged internationals and hardened locals realised, as the real bombs came only to those they were meant for that day.
Ultimately experience counted too, and the amount of time involved in the events over the years and put into the water at Dungeons was in part reflected by the overall result, with South Africans filling the top three positions.
Entitled, stoked and focused in that order, Red Bull BWA vets and favoured sons on the day, John Whittle, Andrew Marr and Chris Bertish used their different approaches to tame the 15 to 20 foot waves and win through to the money and glory.

Copyright Miles Masterson Media 2008 click here for menu

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Christian Fletcher

Storm 2006

“I came over here to England when I was 16 and bought all kinds of **cken Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix stuff; and tapes and pins and patches and shit and a Motorhead banner. You know the Motorhead banner? With a big rat in its mouth and all blood and stuff – and I still got that in my garage.”

Christian Fletcher, one of the most controversial surfer/skaters to come out of California remembers his first visit to Britain quite fondly. He and a group of older professional surfers had travelled over from your hometown of San Clemente to enter in a major contest down in Newquay, Cornwall. For a teenager into thrash, London proved to be paradise. He was stoked. But his travelling companions were not. They felt his raucous behaviour was not exemplary of that of the clean-cut pro surfer image their sponsors wanted the world to see. At that time professional surfing still hadn’t quite shrug off its druggie-layabout image and Christian’s behaviour – no matter how talented he may be – was not good for their image.

“And so,” continues Christian, “Deano, Scott Farnsworth and Brian McNulty were all ganging up on me out in London one night. They were goin’ – ‘What the **ck’s wrong with you? Why are you into that stuff? You’ve got to start worrying about your reputation, you’ve got to cut your hair and quit listening to that music.’ And I was like, ‘You know what? Do you think any one of your opinions mean a **cken thing to me?’”

What Christian now finds ironic is the fact that Dino Andino, who grew up surfing the same break - Trestles - as Christian, and who is two years his senior, was so against Christian’s music, he wanted to pick a fight. Then, a few years later, Deano who was by now in the top 50 in the world, grew his hair as the “grunge” movement became trendy and bands like Metallic turned mainstream.
“And then he’s singing the worst parts of the songs to Black Sabbath,” says Christian, “and goin’ ‘these guys are so rad’. And he’s singing ‘Lucifer take my hand’ and stuff that’s as funny as shit; after they tried to tell me that stuff before. But the trend only came five years after.”

Strangely this little story also punctuates Christian’s life as a competitive surfer. From the age of 16, and for the next couple of years, Christian was lauded as one of the most radical surfers in the world.

He graced the cover and centre spreads of the two major American glossies “Surfer” and “Surfing” and appeared in countless adverts and photo-spreads. His ticket to stardom was the aerial; never before had anyone so young broken the boundaries of surfing in the air with such confidence and every time the tour rolled through his home town, Christian whipped their arses. In 1990 he won USD100,000 at a Bud Tour contest at his home break; his brash aerials proved too much for the conservative four-waves-to-the-beach-for-maximum-points professional surfers.

But then things went awry. Christian’s radical lifestyle – he was unashamed to make it clear he smoked pot, partied, had tattoos and shaved and dyed his hair every colour in the spectrum whenever he felt like it – turned the mainstream “clean-cut” surfing establishment against him. 1977 World Champion and tube riding legend Shaun Tomson, along with college graduate and top 16 surfer Jeff Booth, instigated a petition which most of the top 30 surfers in the world signed. It was a protest at Christian – “a kid who spent the summer at Trestles” getting so much magazine exposure whilst the top pros grovelled on the tour all year and received less coverage than Fletcher. He didn’t deserve it they said.
Christian’s love affair with the surf media ended abruptly as a result of this. He feels advertisers put pressure on the media to feature contests and their tem riders. They buckled.

However, the petition sparked a lot of public interest and the magazines were swamped with letters supporting Christian for months afterwards. The real reason, he feels, behind it was because his surfing was so far ahead – by five years at least – he made professional surfing – which was in a slump at the time – and surfers look boring. And his lifestyle was not something parents who buy all the kids their equipment, would want their offspring to be involved with.
“At one of the contests one of the judges said to my dad (‘60s legend Herbie Fletcher) ‘tell Christian to slow down, the judges don’t know what he is doing.”

Moreover, Australian Ian Cairns, another former world champion, founder of the world surfing circuit and advocate of straight laced saleable professionalism, made it clear he wanted Christian out of the picture. Christian now calls him “a **cken prick.”
The year following Christian’s win at Trestles, he returned to defend his title, and despite his surfing being as good as the year before, he was eliminated early. He announced his retirement from competition and left the contest with a bitter taste in his mouth. Pro surfing had **cked him.

Christian turned to a new medium to show the world there was an alternative to the narrow conservative surfing of the ASP. With the help of his father, who runs one of the world’s largest deckgrip companies, Astrodeck, Christian starred and presented, with his younger brother Nathan (and Herbie on his longboard) a glut of surf videos back-sounded with his favourite heavy metal bands such as Napalm Death, Carcass and Bolthrower.

Kids with VCRs could still see that he was still pushing the limits, even if his style – although functional and well suited to a skateboard ramp, often looked ugly on a wave. Then in 1992 mainstream surfing caught up with what he had been doing five, or six years earlier and led by Kelly Slater, a new generation of professional surfers began to include big tailslides and aerials into their competitive repertoires.
An American magazine ran an article on the future wave of these surfers, including Dino Andino … and without a trace of Christian.

“I went in there and I said, ‘**ck, what’s going on?’” Explains Christian: “And they told me that I was too old, and basically I wasn’t new. And I told them, ‘**ck some of those guys featured are older’n me.’”

Christian reckons they’ve shunned him due to fear. “I’d rather hang out with my friends that don’t surf and drink beer and have fun and stuff, compared to hanging out with the pros.” But he is clearly pissed off at them. “Surfers are real conservative and skaters are more accepting of a different kind of lifestyle. The kind of music I listen to and the stuff I’m into; the surfers, they are kind of scared of it.”

However, Christian’s view of surfers has been distorted by professionals who according to him, preach one thing and do the next. His blonde wife Jennifer calls them “closet smokers” and he calls them “hippochristians, all image.”

Christian’s mission, to take skating into the water, is he believes, the main reason many top surfers wrote him off. They have a system and don’t want change. “I don’t think surfing can go much further on the boards they are riding … and if they spent more time trying to get radical on skate ramps and in the water instead of playing **cken ping pong … I just want to see surfing progress, and if I don’t do it, no one else will.”

Christian also feels surfing is not the unlimited charge many surfers think. “Surfing doesn’t blow my minbd, it just doesn’t. I mean, it’s a great sport and it’s fun and wonderful, and there’s some rad moves, like coming out of the tube, or launching airs. But for the most part it’s not like skating; (you’re) not like going up above the lip ten feet and doing a flip and a half and landing, or on a snowboard, flying off a hundred foot cliff. To me that is – I like it best on the halfpipe – that is mindblowing.

Christian is good mates with top skaters like Christian Hosei and although he doesn’t place himself quite in their ranks, he is clearly shit-hot. He gets a rush from it, and unlike surfing, if you fall, you deal with concrete. Hard and unforgiving. This risk gets his adrenalin thumping.

He continues on the good points of skating animatedly. “They’ve got guys who do stuff, right? You’ve got seventeen stairs and a handrail and it’s raining and a guy comes and does an ollie to backside disaster on the handrail and slides down seventeen stairs and lands on the street, in the rain, and skates away.”

“I’m into it 50/50,” he says. “I like to do big airs, do my trick and do it clean and land it and ride away … but I also like to do a big **cken super hard carve. Too many surfers today do small tricks – stuff I was doin’ years ago – and they can’t surf really rad. “My style is not for everybody, but it is what I want to do.”

Christian is amped now and the stories flow. “My friend, Chris Markovitch, he got on the roof of a building, they set a little plywood up against the lip right? He just launches over it, does a kick flip over the alley and lands on the next roof. Now that’s mindblowing.”

Nevertheless, he still respects “hard surfing”, as he calls it, and Hawaiian legends such as Dave Kealoha, Marvin Foster and Australian power men like Tom Carroll and Luke Egan, are among his favourite surfers.

In 1995 Christian Fletcher had been all but forgotten by the American Surf media, and despite a short terms ponsorship from British wetsuit manufactuer, Gul terminated, according to them because an article by this writer which appeared in ‘Wavelength’ Surfing magazine in which Christian spoke his mind about his dislike of professional surfers and how he felt the world was on the brink of destruction, he continues to produce videos starring himself and his unique brand of surfing.
In the article I all but called Christian a has-been and wash-out, which was perhaps a bit harsh seeing as he has contributed so much to surfing and has every right to feel the way he does.

Nevertheless, what do you expect the mainstream of society to think of a man who is not averse to putting pills on his tongue and who cites “smoking pot and listening to brutal music” as the two major influences in his life.
His former sponsor proofed my article and cut the above statement, saying it was a bad influence for kids; a veiled threat to pull advertising if it went in as it was.

That about sums up Christian’s life. He is extreme and outspoken, but the world would be boring without people like him.
He still lives in San Clemente, surfs Trestles regularly and then drives up top the snow to go ‘boarding. He has son’s name – ‘Greyson Thunder’ – tattooed on the back of his neck and he runs his own clothing and surfboard brand under his own name.
Professional surfing wrote him off, and the media shunned him, but I think we all know who had the last laugh.

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