The Pick-Up: Why Brazilians Rule Hawaii, And Please Lose The Loose Handshake

Welcome to the Thursday morning edition of The Pick-Up, Stab and Vans twice-weekly variety show filmed on location in Hawaii for the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing. 

On this episode of the banana-tinted talk show, we chatted with longboard World Champion, jiu-jitsu Pan-Am Champion, and prolific Instagram critic Joel Tudor. Here are a few of the things we covered:

Slater’s Getting A TV Show

For the past week in Hawaii, Slater’s been followed by three broadcast-quality cameras for the filming of his 24/7 episode—HBO’s panoramic inspection of Kelly’s mental and physical preparation for potentially his last CT event, the Pipeline Masters. It should air on December 3rd. 

Gossip Girl: Surfers outsourcing social media obligations to managers and significant others.

While having a presence on social media is now a major aspect of being a professional surfer (you should see how much space Instagram specs eat up in their sponsor contracts), not all of our favorite spinsters enjoy the extra screentime. That’s why some of them, most notably John Florence (whose daily screentime doesn’t break the hour mark!) and Kolohe Andino, have outsourced their IG obligations to managers and significant others, so they can spend more time stickering surfboards or soaking in ice baths. 

Slater, clearly, is not part of this digital detachment movement. 

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Brazilian fans will kill you, according to Joel Tudor.

With three Brazilians in the Men’s Title race, there will be hundreds if not thousands of their countrymen and women flocking to the North Shore in the coming weeks, and they are not fucking around.

“If you fuck with one of them, you’ll die,” our guest, Tudor, proclaimed. “If you say something about Gabe, there are thousands of people who will kill you. Kill you. They’ve got a country that don’t play. America’s soft. We don’t do that anymore.”

Butter Knives: Nathan Fletcher’s noseless, parent-painted, quad-finned “water skateboard”. 

Joel Tudor claims that anyone riding a quad set-up in waves of consequence can thank Nathan Fletcher for pushing that paradigm to new heights. We’ll take his word for it. 

Kittens and Lions: kill the limp handshake.

After initially naming the Pipeline boogie fight as his Kitten, Joel turned his rage to the limp handshake that plagues men and women of the modern generation.

So firm it up, lads.