Gav Beschen, grinding his teeth on tube steak, Playa Zicatela

Ah, the ol Mex Pipe, ain’t she just the go-to gal when a man feels like some real action? Rogue tectonic plates smashing together, like, a million years ago to form that magical underwater canyon that funnels all that south swell onto that 200-metres line o sand. Like Hossegor but… deeper, more powerful, a real-life heavyweight. This particular event, the one you see here, took place when the photographer Dan Russo, the best of the water photography genre, if we’re to be honest about such things, was in town to shoot the final section of the new Vans movie. “Gavin was staying across the street from me and every evening he would climb the building and perch himself on the roof and, calling to the moon and stars, he sang a song.” Now, Russo tends toward the metaphysical at the best of times, but listen to this: “During the night in my dream, the song Gavin sung would float down the road and into my room and put me into a trance. I started having a vision of this image and everything that would happen. When Gavin dropped into this wave, Gavin started humming the song and put me into a trance again. Like the dream, the image happened.” Russo adds: “Mexico is a weird place and you never know what you will see or eat.”