Watch: Kelly Slater On VHS

“We had a van we’d drive down, and we’d pitch a tent under the bridge, before there was a parking lot,” Kelly slater says of his childhood spent at Sebastian Inlet with his family, fishing with scavenged bait off the jetty, and eventually working his way up the First Peak pecking order behind his brother, Sean, while his little brother, Stephen, aka Skippy, picked off insiders on his longboard.  

“There were no fees. You just pulled off on the side of the road and parked wherever you wanted. I actually don’t think I surfed Inlet until I was 10 years old,” Slater says. “At First Peak, if it was a crowded day, you were really lucky to even scavenge a wave as a kid. There’d be 70 or 80 guys out. You had to move down to Second or Third Peak. It was a very similar pecking order to Pipeline.”

Enjoy this vintage VHS clip (thanks, YouTube!), featuring a young GOAT groveling on a warm Florida afternoon, just a little 14-year-old kid with, um, potential. 

“I was up on the jetty,” ESM’s Tom Dugan remembers of the period. “Matt Kechele  comes up and says, ‘Hey, check out this kid. He’s going to be good.’”