On June 20, 2014, I got the chance to attend one of Hurley’s “Surf and Enjoy” events in Hermosa Beach, California. In celebration of the 10th annual International Surfing Day, Hurley uncaged some of its premiere athletes — Rob Machado, Yadin Nicol, Felipe Toledo, Dane Zaun, and Michael Dunphy were all there pushing anybody and everybody on the beach into their first waves. It was mostly eager excitable kids having their minds blown, but I’m sure even your mom probably got some waves; she may have even got some free schwag too… play your cards right and she could probably score you a killer “surf and enjoy” hat or tee. E’erybody was was just walkin’ ’round gettin’ it!
Hurley’s Evan Slater, one of the founding fathers of ISD, was on hand, so it’s no surprise Hurley would show up big. Slater started ISD with Ross Garrett at Surfing magazine in 2004; it was started as a celebration of surfing, creating awareness around cleaning your local beaches.
Here at the Hermosa beach event, Hurley partnered up with Spyder Surf Shop, Surf Academy (which busses in innercity kids to surf for the first time), The Ecology center (which is an organic farm down in Orange County that educates people on growing your own food and clean water conservation), and H2O (a part of Hurley which is creating awareness around providing clean water access for people all over the world). It should also be said that the Surfrider Foundation has been a great caretaker of ISD all over the globe.
The main event down in Hermosa was surfing, most of these people riding waves for the first time — give them the gift of their first wave and let it change their life because it’s changed a lot of our lives. I felt the athletes killed it; they were in the water for hours. I talked to a few kids and tagged along with Yadin for a bit. I missed Rob and Felipe, but still had a lot of fun with the rest of the boys. The video is the straight-laced version to preserve the integrity of the beautiful gift the guys were giving to these first timers. The bonus footage of Yadin, Michael, Dane, and Pat O’Connell’s harrowing comedy hour will have to wait for now. Actually they were all super funny and really cool dudes. I had so much fun I forgot what I often was doing.
