Bobby Martinez reviews day 13 of the Quiksilver Pro!

Words by Theo Lewitt

Last Thursday, the Quiksilver Pro re-commenced after a stretch of downtime in bizarre fashion. Depending on your tastes, it was either the most entertaining day in webcast history, or the worst. Truly exciting surfing was scarce, sets were scant, and patience thin. That said, braving 15-minute lulls in hopes of knee-high snapper scraps was as rewarding as ever. If you missed it, the highlight reel includes a post-heat interview by Gabs Medina that strayed far from the script (feat. F-bomb!), and a new skate-inspired jam by Fred Patacchia on the Little Marley rocks. Innovation! Regardless, it was pure, unadulterated cyber gold. With an above average flare of personality, an otherwise drab day on the Gold Coast became a wondrous mess of frustration and virality.

With attention glued to Snapper, Young Wise Tails, the digital baby of the brothers Coffin and filmmaker Ryan Perry, snuck a wonderful Bobby Martinez clip onto the interwebs, which features the goofyfooter weaving his way through perfect beachbreak tubes somewhere near his hometown of Santa Barbara. The beautiful irony of this was lost on no one. And since Bobby godfathered the art of thrillingly-awkward post-heat interviews, we dialled him in to see how he rated Gab’s words and Freddy’s rock n’ roll.

Stab: How’d you rate Freddy’s new trick?
Bobby: When Freddy went into the rocks and smashed his board? I watched it like five times, it was so hilarious. That was probably one of the best things I’ve ever seen (laughs). I bet he was pissed though; he didn’t look happy. I don’t blame him. What did they do? They extended the waiting period and postponed it for that shit? I heard there were better days throughout the whole waiting period. Those waves definitely weren’t worth extending for. I would’ve been pissed too if I were Freddy. That would suck! (laughs)

The day they run the comp in shitty surf and all of that webcast mayhem does down, the Coffins release a clip of you getting barreled in perfect surf, definitely having more fun than anyone at Snapper… That’s funny. I haven’t even seen the clip, but I know I’m having more fun than those guys for sure right now. At least in my opinion I am, clip or no clip. I can say that much! (laughs) Some people love the tour, but fuck, it was kinda bullshit for me.

After denouncing the tour, do you get a kick out of seeing an event run in one-foot slop? Yeah, It’s pretty funny when I see that. It’s just a trip. Then I see people like Taj, Mick, CJ, and all these guys that have been there for so long, and they’re still there doing it all. It trips me out. I understand the new guys coming up. They haven’t been there and they want to go and try it, so I understand that, but the old guys still doing this shit? You can’t do the tour forever, and I laugh at that for sure. It’s like, when does your life change and move on? There’s gonna be a time when you’ve gotta stop. The tour is something to do, but the tour is not what you are. Maybe it is now, I don’t know (laughs).

Is personality and attitude lost on tour? For sure. Guaranteed. When I saw the Medina interview yesterday and the interviewer pulled the microphone away like, “whoa whoa whoa whoa,” like he did something bad… all he did was say “fuck.” You gotta be kidding me! How soft can a tour get? It’s like, nobody can have personality and everyone has to be plain vanilla saying the same thing. It’s so fucking boring. Nobody can be themselves. How are people gonna be able to relate to you or respect you when you’re not yourself, y’know what I mean? They’ll slap a fine on you and everyone will post about it… who cares! Who doesn’t say “fuck?” It’s just so stupid. It can’t really get much softer than it is now. It’s boring when I know what’s gonna happen after every single heat in every interview. It’s too predicable. Nobody can be themselves and say what they want to say… what kind of shit is that? There aren’t any people on the tour that show personality anymore, but I know they all have personality because I’ve hung out with them and seen their true colours, but there’s no room for it on tour now.

What about Freddy? Do you think he’s one of the few guys that’s able to assert his personality into the tour, but make it work? F’sure. I think Freddy’s the only one. Freddy’s also not afraid to step outside the guidelines. I remember an interview after a heat of his that he won at Bells, when I was still on tour, and he said something about the commentators having “Owen Wright’s balls so far down their throats” or something. That’s not staying within guidelines, that’s just Freddy being Freddy and I love that shit. That’s how it should be. Like, yes, he stepped outside the boundaries, but who fucking cares. It was probably the truth. I think Freddy’s the only one, and you’ve gotta respect that. The people that are too soft and don’t like him for that are just like ever other vanilla fuck in the world. It’s refreshing to me. Why would I want to watch a person who’s gonna say the same thing as the next person. Why would I care?

How would you rate Gabriel’s interview performance? I wanted to hear more. I thought he did a good job. He gave Kieren Perrow shit, which needed to be done because running an event in those conditions was horrible. He did it in a good way, too. He just said, “he did a bad job, and I hope he can get better,” or something. I though his interview was fine… he just said “fuck.” Just let him talk! The guys are interviewing him, so obviously they wanted to hear what he had to say, so why are you gonna pull the microphone away? Why go ask him to do an interview when he just lost, he isn’t happy, and then he says what he wants to say and you pull the microphone away and make it seem like he did some bad thing. How dumb is that? The waves were really shitty, he was pissed at the call, Glenn Hall told him “fuck you” or something which made him unhappy, and they want to go pick his brain… What did they expect?

Score the interview out of 10. (laughs) I don’t know. I would say, compared to all the other interviews, it’s about time someone other than Freddy speaks their mind…but I’m not a judge (laughs).

What do you think of Gabby’s surfing? I’m very impressed by him. I think he’s an incredible surfer; he can do anything. That’s the one guy I see that’s so well rounded. It’s pretty amazing.

When you first got on tour, were guys speaking their minds in interviews more than now? Honest truth, I never cared about what anyone was saying when I was on tour. I was too busy trying to do my own thing.