Like most YouTube videos posted by , a 29-year-old surfer known for riding the world鈥檚 scariest waves, the clip posted on April 12, 2019, leads with cuteness.

Titled 鈥淔ull Day of Surfing with My Brothers and John Gives Me a Board to Try!!! || Nate鈥檚 Big 国产吃瓜黑料,鈥� it opens mid-frame like a raw home movie. You see Florence barefoot and giggling in surf trunks on green grass, shaggy brown hair cut in a DIY-looking mullet. Then he鈥檚 snuggling a fluffy cat and whispering, 鈥淭ell the viewers hello. Show them your pretty blue eyes.鈥�

Unlike most of Florence鈥檚 videos, this one hints at the elephant in the room of Florence鈥檚 life, and also at the brilliant solution that has made him the unlikely breakout star of surfing鈥檚 most surprising new generation: the high-performance YouTubers creating an entirely new category of pro surfer.

The first clue comes in the video鈥檚 title. 鈥淛ohn鈥� is Nathan鈥檚 eldest brother, John John Florence, the two-time World Champion, the reigning king of American surfing. The second clue comes in a small-wave action montage that skips from Nathan surfing with enviable power and flow to John John surfing so much faster and better than Nathan鈥攁nd pretty much everyone else on earth鈥攖hat it鈥檚 almost embarrassing.

Back at his house on Oahu鈥檚 North Shore, Nathan turns to the camera and recalls the session in that montage, how he sat on his board and innocently told his brother that he was seeing air sections here and there. Nathan then slips into a different voice, channeling somebody harder and tougher鈥攍ike maybe (and this is just a guess) John John. 鈥溾�夆�榊eah. There is. Maybe I鈥檓 going to, like 鈥� go for one.鈥欌�夆�� Two waves later, Nathan says with the eternal outrage of an upstaged younger brother, John John launched a huge 360 air, stuck the landing, carved a turn, and then boosted another鈥攖ruly elite, competition-winning stuff, tossed off in a casual surf.

Florence, now performing his own disgusted rage at the very sight of this, says, 鈥淚鈥檓 just like, You know what?鈥�鈥� Then he bursts out laughing and says, 鈥�You know what? I鈥檓 outta here!鈥�

Outta the whole game, that is鈥攐utta the entire lose-lose proposition of competing head-on with his gifted brother, and instead into a game of his own invention, one he鈥檚 already winning.

Florence鈥檚 mother eventually found them a home on the sand at Pipeline, surfing鈥檚 ultimate proving ground. With superstars like Kelly Slater competing out front, the Florence boys dreamed of going pro.

鈥淛ohn was ultracompetitive, and he was winning contests from early on,鈥� Florence says. 鈥淎nd I was not. I just sucked in events.鈥�

Back then the only other path to pro sponsorship was that of the so-called free surfer. To succeed with this whimsical-sounding career, surfers had to show up at high-profile breaks whenever the cameras were rolling, surf well enough to get photos in magazines, and release occasional feature-length videos. Guys鈥攁nd they were always male, like Dave Rastovich, Donavon Frankenreiter, and later Rob Machado鈥攎ade a decent living this way in the 1990s and early 2000s.

鈥淏y the time Nathan came into his own, that world had already changed,鈥� says Kai Lenny, a big-wave surfer from Maui. The free-surfer model had fallen apart鈥攎ainly because Facebook and Google devoured the global ad business, killing off most of the surf mags in the process, and because free YouTube content destroyed the market for surf videos.

John John survived鈥攁nd thrived鈥攂y going the conventional route, winning the Championship Tour of the World Surf League in 2016 and 2017. Nathan needed a different strategy. He鈥檇 always been good in giant surf, so he tried competing on the WSL鈥檚 less lucrative Big Wave Tour鈥攔acking up good contest results at Mexico鈥檚 Puerto Escondido, in Portugal, and back in Hawaii. In 2019, the WSL canceled the tour outright, in favor of what the league called a 鈥渂ig wave platform鈥� that no longer crowned a world champion.

That left the Billabong XXL Awards, an annual competition with prize money based on footage from the prior year. Florence dutifully flew around the world, charging watery mountains and sending in clips that made him a solid contender in 2020 and 2021鈥攋ust in time for Billabong, in 2022, to shelve the XXL Awards.

Cue Jamie O鈥橞rien, former contest pro and North Shore local, a childhood friend of the Florences who is 11 years older than Nathan. As surfing鈥檚 first successful YouTuber, O鈥橞rien was鈥攁nd still is鈥攑umping out two videos a week, blending famous-surfer cameos and zany high jinks like riding Pipeline in an inflatable dinosaur costume.

鈥淗e actually came to me,鈥� Florence says of O鈥橞rien, 鈥渁nd was like, 鈥楬ey, what are you doing? You鈥檙e blowing it. You鈥檙e killing it on Instagram, but you need to get on YouTube.鈥� I was like, 鈥極h, my God, 100 percent.鈥欌�夆��

Which is how Florence broke his back earlier this year at a spot on Maui called Jaws. He had just popped to his feet at the top of a wave, he says, when the entire wall went concave. 鈥淚 just see 30 feet drop out below me, and I鈥檓 like, 鈥極h, my God,鈥欌�夆�� he says.

Florence plummeted through space, skipped like a stone down the lower portion of the face, then got sucked back into the curl. When he landed a second time, he says, his body went from bent forward in a safety position to flexed backward like a bow. 鈥淚 felt the snap and was like, I think I broke my back.鈥�

Scans later revealed a compressed vertebra, but Florence expects to make a full recovery. In the meantime, he鈥檚 still cranking out videos鈥攚atching the Eddie Aikau Invitational big-wave contest from shore, answering viewer questions with his wife, even doing standard influencer fare such as unboxing packages from sponsors like C4 Energy, GoPro, and Vans. Holding a bottle of CBD body oil, for example, Florence says into the camera, 鈥淪peaking of body oil, guess who started an OnlyFans? It鈥檚 a lot of XX-clusive content.鈥� Florence launched his channel on the subscription service widely known for pornography in July 2021. But, he adds, 鈥淚t鈥檚 not what you think. We鈥檙e doing tips and tricks 鈥� how to stay fit on land for the water.鈥�

Florence isn鈥檛 the only pro making content, of course. Ben Graeff, a scraggly-haired New Jersey surfer who goes by Ben Gravy, does pretty well with videos of himself riding novelty waves like tidal bores, boat wakes, and Great Lakes dribblers. More to the point, a whole clutch of Florence鈥檚 Hawaiian peers are helping pioneer this new business model with content of their own. Koa Rothman, for example, another North Shore standout and childhood friend of the Florences, has a successful YouTube series called This Is Livin鈥�. (Florence and Rothman also do the Nate and Koa Podcast together.) Kai Lenny, with production support from his sponsor Red Bull, puts out an infrequent but slickly produced video series called Life of Kai. Then of course there鈥檚 O鈥橞rien鈥攕till at it, with more YouTube subscribers than any other surfer, 897,000 at last count.

Yet with more than 139 million total views and nearly a billion impressions in 2022 alone, there鈥檚 a case to be made that Florence now leads the pack. (He also has nearly double the subscriber count of his more talented brother.) Florence is cagey about exactly how much money he earns but calls it 鈥渃ompound growth.鈥� As he explains: 鈥淵ouTube starts to pay you from the ad revenue, you go on more surf trips because you鈥檙e getting money to travel, and you put out more content and bring more value to your brands. It鈥檚 a snowball effect.鈥�

Florence adds that he鈥檚 already doing better than contest pros ranked in the top 20 on the World Tour. 鈥淪ome of those guys don鈥檛 have a main sponsor,鈥� he says. 鈥淗ow gnarly is that? You鈥檙e one of the 20 best surfers in the world. But a brand looks at you and goes, 鈥榊ou don鈥檛 have eyes on you. How can we get you to sell our product?鈥欌�夆��

Meanwhile, Florence doesn鈥檛 have to worry about contest results or injuries suddenly derailing his entire career; he just has to be himself.

鈥淪o many people are a different person on social media,鈥� he says, 鈥渢hey change their personality. I鈥檓 never going to do that. I鈥檓 going to be myself. I鈥檓 a weird dude. I鈥檓 a dork. I don鈥檛 mind putting it out there.鈥�

The post How Nathan Florence Used YouTube to Achieve Surfing Stardom appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

This story update is part of the 国产吃瓜黑料 Classics, a series highlighting the best writing we鈥檝e ever published, along with author interviews and other exclusive bonus materials. Get access to all of the 国产吃瓜黑料 Classics when you sign up for 国产吃瓜黑料+.听

In 1998, Susan Casey, then the editor of Women 国产吃瓜黑料, a monthly 国产吃瓜黑料 magazine offshoot, sent Susan Orlean to Maui, Hawaii, with the vague direction to track down a list of young women听thought to be serious surfers. Orlean, who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992, did just that鈥攐nly to find that none of the women actually surfed.

Luckily, a tip led Orlean to the small, remote town of Hana, way over on Maui鈥檚 east side. There she met Theresa, Angie, and Lilia, the听surfers who would star in Orlean鈥檚 story of young women on the cusp of adulthood.

That piece, which ran under the headline 鈥�Life鈥檚 Swell,鈥� eventually grew into the 2002 film Blue Crush,听starring Kate Bosworth, Sanoe Lake, and Michelle Rodriguez. The film performed all right at the box office, and yeah, some of the scenes of Pipeline are a little cringey (that鈥檚 what you get when you on surfer Rochelle Ballard鈥檚 body, or when you put North Shore big-wave surfer Noah Johnson in a blond wig for some of the action shots), but the movie eventually became a cult classic, inspiring all sorts of young women to head to the waves.

Here, surf writer Daniel Duane chats with Orlean about how 鈥淟ife鈥檚 Swell鈥� came to be.

OUTSIDE: I just reread the Maui-girls story, which is so fun, and it kicks off with a totally sparkling lead. I understand how somebody just started reading it and thought, This is a movie right now.
ORLEAN: Oh, thanks. Doing the story was really fun, and it just kind of fell together. The writing fell together easily, which was nice.

Tell me how the story came to be. How did the assignment happen?
Well, it was kind of funny. I had been doing stuff for 国产吃瓜黑料, and Susan Casey, who was then running Women 国产吃瓜黑料, said to me, 鈥淗ow would you like to do a story about these girls who are big surfers in Hawaii?鈥� Generally, I come up with my own story ideas. It鈥檚 rare that I respond well to someone鈥檚 suggestion. But I thought it sounded great. And as I recall, I basically got a flight and went, and when I arrived in Maui, I started calling the different girls whose names Susan had given me. And one after another, they said, 鈥淥h, I don鈥檛 surf anymore鈥� or 鈥淵eah, I鈥檓 not that interested in surfing.鈥� It was every reporter鈥檚 nightmare. It was like, 鈥淲hat? You don鈥檛 surf anymore? Here I am in Maui, and I spent all this time and the magazine鈥檚 money to come here, and none of you guys surf?鈥� I was very discouraged.

I talked to Susan and sorta said, 鈥淟ook, the story鈥檚 a bust, so sorry, but, you know, I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 going to happen.鈥� And she said, 鈥淪tick around another day or two, you know, see what you can find.鈥� There was one girl on the list that I had been given who was a bodysurfer. And I had originally not called her, because that was not quite what I was looking for, but I thought, Well, she鈥檚 the last person on my list. Why don鈥檛 I call her? And she answered the phone, and we spoke a bit, and I confided in her and said, 鈥淚鈥檓 going crazy because this list of names that I was given, none of these girls surf anymore.鈥� And she said, 鈥淥h, those aren鈥檛 the real surfers. I don鈥檛 know who gave you that list. But those girls aren鈥檛 the real surfers. The real surfers are out in Hana, and I can introduce you to all of them.鈥� And it was like, 鈥淥h my God, are you serious?鈥� She basically took me in hand and introduced me to this whole group of girls who were really serious about surfing. I think the other girls had surfed a little and it was kind of a short-term hobby, but these were the girls who were really serious about it and devoted to it. So it was sort of pay dirt. And it was of course the better story than the one that I had set off to do鈥攐r certainly the better subjects. I mean, they were exactly what I had hoped the other girls were all about, and they were just the wrong people.

Do you remember that first drive out to Hana?
Oh my God, yeah. Anybody who has done that drive doesn鈥檛 forget it, because it is a very challenging road. It鈥檚 not very far, and I鈥檓 a totally fearless driver鈥擨 have no fear of driving anywhere鈥攂ut it鈥檚 the most harrowing drive, and [you鈥檙e] doing it in a rental car where you have no idea the quality of the car鈥檚 tires or traction. It was actually very interesting because Maui鈥攃ertainly where I was staying鈥攊s very developed, very civilized, you know? You come to believe that all of Maui is very developed, so driving to Hana, it鈥檚 a real surprise to go through parts of Maui that are so wild and undeveloped and rugged. I mean, it was very cool.

How about when you came down into that town? You described going to that general store, and I know that general store, so when you come down into the town and you go to that general store, how did Hana itself strike you?
You know: classic small town, where everybody knows where everybody is. And clearly everybody knows everybody. I mean, all I had to do was stand there for a few minutes and I could find out where all the girls were. Part of what was really interesting was how you鈥檙e in a town where people truly keep an eye on each other and know each other literally on a first-name basis. It鈥檚 also very Hawaiian. I remember being in that store and seeing all those kinds of rice-ball snacks and Spam snacks, which when you鈥檙e in the main part of Maui that鈥檚 much more developed, more touristy, you don鈥檛 get quite as much a feel for鈥攖he real Hawaii, the Hawaii that is not for tourists but for the people who live there full time and really are part of the culture. And I really felt it there, like I was seeing Hawaii in a very different way.

I remember once being down at the beach there, watching kids after school surfing on small waves. I can鈥檛 remember the name of the beach, but it struck me as one of those rare glimpses of paradise there, the lives of those kids in the water. I guess I can imagine being there, and meeting those girls, and seeing them in the water and thinking, Wow, this is really a special scene out here.
Oh yeah. It seemed very authentic. That鈥檚 one thing about Hawaii鈥攁s a tourist, you can be frustrated sometimes, feeling like you鈥檙e never really seeing the place, that you鈥檙e always seeing some kind of tourist version of it, and this felt authentic. It also seemed idyllic鈥攁lthough that鈥檚 partly an illusion as well. A lot of these girls didn鈥檛 have intact families, and it wasn鈥檛 purely a kind of Mayberry experience. Some of them had fairly tough lives. So the setting is idyllic, and the idea that you come after school and go surf, all of that, of course, seems like paradise. But there鈥檚 a lot of complexity as well.

There鈥檚 a really nice description at the end of your piece. You described your plane sort of rising up over the island and looking back down and wanting to think of those girls as always there. And that story had such a life after your departure. I mean, of course, the writing of the article and then the movie that was loosely based on it. How does that memory sit with you now, when you think of that moment in the plane looking back down?
A lot of what interested me in doing this story was, when I鈥檝e written about young people, the sense that the age at which you view them is an eternal age at which they will remain forever. You know, when you鈥檙e writing about adults, you aren鈥檛 thinking about the transitions their life will take. They鈥檙e an adult. They鈥檙e fully formed. You just see them as a person who you鈥檙e catching at a moment. I think when you鈥檙e writing about young people, for me, I鈥檓 always acutely aware of how transitory the moment is, and that the moment at which I am seeing them is just one very specific moment, and it will change. So there鈥檚 a lot of poignancy for me in those stories, because you know the minute you put it down on paper, they鈥檒l have changed, and it will immediately become a sort of reference to another point of their lives.

In the case of the girls, too, I was catching them while they were inflamed with this enthusiasm, and they all fantasized that they would become professional surfers. As an adult who knew a little bit more about maybe how the world works, I knew that that dream was unlikely to come to fruition for most of them, if not all of them. So I was catching them also at a moment where they still believed in this possibility, and they hadn鈥檛 yet had the more rude awakening of reality that, no, they probably weren鈥檛 gonna make a living as professional surfers. So it鈥檚 capturing a dream in its most buoyant moment before the very kind of drab reality of possibility lands and punctures it.

I鈥檝e been a surfer for 30-plus years, and I saw Blue Crush when it came out, and I鈥檝e written and thought a lot about surf culture over the years, so I have a real sense of what a cultural milestone it was. I鈥檓 really curious to hear your sense of the relationship between the girls you met and their lives, and the story told in Blue Crush, and why it had the effect in the culture that it did at the time.
You know, it鈥檚 so interesting. I mean, I haven鈥檛 seen Blue Crush听in ages, so I can鈥檛 speak really authoritatively about it, but the girls were a little older in the movie, they had relationships with boys that were more developed. The girls that I wrote about, many of them were still kids. The girls in the movie, as I recall, some of them were working and they were just like, they kicked up their age a little bit, perhaps to give them a bit more independence and agency. But I felt that the intention of the movie was very close to the spirit of the story.

Why has this movie caught on? I feel like it鈥檚 an evergreen. I barely meet anyone who hasn鈥檛 seen it, particularly women who say, 鈥淥h, yeah, we used to watch it in my dorm room in college all the time.鈥� It鈥檚 one of those movies that, when it came out, I think the box office was unimpressive. It was fine. It wasn鈥檛 a blockbuster by any means. But it seems to have had a stickiness that many movies don鈥檛 have. Was it because it was an early movie about women鈥檚 surfing?听For all I know, it was the first movie ever about women鈥檚 surfing. Although I guarantee you that the number of women who have watched the movie who are surfers is probably low. Is it some sense of freedom and physical strength? I鈥檓 not sure. I mean, I think if you could identify what quality about it has made it something of a cult movie… I mean, the cinematography is great. The cast seems to truly embody the characters. Are they great actors? Who knows. But they certainly cast that movie perfectly. It seems to have captured the quality of independence and self-determination without being didactic that kind of caught people鈥檚 imagination.

How do you think the culture has evolved since then? The very fact that there was a Women鈥檚 国产吃瓜黑料 magazine in which the article first appeared seems an artifact of the time. And I鈥檓 curious to hear your thoughts on how our culture around women in sports and women being depicted as strong athletes with agency has changed. There鈥檚 that sort of curious quality in the movie, where the lead girl is both trying to surf Pipeline, which is this extremely dangerous technical wave, and dating an NFL guy who happens to be vacationing on the island. So she鈥檚 kind of in the braver position, there鈥檚 a sort of an interesting inversion. How do you think the culture has moved since then around those kinds of stories?
Well, I think it鈥檚 easy to forget how fresh the idea was at that time. I don鈥檛 remember the year that movie came out, but now when we see women in just about every sport, and women referees in the NFL, there鈥檚 been a considerable sort of speeding up of acceptance of women as athletes. And in fact, I would argue that many of the real standout athletes of the past ten years have been women. Serena Williams, Simone Biles. You鈥檝e got the women鈥檚 soccer team and so forth. So I think that it鈥檚 been normalized in a kind of accumulative way. We鈥檝e forgotten that, at the time that Blue Crush came out, at the time my story came out, it was kind of surprising.

Even for people who felt quite comfortable with the tenets of feminism, I don鈥檛 know that women doing certain sports like surfing had become familiar and common. It just wasn鈥檛 a sport that women had penetrated in a very public way. I think the ability of women athletes has been so amply demonstrated over the past ten or fifteen years that we鈥檝e become fairly used to it. But back then it was still a bit of a surprise. And for these girls, there were not a lot of women professional surfers [who were] role models. That just wasn鈥檛 yet a familiar sight, and coverage of women鈥檚 sports, which I think is a huge part of it, was still given short shrift.

As a journalist and a writer, what was the experience of writing that article and having it turn out the way it did, and its transformation into the movie, and its long life to this day? Were there any lessons about the relationship between life and writing? And what makes a compelling story for you? Did you have any takeaway over the years, mulling that experience?
I think I鈥檝e always been permitted the luxury of following my curiosities and my intuition about what makes a good story. And I鈥檝e always shied away from the story that is about a woman performing something that is not normally associated with women, because that had become a kind of tired trope in magazines鈥攜ou know, the first woman arc welder, or whatever. So I think that I鈥檝e avoided those stories. There was something about going, 鈥淥h my God, oh my God, there鈥檚 a woman doing a man鈥檚 job鈥� that really offended me, because you think, Well, wait a minute, this shouldn鈥檛 be treated as a crazy freak show; we should accept it as that鈥檚 the way things should be, so let鈥檚 not turn it into a big deal. But the bottom line is, I didn鈥檛 write the story with that as the point. I just thought, This is an interesting thing to observe, and I don鈥檛 have to feel burdened by this idea that, oh, the big point of the story is girls doing a man鈥檚 sport, but instead let鈥檚 go past that and write about the experience that these girls have doing this sport. I think this goes to the more general sort of philosophy about writing and about looking for the story that really resonates. The thing that moves you as a writer is the thing you should go toward, rather than feeling like you鈥檙e kind of checking a box.

It seems to me that there really is a lesson for the young writer in there鈥攖hat you just went after the emotional quality of these girls鈥� lives that resonated with you.
I think that鈥檚 what I鈥檓 trying in a fumbling way to say: that once you establish in your mind, 鈥淥h, this is a story that has some special interest to me because it鈥檚 a bit unusual to see girls surfing,鈥� then that鈥檚 not the story. That may be a justification for the story, but that鈥檚 not the actual story. The actual story lives in the emotion of it, and the characters, and the people, and the actual story鈥攏ot the policy position.

The post Resurfacing 鈥楲ife鈥檚 Swell,鈥� the Story That Produced 鈥楤lue Crush鈥� appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

In the mid-nineties, while prowling the library at the University of California at Santa Cruz for anything remotely related to surfing, I happened upon an extraordinary book, a 1964 first edition of Willard Bascom鈥檚 .听Surfing was a somewhat mysterious business in those days. I did an awful lot of it, mostly at a rocky point north of town. I spent even more time thinking about the beauty of breaking waves, the constant flux of sand, and how great it would be if I could predict either with any semblance of accuracy. But I knew almost nothing about the physical forces involved.

Like most surfers at the time, my best wave-forecasting tool was a battery-powered weather radio. Every night before I fell asleep, in those days before smartphones colonized our every waking moment, I turned on that radio to listen. An authoritative male voice, in a recorded statement updated every hour on the hour鈥攁s if speaking from some high perch with an infinite view of the sea鈥攔attled off wind and wave data from every offshore buoy along the west coast. Starting in the far north, that man鈥檚 voice worked its way south, reporting each buoy鈥檚 local wind speed and direction, plus the direction, height, and interval of open-ocean swell.

My imagination always conjured images of these buoys bobbing and swaying in the night-dark ocean. If the swell reading of a particular buoy suddenly jumped in size鈥攆rom, say, three feet at ten seconds to eight feet at 17 seconds鈥攎y mental image leapt with it. That meant waves were already on their way toward me, moving hundreds of miles across the face of the sea. The sheer excitement often infiltrated my sleep, causing me to awaken in the wee hours. I lived on a quiet street near a beach and would open a window to listen for the telltale thumping of waves. Over the years, I鈥檇 become acutely sensitive to the quality of this thumping, from the hollow slap of summer rills spanking the sand to the bunker-busting thunder of midwinter monsters. By counting seconds between impacts, I could also tell if a new swell had begun to hit. If it had, I鈥檇 lie there in bed and stare at the ceiling, running a subconscious听algorithm crunching local tides and likely winds to settle upon the best possible time and place for the following day鈥檚 surf.

Beyond that, though, my relationship to the sea was heavy on questions and light on answers: Where do surfing waves come from, anyway? What causes waves to break the way they do? What exactly happens when we catch a wave on a surfboard?

鈥淭he trick of surfing, of course,鈥� writes Bascom, as if in response to the latter, 鈥渋s to get the board moving and the weight properly balanced so that the down-wave slope drag can take over the work of propulsion at the moment the wave passes beneath.鈥�

The scientific dorkiness of that prose suggested that Bascom鈥檚 imagined reader was a beach-town Beaver Cleaver, thumbing pages while scanning airwaves with his homemade radio鈥攕omeone very much like Bascom himself, in other words. Born in New York City in 1916, Bascom went to college at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden and later took a job with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. The sheer squareness of Bascom鈥檚 writing thrilled me so much, in the library at UC Santa Cruz, that I took the book home. For months, I swam in Bascom鈥檚 curiously exhaustive treatment of a delightfully narrow topic: the physical dynamics of ocean waves and the beaches against which they crash.

This included: a sweeping treatise on the origins of all ocean waves; mathematical descriptions of their ideal forms; beautiful explication of exactly how gravitational interaction between the earth, moon, and sun creates tides; and rousing accounts of destructive tsunamis and rogue waves encountered by ships at sea.

I didn鈥檛 have much money for books in those days, and I returned the library edition when I finished school. By that time, though, Waves and Beaches had lodged itself on the surfer鈥檚 library shelf of my mind as one of the few truly indispensable titles, a book that any genuine ocean lover simply had to own in order to feel complete. In later years, after I got a real job, I tried to buy a copy but was disappointed to discover that Waves and Beaches was in such scarce supply and high demand that prices had become ridiculous. One can still find copies online for upwards of $100. So I was genuinely thrilled to discover, late last year, that Patagonia was publishing ($30). Better still, given how much time had passed, this new edition had been updated by an oceanographer named Kim McCoy who has spent years researching surf-zone wave dynamics, sailed and freedived all over the world, and, according to his 鈥淎bout the Author鈥� statement, 鈥渞ecently completed an Ironman and will continue to swim, dive, surf, sail, rock climb, and paraglide until motion stops, viscous drag ceases, buoyancy is lost, and gravity ultimately wins.鈥� Best of all, McCoy befriended Bascom in the later years of Bascom鈥檚 life, and even discussed possible updates to Waves and Beaches before Bascom鈥檚 death in 2000. McCoy, in other words, was the perfect man for the job.

Once I got my hands on a copy of this latest edition, I noticed several things right away. First up, McCoy and Patagonia clearly conceived of their project as simultaneously an act of preservation鈥攔eintroducing a forgotten masterwork鈥攁nd a genuine continuation of Bascom鈥檚 oceanography, bringing it up to the minute as Bascom himself might have done if he were still alive. The physical design of Patagonia鈥檚 Waves and Beaches also demonstrates a quiet wisdom: sturdily bound in hardcover but without a dust jacket, and printed on heavy paper stock, it seems purpose-built to survive decades of repeated reference, trips to beaches in sandy daypacks, and passing along to future generations. Mesmerizing new photographs of giant ocean waves, plus easy-to-understand scientific illustrations, speak directly to our information-hungry modern minds; and the careful balance between Bascom鈥檚 original prose and McCoy鈥檚 additions reflect a perfect understanding that Waves and Beaches remains indispensable for every surfer, sailor, kayaker, kiteboarder, freediver, and beach lover who has ever wanted to know exactly how and why the water and sand behave as they do.

McCoy鈥檚 contributions feel especially on-point with regard to contemporary ocean-research technology, recent epic storms, and chilling detail about climate change and how it threatens coastal cities. I have also been delighted to find Bascom鈥檚 old scientific dorkiness sustained through McCoy鈥檚 newly precise insights about surfing. These include an 11-point summary of wave conditions ideal for surfing, such as: 鈥淭he lateral speed of breaking鈥攖he sideways extension of the curl along the crest鈥攕hould be between one and two times the onshore speed of the wave.鈥�

They also include equations for calculating how fast a surfer must travel over water to catch a wave of any particular height鈥�35 miles per hour for a 60-footer鈥攁nd how fast a surfer moves when up and riding on giant waves at Nazar茅 in Portugal, an astonishing 50 miles per hour. McCoy even throws in legally dubious advice for anyone curious to experience the feeling of free-falling off a 30-foot wave face: just drive a car across a bridge at 30 miles per hour and jump out the window into the river below.

Best of all, McCoy鈥檚 edition allowed me to savor passages that I鈥檇 either overlooked or forgotten, like Bascom鈥檚 account of the dream job that led to the book鈥檚 writing. Bascom was in his late twenties at the time and already a researcher at Scripps when, in 1945, he got hired by what he calls the 鈥淲orld War II Waves Project,鈥� at the University of California at Berkeley. This outfit had been established, Bascom wrote, 鈥渢o develop scientific means of determining the characteristics of beaches and of the waves that would make it difficult for landing craft to approach enemy-held beaches.鈥� Its work continued after the war and allowed him to spend five years exploring and surveying beaches up and down the west coast of the continental United States. It sounds like an awful lot of fun. In those simpler days of fewer people and rudimentary gear, Bascom and his colleagues would drive the amphibious landing craft right off the beach into gigantic swells. Having seen restored DUKWs in use for tourist outings, I was astonished to reread Bascom鈥檚 account of deliberately surfing big waves in one by gunning the engine down a wave face and riding back toward shore.

Equally enjoyable, in a very different way, was the chapter on subtle hydrological forces that create fleeting sand forms like little rills and cusps and pinholes鈥攖he kinds of things we鈥檝e all noticed during our own beach walks but never even thought to spend days and weeks weeks happily explaining.

The post Ocean Lovers, This Little-Known Book from the Sixties Is Required Reading appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Barefoot on the sand among adoring fans at the 2019 Billabong Pipe Masters surf contest on the North Shore of Oahu, Kanoa Igarashi looked mostly like what he was: a smooth-muscled, 22-year-old pro surfer with peroxide-blond hair and the youthful beauty of a boy-band teen idol in a comic book about young rock stars who become space warriors to save the galaxy.

As Igarashi psyched himself up to compete, though, and watched ten-foot barreling blue waves spit great gobs of white foam into the bright Hawaiian sun, he looked like something else, too: a star-kissed man-child who鈥檇 already won everything and couldn鈥檛 decide how he felt about it.

Allow me to back up. Igarashi has dual Japanese and American citizenship. He grew up in Huntington Beach, California, a.k.a. Surf City, with a Japanese mother and father in the role of hard-driving American sports parents. Igarashi got so good at surfing so fast that in 2016, at just 17 years old, he became the youngest rookie to qualify for the Championship Tour of the World Surf League. He won the , the largest surf competition in the world, in 2017 and 2018, and by early 2019 was the tenth-ranked surfer on earth, the second-ranked American, and absolutely huge in Japan.

That鈥檚 really the big story about Igarashi: Japanese pop-cultural superstardom. In 2018, he officially switched his national identity on tour from American to Japanese. His new country has around two million surfers and not a single serious challenger for the title of best and most famous Japanese surfer of all time. As a result, Igarashi, now 23, has had his image plastered on gargantuan billboards in Shibuya Crossing, Tokyo鈥檚 equivalent of Times Square. And for several years he has ridden a tsunami of sponsorship money in the neighborhood of $2 million a year from so-called endemic surf brands like Oakley, Quiksilver, and Red Bull, as well as more mainstream outfits like Beats by Dre and Japanese cosmetics and construction companies. Visa has fun ads in which Igarashi quite literally surfs a wave of cash cards.

More recently, Igarashi鈥檚 choice of flag has made him the single biggest human-interest story going into surfing鈥檚 Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Games. Because, see, Igarashi鈥檚 mother and father not only surfed in Japan before moving to the United States but also claim to have moved precisely to give their unborn child the best possible shot at becoming a professional surfer. As if that weren鈥檛 awesome enough, Igarashi鈥檚 father is pretty sure that he and some friends were the first surfers ever to ride waves at the break in Japan where the Olympic competition will be held, 90 minutes outside Tokyo at Shidashita Beach, in the town of Ichinomiya. Meaning that Igarashi will compete for gold on behalf of family and country at his own father鈥檚 home break.

Destiny, anyone?

Nevertheless, on that sunny December day at the 2019 Pipe Masters, Igarashi could have seen his upcoming heat as a very big deal. Pipeline is still the most photographed surf spot on earth, grinding over coral reefs shallow enough to have killed at least 11 surfers and maimed the bodies and egos of countless more. And the Pipe Masters is still the biggest annual event in the sport, the jewel of the globe-trotting nine-event Championship Tour.

The post Is Kanoa Igarashi the LeBron of Surfing? appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

My dream of surfing bigger waves took hold on a blue winter day several years ago, when I stood on a dune at San Francisco鈥檚 Ocean Beach and watched 20-foot swells peel into magnificent long walls. I was 45 years old, and I鈥檇 been surfing OB for 15 years, never venturing into anything above 10 or 12 feet, but all of a sudden I began thinking鈥� maybe.

Before I explain why, and how it all worked out, I should clarify that nothing I鈥檓 describing qualifies as what I鈥檇 consider true big-wave surfing. I鈥檝e seen the latter in an awful lot of movies, and with my own eyes at Maverick鈥檚, 20 miles south of Ocean Beach, and at a break on Maui called Jaws. By some accounts, big-wave surfing doesn鈥檛 begin until the face hits 30 feet. It becomes serious around 40, and routinely sees elite riders rocketing across 70-footers.

In the context of the sport, in other words, my little midlife impulse toward bigger surf blew zero minds and qualified strictly as pushing a personal limit. Hundreds of men and women in California alone surf waves as big or bigger without a second thought. I鈥檇 ridden a few 18- to 20-footers myself鈥攂ack in my twenties, when I lived in nearby Santa Cruz and my entire life revolved around catching waves, my daily schedule dictated by tide charts and wind patterns.

But then I moved to San Francisco, married and bought a house, and had kids鈥斺�渢he full catastrophe,鈥� as Zorba the Greek puts it. Just crawling out of bed every morning, trying not to end up divorced or go bankrupt or traumatize my children, felt scary enough. Recreational terror held no appeal. A dear friend of mine named Mark Renneker surfed Maverick鈥檚 almost every time it broke, and he is quite a bit older than me. So I paddled out there once, caught a ballpark 30-footer, and duly wiped out. I told myself I didn鈥檛 need whatever Maverick鈥檚 had to offer and that anyone who did was nuts.

That left Ocean Beach, a world-class break that, while not a true big-wave spot, is notorious for North Pacific swells heaving into giant A-frames that detonate on shallow sandbars like bunker-busting bombs. Unlike Maverick鈥檚 or the waves near Santa Cruz, Ocean Beach lacks deep-water channels, so there鈥檚 no way to paddle from sand to surf without a beatdown. Before you can even try to catch a wave, you first have to paddle through 75 yards of relentlessly inbound walls of whitewater.

During small swells, those whitewater walls hit like distracted joggers, bouncing you around. On big days, they hit like NFL linemen in pillow suits鈥攕lamming you backwards so far it can take 45 minutes of lung-burning mortal combat just to reach the outer breakers, which is where the actual surfing happens.

Even then, the side-shore current sweeps south so fast that you might paddle parallel to the beach for an entire session just to stay near the best surf, which becomes a problem when an unusually huge wave looms into view and you鈥檙e too tired to sprint-paddle out of harm鈥檚 way. Taking a giant lip on the head, you can easily get blown back into the whitewater zone, and then, lacking the willpower to ram past all those linemen again, clear to the beach. The subsequent three hours of torpid, cranky exhaustion on your couch, nursing a beer and a burrito, do not square with family life.

But life has more seasons than we think. It鈥檚 not just spring, summer, autumn, and winter. If we have kids, they grow up and stop laughing at our jokes. If we suffer self-doubt and fear of failure鈥攁nd who doesn鈥檛, at least some of the time?鈥攚e realize that those feelings never really go away, so we learn to manage them like a chronic disease. Daily joys like surfing turn out to be strong medicine. New ambitions within those daily joys鈥攄eeper powder, tighter singletrack, more trail-running mileage鈥攔estore our sense of life as an adventure while anchoring us in the gentle sunshine of the present.

Better still, when we push limits in midlife, we get a much better idea of our actual physical capacity and needs. Like at Ocean Beach on that blue winter day: I was in great shape from a summer of triathlons, and I knew I鈥檇 be fine as long as I didn鈥檛 get seriously winded. So I pulled on a wetsuit, grabbed a surfboard, and started paddling, committed to remaining within myself, keeping calm.

I can鈥檛 say it was a glorious success. Forty minutes of battling whitewater got me to what we call the 80-yard line, a gauntlet blocking access to the good waves farther out. On that particular day, the 80-yard line consisted of a constant drumbeat of ten-foot waves slamming down hard enough to snap my board. I tried to ease my way across but got hit and drilled deep, flipped around like a toy soldier, and pushed to the beach.

In surfing terms, I got shut down鈥攏ever reached the outside waves, much less caught one. But I was also unharmed and even unshaken, so I felt more as if a door had creaked ajar. I told Renneker about the experience, said I鈥檇 like to join him on bigger days. Next chance we got, he led me back through all that whitewater and taught me to bypass the 80-yard line by diving down and swimming along the dark sandy bottom while dragging my surfboard by the ankle leash. It worked. I was astonished to find myself alongside Renneker in the relative safety of the takeoff zone.

Watching those beastly things roll toward us, then floating up and over as they spun into foamy roaring tubes, felt like leaning over the balcony of the oceanic opera house and bearing witness to grandeur. Renneker rode several waves with such unfussy ease that I tried one myself, paddled hard as the wave bore down, felt my surfboard start to glide, and was about to hop to my feet when I looked down the blue cliff ahead and chickened out.

Ashore, Renneker kindly said it wasn鈥檛 my fault, that my surfboard was too small. He introduced me to a brilliant board designer named Dave Parmenter and helped me order a so-called big-wave gun鈥攁 nine-foot, six-inch spear painted fire-engine red.

I鈥檝e been on this journey eight years now, constantly training to be fit enough. I swim laps in the off-颅season, lift weights, bodysurf. I wouldn鈥檛 say I鈥檝e got anywhere near mastery, nor am I immune to serious thrashings, which I receive frequently. But there are beautiful moments, too鈥攂urned into memory as a fusion of feeling and image. Surfing鈥檚 weird that way. The focused fun of soaring on a great wave so deeply immerses one鈥檚 consciousness in flow that it鈥檚 quite normal to finish the ride of your life unable to replay it mentally. Looking back, if I see anything at all, it鈥檚 that initial instant when I鈥檝e just caught a wave and stood up, taken control of my surfboard, and looked down the line of flight as if into a wormhole through emotional space-time, giddily anticipating the natural acceleration that obliterates self-awareness.

Curiously, though, I鈥檝e found equal satisfaction in the discovery of genuine personal limits. A few months ago, again with Renneker, I paddled out in the biggest and most powerful surf I鈥檇 ever seen at Ocean Beach, each massive pulse like a runaway 18-wheeler speeding just under the surface, pushing us upward as it rolled below, then dropping us off its back. Renneker wasn鈥檛 remotely scared鈥攈e鈥檚 ridden 50-foot faces elsewhere鈥攂ut I watched in astonishment as brilliant young surfers pulled into barrels the size of subway tunnels. When my own chance came, I paddled to the speeding brink of a watery cliff and, just as I had eight years before, chickened out. An hour later, I got another chance and had to yell at myself鈥攆or real, out loud鈥�Don鈥檛 be scared! Don鈥檛 be scared! Hopping to my feet, I was airborne, separated from my surfboard and falling through space.

By the time I surfaced, I鈥檇 been pushed back across the 80-yard line, then well into the whitewater. Soon I was on shore. Walking up the grassy dune, I turned and saw Renneker, a tiny black figure on the now silver sea, glide along a mercury wall.

Later, as darkness fell and headlights gleamed on the city streets, he walked up, smiling. I told him how impressed I was, that I鈥檇 seen his ride and, having come up short myself, knew exactly how much skill it took. He said something equally kind鈥攕aw my wipeout, awesome that I鈥檇 tried, crazy-difficult conditions鈥攁nd I realized I鈥檇 been wrong about Maverick鈥檚, about big surf in general. I鈥檇 been wrong because I hadn鈥檛 known the pleasure that comes from really trying something at the outermost edge of one鈥檚 own ability鈥斅璭njoying a certain pride, to be sure, but also earning the tenderness toward oneself and others that comes from authentic risk.

The post Can You Pick Up Big-Wave Surfing in Middle Age? appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

First, a thesis: Americans driving cars kill Americans riding bikes for the same reason that Americans in pandemics refuse to wear masks, and Americans who love assault rifles get panicky at the mention of gun control, and Blue Lives Matter types freak at any suggestion that cops should听try to kill fewer Black people.听

Before I elaborate, a word about where I鈥檓 coming from: progressive politics, obviously, but also climbing. Cycling only entered my life ten years ago when I trained for the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon in San Francisco, where I live. Triathlon training involves a shocking amount of cardio鈥�12 hours a week of swimming, running, and cycling鈥攂ut I loved the endorphins and got hooked. For years after, I spent summer Saturdays on long rides through coastal redwoods and wine country. I took up other cycling disciplines, too: did most of a century ride as triathlon-training,听flew to Oregon to race in at Alpenrose Dairy,听mountain-biked clear around the Big Island of Hawaii by linking dirt roads from beaches to country inns.

Like every avid cyclist, I started noticing articles about riders maimed or killed by people driving cars and trucks: a father of two out for a toodle , California,听when a driver ran him down from behind; a young woman when a trucker made a hard right and ran her over. I heard stories from friends: a middle-aged dad cycling through vineyards when somebody swerved onto the shoulder for no apparent reason and killed the guy; a friend of a friend in D.C. who was commuting to work when an inattentive driver left his children fatherless. I noticed also that people who killed other people with cars or trucks rarely got so much as a moving violation unless they were drunk or high.

So I stopped recreational road biking and moved all of my triathlon bike training indoors. Eventually, new bike lanes started appearing all over town, some even well protected. I told myself I鈥檇 crawl out of the basement when they built enough of them to link together a long, safe ride. As the years passed, though, I traded triathlons for a midlife return to rock climbing in Yosemite.听

Cycling friends laughed. You鈥檝e got to be kidding me, they said. You climb in Yosemite and you think cycling is too dangerous?听

Damn right. In climbing, the danger is high but also predictable, manageable. That鈥檚 the whole point. I鈥檝e climbed for decades and trust myself to make good decisions. In road biking, the danger is more like the risk of getting struck by lightning while running around on a mesa during an electrical storm with a tin hat on your head. The only decision that matters is whether to run around at all. Every time you ride a bike on a road with cars, you depend absolutely on every human being driving every one of those cars not to make a careless, casual, no-big-deal听momentary oops-level mistake that leaves you maimed or dead. Given the human propensity for such mistakes, that鈥檚 a nonstarter for me.听

Also: the bad stories never stopped coming. My daughter went off to college last year and met a terrific young man whose father, a guy very much like myself, was cycling in Napa County on a lovely Saturday morning in August 2012, as a perfectly sober but sleep-deprived nurse drove her BMW in the opposite direction. At roughly 9:30 A.M., the nurse turned left, apparently without first checking to make sure there wasn鈥檛 a cyclist going the opposite way, and killed that young man鈥檚 father. Law-enforcement officers showed up, looked around, and determined that, yep, the cyclist had the right of way. The perfectly sober nurse was 100 percent at fault in this 100 percent avoidable killing of another human being. In fact, all she would鈥檝e had to do to not kill that young man鈥檚 father was think, Oh boy, before I make this turn, I better look carefully to make sure I鈥檓 not going to kill anybody.听And sure, she tried her best to save his life听and was clearly traumatized by the incident. But she was only convicted of a misdemeanor, with a penalty of community service. Because, see, in our system of laws and civic responsibilities, and despite how remarkably easy it is to not kill cyclists, that nurse鈥檚 error just wasn鈥檛 considered a big deal. In fact, homicide by automobile might听be our country鈥檚 least-penalized way of killing other human beings.

So, of course, let鈥檚 build heaps of cycling infrastructure in every American city. Cycling is unbeatably healthy, fun, social, and good for the planet, and good infrastructure makes it a lot safer. But let鈥檚 also find a way to fix our cultural infrastructure.听

Existing laws, after all, seem well conceived to punish drivers who kill cyclists听and thereby encourage safer driving. New York and many other states have 鈥渞eckless endangerment鈥� laws against behavior that puts others at risk when someone acts in a way that deviates听grossly from that of a hypothetical reasonable person in the same situation. Non-cycling examples include leaving a loaded gun where a child might find it, and dropping a bathtub off a tall building. And California law specifically forbids reckless driving, defined as driving in any way that the driver knows could cause injury, and also the unintentional killing of people with cars. The latter, known as vehicular manslaughter, amounts to a misdemeanor if done while violating a traffic law鈥攕peeding, running a red light鈥�and simultaneously failing to exercise the degree of care that any reasonable person would under the same circumstance. Vehicular manslaughter becomes a felony when a driver鈥檚 negligent behavior creates such a high risk of death or serious injury to others that it suggests disregard for human life.

On the face of it, these laws should apply pretty much every time a driver kills a cyclist in a situation where the driver is at fault. If you鈥檙e in control of a 2,000-pound hunk of steel moving 55 miles per hour or more on a road equally open to cyclists鈥攚hich is to say, most roads in the United States鈥攁nd you make a sudden left turn without first ensuring there isn鈥檛 a rider in the way, then you have clearly put others at extreme risk in precisely the same way as somebody who drops a bathtub off a tall building without first looking at the sidewalk below. Or, to paraphrase the language of the California laws,听you have created such an extreme risk of injury or death to others that you have indeed displayed gross disregard for human life.

In practice, though, these laws almost never apply, because police officers and district attorneys have to decide whether to press charges. Those decisions require judgment calls about what terms like 鈥渞eckless鈥� and 鈥渘egligent鈥� and 鈥渞easonable person鈥� actually mean. As it happens, cops and DAs frequently decide that speeding, running red lights, swerving onto road shoulders at 55 miles per hour, or making left turns without first checking for cyclists is merely the behavior of a perfectly reasonable person.

Which brings me back to my thesis about Americans finding it perfectly reasonable to refuse to wear a mask听in a pandemic, lose听their minds at the thought of restrictions on their assault rifles, and fight听for the freedom of cops to kill Black people.听

A culture that considers none of the above reckless, negligent, or a display of听disregard for human life is a culture that places extraordinary value on every individual鈥檚 freedom to endanger others, especially in service of that individual鈥檚 personal safety: the feeling of safety I get from believing in Donald Trump鈥檚 worldview is far more important to me than any risk that I might pass a lethal virus on to somebody more vulnerable than myself; the feeling of personal safety I get from stockpiling assault rifles is vastly more important than the role widespread gun ownership plays in our astronomical rate of firearm deaths;听and, to extend the thought,听the feeling of safety I get knowing that I won鈥檛 suffer any consequences if I kill somebody with my car, is听vastly more important to me than the risk posed to cyclists by my not having to worry about killing them.

This odd notion of freedom looks even more peculiar in light of the fact that American culture simultaneously denigrates the freedom to endanger oneself. Even as we are astonishingly permissive of behavior that endangers others, we enforce strict motorcycle helmet and car seat-belt laws. We demand that auto manufacturers include expensive airbags, roll cages, and other features aimed at protecting the occupants of cars, while requiring absolutely nothing aimed at protecting anybody that these same cars might hit.

And just in case this seems like the way of nature, consider BASE jumping, which is illegal almost everywhere in the United States, even as we allow the purchase of assault rifles alongside eggs and milk at Walmart. In Europe, the opposite holds true: BASE jumping is legal all over but gun ownership is highly regulated. That鈥檚 because Europeans venerate the freedom to risk one鈥檚 own life but not the freedom to endanger others. European police officers, furthermore, do not generally carry guns and kill .

Of course, our cultural infrastructure is distinctive in other ways, too. For one thing, it venerates the big over the small, the heavy over the light, the powerful over the weak, the fast over the slow, the easy over the hard. In matters of transportation, it also venerates the car over absolutely everything else. That鈥檚 why, despite laws in every state giving cyclists equal claim to the road, many of us drive as if cyclists are merely annoying interlopers for whom no driver should ever have to modify behavior.听

Among the few slender rays of sunshine are so-called vulnerable road user laws (VRUs), promoted by cycling-safety advocates and currently on the books in ten states. VRUs听provide stiffer penalties鈥攕ix-month driver鈥檚-license suspensions, large fines, and even 30-day prison terms, especially for drivers who injure or kill cyclists while breaking traffic laws. But widespread adoption of such听laws may already be threatened by weakness in the knees among their very own advocates, some of whom apparently worry that VRUs听will only give police new means of oppressing the oppressed.听

That leaves most of the country still dependent on older laws. It also means that our biggest hope for real change lies with dramatic cultural transformation: cops and DAs willing to redefine the behavior of听a 鈥渞easonable鈥� driver as not including vehicular homicide,听public shaming of drivers who kill cyclists,听celebrity public-service campaigns about how remarkably easy it is not to kill cyclists,听driver鈥檚-ed courses that actually hammer home a cyclist鈥檚 equal right to the road. But these are all tall orders and, until they appear imminent, I鈥檒l stick with rock climbing.

The post Killing Cyclists Is As American As Mass Shootings appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

One afternoon on a Northern California ranch, as wildfires threatened around the state and the power company shut off electricity to prevent new flare-ups, chef woke from a nap and decided he wanted to shoot something.

Fair-haired and barrel-chested at 40, and already on the short list of the world鈥檚 great chefs, Skenes rubbed his bleary blue eyes, slipped his feet into delicate white sneakers, and walked outside to the enormous truck he jokingly called Rambo. Under the back seat, he had a machete, a samurai sword, and a double-bladed battle-ax鈥斺�渟treet-fighting stuff,鈥� he told me with a chuckle, knowing exactly how insane that sounded.

Street fighting didn鈥檛 appear to be imminent, so Skenes opened Rambo鈥檚 camper shell and, between yawns, grabbed a carbon-fiber rifle fitted with a scope, ballistic range finder, and bipod鈥攍ike something a professional assassin might get for Christmas. He placed the rifle in firing position on a picnic table and took a seat behind it with a box of very large bullets.

Nearby sat Jonathan De Wolf, the shambolic culinary director of the company Skenes founded, Saison Hospitality, and also Ilya Fushman, a physicist and big-time venture capitalist who happened to be Skenes鈥檚 regular hunting and fishing buddy.

Earlier that day, Skenes and his pals had shot a mess of quail after driving three hours from San Francisco to the ranch, a private hunting operation called : as in, drink ale, shoot quail鈥攊deally not in that order. After checking in, they鈥檇 dropped their luggage in a bunkhouse and listened to warnings about fire danger so extreme that cigarette smoking was forbidden everywhere but on the concrete patio, which also included a grill. As for that grill鈥攁 steel and brick firebox built into the wooden framing that supported the patio鈥檚 roof鈥擲kenes was well aware of the danger that might pose.

At Ale & Quail, customers book in advance and tell the owner what they want to shoot: bobwhite quail, chukar, pheasant, whatever. Early on the morning of a customer鈥檚 hunt, a game-bird hatchery delivers the target critters; Ale & Quail employees then release those birds into bushes and trees. (Skenes would later insist that normally he doesn鈥檛 hunt like this, and that if I hadn鈥檛 been along he would have done something more serious.) It isn鈥檛 cheap鈥�$785 per person for a day of fun鈥攂ut such outings have become popular with California鈥檚 tech crowd. During their hunt, Skenes and the boys only had to load their shotguns and follow a guide with a pair of dogs鈥攁 German shorthair to find the birds and a black Labrador to flush them.

Every time a bird flapped, shotguns swung and I dove. De Wolf had a rough time, couldn鈥檛 hit a thing. Fushman did great, averaging maybe 60 percent. Skenes never missed. Whenever he pulled the trigger, a bird died. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what to tell you,鈥� Skenes said. 鈥淚 shoot and they fall.鈥�

Now the birds lay on the patio, waiting for Skenes to pluck, gut, and grill them鈥攁 tantalizing thought, given his reputation as heavyweight champion of the open flame. The fire-centric fine-dining establishment that made Skenes famous, called Saison, has long been one of the most expensive in San Francisco鈥攁t one point, dinner for two, ballpark, could run $1,800鈥攁nd his new restaurants, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, both called Angler, are dedicated to the not so simple pleasures treasured by every serious hunter and fisherman: proteins rare and pure, expertly killed and cooked over fire.

More important, after one of the most meteoric rises in culinary history, and before the coronavirus pandemic shattered the restaurant industry, Skenes plotted a change in direction. Hunting trips like this one served as inspiration for a mysterious venture he was calling , the website for which offers only a single photograph of an elk herd and a link to request an invitation.

But before Skenes grilled those birds, he was in the mood for a little sniper practice. Hence the bipodded rifle on the picnic table. The wild grass beyond his muzzle looked parched enough to burst into flames if you glanced at it wrong. On the far side, 450 yards away, a dirt bluff rose a hundred feet. Word had it that a metal plate six inches wide hung from a chain somewhere on the bluff, for target shooting, but we were too far away to tell for sure.

Skenes scanned with binoculars, then looked through the rifle scope. He made some fine adjustments to the bipod. He chambered a shell and said, 鈥淭his is going to be loud.鈥�

A thunderous boom concussed lungs and ears and was met instantaneously by a metallic clang! 叠耻濒濒鈥檚-别测别.

Skenes chambered another shell, did it again: boom–clang!

He looked back at us with a faint smile, as if to say, OK, skills intact. Skenes encouraged his friends to try.

De Wolf: boom–thud. At least he鈥檇 hit the bluff.

Fushman: boom–clink. Hit the chain supporting the plate鈥攏ot bad.

Skenes chambered another shell. Boom-clang!

The post This Oddball Chef Wants to Serve You Wild Animals appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

On a warm, breezy February day in 2000, Jeb Corliss strapped听on a parachute and stepped to the edge of a 310-foot sandstone cliff in South Africa.

To Corliss鈥檚 left, the Umgeni River poured green and clear off the cliff to become Howick Falls, a gargantuan shaft of water that crashed off rock ledges and thundered into a deep pool below. Straight ahead, in the direction Corliss intended to soar after opening his parachute, whitewater rapids flowed into a forested valley.

Corliss knew that big waterfalls can create enough air turbulence to destabilize a parachute, but he was 23 years old at the time, relatively new to the sport and driven by hungers and agonies he hadn鈥檛 begun to name. Corliss had not yet honed his judgment through two decades as the international face of professional BASE jumping鈥攐f seemingly crazy leaps from the world鈥檚 tallest bridges and skyscrapers, violent deaths of fellow jumpers, and gruesome injuries of his own.

Ambient winds were light and the view stunning. Corliss counted down: Three, two, one.

Just a kid really, he and adopted the conservative prone posture of a BASE jumper who considers the act itself plenty exciting and doesn鈥檛 need to up the ante with flips and tricks. Arms spread wide, with a small pilot chute clutched in his right hand, Corliss accelerated toward terminal velocity鈥擝ASE jumping is sometimes crassly referred to as committing suicide and choosing to save yourself鈥攖hen threw the pilot chute, which triggered his main chute. At that instant, he made a seemingly minor error: he allowed his left shoulder to dip below his right. As a result, the main chute opened asymmetrically and swept Corliss directly into Howick Falls.

Sucked inward and downward by the roaring water, Corliss bounced off a rock ledge hard enough to snap his sacrum, break a vertebra, and dislocate his tailbone. Impact with a second ledge shattered his right knee and left foot, and broke every rib on his right side. He fell another 100 feet into the deep pool at the base of the falls. Underwater, turbulence thrashed his body, then released him to the surface, where he drifted into the shallows.

Corliss recounted all this to me last winter while steering his big Winnebago RV northbound on Interstate 15, toward a skydiving center east of Los Angeles. Dressed entirely in his trademark black, with a gleaming bald head and a toothy, square-jawed snarl, he spoke in a measured but relentless torrent of dramatic anecdotes and self-analysis. Corliss can talk for hours without a break, as if storytelling is at once his deepest compulsion and crucial to the performance art that has become his life.

Broken and immobilized in the pool below Howick Falls, Corliss said, he鈥檇 lain perfectly awake as freshwater crabs dug into his torn flesh.

鈥淲hen I hit the cliff, it sliced my butt open,鈥� he said. 鈥淟ike, flayed me open. They were attracted by the blood and were eating the open wound.鈥�

From the passenger seat of Corliss鈥檚 RV, I asked how that felt鈥攜ou know, just out of curiosity.

鈥淭he helplessness and not being able to move and having really small creatures chew on you is鈥︹�� He paused. 鈥淯npleasant. I would say, if you can, avoid that at all costs.鈥�

鈥淪o where does that experience rank in your personal pantheon of pain?鈥�

鈥淎t the top, for sure.鈥�

Paramedics eventually reached him and prepared a syringe of morphine.

鈥淚 was like, 鈥楴o, I don鈥檛 want morphine,鈥欌�夆�� Corliss recalled. His face stiffened, as if the world should have known that any pain medication would undermine the central project of his time on earth.

The paramedics, he said, 鈥渓ooked at me like I was a complete lunatic. They鈥檙e like, 鈥榊our back is probably broken. Your hips look broken. Your legs look broken. Everything looks broken. And we鈥檙e going to have to carry you out and probably bounce you off every rock, and it鈥檚 going to take six hours. You need pain medication.鈥� I鈥檓 like, 鈥楴o, I don鈥檛 want it,鈥欌�夆�� Corliss said. 鈥淎nd they鈥檙e like, 鈥榊ou鈥檙e going to have to give us a good reason.鈥� I鈥檓 like, 鈥業 know what hurts right now, and when I go to the doctor I want to be able to tell him what hurts. If you give me that shit I鈥檓 not going to know.鈥欌�夆��

So Corliss lay in elective agony for hours while the dumbfounded rescue workers rigged a cable across the Umgeni River and hauled him up and out, and then to the trauma unit of a nearby hospital. There, even as doctors stitched his wounds, he continued to refuse pain medication. Worse by far, though, in Corliss鈥檚 telling, was the six weeks of recovery in a hospital room, where he was entirely dependent on a nurse with a bedpan every time he wished to relieve himself. (鈥淚f there鈥檚 a hell, it鈥檒l be a bedpan for me,鈥� he said.)

Corliss pulled off the freeway into the windy desert town of Perris, then took a wide, quiet country road past sun-parched grass below the San Bernardino Mountains. Turning into the palm-lined driveway of , he rolled to a stop in the big asphalt lot and finished the waterfall story with one of his standard narrative moves: an abrupt shift from horror to reassurance that all was for the best.

鈥淭he funny thing is,鈥� Corliss said, killing the engine, 鈥渢hat accident was a catalyst for my entire career. If I had not hit that waterfall, had I not been injured that way, I would never have become a professional BASE jumper. I would have had to continue being a graphic artist. And I really do think that one saved my life. It helped me work through a lot of psychological problems I鈥檝e had since I was young.鈥�

The post What鈥檚 Wrong with Jeb鈥檚 Brain? appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Pandemic climbing stories came first. Stop-and-go traffic at Joshua Tree, people flocking to Bishop, California, for all-day bouldering at the Buttermilks and then beers at the brewery. Next up, an American surfer in Costa Rica violated a beach听closure only to get with a twitchy trigger finger. Not long after that,听some random stand-up paddleboarder in Malibu noticed that widespread civic responsibility鈥攆ellow citizens听doing their part by staying home鈥攍eft the waves uncrowded, so he paddled out and caught a few until police in a powerboat cornered and .听

The truth is, I get it.

The great tonic of outdoor sports lies in precisely what we all need right now鈥攆low, escape from one鈥檚 own haunted mind, communion with the eternal. At a time when every other human threatens to infect us, it鈥檚 only natural to seek solitude on open ground. No wonder Southern Californians coped with parking-lot closures by hiking and biking miles to quality surf spots like San Onofre and Trestles. There鈥檚 something downright sane about heading outside, doing what we love, and keeping healthy.

Plus, it鈥檚 cultural鈥攐r听should I say听countercultural. Surfing and climbing both went mainstream in the mid-to-late 1950s, when postwar conformity became so oppressive that young Americans craved authentic experiences and lifestyles less consumed by keeping up with the Joneses. , the 1968 Zapruder film of our entire听contemporary听outdoor culture, follows four California buddies鈥�Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard among them鈥攊n a van, spurning the straight and narrow for an epic surf/ski/climb road trip clear to Argentina.听In the sixties, hard-partying New York rock听climbers known as the Vulgarians got laughs by ascending big cliffs while stark naked. Yosemite hardmen (and women) made a stand-alone sport out of dodging听park听rangers听to live on the cheap in caves and cars, surviving听on abandoned cafeteria leftovers while plotting first ascents. In the early seventies, when President Richard Nixon used his home in San Clemente as the Western White听House鈥攖hink Mar-a-Lago鈥攖he Secret Service banned surfing nearby. To this day, the surfers who defied that ban听and got chased by military police听remain legendary. Flouting the law is in our blood.

Hollywood still milks that outlaw image in blockbusters like Vin Diesel鈥檚 XXX series and the Robin Hood thieves of Point Break remakes鈥攆ree-solo climbing, big-wave surfing, wingsuit flying, international bank robbery. That tradition likewise remains undead in the pleasure we all get from real-world exploits of modern听elite athletes. Capitalist consumer culture will always teach that life鈥檚 deepest purpose lies in the endless boring toil for money, with a close second place going to the expenditure of that money on ever more possessions, necessitating further toil. So when Alex Honnold free-solos El Cap, or when Keala Kennelly charges a death-or-glory barrel at Teahupoo, everybody else gets a vicarious thrill from watching somebody risk death just to feel what it鈥檚 like to be alive.

For those of us dedicated to tamer versions of these pursuits, the spurning of expectation brings so much happiness that we don鈥檛 just think it鈥檚 smart to break society鈥檚 rules now and then鈥攚e know that it鈥檚 vital to the well-lived life. But all cultures have weaknesses, often on the flip side of their strengths. Think about听New York, the epicenter of America鈥檚 outbreak. The city听gets much of its cultural magnificence from the unfussy willingness of locals to squeeze through crowded sidewalks and subway cars, holding the same handrails and breathing the same air as everybody else. Unfortunately, while that鈥檚 great for sowing a sense of common humanity, it also turns out to be great for spreading a virus.

In our case, outdoor adventure sports cultivate admirable individualism and free-thinking pursuit of good times,听but they can also make us a wee selfish, overly focused on private pleasure. Everybody knows by now that the crowds of young urban climbers driving to the eastern Sierra doubtless included a few asymptomatic carriers of this novel coronavirus, potentially infecting vulnerable locals in a rural area with vanishingly few intensive-care beds. Anyone not currently living a mile underground also realizes that hospitals are so desperately inundated with the critically ill that old calculations about injury or death鈥�I鈥檓 pretty sure I can stick this landing鈥攏o longer hold. When ski-resort closures sent hordes into the backcountry in early March, an avalanche near Telluride, Colorado,听left a snowboarder badly injured. The ensuing rescue brought dozens of people into dangerously close contact with one another, and the snowboarder himself wound up in an emergency room, consuming medical resources already being taxed.听

For the time being, caution equals caring. And, yes, it sucks. I was planning to climb a big wall in Yosemite this spring with my daughter鈥攐ur first together. Now the entire climbing season looks iffy. But there is consolation. Before the novel coronavirus, we burned emotional energy worrying about overcrowded national parks and climate change. Those worries will come roaring back when all this is over. For now, though, deer wander carless roads in Yosemite Valley while coyotes amble Chicago streets. Vehicle traffic in and around San Francisco, where I live, has fallen so much that normally hectic city boulevards feel downright peaceful. California skies are the clearest I鈥檝e seen in decades.

Better still, when the pandemic passes, we鈥檒l find our wildest places looking better than ever, refreshed by this much needed break from humanity.

The post Why Surfers and Climbers Break Social-Distancing Rules appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

For a movie so outwardly uncomplicated, , by directors (and brothers)听Jeff and Michael Zimbalist,听is remarkably hard to define. The simple version goes like this: Momentum Generation is a gorgeously shot feel-good documentary, filled with spectacular surfing footage on waves big and small all over the world, about the lives and friendships of eight male pro surfers and one surf filmmaker who all got to know each other back in the early 1990s, when that surf filmmaker was producing a low-budget surf flick called .

Everyone听who paid attention to surf media in the 1990s will have heard of Momentum, not because it was artfully made鈥攊t wasn鈥檛鈥攂ut because the 1992 film's听screechy punk/metal soundtrack and hyper-aggressive slash-and-aerial surfing really did announce the arrival of a new generation of young dudes who shredded waves into way smaller pieces than the reigning old dudes.听Every surfer who paid attention to surf media for even a portion of the past 25 years will also know the names and faces of most if not all of the stars of听Momentum Generation: Shane Dorian, now widely recognized as the world鈥檚 greatest big-wave surfer; Pat O鈥機onnell, co-star of the sweet-but-canned surf flick ; Rob Machado, arguably the only pro surfer ever to have built a lucrative career on a combination of brilliant surfing and lovely hair; Benji Weatherly, social glue and tender heart of the crew; Ross Williams; Kalani Robb; Taylor Knox; and, of course, Kelly Slater, the best and most famous surfer all time.

This brings me to a more complicated way of characterizing Momentum Generation鈥攁s an听exuberantly hagiographic work of celebrity journalism trading openly on the putative pleasures of glimpsing inside the charmed lives of people we are presumed to already听admire and envy.

The film, which ,听begins with the deft establishment of thumbnail backstories for each surfer: Slater talks about growing up working-class in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and the emotional toll of his father鈥檚 drinking and his parents鈥櫶齞ivorce; Knox talks about watching his father beat up his mother; Robb describes painfully impoverished days on the beach, with no adult supervision. The boys excel at surfing, become friends while rooming together at Weatherly鈥檚 home on Oahu, and thus begins a joyous Act Two in which they win contests as the aspiring filmmaker Taylor Steele鈥攐f the original Momentum, not Momentum Generation鈥攍aunches their collective journey toward surf-world fame.

The emotional center of Momentum Generation鈥攖he Act Two crisis, if you will鈥攈inges on two very different events. The first comes when Slater has two world titles and is chasing a third, and suddenly finds himself behind Machado in the rankings. Machado and Slater face each other in a semifinal at the 1995 Pipeline Masters contest and trade perfect waves that put Machado on track to fulfill his dream of becoming world champion. Machado emerges from a big tube and Slater, sitting upright on his surfboard nearby, raises one hand to offer a high five. Machado veers to consummate that high five, and the surf media goes nuts with ecstasy over this apparent display of brotherly love and shared passion for surfing in a seemingly cutthroat competitive setting.

The enduring nature of that ecstasy, the legend of the High Five Heard 鈥橰ound听the Surf World, has always been testament more to the excruciating lack of meaningful content in surf competition than to the significance of the high five itself鈥攂ecause, really, who cares? So I appreciate the willingness of Momentum Generation to explore darker aspects of this incident. Slater, it turns out, by luring Machado into that high five, and for reasons that have to do with arcane surf contest rules, cost Machado priority for the next wave. That loss of wave priority made it easier for Slater to beat Machado and seize the world title for himself, crushing Machado鈥檚 dreams and plunging him into self-doubt and despair.

Several talking heads argue that Slater did this on purpose鈥攁 genuinely ugly move, if true, exploiting a friend鈥檚 essential kindness and desire to be liked as a way of destroying him. Machado clearly leans toward that explanation himself, and fairly seethes with bitterness as he talks about it in Momentum Generation; Slater rejects this interpretation outright and appears hurt by the implication.

The second big turning point in the film听comes when an older surfer named Todd Chesser, longtime mentor to the boys,听dies in giant surf off Oahu's North Shore in 1997.听Momentum Generation听promptly听enters a blue period in which our grieving heroes drift apart and struggle to grow up, and one of the more peculiar aspects of surf culture begins to shimmer around the edges of the story. Machado, depressed about Slater鈥檚 high-five and Chesser鈥檚 death, and eliminated from the contest tour because of an injury, works to rehabilitate his career by making a solo surf film with Steele, director/producer of the original听Momentum. They come up with the idea of Machado taking听a soul-searching solo surf trip across Indonesia, with his hair in the long spectacular curls appropriate to a Central Casting seeker, and call it听.听

Putatively a documentary,听The Drifter听is good stuff: Machado achieves the last word in Spiritual Hair, is one hell of a beautiful surfer, and really does seem like a decent person. He looks great, in听The Drifter,听lying around by himself in foreign听hotel rooms, staring thoughtfully into mirrors and writing in his journal. He looks great alone on local Indonesian busses, staring moodily out the window as the world goes by, and alone on cool old motorcycles on country roads,听and alone on boat decks, staring at the sky. And if you鈥檙e wondering how he could really have been alone, given that every one of those scenes has to have been staged and that a film crew was clearly with Machado everywhere he went, well, that鈥檚 what I鈥檓 trying to talk about.听

Starting as far back as听The Endless Summer,听in 1964, surf movies have always been like porn: the action is the point, with a loose little storyline to break the monotony. Porn storylines are almost always fictional鈥攑izza guy, remodel carpenter, office hanky-panky. Surf storylines, by contrast, are almost always documentary: two buddies chasing the summer around the world, searching for the perfect wave; depressed Machado growing out his hair and looking in the mirror for enlightenment. So many surf filmmakers have made so many such films for so long that the entire culture has grown comfortable with the idea of famous surfers participating in fabricated versions of their own lives鈥攇orgeous, enviable, inspiring, but essentially fictional鈥攁nd presenting them as real, or at least, real enough.听

In听Momentum Generation,听Steele and Machado even talk about making听The Drifter听in terms of their hope that it would recast Machado鈥檚 image in ways that might be good for enticing sponsors听going forward.听Momentum Generation听then uses footage from听The Drifter听to the same end that it was used in听The Drifter听itself: to create a mood of depressed听soul-searching and show viewers of听Momentum Generation听that, during the blue period when the boys were estranged from one another, things got, you know,听heavy. Put another way, the putative documentary called听Momentum Generation听lets us know (by accident, not because anybody cares) that the putative documentary called听The Drifter听wasn鈥檛 really a documentary at all, and then deploys putatively-documentary footage of clearly staged scenes from听The Drifter听as if they are real鈥攐r, rather, in the same spirit in which that footage was used in听The Drifter,听which is to say, with absolute comfort in the idea that any line between the real and the fabricated is itself an听illusion.听

It鈥檚 all so meta-meta-postmodern that I鈥檇 have to go back to graduate school to have any hope of accurately quantifying the sheer emptiness of its deepness. That quality oozes into听Momentum Generation听itself when the blue period yields to a joyous reunion of our heroes. Wiser and warmer from the passage of years, they rekindle old friendships in full view of what must have been a minor Air Force of camera drones supported by a SEAL Team Six of water photographers, in absolutely stunning sunset light鈥攕taging a core emotional moment in their lives as if it were a Miller Lite commercial.听

I don鈥檛 mean to say that听Momentum Generation听is not pleasurable to watch听and well made, because it is. Nor do I mean to say that these men are inauthentic and their friendships听insincere鈥攂ecause again, they come across as decent guys, and are appealing to watch and listen to. I mean only to say that image-fabrication has become so routine in the surf-flick genre from which听Momentum Generation听emerges that it becomes impossible to tell if you鈥檙e watching fiction or nonfiction, or if it even matters.听

The post ‘Momentum Generation’ Is Postmodern by Accident appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.