Get in a Summer Mood

There’s something about summer, ain’t there? All that cooze and all that scooze; all that hip-to-toe nakedness and tongues acrobating across sensual lips. Pour me a spritzer, turn on the hi-fi and get me to a sun trap.

The reason for this magazine’s summertime existence is its breezy, easy-to-comprehend nature. There is little to confront, nothing to expose and ain’t no fantastic clusters of text to pain your cerebral cortex.

But, a soft zephyr kissing sheer curtains wasn’t the mag I was aiming for.

When your star is as all encompassing as Mr Dane Reynolds, even an unflattering shot of your nostrils and eyebrow ridge is enough to secure two consecutive editorial pages, approximately $6000 of value. Photo: Nate Lawrence

Charlie Smith, in his new New York Times guise as a straight-shooting reporter (see his Fletcher family story at tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/christian-fletcher/), was employed to write 5000 words on the Mind Games of Kelly Slater, timely ‘cause of KS’s new record as the oldest surfer ever to win the world title (he was the youngest, too). Charlie would speak, I was assured, to every surfer whose skull had been caved in by Kelly over the past 20 years: from Machado to Burrow. This was Charlie’s redemption for his brutal, but usually hilarious and unsparingly honest, comedy from earlier issues.

A terrible thing happened over the course of the deadline period that stopped this fantastic reporting challenge, howevs. Kai Neville stepped into the media ring with a mag/website of his own and decapitated Surfing, who had only just devoted an entire issue to Lost Atlas, by employing their editor, Travis Ferre. He took writer Stuart Cornuelle and the mag’s assistant designer, as well. This meant, Charlie had to step into the Surfing bloodbath and staunch the wound.

Charlie emails: “Kelly is going to be done this weekend! It got put at the bottom of a crazy big stack! Turmoil at Surfing! Staff quits! I become editor at large!”

So, instead of 5k of observation I get a three thou Q and A. And it’s a phoner.

“I left the Arizona desert at 5:30 am to make it to Orange County in time.,” explains Charlie. “He told me our window would somewhere between five and seven. I arrived at two. I wait. I excite. Then he calls and tells me he has messed up his sched! So I cry and we speak on the phone. But it is gold!”

A terrible thing happened over the course of the deadline period that stopped this fantastic reporting challenge, howevs. Kai Neville stepped into the media ring with a mag/website of his own and decapitated Surfing, who had only just devoted an entire issue to Lost Atlas, by employing their editor, Travis Ferre. He took writer Stuart Cornuelle and the mag’s assistant designer, as well. This meant, Charlie had to step into the Surfing bloodbath and staunch the wound.

Gold? Yeah, kinda. Pretty cool. Enough to occupy a wandering eye on a blazing summer afternoon. A warm Aperol when you were hot for champagne is how I’d rate it.

The rest of the mag soaks in the hot tub of Dane Reynolds’ typhoon-chasin’ Japan trips. The world’s favourite surfer went there twice looking for gold, striking silver on trip one and the mother lode on trip two.

Along for the ride came John Florence, Kolohe Andino, Conner Coffin and Yadin Nichol.

But who else surfs like a monstrous dog on heat? This is the Dane Reynolds show!

And, in a fitting irony given his departure from Surfing tore the heart out of our Slater piece, Travis Ferre, who organised the trips, has written the captions on the Reynolds and Pals feature.

“Honestly, it was the best trip of my life,” says Trav who later agreed with my premise that getting boozed with Reynolds is one of the greatest things in the world.