Fire, Pineapples And Machetes: Kelia Moniz

When Kelia Moniz rolled up to the outdoor studio Stab had set up for the day behind Oahu’s North Shore, she wasn’t expecting a beat up 1976 Dodge Dart with hundreds of pineapples in the trunk. “This is different to anything I’ve done before,” smiled the delightful two-time longboard World Champ, as she picked up a machete and swung it through the thick Hawaiian air. Yeah, Kelia loves anything involving fire and big knives.

See, the 23-year old is a woman of opposites. On one hand, she’s soft-spoken and unassumingly charming. In Stab’s opinion, her elegance on a longboard is unrivalled. Kelia is a modern Hawaiian woman: Her Japanese, Portuguese, Irish and Polynesian traces all mixed up in beautiful dark almond eyes, long brown hair and caramel skin. But she has a wild side. You’ll surely remember her breezing down the face of a Teahupoo bomb on her longboard. On her second wave she was slammed into the reef, before shaking it off with a (legitimate) smile. If you’ve never seen it, watch as pal Mon Eleogram rubs lime into Kelia’s lacerations, and Kelia’s subsequent handling of the ordeal, which is strangely hypnotic viewing. “I’ve always been the wuss in my family,” she says.