Gallery: Last Night’s Stab In The Dark Premiere In Venice

The night was cold.

Not east coast cold nor Northern California cold, but for the SoCalites in attendance this frigidity was nearly too much to bear. Some claimed that it snowed in Malibu yesterday. It likely just hailed.

For our thin Los Angeles skin and ill-prepared winter wear, the temperatures that dipped into the low 50s, or maybe even the high 40s were, pathetically, an ongoing topic of conversation.

Ladies and gentlemen flocked to heat lamps like bugs to street lights. PBR lights in hand, because apparently, PBRs can get lighter – but they were 16 oz cans, and if you don’t appreciate an extra four oz in your cheap beer, then you aren’t American. Many attendees, however, weren’t American. Surfers like Grant ‘Twiggy’ Baker, Mitch Coleborn, Michael February, Doomsday Fahrenfort and the melting pot of Australian, English, South African and South American men and women that occupy Venice didn’t complain, much.

Still, the greater Los Angeles region came out in droves. Britt Merrick and the Channel Islands crew made their way down from Santa Barbara, and the local crowd produced a good showing. By the time we played the film, 30 minutes later than promised, the body heat radiated above the concrete floors outside at the Waterfront Venice. It was a packed house. The viewers sat in a silence only broken by the occasional laugh or cheer at the undeniable charm of Mick Fanning and his shredding on all 11 murdered-out epoxies.

After the film, we did a short Q-and-A with the winning shaper, Britt Merrick of Channel Islands. He told us after the height and weight we provided for our mystery surfer, he dipped into the WSL surfer stats and quickly put together that the surfer was, in fact, 3x time World Champ, Mick Fanning. He’s a sharp man with a majestic beard with a noble family surfboard shaping lineage. He also knows how to use the internet. 

The crowd lingered for a bit, we finished our beverages and spilled out north/south/east and not west of the Venice Boardwalk continuing our nights in a similar boozy fashion.

The next Stab in the Dark premiere will be at Topa Topa Brewery in Santa Barbara next Thursday, February 28th.