The Weekly Bugle: Into the weeds of the surfing week that was
The (second) best surf coffee table book ever, the best shark novel of all time, new cyclone tropes, Eddy Hamaty, the biggest air ever done by a skater (or surfer) and other carefully curated shit you
Unbound: Vol 1
I was stoked to receive Rambo Estrada’s book, Unbound: Vol 1 in the post this week. She’s a weighty tome from the legendary Kiwi photographer, and I’ve already eaten into his profits on shipping costs alone.
“For the book, I used the same process as throughout my career,” Rambo told me in our chat last year. “Which is to spend as much time on the road as I can, be at the beach before the sun comes up, stay till dark and hope for the best.”
It’s one of the best coffee table surf books I’ve ever read, and that’s coming from the guy who wrote the Breitling Book Of Surfing (available at all good bookstores) and easily the best account of New Zealand surfing put in print. Go buy it.
Quint
Speaking of books, it's common place for people on the internet to give their book recommendations to prove their cultural credibility and all round good taste. And with me having more of both than 102% of the population, who am I not join in? Sadly, I actually can’t claim this one, Surf Bugle fan Matt Barr of
influencer fame put this out there. I can’t trust Matt on surfing, football or neckwear, but he’s real fucking good on books.The title character of Quint is the grizzled sea captain played in the Jaws movie by Robert Shaw. This tells his life story after surviving the shark-ridden sinking of the USS Indianapolis in WW2. The Observer called it, whisky-soaked, guttural, stinking and funny,” while another reviewer said it was, “thrilling, brutal, poetic, literary and irresistible, one of the 21st century’s first great 20th-century American novels.” I’d agree and while it’s slightly perplexing the effect it may have on shark protection and ocean conservation (and I wouldn’t recommend it if you have a fear of sharks) it's a fucking corker of a read that I tore through in a day or two.
New Cyclone Surfing Trope Alert
As I type, Cyclone Alfred is making landfall near Caloundra and is about to dump giggatonnes of water on a huge swathe of coastal land which haven’t recovered from the floods from 2022. When Alfred was safely parked out in the Coral Sea, it delivered a week of waves to the Gold Coast, and sixteen billion megabytes of Kirra footage through my algorithm. I’d seen most of the tropes (waves with six successive drop-ins, Mick Fanning, too many jet skis, teenage girls getting pitted, Occy getting tubed, grannies getting washed over by storm surges, pros getting barrelled etc) but the-underground-dude-getting-the-wave-of-his-life-on-an-old-board-laced-with-emotional-resonance was new one, and perhaps my favourite. The best two examples are above and below.
Eddy Hamaty’s Core Story
I've been helping Ocean & Earth with the Core Stories series and it's an excellent opportunity to meet young, underground surfers with different approaches. The latest is with Eddy Hamaty, who was raised in his words, “as a full ethnic moto bogan in the Western Suburbs of Sydney.” A move to Sandon Point kickstarted his surfing life and he’s never looked back. Eddy’s dad was originally from Egypt, and his mum is Slovakian, and the role of multiculturalism in surfing I’d argue has never been fully covered or celebrated. Oh, and he rips.
The Biggest Air Ever Done by a Skater (or surfer)
I would always be largely interested in the biggest air perhaps seen in a pool, but when it's done this clean, by a surfer I’ve never heard of, well it kinda blew my tiny mind. Now it says a lot that I wasn’t up to speed on OG skater Pedro Barros' talents, but it shows how it will probably be skaters pushing surfing’s aerial progression in the tubs.
And For The Bodysurfer Who Has Everything….
Best complisult ever 😂