Jordy Smith was getting all over the nearly perfect performance waves at the Nike 6.0 Lowers Pro at Trestles today. In the round of 48 he and Josh Kerr rolled over Brazil’s Wiggoly Dantas and Damien Hobgood and then he marched right through Gabe Kling and Aritz Aranburu and will meet Josh Kerr in Heat 8 of the Round of 16 tomorrow morning. It doesn’t look like much will stop him.
The resulting visual history of Santa Cruz surfing is beautiful — and unlike anything before compiled. It ranges from the skateboarding-spawned origins of aerial surfing with an innovator named Kevin Reed to the divergent personalities of Westside icons Richard Schmidt (now a popular surf instructor at Cowell’s) and Vince Collier (the self-appointed Godfather of the so-called Westsiders surf gang).
From there Conley says it “buries the nose and tumbles.” But we still want to see it.
“I’m going to get in the ocean,” she told us. “I promised myself I’d learn how to surf this year. I surf a little bit and so I’ve got my pink surf board and I’m ready to get in the ocean. . . “I’m always learning new things. I think it’s really important as we get older to not think that you’re not too old to learn something new. It makes you live better.”
It’s difficult to believe there’s anything she hasn’t exposed herself to.
Thanks to the new ASP scoring system the Nike 6.0 Lowers Pro is going to be as close as we get to an elite World Tour event until the Hurley Pro in September 12-21, 2010.
Top seeds in this year’s ASP PRIME 6.0 Lowers Pro include former three-time ASP World Champion Andy Irons (Hanalei, HI), 31, California wunderkind Dane Reynolds (Ventura, CA), 24, defending 6.0 Lowers Pro Champion Fred Patacchia (North Shore, HI), 28, and rookie talent Owen Wright (AUS), 20, amongst others.
It all goes down (along with the Oakley Junior Pro) May 4-8, 2010. Guess we have to go.
Never really paid that much attention to Josh Kerr, but this trailer from his new self-produced bio-pic Kerrazy Kronicles is fixin’ to change all that. As Stab Mag says:
From the death drop to double-barrel at 50 seconds and the flurry of Lien grab oops, turns and tweaked punts, there’s enough here to suggest Julian and JOB have a dark horse to rival them for the year’s best profile film.
After two Westside teenagers were killed in the last six month, Santa Cruz Sentinel writer Jennifer Squires investigates the crossover between Westside surfers and gang bangers. As evidenced by the deaths of Tyler Tenorio, 16, and Carl Reimer, 19, sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Culture has changed,” said Santa Cruz Police Deputy Chief Rick Martinez, a Harbor High graduate. “There was a day when Eastside-Westside was a surf rivalry in our town. Now if you’re claiming Westside’ or Eastside,’ depending on the context, you could be representing a gang.” . . The east-west localism in Santa Cruz grew out of the community’s surfing tradition. As riding waves grew in popularity, kids stuck to the breaks in their neighborhoods and tried to keep outsiders from their favorite spots. . . . “Surfers tend to be a little territorial,” said John Mel, 63, who owns Freeline surf shop in Pleasure Point on the Eastside. “But it’s tongue in cheek.”
Flea is quoted as saying: “People need to not focus on Eastside-Westside rivalries, but instead realize everyone is from Santa Cruz.” Sadly, it’s the local battles that always seem the biggest. . .
Sam George’s feature documentary Hollywood Don’t Surf focuses on how many times Hollywood has failed when trying to properly capture surfing will be shown at a sneak preview at the Cannes Film Festival next week according to a story in the Laguna Beach Independent.
The cinematic retrospective explores 50 years of Hollywood surfing movies, featuring rare surfing footage, such as Thomas Edison’s 1906 Hawaiian surfing footage, and excerpts and behind-the-scenes shots from numerous surfing films including “Gidget” beach party movies, “Ride the Wild Surf,” “Big Wednesday,” “North Shore,” “Point Break,” “In God’s Hands” and “Blue Crush.” Interviews with Hollywood luminaries and surf stars include Quentin Tarantino, John Milius, Steven Spielberg, Stacy Peralta, Mac- Gillivray, Gary Busey, Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, Greg Noll, Laird Hamilton, Peter Townend, Robert Englund, Frankie Avalon and real-life “Gidget” Kathy Kohner.
We’re most interested in seeing how Sam handles the In God’s Hands section.
Anyone who watched Brazilian ASP Tour rookie Jadson Andre charging through the early rounds of the Billabong Pro Santa Catarina knows that he was not in it for second place. He’s grown up in these small, fast waves, he’s trained in them, and for the last few days he’s dominated them.
He didn’t slow down as he squeaked past Dane Reynolds in the last five seconds of semi-final 1, and he didn’t stop when the waves gave up in his final against nine-time world champion Kelly Slater.
“I’ve been waiting so long for this day. This is the best day of my life,” Andre said on the podium. “Thanks everybody: My family, my dad, my momma. This is the best day of my life.”
Kelly was mostly gracious in defeat. “These waves were made for Jadson. Obviously, no one was going to stop him here,” Slater said before adding a little competitive dig. “It will be interesting to see how he does when it comes to Teahupoo and Pipeline.”
We’re kind of wondering why we even write these things up, honestly. We must be on some kind of autopilot or something. Click the link for full results and quotes from the people paid by the ASP to present things correctly. [click to continue…]
Anyone who grew up listening to LA and Orange County’s World Famous KROQ radio station will agree that one of the best parts of the Kevin & Bean Show every morning was when Rockin’ Fig aka Rick Fignetti would call in with the morning surf report. Fignetti’s sing-song, surfer-dude whine is synonymous with Southern California surfing and yet, KROQ has apparently decided to switch to an “automated online forecast,” according to a story on OrangeCounty.com.
Local surfers and fans are bummed that Fig’s upbeat voice is no longer waking them up during his 30-second radio spot, the departure leaving a void in people’s early morning routines. . . “Surfing is bigger than ever, and I can’t believe they took him off the air,” said listener Bob Kizanis, who listens to the report during his morning drive. “We have to let them know that this is a tremendous mistake for their station.”
Guess if we still listened to radio, we’d be bummed, too.
