5 Things We Learned from Chapter 1 of ‘Andy Irons and the Radicals’

Watch episode one of Andy Irons and The Radicals here.

Last week we released the first chapter of Andy Irons and The Radicals: The Making of a Hellraiser. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a few things you missed.

There were hours of lost Andy Irons footage in a Florida garage.
A good portion of this project revolves around box tapes from Pat “Tupat” Eichstaedt. The tapes were unseen to many and had never been digitized until now. Our favorite was the one titled “ANDY IRONS A++”.

These weren’t your typical posterchildren.
Being from Kaui, the Irons brothers surfed (and lived) with a chip on their shoulders, like underdogs with something to prove. In episode one, Bruce fills us in on exactly what that entails.

Chris Ward and Cory Lopez were Andy’s main influences.
In episode one, we learned about Andy’s introduction to the …Lost team, how he met the Lopez brothers, and how Chris Ward drove everyone insane. Especially his closest friends.

Andy got arrested as a teen.
Who put that weed in Andy’s bag? Does Texas have lenient laws on small bags of grass? Here’s a hint: No. It took three days in jail and four fights, but Andy got over it.

MCD set the stage for Andy’s meteoric ascent.
We all remember Andy with Billabong on the nose, but don’t forget his joining of Gotcha’s More Core Division as a late-teen. Is that a big deal? It depends if the names Mike Stewart, Michael and Derek Ho, Gerry Lopez, Matt Archbold, or Sunny Garcia mean anything to you. Taj Burrow describes Andy’s surfing on MCD as “Young, wild, and fucking hungry.”

We can’t spill everything. Catch the first episode here.