Watch: Tosh Tudor In ‘Tube Therapy’

Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew once described the backside tuberiding of Neal Purchase Jnr as ‘embryonic’.

A terrific compliment, steeped in the spiritual nativity encountered upon emerging from the maw of a folding-over swell line.

After spending his formative years in La Jolla — evolving from an incubator of eel-grass covered slabs and his father’s curated single-fin guidance — 19-year old Tosh Tudor has begun to validate his own burgeoning brand of similarly carnal tuberiding through the planet’s most technical portals. 

With a tinge of Taylor Steele, his first full length film ‘Tube Therapy’ is built around the half-satirical premise that time spent in the tube is a worthy prescription to ward off the woes of the waking world. 

Anchored by fellow La Jolla local Skip McCulloch and created by filmmaker Cameron Vurbeff, the film spins between scenes of a distraught, tubepressed Tosh in his therapist’s office, to visions of far-flung liquid hideaways in Indonesia, Hawaii, Mexico, and home.

Upon watching Tosh surf, it’s immediately apparent that, unlike many other freesurfers, he doesn’t seem to have identified himself with the brand or style of boards which he rides. Performance thrusters, downrail single fins, narrow twinnies, extra volume, canted bonzer fins — his van is filled with every manner of fiberglass and foam. 

We caught up with Tosh as he drove up the east coast of Australia, en route to the airport, and eventually, en route to more tubes. 

“I was fortunate to grow up with surfboards so easy to access, especially really well-made surfboards because of my dad,” he remarks. “Being with him in Hawaii through each winter, you see so many different takes on tuberiding, people on different boards. He had me riding only single fins when I was younger, but sooner or later you start sliding out in the tube and you’re like, ‘oh, maybe a single fin isn’t the best for this wave.’

“Obviously you can ride single fins in everything, but you’re going to have a lot of weird things go down on waves that you never would want to happen. So I started trying twinnies and then thrusters. I’d probably say thrusters are always the most reliable when you’re at a wave where you don’t wanna fuck up.

“For me, it’s about riding the best board for the conditions. If it’s kind of lumpy, weird wind at Deserts, I’d probably ride a thruster, but if it’s clean as can be I would really want to ride a single fin. It’s such a cool feeling getting a crazy wave on a board that only has one fin, and I get bored riding the same setups over and over. I guess it’s different for everybody though.”

“The main deal is dad has a surfboard factory, so I ride a lot of boards made out of there. And then fortunately Thomas has let me ride some boards over the past couple of years and made boards for me. But yeah, no signed deal or anything. He’s been super cool and let me try a bunch of different shapes. It kinda goes back and forth between Thomas and dad’s boards — THCs and the Joel Tudor Surfboards.”

A healthy portion of the film is allotted to Desert Point, a renowned venue of frustration, where Tosh seems to easily posit a poignant accumulation of tube time 

“As long as you go out not expecting much, you can have a good time every time at Deserts,” he laughs. “It’s such a big playing field and you can always take off on different sections of the reef. There’s always a few wide swingers that hit the middle section or something. 

“Everybody puts so much weight on every session over at Deserts, you’re seeing these minute-long draining lefts, so you’re obviously thinking you’re going to get one of those. But really, you gotta just be happy with whatever you get and maybe you’ll luck into one. It’s just about putting yourself in the situation to get one, but not being aggressive. As soon as you get aggressive, there’s so much crazy energy out there, it’ll just fuck you up. You’ll see guys who are assholes out there, and they have cuts up and down their legs. There’s a lot of karma in Indo, and if you fuck with it, something weird will always happen.”

Especially through the Mexican portions above, Tosh exhibits enviable poise in his backside tube technique — switching between parallel stance, layback lounging, and lucid pig-dogging at will. When I ask for his advice on the topic, the answer surprises me in the form of the world’s foremost surfing Vlog. 

“Watch Jamie O’Brien,” he laughs. “I must’ve been 14 years old and I watched one of his how-to videos. He said something about laying the side of your foot down to stall. So I just went out to Georges and started packing closeouts and stalling with the side of my foot the whole time.

“And then, with the parallel-stance stuff, John Peck was a huge influence. He was basically the first guy to start grabbing his rail in surfing. He’s from California originally, but he was one of the first guys to go over to Hawaii on logs in the 50s. First backside guy to really get it going at Pipe, and he did the parallel stuff.” 

Finally, after spending a few weeks this winter watching him nab nearly every Off The Wall left that didn’t clamp, I had to ask him for his thoughts on the North Shore’s least appealing goof-magnet. 

“I feel like every goofy footer that goes to Hawaii for a while eventually finds themselves Off The Wall left because it’s too packed at Pipe and there’s a pack on the OTW right,” he says. “It’s like, ‘look at these lefts that are barely not clamping. This year had really good sand. I don’t know who the best ever Off The Wall left would be. Brett Barley’s one is pretty crazy. Jensen Hasset definitely has the best right ever out there, I feel like people don’t know about it. You should find a way to drop his video in this story.”

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