Nathan Florence palms a rideable set at Second Reef Pipe

From Stab issue 66: How pretty is this wave? Don’t it make you just wanna grab that five-six quad y’got and paint it red with your energetic strikes? Turns out this is a bomb set on a 12-foot day at Pipe, shot from up the beach at Rocky Point. But enough from me, let’s hand the microphone over to Mr Brent Bielmann, the local shooter who grew up on this chunk of sand and who knows it, and Nathan, as good as anyone. “I shot it to get away from the normal fish-eye stuff,” says Brent. “I used a long lens to shoot from the deck of my buddy’s house. That afternoon was too big for Pipe. Guys were waiting, literally, 40 minutes before they even caught one wave, one that was actually manageable. Most of the sets were washing through and then that stood up, a side wedge hit it right when it jacked up, and instead of breaking it stood real tall. It reminds me of a skate ramp or a nice lil hip for snowboarding.”

And how about Nathan, the middle brother of the famous Florenzo family? “Nathan’s, like, almost more hungry to prove himself ‘cause John gets so much attention,” says Brent “You can tell he’s sick of being his brother’s shadow. I did a trip with the three brothers to Tahiti and Nathan was by far charging harder than anyone, taking off on the gnarliest stuff. He’s not the best small-wave aerialist surfer but when it comes to charging, I think, right now, he’s one of the top guys at Pipe as far as getting the gnarly waves.” Describe for the fans his personality. “He’s a happy-go-lucky jokester. John’s quiet and can be a little…how do I say it… uh… introverted. You can be talking and it seems like he’s thinking, you can tell there’s other things going on in his head. Nathan is a loudmouth. Whatever he’s thinking, he’ll blurt it out.” – Derek Rielly