Stab Interview: A Meandering & Overtired Post-Tennis, Mid-Fortnite Yarn About Nothing In Particular With Ari ‘Krooky’ Browne

“I’m real tired today. So tired. It’s so weird. I just went for a bush walk and I’ve been playing heaps of tennis. Maybe it’s caught up with me. I just played with my friend Bucket. We’re just learning but we still score the games otherwise we end up hitting the balls at each other and doing weird shit,” says Krooky. 

Ari Browne, aka ‘Krooky’, is the reigning champion of S.U.R.F, the best frictionless surfer of his generation, and the co-owner of Baywash — ‘Byron Bay’s worst magazine’ formerly headquartered in a sharehouse in Dolphins. His ambidextrous brother Raf is the other co-founder, who made a pact 11 years ago to never surf backside – now he’s a regular-footer on rights and a goofy-footer on lefts.

Krooky attended Shearwater Steiner school in his youth, which “makes you a dumb ass but pretty nice,” and currently works as a ‘hammer hand’ when he’s not slipping into tubes on various alien surf equipment. He views Derek Hynd as the ‘godfather’ of frictionless surfing and adores his reverence and complex esoteric theories about surfing. “The more complex the better,” he reckons.

We called him Ari the middle of a Fortnite bender…