Surfing World Magazine September 2017

It’s 2am and I’m sitting at my desk in SW HQ having the time of my life. Art director Corbin is sitting just over from me with a smile on his face like a split watermelon and the chorizo risotto our guest proof reader Sally Mac brought in for dinner five hours ago is warming my tummy like I’ve eaten an electric blanket. Someone has left a box of apples and mandarins in the office and the room smells nothing like the usual deadline cocktail of anxiety sweat and pizza methane, rather it is crisp with subtle notes of winter splendour, like an orchard after the first frost of the season when the juice of the fruits turn from bitter to sweet. Reasons for my current state of mind –…

Chelsea Georgeson 2005 WSL World Champion Rob Machado. I’ve always thought his boards look amazing! Damien Hardman X2 WSL World Champion Andrew Kidman and Joel Fitzgerald have a pretty wild bunch of boards. Otis Carey Artist, ripper, Sophie’s squeeze I reckon Ozzie’s is pretty mental but I’m yet to see Tyler Warren’s quiver. I reckon Tyler would have some crazy beautiful shapes. Greg Webber Shaper, Wavepool Visionary Any gun quiver shaped by Arakawa, Rawson, Barnfield, Hurley or Loehr in the late 80’s or early 90’s. Doug Lees Surfing World Publisher Whatever Jason Stevenson has laying around the factory. Toby Cregan Filmer, Skegss Maniac Dave Rasta has the best quiv out of anyone.…

"MAYBE IT'S MY LIGHTER FRAME, BUT WHEN IT'S EIGHT FOOT I'M STRUGGLING TO WET A RAIL..." When What Youth dropped us these images of Craig Anderson and Ryan Burch shredding 12 foot Cloudbreak for Thomas Campbell’s new movie project we were over the moon. Where did this session come from? How come nobody had been talking about it? And why does Ando look so unfamilar out there? Turns out the session went down nearly a year ago to the day, they’d been sitting on it and (astoundingly) it was Ando’s first time to the Pacific Island chain. “Stuff it! We’ll run it anyway!” we screamed and then we all joined hands and danced in circles around the office drinking mead from horned helmets and eating wild boar over an open…

Second to none air game,” commented Kelly Slater on an Instagram post featuring Chippa Wilson. No more. No less. Just that one sentence. We don’t know where Kelly Slater was when he wrote that, what he was doing when he scrolled through his Instagram feed, stopped on an image of a poised Chippa Wilson aerial, and tapped in that simple little comment. But we do know that when Kelly Slater says things, he means them. That there is rarely, if ever, something the greatest of all time says or does that hasn’t been well thought out from every angle. And after more than two decades at the forefront of progression in surfing, he’s well aware that people care about what he has to say on the matter, that his words…

If you’re the kind of arsehole who has too much time on your hands, and divides that time equally between writing hate filled dribble on Internet comment sections and stalking your ex on Facebook, then Shaun Manners is your wet dream. Why? Cause he’s a young pro surfer who is androgynously handsome, hangs out with young freesurfers Creed McTaggart, Ellis Ericson, and Beau Foster on the North Coast of NSW, is on Dion Agius’s sunglass brand, the Epokhe surf team, and has appeared in a Skegss music video pashing a girl in slow motion, which also featured on one of the band’s EP covers. In short, he’s a nice kid who shreds, and is having a pretty good time… perfect, right? So, go on, get on with your hating, surfing’s…

Unbeknownst to most of the greater surfing world, there are few greater minds in surfing than the one that’s bouncing around inside the skull of Mr. Dion Agius. Sure, the squishy, juicy brains of the likes of Derek Hynd, Matt Warshaw, and Simon Anderson, amongst others, get talked about with reverie often, and with good reason, but in a career path that’s full of forks in roads, dead-ends, and just plain old potholed broken bitumen, Dion has never seemed to make a wrong turn that so many of his contemporaries have. Couple that with a sharp eye for style, an Adriano DeSouza-like work ethic, and an ability to boost like a fucking maniac, and you’ve got one of the most dynamic figures in professional freesurfing of the last decade. From…