Is it possible to love without obsession? Can we admire without screaming Genius? Can a man photograph the budding breasts of a 13-year-old without being swept up in a righteous fervour?
This issue, we spend three score pages on everyone’s favourite surfer at the mo, 22-year-old Dane Reynolds from Ventura in California. For the very first time in the 46-year history of surfing magazines, an entire magazine (forgetting the stud section on the backside, we had obligations there, but I’ll explain that in a satisfactory manner later) is given to the documenting of one surfer. Of course, Stab’s well-rounded readers will quickly blurt: Fashion mags have been all over it for years, Agnes Deyn in ID, Madonna in Dazed, Maria Ozawa in Japanese Rape Fantasies etc. So, to set the record straight, we are, like, so not the first.
This magazine is the natural progression of a sport out of kilter. The year begins and the nearly middle-aged Kelly Slater wins three out of four despite a wide-stance, a jerky style and hands that appear to be controlled by an unseen Gipetto. We yawn our way through the webcasts, our spirits lifted only by the appearance of a loose-limbed natural footer called Dane Reynolds.
So, at the tour’s midpoint we figure, forget the rest (although we can’t resist putting Jordy on the reverse cover, god bless that man of steel) and let’s spend a magazine getting to know a surfer Joel Parkinson describes as: “The best surfer in the world. If anyone says any different I’ll fit em.”
Over a month or so, we get Charlie Smith to visit and profile Dane (“I can’t keep my hands off other men’s wives,” page 48) who then forwards the story to Dane who then fedexes me his comments written all over the original piece. The drawing of our man Charlie and “fuck-face writers” is genius in itself, and that’s before we talk about his surfing.
Steve Sherman, mercifully recovered from our barbs about him attending an all-gay surf mag conference in Baja, heads up a week after and takes the best portraits of Dane we’ve ever seen, including a black-and-white still of Dane at the piano.
Some time later, Dane writes: “Hey i've got a favor to ask. when sherm came over he wanted to take a picture of me at the piano. could you not run those?? It's just a weird thing that everything i do turns up in surf magazines and i don't want people to take me learning piano as anything. i just want to play the goddamn thing i don't want to have pictures in a magazine doing it. Ahh whatever.”
For the best surfer in the world? Anything, you hot little meatball, anything. We are obsessed, you are a genius.
Oh, and my satisfactory explanation for not running Dane in Stab Stud? Tits, my friends, tit-teez. Flip the mag, turn to page 13, and then tell me I’m wrong. – Derek Rielly.
