Stab Podcast: CT Schedule Review + Taj’s Thoughts On Trilogy

Leave Mateus Herdy alone, alright Brazil? He’s one wipeout away from suds and scouring pads, and now his home country is crucifying him for gracefully unpacking Ethan Ewing’s death threats. 

It’s not all bad, though. If the tour snubs him, maybe Stace can grease a few wheels and throw him a mic on the WSL broadcast. That hair? Pure silk — he’d glide right in next to Joe Turpel. 

This week on the podcast: the year is 2006. The boys talk the newly announced Dream Tour, the release of Trilogy, and the wildest six months of Taj Barrow’s surfing career.

Let’s begin with the return of the tour of dreams. The biggest criticism of the WSL is not, surprisingly, that it has become a friendly church service. It’s that the tour stops seem more hell-bent on chasing cash than putting surfers in decent conditions. As a result, the viewing spectacle has often left us feeling empty. But this year, the voices of the people are finally being heard, and the schedule is looking more like the thing it’s supposed to be selling.

Five pre-cut events pushed back to seven; Jbay on the roster; finals day in the juice instead of the dribble. If nothing else, says Stace, this year will give the new faces a chance to do some post-heat interviews before they’re banished back to the Chang. 

Mikey and Stace defend the addition of the Abu Dhabi wave pool event. “It’s not only justifiable in 2024 to have an event that makes up just 9% of your overall ranking in a wave pool—I think it’s mandatory, with the way surfing is evolving. To leave it off the schedule would be weird to me.” Progress or get left behind; there’s no space to be a purist in a world dominated by big oil, petro states, and the relentless march of Kelly Slater Technology. 

The cream rises to the top at Surf Ranch, sure, but crap also floats in a pool. Will this event be a code brown? Only time will tell. 

Next up: Taj talk. 

“Taj is one of the most documented surfers of all time, and for him to get the wave of his life without it being recorded, is ridiculous,” Says Buck. “Also, for him to get his best-ever wave at this stage of his career is, frankly, fucking inspiring.” 

“Just buzz across the top and I’ll jump on. It’s a piece of piss,” said Taj, half-asleep and instructing an inexperienced ski driver trying to tow him into a back ledge Cloudbreak wave before sunrise. “I’d never surfed the back ledge. This wave came through, and it just looked a bit different to the rest. I wanted to wake up and feel the board, but then the wave turned into an absolute monster. I was trying to outrun the tube, but it caught up to me, and I found myself in the biggest tube I’ve ever been in. I had to make it or I was gonna drown. It was the best wave of my life” 

Thrilling stuff, really. 

The boys then shift to the release of the Trilogy: New Wave, pulling words from one of the original film’s kingpins. More from Taj: 

“There might have been a little too much talking. A lot of the things they say seem kinda forced. They seem to just say the things they think they should say. But, we’re comparing them to Andy Irons, so it’s hard to match that.” 

Taj also had some nice things to say about the movie, but sass wins the day.

To wrap it up, a quote from a recent Paul Evans piece that deserves a hell of a lot more attention, as read on the pod by the velvety pipes of Mikey C. 

“Is pro surfing a better place now than it was in the late naughties? Probably not. Will anybody be writing articles about New Wave’s legacy twenty years from now, harking back fondly to a time when Billabong still existed? Hard to say for sure. Surfing has always had an awkward relationship with the future. It’s always been a lot more comfortable looking back. As we do, and recall a time before mindfulness, before being present, before journaling the journey, before photo dump about yesterday, when we didn’t expect people good at surfing to offer quasi-spiritual life coaching or guidance on breathing. Before being a person meant spending at least half your waking hours scrolling vacantly at a never ending string of people’s commercials for their own existence, surf films filled a functional need: the ritual of getting psyched.”