On the Cover of Stab issue 62

Kolohe Andino, pretty in pink. Photographed by Morgan Maassen, December 12, 2012.

This magazine was speared two days before the final day of the Pipe Masters. Ain’t it cruel! Our printers say, if you don’t upload your files before December 14, your magazine won’t bounce into newsagencies until 2013!

And, we think, sure, we can live with that. What’s it matter, right?

But, then, another pattern forms. What are we going to do with the world title, anyway? Interview Joel or Kelly (by this time, Mick is out of the game)? Run a covershot of one of these peckerwoods being hoisted up the sand, a noisy, conspicuous cover, for sure, but the same as everyone else?

But, what if we were to create a cover of Kolohe Andino, for he is the most quotable surfer in this magazine, featuring the new sticker on his board, the capital H? And, dressed in his new Hurley trunks? What if we echo his interview in the magazine where he talks of his hate for stabmag.com by outfitting the young man in a t-shirt that reads: I HATE STAB’S WEBSITE.

To complete the blend, the surfboard he rides will be the six-o Sub Driver Matt “Mayhem” Biolos made for the Tweeds underwear label, featuring its signature logo all over the board.

And, what if that cover goes with an eighties kink? One of those old-school, zoomed-in hyper action shots that were so big 30 years back, and hit with colours from all points of the fluoro rainbow?

Brent Bielmann, the young Hawaiian maestro, as well as Santa Barbara’s Morgan Maassen, the same photographer we used for our Bobby Martinez shoot on the opposite cover, are employed to document the session.

And, soon, we see Kolohe at Beach Park, just north of The Pipe. In small sand-reef waves, Mr Andino, only 18 still, creates beautiful patterns and doodles. Kolohe demonstrates a loose-limbed panache we hope will help him kill larger and heavier prey on the tour next year.

Did he like the cover shoot, I ask?

“It was weird,” he says from his house at Backyards Sunset, far from the industry and the players on the Backdoor/Off the Wall stretch.

Why does he stay at Sunset?

“Well, if it’s flat it’s super hard to surf down there and when you do surf you’re surfing in front of the whole industry. I wanted to go incognito this year. Also, I was disappointed at the way I surfed at Sunset last year and I wanted to learn how to turn a bigger board.”

And, more! Why did he switch off social media? Was it because of the cruel comments on Stab’s website?

“Yeah, I’d probably be able to take it if it was one thing, but it seemed like a bunch of different things. It’s lame! If I’m talking about someone else, I want to bring out the good, not the bad. It seemed like people were taking the bad out of me and multiplying it by two billion.”

The world turns and the world hardens. But Kolohe remains as vulnerable as a wounded wood pigeon caught in the long talons of a peregrine. – Derek Rielly