Listen: Not A Bad Week, All Things Considered

Welcome back to The Drop: a podcast, of that there can be no doubt.

This week, our cheerful hosts Buck and Mikey get their vocal cords going with a Surf100 Challenge Series presented by Pacifico check-in before returning to the lingering post-Saquarema hangover, where Italy, via Leo Fioravanti, wrenched itself into surfing’s most powerful position, at least for another month and some change.

While the mic runs hot with WSL content, they discuss a new and exciting tour stop that raises questions about how vertiginously surfing is progressing. What was once regarded as a barreling slab over shallow reef is now well on its way to being considered the highest-performance wave on tour. May meteorology be on the side of those men and women who surf professionally better than others.

Last year, 7,500 of our Premium members took time out of their schedules to supply us with data that we then processed and (finally) released. This most recent chunk pertains to surfing accessories and the companies making them. Our hosts surprisingly care more about traction pads than you’d imagine and go into an in-depth discussion about softness, firmness, grip, bumps, and sensations you didn’t know your thickened, callused soles could even feel.

From traction to unsteady decks, news traveled fast from the end of the road that a multi-boat party had recently been inconvenienced by one of the world’s heaviest waves. Nick Gibbs wrote about it, but the story makes for further discussion on air.

Straight out of Paul Evans’ peculiar brain came a slightly fictional World Cup of Surfing, a companion to the current FIFA World Cup being played across Canada, the United States and Mexico, or CUM, for brevity. In Paul’s world, there’s no VAR or hydration breaks, and geopolitics aren’t welcome either.

To close things out, a little fashion segment with a review of Louis Vuitton S/S 2027 at Paris Fashion Week and the announcement of Victoria Vergara’s self-funded and initiated swimwear label, ViVi by Victoria.

Get an earful.