Slide Magazine...

Gabriel Medina. 15-years old...

The final of the King Of The Groms comp held the day after the Quik Pro. Darn sight more exciting than the actual final of the WCT. Wildcard for the Portugal event please Rip Curl! This does not bode well for the Brit juniors...

MVP You Decide... Tom Lowe

Lowey maybe back in the water now after getting mown down by Laird's barge. Here he is in happier times-

Dane, Kelly & Jordy Do Wheelies...

The Finals day of the Quik Pro may have been a yawn inducing hack attack but there were some glorious moments of aerial mastery... Here are three.

Quik Pro France 09- Day 5

Some fella called Mick Fanning has just won the Quik Pro France; you heard of him? If you don’t know him he’s easy to spot cos he’s the skinny blonde dude dragging around a scuffed Louis Vuitton suitcase full of crisp dollar bills. Mick’s total winnings in the last week or so total a marvellous $145,000US. Which is not bad going in anyone’s book. As a surf photographer it would take you approximately 5-years to earn that same amount. Which is thoroughly and terminally depressing…

Quik Pro France 09- Day 4

I’m gonna be honest with you people. It’s half past midnight here in France. I was on the beach from 8am til 7ish. I feel like my eyes are going to fall off, a decidedly uneven tan is forming and I’m having trouble forming coherent sentences. Not because I am drunk- it’s just been a long, sun-baking, booby-admiring, aerial-wafting, upset-happening, Dane-worshipping, crowd-pleasing day… and it’s hard to put a whole day of the Quik Pro France into words when you’re yawning and you’ve got to be back at the comp in six and a bit hours.

Quik Pro France 09- Day 3, well kinda...

I had such good intentions for today’s blog. Round 3 was imminent, just a few Rd2 heats to get out the way then it was game on. The weather was supposed to be sorting its life out and the swell whilst dropping was supposed to still be fun. No worries I thought, some small stuff will be good for punts and shit, be like an airshow yo. Here’s my first entry diligently typed on my phone.

Quik Pro France 09- Day 2

Day 2 was D-Day at ze French CT. The D is for Disappointment. Pained faces sucking up 33rd places.  Mummies brave little soldiers need to keep their chins up as they embark on a long ten days of soul searching before the next leg kicks off in Spain. The Dream Tour ain't all good times and easily obtained blow jobs; especially if you're a tail-end Charlie languishing below the cut.  Ten days of ennui in a small French town that's shutting up shop for the winter ain’t fun. Even the main diversions of the bowling alley, ogling unobtainable waitresses and cheap red won’t heal the pain. Not looking like going for a surf is going to be much of an option either…

Quik Pro France 09- Day 1

I’ll be honest now- I’m knackered, much like the WCT crew, who to a man are on the jetlag program. Sure I didn’t fly from L.A to London then scoot to a different London airport then fly to France and drive the last hour from Bordeaux to Hossegor. No that’s posh and I wasn’t in California. I got an 8-hour ferry full of fat old Brit’s and skinny French pensioners and then drove for 9-hours hopped up on espressos whilst avoiding dozing Portuguese truckers. Not as glamorous but just as tiring.

Model Ho?

HellYeah is an unusual name, where the hell does it come from?
You may think ‘Hell Yeah’ comes from WWE wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin, but no, in fact I just inherited it from my father, Hellyer, and Hell Yeah just caught on in the school playground…
 
And it's Sophie with an 'ie'. Not a 'y'. Why?
Sophie with an ‘ie’ not a ‘y’ ? I don't know, because my parents weren’t lazy and could spell properly? Now that’s a silly question Sharpie.

Mark Mathews Ours Nuttiness...

Taking the GoPro cams to extremes at Ours... As this technology develops are minds are going to get fully bent...

Reubs Rides The Nationals Express...

This weekend was dem British Nationals. An important event. Cos calling yourself 'British Champ' opens many doors and generally means you don't have to make tea for anyone anymore. It was at Fistral (quelle surprise- it should be at Thurso like it used to be!) and the surf was flat dribbly shite on Saturday (so small and poopy looking on the webcams that I didn't even bother going) but it built a bit for Sunday and was contestable, onshore, closey-outy, dribbley shite instead. In other words business as usual for British comps... Not that the dire surf prevented some serious schwacking, punting and gouging from going on.

21 Days Later- Mentawais review...

I've just watched Mr B's awesome new version of 21 Days Later and I'm wiping the tears of mirth from my eyes. The re-edited, rejigged, re-soundtracked version seems a whole different world compared to the hurried, bare bones version we put out with issue 3 of the magazine back in 2006. That was a 20-min promo clip, this is a film. B's editing and production skills are sublime and he's created an amazing package from a pretty huge stock of footage from the trip but what makes the DVD for me are the extras. Surf DVD extras aren't something you'll normally trouble yourself with but it's worth buying this purely for the commentary version...

Gnarly With A Capital 'Gnar'...

Batty's known for just being there one day and gone the next, no one even knowing where he has gone. That and for going feral in Indo for months on end, travelling around by local canoe, living on porridge, sleeping in his little mozzie tent and scoring insane waves…

Err?

Technology is a marvellous thing. I'm currently lying on some nice flat sandstone (thanks passing geography field trip for that titbit) on the north side of Lahinch Bay. The sun is blazing. People are in bikinis (women anyway) and life is good. All the while I'm sorting out trips with Mr Nunn of Wavelengthshire and getting jazzed on the Indo clip that Batty just uploaded to me. All through me phone.
Just thought I'd let you know. Battys clip will be up later once I've found some wifi. Cos whilst tech is cool it ain't free.

Jamie's Italian- Canary Wharf...

Surfers need to eat. Can't perform or endure unless you've got fuel in the machine. So with that in mind I've added a new category to the site- namely 'Noshing'. Food, eateries and more encountered on the road in this surfing life from roadside stalls to as posh as I can afford -as in not that posh- restaurants. Now Canary Wharf is in London. The big village that runs England. It's not renowned for it's surf but it does play home to a lot of surfers and if you are going anywhere more tres exotique then odds on you're around London to go to an airport (if you're going to City airport this is right on your flight path)...

Lady GaGa Nearly Killed Me... (Or CaliGirlVacation)

A trip from February which has never seen the light of day in the surf mags... So here it is in interweb form... Pics here.

In which our heroines- Bethanwy Mason, Gwendolen Spurlock and Anastasia Swallow head Stateside to traverse the Golden State from north to south in search of waves, good times, ice-fuelled mentalists, celeb’s and the perfect breakfast pancake… (Whilst also attempting to turn one previously sane surf photographer completely doo-lally through the sickening mental torture of Lady GaGa on infinite repeat).

Things didn’t start well. I’d got on a plane in the tropical heat of Bali at the end of January and got off in a London that was battening down the hatches for a serious winter storm. ‘No problem,’ think I, ‘we don’t get proper snow anymore!’ I was wrong- three days of public transport free, snowy, house arrest and many flight cancellations later I was en route to Heathrow unsure if we’d be going to California at all…

And I Didn't Even Mention Haggis...

1. Dunnet…
Is the most Northerly point of mainland Britain. Not John O’Groats. Dunnet is a more classy affair than its slutty, cheap whore of a neighbour. Featuring a small car park, a lighthouse, spectacular views and some high class cliffs it’s a world apart from the tacky gift shops and general shiteness of the ‘Groats’. Dunnet also has a fun little beachbreak and a sweet right pointbreak whilst the ‘Groats’ has bog all except too many shops where you can buy ‘My parents went to John O’Groats and all they bought me was this crappy T-Shirt’ rubbish. They do have a lovely range of tea-towels though.