The dark knight of Morocco – Jérôme Sahyoun
The blessed existence of North African surfer, Jérôme Sahyoun.
Ben Mondy
CLASSIC FEATURE – POSTCARDS FROM THE LEDGE
Nathan Florence’s 2022 Travel Diary as told to Ben Mondy.
Chippo’s time to shine: Issue 596
At the end of 2019, Jacob Willcox is sitting in the swirl of a disjointed Haleiwa lineup. There are a few seconds to go in the heat and he’s in second place. Progression would mean qualification for the CT. Kelly Slater, however, takes off in the white-water, lying prone on a 5’3” Cymatic snub-nosed quad. He simultaneously stands up and does a bottom turn and heads towards the lip before the wave closes out. He performs a tight, technical, and theatrical turn. It’s not in the lip and is pulled short so he can ride out in an avalanche of foam. The crowd goes wild, but he needs a big number. “He got totally juiced,” Willcox tells Tracks. “They gave him the score, and some. That meant I needed a fourth or better at Sunset to qualify. I got fifth.” Similar scenarios would play out in 2020, and in 2022 when he again fell one heat short of CT qualification at Haleiwa. “The last few years having come so close, I had to think that there was every chance that I wasn’t going to achieve this dream,” Willcox said, matter-of-factly. “I had to think that I was going to need other options, be it in surfing or not, and that was just a reality coming my way.” Willcox had been on a decade long slog since he burst into the scene back in 2013. Having recently turned 16, he made the main event of the Rip Curl Pro at Supertubes, Portugal by winning the Trials. He took a few scalps, before being defeated by Mick Fanning. It was enough to think that Australia had a new, once-in-a generation surfer. Blade selection at home. Photo: Kim Feast. His surfing was groomed in the power of Margaret River waves, his personality humbled by a working-class background. He was smart and grounded. He could also pack any barrel that came his way. His aerial game was on point. His CT status seemed pre-ordained. The fact that in the last 10 years he had been handed 13 CT event wildcards showed the faith his long-time sponsor Rip Curl had in him. However, he just couldn’t get over the line. And in his self-effacing, practical way, faced with the possible end of his dreams, he simply looked at the alternatives and attempted to engineer a positive outcome. “I’d always been curious, and I had experience … Read more
At the end of 2019, Jacob Willcox is sitting in the swirl of a disjointed Haleiwa lineup. There are a few seconds to go in the heat and he’s in second place. Progression would mean qualification for the CT.
Kelly Slater, however, takes off in the white-water, lying prone on a 5’3” Cymatic snub-nosed quad. He simultaneously stands up and does a bottom turn and heads towards the lip before the wave closes out. He performs a tight, technical, and theatrical turn. It’s not in the lip and is pulled short so he can ride out in an avalanche of foam. The crowd goes wild, but he needs a big number.
“He got totally juiced,” Willcox tells Tracks. “They gave him the score, and some. That meant I needed a fourth or better at Sunset to qualify. I got fifth.” Similar scenarios would play out in 2020, and in 2022 when he again fell one heat short of CT qualification at Haleiwa.
“The last few years having come so close, I had to think that there was every chance that I wasn’t going to achieve this dream,” Willcox said, matter-of-factly. “I had to think that I was going to need other options, be it in surfing or not, and that was just a reality coming my way.”
Willcox had been on a decade long slog since he burst into the scene back in 2013. Having recently turned 16, he made the main event of the Rip Curl Pro at Supertubes, Portugal by winning the Trials. He took a few scalps, before being defeated by Mick Fanning. It was enough to think that Australia had a new, once-in-a generation surfer.
Blade selection at home. Photo: Kim Feast.
His surfing was groomed in the power of Margaret River waves, his personality humbled …
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Easy Slider : ISSUE 594
Blair Conklin is an ocean multi-instrumentalist, playing a rare
tune that has united all the surfing tribes.
You’ve probably never heard of Combesgate Beach. After all, the golden sand and shingle shoreline nestled in the crook of the Morthoe Headland, just to the north of Woolacombe Bay, North Devon, in the UK, disappears every high tide.
However, in 2022, as the 24-feet bulge of high tide drained off the shingles, Blair Conklin stood on the sand, surrounded by a gaggle of first-time skim boarding kids, starstruck UK surfers, and a clutch of new mates. It was a trick, if you could call it that, that he would repeat in stops in Portugal, Madrid, San Sebastian, and Hossegor as he screened ‘Easy Slider’, the first skim movie to come out in nearly a decade.
At each stop, the blonde-haired 28-year-old spread the gospel of the new age, multi-rider–-from skim, boog, to standup boog, soft top, thruster, you name it; if it floats, Blair’s going to rip it. His alchemy of skimboarding, surfing, wake and skate has netted him over 300K Instagram followers and more than 2.2 million subscribers to his YouTube channel Skid Kids. As a comparison, Jamie O’Brien hasn’t even cracked a paltry one mill. When Blair Conklin stands up, and on whatever he stands up on, people want to watch. The questions are how, and why?
Conklin grew up a short walk from Laguna Beach, in Orange County,California, located halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. His dad didn’t surf, but his two uncles were good surfers and all-around watermen. Conklin’s mum had been a keen waterskier, and had competed near her home of Lake Washington, “Doing big roosters and going really fast on single skies,” said Conklin, a trait she has passed on to her son.
Like most Californians, the beach was a massive part of the family’s lifestyle. However, while Laguna is only 15 …
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Postcards from the Ledge: Issue 591
Nathan Florence’s 2022 Travel Diary As Told To Ben Mondy.
NATHAN FLORENCE’S 2022 TRAVEL DIARY As told to Ben Mondy
“At the start of 2022, I was so burnt out on surfing pipe. Pipeline had been so crazy, but I was just fucking done surfing the same wave over and over again. And I was just so excited to travel. I was like, okay, I am going to chase swells, but I was less strict on how gnarly the swells would have to be. I wanted to be in australia for march and april and catch up with john. And, I wanted to do indo and also two months in europe. So those trips were locked from the beginning, but I had no idea really how it would pan out. I didn’t plan to have the best surfing year of my life.”
Stepping into Oz
I made it to Oz and this Shipsterns swell popped up almost immediately. I was talking to my buddy Kipp Caddy, and he said, ‘Dude, it looks pretty sick, a paddle day, could be fun, maybe not the best ever, but worth a look.’
We show up and we have fucking the most epic day. It wasn’t 100-foot or anything like that, but it was insane paddle conditions. Everyone was going over the step getting 10 to 12-foot barrels, the bodyboarders were paddling 15-footers. It was fucked up. We all scored.
Then I went to Western Australia and met up with John. During the Finals Day of the Margies CT, I had two sessions at the Box. In the morning I surfed with just two guys. Then I watched John’s heats and went back out and this time it was with Kelly and one other guy. Unbelievable. The dudes at the comp were saying the winds were weird. I was like, “I just saw a …
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Surf Park Petri Dish: A New Frontline In The Surf Culture Wars
As we are not far off to the next WSL event at the Kelly Slater Wave Pool, check out how Surf Parks are creating their own micro culture.
SUMMER READ: THE GYPSY KING
Performance. Art. Theatre.Fast, smooth, funny and pretty.It’s Mckenzie Bowden’s world, we are just spinning in it.
THE GYPSY KING: Issue 587
Performance. Art. Theatre.Fast, smooth, funny and pretty.It’s Mckenzie Bowden’s world, we are just spinning in it.
Mckenzie Bowden, 25, might be the man for our troubled surfing times. A dancer of imagination, a high kung fu kicker of note, a man as comfortable behind the decks as he is on the tools. A surfer of rare talent and style. A blue-collar, working-class Gen Z, with 35k instagram followers. A heart of gold, with cultural sensitivity anda jawline that could cut diamonds. A storied gypsy with a hippy upbringing that has allowed his mix of work ethic, talent, and quirkiness to stand out in the varied surf hubs of Whangamatā, Torquay, and the Gold Coast.
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McKenzie Bowden is just back from his mate’s tattoo shop with fresh ink. “I got some strawberries because I’m sweet like a strawberry, and a genie bottle with a little traditional flower poking out. Because life’s a juxtaposition, and we all wish for mystery. Oh, and because it was just a funny, silly thing to do, we filmed it.”
The Kiwi-born, Gold Coast natural-footer hasn’t been afraid to put his noggin above the comedy parapet. In being largely successful, he joins a cast of pro-surfers that you could count on one hand. His parodies of surf and surf-adjacent stereotypes have gained traction with a broad audience in and out of the surf world.While sometimes tackling subjects like race, peer pressure, and social media anxiety, they generally just make you smile.
(Photo: Bosko)
“He wants to make them funny, but also have some type of meaning behind them,” says younger brother, surfer, model, and skit co-star Tanē (pronounced Tah-nay). “I mean as much as he always is the funniest guy in the room,Macca is a caring, smart dude, and he tries to twangle those aspects of his personality together in those skits.”McKenzie spent his first four years in Taupō, a beautiful, remote …
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