Initially, skating was a rolling stand-in for surfing. A next best thing. Asphalt slants, concrete curbs and stormwater drains were all places to rehearse surf moves and simulate the wave-riding Zen. But like any lovechild, skating was determined to go its own way, carve a different path and soar beyond expectations. And so, it did, spawning a distinctive culture and new moves, giving rise to a rebellious cast of heroes who dared to reclaim the streets, drain the pool and mine the skies.
Concrete playgrounds around the world were ripe for the picking; just add wheels, no saltwater required. Skateboarding flourished; maybe surfing even felt a little left behind – the lovechild had grown into a radical, self-aware adult with lofty ambitions.
The two cultures were always intertwined but at some point, surfing figured it had to borrow a little back. It’s said imitation is the highest form of flattery and so it was that surfing embarked on its own aerial odyssey, looking sideways at skateboarding for its cues.
Curiously, it was an empty pool that accelerated the evolution of skating’s reach for the sky and now it’s wave pools that are fast-tracking surfers as they learn how to fly. The lines are blurring with cross-over riders straddling both worlds. ‘Surf then skate’. ‘Skate then surf’. The mantra has never been more real.
Check out the stories featured in Issue 607 below. Click here to subscribe and get a copy delivered to your door.
Caity Simmers: Notes from the Ether
Seeking explanations for one surfer’s other-worldly traits.
Written by Luke Kennedy: Photographed by Josh Tabone
“I think expressing yourself creatively is the greatest power you can have. It’s pretty easy to see this with artists all over the world. Surfing is such a creative activity. It’s you and a wave and you can do whatever the hell you want on it. It gets complicated when you add a criteria, a time constraint, and the pressure to make money to survive. It gets complicated but it doesn’t make it impossible.” Caity Simmers
Southern California’s Dual Threat
A brief history of the symbiotic relationship between surf and skate in the Golden State.
Written by Taylor Damron
“The story of skateboarding, just like the story of surfing, is one of timing. This generation of baby boomers were born into a rapidly developing and economically prosperous Southern California that would embrace these nascent cultures as they developed. If there was an American dream, this was the budding Californian dream. And as surfing’s continued to unfold skateboarding’s would get put on a brief hold as everybody’s mother realised where all these cuts, bruises, and broken bones were coming from.”
Ivan Florence: Till the Wheels Fall Off
Or Zen and the art of transferrable learning between surf, skate and snow.
Written By Luke Kennedy
“It was like a little jungle dreamland,” Ivan says of Cholos. This sick skate spot that nobody was allowed to go, and just me and my brothers would be the only ones up there with a few other friends, and we’d just skate so much… “That’s where we really got into skating.” Ivan Florence
Chippa Wilson– Curb Surfer to Aerial Virtuoso
How a skate-obsessed kid from Cabarita became one of surfing’s most celebrated flyers.
Written By Luke Kennedy
Chippa Wilson readily admits he owes much of his aerial wizardry to a 50-yard stretch of bitumen out the front of his childhood home in Cabarita.
“We had these really cool, curbed gutters, and I used to barefoot surf-skate those fuckers from sun-up to dusk… I honestly just did little floaters and alley oops, shove-its and what not… Little lines that I have achieved later on in my life surfing.”
Surf What’s in Front of You
How Shane Borland goes big in both worlds.
Written by Taylor Damron
“When the waves are good, he surfs. When they aren’t, he skates. Simple, in theory but in practice, it leaves Shane with an extremely full dance card. It’s just what he does and has done since he was a child. And this devotion is not born of a conscious, performance-maximising desire to cross train, but out of a genuine love for the two practices. The spill- over effects are a happy, and welcome accident that provide colour to Shane’s approach and a contrast to the hyper focused, black and white, super-competitors that dominate much of surfing’s world.”
Where Concrete Meets the Sea: Jett Dehaan
The gifted Cronulla rider is living a blissful, dual existence.
Written By Angus Piper
“After dropping out of school, travelling the world as a teenage skate prodigy, being unsuccessfully moulded into an Olympic athlete and receiving death threats for landing a trick, Jett Dehaan’s shoulders are surprisingly relaxed, free from the weight of expectation; he’s simply creating a double life where surfing and skateboarding co-exist and sponsors are happy to fund the ride.”
No Comply: Jacob ‘Zeke’ Szekely
Behind the polarising persona lies a troubled past, a skateboarding mindset and a wave pool obsession that have helped Jacob ‘Zeke’ Szekely carve out one of surfing’s most unconventional careers.
Written By Jake Stolte
“I was a convicted felon; I got sober and turned my life around. I rocked up to Waco with an ankle monitor on and went and landed some of the biggest tricks of my life and never looked back.” Jacob ‘Zeke’ Szekely
Cheyne Horan and the Career Sugar Hit
How concrete curves and Coca Cola credentials helped ‘The Bondi Kid’ on the world stage.
Written By Luke Kennedy
Before Cheyne Horan became the ‘Kid Dynamo’ of surfing’s nascent pro-tour, he was the Australian skateboarding champion and a star member of the Coca Cola skate team. Cheyne preferred to skate in bare feet, and tricks were more urban anarchy than boy band choreography. A favourite bit of improvised fun for Cheyne and his four-wheeled gang was to find an abandoned car and make board straps out of the seatbelts.
Wafa Heboul is doing it her way.
The determined Moroccan woman who has cultivated a dynamic lifestyle around surf and skate.
Written & photographed by Maddy Bolt
Wafa Heboul refuses to fit into your box. A Moroccan skater, surfer, and entrepreneur, Wafa has grown up going against the grain. Her experience learning to skate as the only girl at her local skate park 20 years ago made her comfortable rebelling against norms and choosing the path less traveled.
Blurred Lines – Pictorial Spread
Their relationship has had many twists and turns but surfing and skating have never been closer.
Chumbo, Dylan and Fink – Full Power Down Under
The maestro of Nazare and his skim-boarding accomplice roar through Australia, with a little help from their friends.
Written By Luke Kennedy
“It was a real freight train, wally, barrelling, unpredictable left … It was moving so fast, but he was playing with it. He was back-dooring sections and coming out, doing a snap in the pocket, getting another barrel and then trying a big air. It was this high-performance mix between snowboarding and surfing.”
Still Here, Mate.
The indomitable spirit of Shane Stedman
Written by Phil Jarratt
By the time we met, Shane had already lived what seemed like a lifetime of experience, from growing up as Tony, mostly at Crescent Head, a barefoot bush kid who learned an abiding respect for First Nations culture through his schoolmates, and first felt the lure of the surf, to studying engineering by day while changing his name to Shane and becoming a rock star by night (Shane and the Trojans), going into surfboard production in a rented shed at Eastwood in Sydney’s west, to finally making the move to Surfboard Central in Brookvale in the late ‘60s.
The Death of Surprise
How technology has re-shaped the surfing experience.
Written by Brad Sterling
“Analogous to many things in life, as well as in surfing, technology can dull the edges, yet we seem hellbent on prioritising convenience at the expense of almost everything else (as the Dead Kennedys famously put it,“Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death”).”
