“My story’s pretty different than most pro surfers.” Photos courtesy Hunter Jones
Hunter Jones didn’t take your traditional path to becoming a professional surfer — as if making a living surfing is traditional in any way to begin with. He’s a filmmaker and an athlete, constantly weaving the two together. He’s a guy who smiles often and paints just about every story he shares with a noticeable amount of positivity, whether it’s over the phone, on film, or the occasional run-in around the South Bay. He has a solid wetsuit tan on any given day. Maybe one of the best in the game. And he’s regularly up to something worth sharing.
In 2020, Jones was one of four surfers to launch a platform for social and environmental advocacy, 1 Planet One People. This year, he celebrated launching a signature collection he designed with his best friend and then recruited friends and family like his brother, roommate, and even Selema Masekela to package and release for the world. He was a speaker at South by Southwest earlier in 2022. He co-hosted an online surf travel series with the World Surf League. The list goes on.
But rewind to a point when the South Bay native decided to take an internship with the WSL after finishing his associate’s degree and you’d hardly imagine a man making a living as a professional athlete with such a unique resumé. And none of it, as you’d guess by now, revolves around surfing in contests.
“My story’s pretty different than most pro surfers,” he admits. Years before making a full-time living with support from sponsors, Jones started out in video editing and production. After getting his degree he decided to pass on the four-year university route, taking an internship with the World Surf League instead. And that internship eventually turned into an opportunity for a full-time paycheck from the League in his early 20s.
“I was a social media coordinator, traveling around the world, running their social, editing their global campaigns,” he said. “It was the coolest thing because I got really close to the athletes and got really exposed to how to run a company, all while doing it through my love for surf.”
“I came up in a great age where social media and the internet really changed the look of what a modern pro surfer can be.” – Hunter Jones
It was a gig a lot of surfers would consider the dream. The catch, of course, was the realization that it wasn’t Hunter’s dream.
“I guess after two years of being there I looked at myself and I was building up all these athletes’ profiles and growing their names.” So he asked himself, “Why am I not doing this for myself?”
So he quit. He’d been sponsored before but it wasn’t his livelihood. Yet.
Jones had grown up looking up to local South Bay heroes like Alex Gray, Matt Pagan, and Dane Zaun. He and his friends would mock up surf brands as kids, and he’d imagine things like having his own clothing line. All this during an era when, for the first time, an athlete’s livelihood wasn’t entirely dependent on holding a spot on the Championship Tour. He points out how he watched Gray, Pagan, and Zaun all compete, create content, and most importantly, have a strong, positive presence in his local community. So when Jones quit his job he started a creative agency while trying to navigate the pro surf world — all this without actually being a full-time sponsored athlete. But he saw the creative blueprint through storytelling and as he puts it, and never took his foot off the gas from that point.
“I grew up consuming so much surf media, watching videos on YouTube and watching these guys travel around with stickers on their board, making content, and making a living out of it,” he says. “I came up in a great age where social media and the internet really changed the look of what a modern pro surfer can be. Now there are just so many opportunities and a willingness for people to hear your story, opportunities to inspire through social media. It’s a beautiful thing.”
It didn’t all happen overnight but brands did take notice as he kept at it. After a couple of years, St. Archer was the first company that signed Jones and made him realize he could call himself a professional surfer. Six months later, Body Glove called.
“They definitely legitimized everything and gave me a platform to express myself and really create what I want to create. To express the sides of my creativity that aren’t in the water. My artistic side in storytelling.”
One of those opportunities he was given to get creative out of the water was to launch a signature collection with Body Glove’s backing. And it was the kind of opportunity that brings the whole leave-your-job-and-pursue-your-dream story full circle. That’s because the first thing Hunter did was call his childhood best friend, Easton Jones — who just so happened to have his own clothing line and now works in production and graphic design — a no-brainer. It made the collaboration between friends easy. He says the two worked on every detail of a signature collection together for more than a year — a laundry list of tasks Hunter didn’t realize went into releasing a collection.
“It puts it into perspective why brands take a year, two years to put collections out in advance,” he says. “We went through so many revisions. I hand-selected every item, from the sample tees to the hoodies to the garment dyes to the logo placement. Sizing. The hang tags. I could not have done this without Easton,” he admits.
Young Hunter and young Easton, a couple years before designing their first collection….
And that same level of humility led to the next realization: if he could include his childhood best friend in designing his first signature collection, he could recruit more friends and family for the ride to actually release it all. Photos of the collection, a promotional video, and a script and musical score were all just a few of the pieces needed to roll it all out, so he picked up the phone again.
“I had my good friend, Matt Devino, who I worked with at the WSL, and I brought him on to bring the video to life,” he remembers. “I got my brother on board. He’s a music producer and artist. I gave him the script, rough visuals, and inspiration for music that I had pulled and thought fit well. He completely customized and made music for the campaign.”
Next up, he knocked on the door of his roommate, Michael Costa, to shoot the collection — the perks of living with a photographer.
“We shot the whole thing in one day. We had all the outfits in my car, went from sunrise to sunset shooting in the South Bay.”
When it was all said and done, Hunter Jones had crossed a childhood dream he shared with friends off his list, all by calling on those friends to actually make it happen. The final finishing touch was asking Selema Masekela to voice over the campaign video, capping off the “it takes a village” effort.
“I was able to glorify their talents and express our creativity through this,” he says.
I poke him with the inevitable so, what’s next?
“I’d love to have a local film festival in the South Bay,” he says. “I grew up attending film festivals and submitting my own films with my friends, and that gave me a platform to show my surfing. It’s crazy to think that translated to making me this pro surfer-filmmaker. I guess we’re just doing it on a bigger stage now, and I want to be able to foster that in the next generation.”
“I grew up attending film festivals and submitting my own films with my friends, and that gave me a platform to show my surfing. It’s crazy to think that translated to making me this pro surfer-filmmaker. I guess we’re just doing it on a bigger stage now, and I want to be able to foster that in the next generation.” – Hunter Jones
