Throughout the ‘90s, North County San Diego-based photographer Steve Sherman gave surf fans worldwide an intimate, inside look at the Momentum generation as they pushed surfing performance to staggering new heights.
About halfway through the recently-released HBO documentary “Momentum Generation”, a film by Jeffand Michael Zimbalist focusing on the New School crew’s swift rise to fame in the ‘90s, there’s a scene where Kelly Slater and Rob Machado recount their competitive rivalry, which came to a head in 1995 while the Momentum gang was in France.
While at shaper Maurice Cole’s house, Slater told him that the quiver he’d made for Slater’s European run wasn’t really working out. Trying to rectify the situation, Cole told Slater that three of Machado’s boards were downstairs and that he should grab one to test out. Slater didn’t need to be told twice and threw one of his traction pads on the board before taking it for a spin at one of the nearby beach breaks. Machado, shocked and irritated by the fact that Slater had helped himself to one of Machado’s new boards, told Slater to scrape the traction offthe fresh stick and give it back to him like new. Few people were around to watch this rare, tense moment between two friends and competitive rivals at the peak of their powers, but photographer Steve Sherman was one of them.
“Kelly had to hack away for 45 minutes to get the decking off,” Sherman told me recently at the SURFER offices, pointing at the infamous photo he’d snapped of the moment (which you can find on page 55). “Ross Williams and Shane [Dorian] were there watching the whole thing. Kelly was so pissed.”
Esta historia es de la edición Volume 59, Issue 8 de Surfer.
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Esta historia es de la edición Volume 59, Issue 8 de Surfer.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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60 Years Ahead
We had a whole plan for this year. Funny, right? Surfer's 60 year anniversary volume was going to be filled with stories nodding to SURFER’s past, with cover concepts paying homage to the magazine’s most iconic imagery. Our new Page One depicts something that’s never happened in surfing before, let alone on a prior SURFER cover. And our table of contents was completely scrapped and replaced as we reacted to the fizzing, sparking, roiling world around us. In other words, 2020 happened to SURFER, just like it happened to you.
A Few Things We Got Horribly Wrong
You don’t make 60 years of magazines without dropping some balls. Here are a few
THE LGBTQ+ WAVE
Surf culture has a long history of marginalizing the LGBTQ+ community, but a new generation of queer surfers is working to change that
For Generations to Come
Rockaway’s Lou Harris is spreading the stoke to Black youth and leading surfers in paddling out for racial justice
Christina Koch, 41
Texas surfer, NASA astronaut, record holder for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman
END TIMES FOR PRO SURFING
By the time the pandemic is done reshaping the world, will the World Tour still have a place in it?
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
After decades of exclusive access to Hollister Ranch, the most coveted stretch of California coast is finally going public
What They Don't Tell You
How does becoming a mother affect your surfing life?
Four Things to Make You Feel A Little Less Shitty About Everything
Helpful reminders for the quarantine era
The Art of Being Seen
How a group of black women are finding creative ways to make diversity in surfing more visible