Gallery: Stab Highway Finale Premieres In Brooklyn’s Thumping Heart

I saw Balaram Stack on the NY subway this weekend. 

Not in the flesh, but on those screens above subway windows that change every 10 seconds. He was on an ad for Brooks Brothers, pulling on a white shirt — sandwiched between a Bumble and an anti-vaping campaign. 

The scents of the New York subway system are… unique. The stench of fresh urine can be quickly dissolved in a cloud of Gucci Flora perfume or the whiff of a steamy pizza slice being gulped down between trains.

665 miles of track, 221 years old, covering all five boroughs of New York City, carrying 5.5 million people every single day — 24/7. It’s the largest and most famous subway system in the Western Hemisphere — and it was the venue for our winner-take-all showdown to decide the champions of Stab Highway East Coast (USA) Presented By Monster Energy.

Rockaway Beach was the venue for the final showdown, to be precise. It’s in New York City’s biggest of five boroughs: Queens. You can hop the A-Train and be there in one hour from Times Square, where Balaram’s face is occasionally looking down at you from a 300-foot screen.

Speaking of Balaram, he, Eden, and Kobe Hughes came down to Williamsburg for our Finale Premiere last Thursday to meet 300 of New York City’s most devoted surf fans. Williamsburg is a fitting locale — famously the “land of 1,000 mustaches”, it was Ground Zero for hipster-ism as “bohemians” were priced out of the island of Manhattan and forced across the East River to Brooklyn (to then price out Williamsburg locals themselves) in the early 2000s.

But amongst all the yuppies, there is one Art Deco temple that provides an incensed shelter from the storm in Williamsburg and that is Pilgrim Surf + Supply — a proper upscale surf shop within eyeshot of the Empire State Building. It serves as the de facto mecca of New York’s small but endearing fan base. Check out the scene below from our packed-house premiere below.

(All Photos by Matt Valenzuela and Zane Elias)