“The Kind of Day That Makes You Want to Quit Everything And Move Here”

Balaram Stack’s endorphins may have peaked on this trip. 

Fishing in the tropics, cold beers in the cooler, scorching lefts breaking over an empty reef pass, it’s like a fever dream in the best way, hence his emotional quote at the end of a ludicrous session racing through double-overhead tubes (see title). 

The waves in question came about on a trip spearheaded by Tai “Buddha” Graham, who had heard rumors and seen shaky video of a roping wave somewhere in a far flung corner of Indonesia. The highlights were spliced into Ride The Line, Blak Bear Surf Club’s film of the year candidate where the tube time was matched by the litany of high energy screenings across the eastern seaboard and California.

As is often the case with sessions in this part of the world, too much good stuff got left on the cutting room floor. So it got rolled up into the edit above. It climaxes at a comically long, hollow and miraculously empty left that has Balaram practically levitating. It looks like a Cloudbreak doppelgänger, except way more shallow and further from most modern medical supplies. As far as we know, the wave had never been surfed at this size before. You’ll see why Bal was excited, to put it mildly.

In addition to prioritizing tubes over turns, there’s another constant in Blak Bear clips — their unapologetic taste in music. The track curation is bold and hits like a post-surf beer. Here, for example, the video effortlessly goes from rock to rap. CKY to Iggy Pop Kodak Black and Lil Wayne set the tone in tropical barrels. If this is just Teva Dexter hitting shuffle on his likes playlist, keep it rolling.