Stay Woke: Bells Is A Good Air Wave

You can’t talk about Bells Beach without talking history.

Like, you actually can’t — or at least it seems that way.

Go to any other surf website on the wide web right now. You’ll find retrospective pieces. How Bells is classic, iconic, legendary, etc.

How the Thruster was born there. How Occy VS Tom Curren happened there.

Enough history there to build a house in Matt Warshaw’s britches.

That’s all fine and cliche, but can’t we just take a moment to talk about Now?

Now is the time to ditch the antiquated Bells rhetoric.

And Now is the time to start thinking about Bells as a good air wave.

There are only three ingredients in a good air wave.

1) You need to be able to get speed.

2) You need a steep enough ramp.

3) You need a reasonable landing.

John Calvert Bell’s Beach checks all three boxes, and with ACDC presumably playing in the background.

Oh, you want proof?

How about Kelly in 2012 (HISTORIC!)

Or John John In 2014

Or John John Last Year

Or Filipe Toledo Last Year

Sure, you can make the argument that every wave on the CT is an air wave Now. Mick Fanning lost the 2015 World Title thanks to Gabriel Medina’s air at Pipe. Pat Gudauskas stuck a rodeo in a heat at Teahupo’o a few years ago. Filipe Toledo found two ramps on a Supertubes runner last year, and Medina has stomped big alley-oops at Cloudbreak…

But the point is that Bells is a better air wave than most.

I’ve maintained this opinion for a while, so I decided to ask Troy Brooks, who grew up surfing Bells, and is a former CT surfer and current surfing mastermind for his opinion.

“Bells? It’s a sick air wave,” he said. “You get so many ramps out there.”

Surfing has progressed to a point where Bells no longer has to be referred to in the past tense. Just as John John redeemed Main Break Margaret River last year. 

This year, someone will land an air that finally starts a new chapter for Bells.