Joel Parkinson Enters The Confessional | StabMic Ep. 31

The best stories tend to live on the wrong side of the velvet rope, and every so often a gentleman must ignore the bouncer and let the public in. Parko, being a gentleman of considerable repute, has brought several such stories with him. Bisous!

Fresh off the Surf100 $100k Finale, where the public judges may have been a touch less charitable than the man deserved, Parko joins Dane and Dooma at the StabMic desk to unpack the experience of putting a jersey back on, and what he’s been doing since hanging it up for good in 2018 after almost two decades on tour.

There’s an obvious bit of crossover here, too. Joel spent the entirety of Dane’s relatively brief CT career on tour, before Dane left the building and Joel eventually did the same. Between them, they’ve seen enough of the institution from the inside to have developed some opinions on how the thing is constructed. It’s a good old-fashioned trip down the rabbit hole.

The contents of said hole: waking Adriano De Souza from his slumber for the traditional Namotu Skulldrag onslaught, the night before a heat, only to face Dane Reynolds in that very heat; rescuing Kelly Slater; the early days of the Cooly kids; Joel’s diagnosis of what the modern tour has lost; and a tantalising hint at a new film project in the works with Mick.

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