Stab Magazine | Watch: The Nu Church Of Surf! With Julian Wilson And Kai Lenny

Live Now — Episode 3 Of Surf100 Challenge Series Presented By Pacifico

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Watch: The Nu Church Of Surf! With Julian Wilson And Kai Lenny

Everybody welcome! Don’t hate; Celebrate!

cinema // Apr 16, 2020
Words by Stab
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Right now, Stab and Oakley can’t help but be intoxicated by the all-­inclusiveness in surfing. While we love the champagne end of the spectrum, we can also dig all (read: most) other kinds of surf crafts. Not everyone is a Formula 1 driver, nor wants to drive a race car. Sometimes you just wanna breeze down the line. 

All of a sudden, it’s 2016 and lineups aren’t just males on 6’0” thrusters anymore. Floating over any takeoff spot around the world, today, it wouldn’t be strange to find any combination of twin fins, single fins, soft-­tops, logs, Alaias, Bonzers, and girls who surf better than you.

It was this status quo that found Stab and Oakley in Bali, at a popular reefbreak, watching Kai Lenny levitate down the face of a set on his hydrofoil, while Julian Wilson jumped high behind him. See, we wanted to capture imagery that symbolised the harmony in surf right now.

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Stab and Oakley took Julian Wilson, Kai Lenny and charming Argentinean longboarder, Alessia Marietti, to Bali – three different surfers, riding three very different boards (a hydrofoil, a performance thruster and a longboard). The aim? To create visual representation of surfing’s new mantra: Any time in the water is a good time.

Few surfers embody this philosophy better than Jules and Kai. Julian comes from Noosa, on Australia’s north coast, where fun is the only rule and, thanks to small­ish waves for the majority of the year, a variety of crafts and a non­elitist attitude are required to maximise pleasure: Soft-tops, logs, singles, twins, fishes, thrusters, whatever is called for. Kai, on the other hand, was guided by gents like Laird Hamilton, who are dedicated to preserving the ancient Hawaiian waterman traditions born of The Duke’s era. Shortboard, longboard, SUP, kite surf, windsurf, Hydrofoil, it don’t matter to Kai.

And so, we brought these two everything-specialists together to hum like two harmonies in a song, and to create visual representation of surfing’s new mantra: In 2016, everyone’s welcome in the lineup, and any time in the water is a good time.

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Kai and Jules: Same song, different harmonies.

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