I met Kelly Slater in 1992. I was living in shared room entrenched in Newport Beach’s Ghetto with five other guys. Forty-Ninth Street. Mansions on the sand. Shacks across the street. Dennis Rodman lived within shouting distance. A weed dealer lived next to him. A venture capitalist and a coke dealer shared a flat on the opposite side.
Volcom was just then climbing out of the ghetto’s womb. This was long before the stock options. Long before the millions. They had stickers and T-shirts. Not much else. Kelly was staying two doors down with former Quiksilver marketing guy Taylor Whisenand. Our house was known for its parties. Massive ones with massive fines from the otherwise bored NBPD. Women, booze, drugs, you name it. The kind of place you hope your teenage daughter never steps foot in. Or your college daughter. Or your wife. A pool table rested in the main living area. There was sand and ungodly stains and green felt trying to escape the madness. It wasn’t Kelly’s scene but he would pop in for a quick game of pool or a little jam on the guitar. He was humble, funny and did not drink. We took care of the later for him.
Later that year he won his first world title. The house celebrated on the balcony with 12 packs of Natural Light and shots of no-name whiskey.
The following are two videos of Kelly Slater. The first was taken two days ago after his loss to Owen Wright, thereby eliminating him from world title contention.
The second takes us back to the year before Kelly’s first title. A simpler time. A happy time. Enjoy.
Photo: Sean Davey
Nugable 
Hell yeah Slater reads Nugbale. He lifted “The Dream tour has been a nightmare this year” straight from your site.
THe nightmare is Mick Fanning has busted into Nug’s porn dreams to steal his chick…. again! Nugget, what is it like losing your whore to someone such a bore?
Well, this time Blasphemy will have an opinion…. Dane got underscored.
Looks like things worked out well for Rip Curl!
Nug, is there any data on corporate riders doing well in their own contests?
As for the vintage video, ridiculous music, shit good Lowers and it’s still missing Chris Brown killing it.
In Black and White is one of the best surf flicks eva! Nice. Little bro is a good looking kid.
Nug, no one cares about you Newport bathhouse stories. Mick won the Search…Suck it.
@Laguna Tuna
Yep, yet another satisfied Nugable reader.
I didn’t watch the contest from the semis on. It was clear who was going to win by that point, and watching Mick vs. Bede in dropping surf was not my idea of a good time. My eyeballs had an important date with a bottle of bleach that I couldn’t miss.
Of course Dane was underscored slightly in his heat with Owen. But the end result of that heat was much easier to absorb since we were entertained by two exciting surfers dueling with barrel rides and aerials and carves. Whomever would win that heat would have met their inevitable end at the hands of the ASP buzzsaw; Mick Fanning.
Fanning remains on the steady arc to the pot o’ gold at the end of Dooma’s career.
It’s funny, watching Slater at Trestles almost 18 years ago still trumps anything I’ve ever seen Mick Fanning do.
Wait, there are bathhouses in Newport? I thought Mark lived over in Hawaii.
is he really smoking cigs?? That’s kinda cool.
ah the newport house, wish I could say I have fond memories, or any memories for that matter.
Whatever happened to PeterPerfect, Laser®, Shreddy Roosevelt, Noam Chompsky, and those other muck-rackers over at PostSurf? Even Taj’s Burrow has flown the coup it seems.
They never CALL, they never WRITE, and they just vanished like farts in the wind.
Or, perhaps they were just literary tools of Lewis Samuels’ lurid imagination, sent to diddle with our minds like mongoloids flicking a door-stop. We may never know the answers to these deep questions. But maybe a few more shots of bourbon will bring these dastardly things to light.
@BR
And who could forget Loving Jewish Couple?
Stu and Artie were funny, and the Bagle is still cooking on the corpse that was Post Surf.
But I think silence may indicate Lewis’ stealth keyboard.
The Slater footage does seem fresh somehow, though the dramatic music timed to his lip “taps” are very lame. The guys a freak and still freaking……
The tour is frothing to have Owen on board, do you guys know if Julian is going to make it as well? Fresh blood to rankle the dead wood is always good.
My bad, Jiggy Jig has to be mentioned for valuable service to the fuckery.
[…] is better than half of the guys he is surfing against? Step away from the bong. They have written Slater out of the script like he was a dead actor on a sitcom. Parko is next to be written off. BEWARE: If […]
Mike,
I love your point over at Stab about the need for a Parko vs. Fanning heat… regardless of the seedings at Pipe. Wildcards are a fetish of those ASP corpo dimwits who aim to appease their politico constituents.
There should be a clause in the ASP bylaws that allows for situations when the tour gets this close towards the end. The result:
Mano y mano. Pipe. Chopes. Or my son’s kiddie pool. I don’t care where. Just stick those two mawfackuh’s in the water and let us watch them demoralize each other for an hour.
Make it happen Mike. You are the President of Vice or some shit like that.
And yes, even if that means Mick will be surfing the heat… I will gladly watch. He is, after all, consistently the fifth best surfer on the tour.
Marv,
How did you know it was me on stab? Those fucks were editing me like mad and I had to come up with an alias.
How rad would Parko/Fanning be at Pipe? They could run it as a specialty heat and allow the rest of the contest to run as usual. An hour format for that heat would be insane.
As for making it happen, a friend forwarded an email to Brody that details a total overhaul of the current system. I received a nice thank you, but the inference was clear…. I am out of touch to the ASP revenue stream.
Stay the course works so well in politics, why change surfing?
So, did you bite the black dude while he was fucking you…. and what’s the deal with the nanny outfit? Balls out showing back up at ESPN, I’ll give you that because the rumor mill was flying. Good on you Marv.
@Mark,
How did I know it was you?
I am a ninja. My real name is Poo-Tang Choo. I go by other names as well. That filthy cauldron of vile vapidness called ‘Stab’ will no longer take my comments since I evidently took the Alana Blanchard post a little too seriously. Same with LikeBitchin, but they’ve at least dropped the “comment being moderated” bit. Maybe I’ll drop a line to my friend Blasphemy.
For now I just roam to and fro, seeking whom I may devour.
My sex life is none of your business though.
Yeeeesh!
I meant @ Mike.
What a fucknut I am.
And by ‘I am,’ I mean Mark is.
Your sex life is public knowlege Marv, high profile fetisism is hard to hide.
But you can always salvage a comment by backing the bus up over Mark.
He’s been pretty quiet since that sleep over in Blasph’s dungeon… Mark mumbled something about it being a cross between Ned Beatty in Deliverance and Silence of the Lambs.
At first I thought Marv Albert was the guy that had the Tijuana Brass. Then I realized it was the basketball dude with the dead animal on his head that likes to sodomize girls.
Does anyone else here realize how much less surf So Cal recieves than the North Shore? I was just curious.
And B.R. you forgot to mention PacNw and Richbzzzztch. And Bay St. and Hog Flu. Wait a second Hog Flu was me. Sorry. I was also Kampion,Hynd,Warshaw and Hawk plus many others.
Those were the days.
Oh yeah and I was SmyrnaJeff also. And Things that make you go Hmmmm. And Septo Bismal.
I’m just sayin.
I agree with Kelly, “The Dream Tour has been a nightmare”. Totally unsatisfying. Show me a final (since Kirra which was not surfable w/o jetskis) that had challenging waves. I swear I had better surf at my Cali home break most days they were holding the contests. Remember, its supposed to be a Dream Tour. Two good days (14 Jul JBay, Peniche in the semis) all tour. Pipe better go off with a good comp or it will be a nightmare year for the ASP-
@ Surfcheck
What about Winkipop?
[…] at the Prince of Poontang, Kelly Slater. He’s been the hottest surfer for years. This guy gets more ass than a Priest on a weekend […]