The 61-Year-Old Night-Surfing Sasquatch On A Warpath To QS Glory
Also, he may have invented the ollie. Meet Tab Textor!
While creating the Vans Pick Up show on the North Shore two years ago, we asked and answered a straightforward question:
Who gets out of the water last at Pipeline on a big day?
Pipe will already have a pack on it in the astronomical twilight of the morning. However, that pack will have the luxury of the atmosphere only getting brighter as their session progresses. Post-sunset, anxiety rises with each tick of the clock. You can go from wanting to get a good wave in, to wanting to get any wave in, to wanting to just paddle in while hoping a six-pack of eight-footers from Alaska don’t show up to barbecue you.
So, one evening, we set a film crew up on the beach to answer that question.
Our efforts revealed a few familiar faces. Tosh Tudor made it until 30 minutes after sunset. Kalani Jabour was the second to last person in the water, coming in about ten minutes after Tosh. Then, one unlikely gentleman took the honors and gave us the most fascinating interview of the bunch.
His name was Tab Textor, and he gets around.
Tab has been going hard at the QS since 2018. He’s competed in WSL events all over the US, as well as Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Mexico, Chile, and Morocco.
He hasn’t made a heat since then, but he’s one of the more well-known names on the North American Q scene. Mention Tab, and almost everyone will have a story.
“He’s like the main character of the North American QS,” says John Mel. “Everyone knows him. I’m not sure if you’d want to be stuck next to him on an airplane, but it’s definitely fun to talk to him if you’re waiting in a line or something and have time to kill. He’ll chat your ear off, for sure.”
John got the best of Tab last December at the Pacifico Surf Open Puerto Escondido.
“Somehow, it was our first heat together. They were having some technical difficulties and had to put the heat on hold for twenty minutes before starting. I’m not sure if he realized it, because he was kind of battling out there during that time — but every time he got a wave, he’d just get up on his knees. It was so small out there. Once the heat started, I’m not sure if he got a score [note: he did get a .15], but I know he charges Pipe when it’s big.”
I had to know more. I tracked down his number and quickly learned that Tab is quite the texter.
In the first hour of our exchange on iMessage, I learned that:
-He is a writer, artist, and economist.
-He was one of the first people to ollie a skateboard.
-He played left corner for UCF in the Tangerine Bowl and is considering trying out as a walk-on in August.
-His family built one of the world’s first skateparks in 1977.
-He fucken loves big waves.
-He believes the stock market is going to crash.
-He says he was doing airs in the water before Christian Fletcher.
-He owns a bunch of commercial real estate in Palm Beach Country, Florida.
-He thinks the southern hemisphere will have a remarkable big wave season later this year.
Now, here’s the wild part: These things appear to be true. During this exchange, Tab included receipts in the form of Yukon gold potato-quality photos of his exploits.
What’s going on here?
Let’s hear from Giorgio Gomez, a QS warrior with a notably better track record than Tab, who grew up in the same area of Florida as Tab.
“Everyone thinks Tab is just a loose cannon, and he is, but he’s also a super interesting person if you take the time to talk to him and can actually keep up with him. He goes down a couple of different pathways in conversation, but it usually leads somewhere if you hear him out. [laughs] He’s like a cartoon character. Most people don’t really know how to gauge him.
“But I’ve known him since I was a kid,” Giorgio continues. “We’d always see him surfing and skating. At first glance, you’d see him jumping around all crazy and stuff and thinking, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ But then he’d get in the bowl and start obliterating it. He’s classic. He kinda helped mentor some of the younger surfers like myself, and skaters like Zion Wright and Alex Sorgente. And he’s also got one of the best surf photos I’ve ever seen from Florida.”
Wikipedia lists Tab’s brother, John, as an extended member of the Du Pont family. Shall we?
The Du Pont family is a prominent American family descended from Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739–1817), a French minor aristocrat. It has been one of the richest families in the United States since the mid-19th century, when it founded its fortune in the gunpowder business.
John and Tab grew up skating in Florida in the 1970s — roughly around the same time/place that Alan “Ollie” Gelfand decided that skateboards should leave the pavement. Alan is credited with inventing the ollie on vert ramps in ’78. Tab has images of himself and John ollieing right around that same time.
John gets a mention in Craig Snyder’s book, A Secret History of the Ollie, where he is said to have been “one of the few who surpassed Rodney Mullen in freestyle competition during the late ’70s.”
In the early ’80s, John copped a traumatic brain injury from skating and decided to leave the sport and focus on education. This sparked a wildly successful business career, and John now owns several major football/soccer teams, including Crystal Palace, Olympique Lyonnais, and Botafogo.
Meanwhile, Tab claims to be an “idiot and a genius” who has “done everything backwards,” but come out the other end alright. His resume includes a long stint as a Senior Appraiser in Palm Beach County, with a book value in excess of $10B. `
John’s Brazilian team, Botafogo, recently won the Copa Libertadores. This, in football, is a very big deal.
Getting Tab on the phone was no small feat, but we spoke for over an hour once the connection was made. Well, mostly, he spoke while I tried to keep up. He’s… passionate. Giorgi was right about Tab going down different pathways that ocassionally lead somewhere, but this anecdote stuck out.
“The second to last time I saw Tamayo Perry, Sunset was massive and it was just us out there,” Tab explained. “I had been out there for two and a half hours. I waved off a helicopter and a couple of Australian guys on skis. They were like ‘Are you alright mate?’ and I just said, ‘Go put another shrimp on the barby’ cause that’s just how I roll. But I told him I wasn’t going in until he got a wave because I don’t want to leave anyone out there alone.”
Checks out with him coming in last at Pipe, to be fair.
Tab claims to have made $200k trading stocks while we spoke. For now, his goal on the QS is to make the top 32 so he gets a seed and “doesn’t have to surf the knee-high first round.”
While that round has thus far proven to be Tab’s Achilles’ heel, it hasn’t discouraged his fan base.
“Everyone is rooting for him when he surfs,” says John Mel. “In Barbados last year, he needed something like a 3.5 and ended up getting a pretty sick three-turn wave. The entire competitor’s area lit up — we were all yelling and screaming for him. We were like ‘Yes! Tab finally did it!’ And then the score came in at a 3.47 or something. It was brutal.”
“I’ve got a classic story that sums him up,” says Giorgio.
“He’s actually really good at forecasting. A few years ago, Tab had been talking about this big swell for South America leading up to a comp in Arica, Chile. Some friends had just got there and, sure enough, it was bombing. Super sketchy, too. There was only one person out and we’re like, ‘Who is this psychopath?’ We decided to give it a try. As we get to the lineup, he’s just screaming and stuff and I paddle up and he says, ‘What did I tell you? The swell’s here, baby.’ And I go, ‘Tab?’”
He just replied, “In the flesh.”
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