Napkin Notes

Finding fresh perspectives and more surf in a new way of life. (written by Napa Merlot) Old age, new groove. It's winter, offshore wind and the WNW swell is building. Forty is considered old by many but for these grey-ish hair boys means just mature teenagers. They seem to be full of bad habits including "stop at the Starbucks for a white-mocha-frappuccino". They don't get charmed easily and besides the time behind them, they feel like they have a whole life to live. On the ledge of the cliffs they stare at the sea. Even a few minutes away from home, new waves. Old age, new world. Old maneuvers, new peaks. Old school style, new reefs, traditional turns, new attitude. They make fun of every single thing that come in front of their eyes. They are 40 going on 21 year old. "Let's paddle out before the wind turns... Well I don't care, maybe it's not so crowd if gets messy". Full wetsuit on, booties, wax rubbing... He looks at an emerald split-peak and carves an "S" in the air with his fingers mind-surfing the left-hander. There is never an aerial maneuver in his mind-surfing, only cutbacks, snaps, floaters and lay-backs. It's pretty obvious for someone who instead of watching clips of John John Florence on YouTube, he searches for old footage of Nick Wood, Dada Figueiredo, Neco Padaratz... When I ask what surfer he likes to watch now days the answer is: "The most interesting surfer these days is Nathan Fletcher, but he is almost 40", he says with a confident smile in his face. And he continues: "I'm always interested in what Daryl "Flea" Virotsko is doing too, he is a pretty cool character", then he runs down the trail towards the cobblestones. They surfed 'till the sky turns fluorescent, 'till it turns bloody. He comes in walking slowly, stopping several times to look back to the waves, to the horizon, contemplating. The first thing he does when he gets to the car is turn on the system. The guy is a punk-rock addicted and his Pandora station goes from Misfits to Dead Kennedy's, from Black Flag to Motorhead, from Social Distortion to Bad Brains, from Agent Orange to Minor Threat, then to Youth Brigade, to Suicidal Tendencies, to Black Sabbath, to Pantera... Noisy and aggressive music, all the time, in opposite of his mellow and hyper-happy personality. Our stomachs are screaming so we stopped at some irish pub for food and drinks. He ordered a salad and I heckled him: "Salad?!!" He answers: "I'm trying to be healthy" with an ironic face and asked the hot-blonde bartender for a 22oz's IPA. I ordered a bacon, bleu-cheese, grilled onions and avocado burger with a side of french fries followed by a Stella Artois. You can tell he likes weird stuff while our conversation goes on: "I recently watched the documentary about pro-skater from the 80's Mark Gator. Pretty crazy shit". He wipes his mouth with a paper napkin that I wrote some notes on and keeps talking: "I tried to find a movie about Jason Jessee (titled Pray For Me), another pro-skater from the 80's but it's not available on line, he is a very interesting and strange guy. I used to skate a lot when I was a teenager so I really liked those movies. I like that one about Duane Peters (Who Cares), and I look for Punk movement documentaries, stuff about Keith Morris and Jello Biafra, they are so smart". He explains: "I always have been part of this culture since it hit me in the mid 80's. I used to hand out with these guys they had a punk-rock band, then we had our own band, then surfing was rebel at the time too, and it's natural you start skating when there is no waves... And I had this political side, I was always a thinker, but at the same time I love to be free and I don't care about shit, so this is pretty much who I am, what I learned, and who I wanna be. It probably all come from my artistic side." He orders another beer and ask me: "Have you watched the movie (Control) about Joy Division's Ian Curtis?!" My answer is negative and he goes: "It's depressive" (and laughs). Suddenly he stops talking about weird stuff and goes all serious about his clothing brand and all his projects and plans, and how he is gonna try to bring his buddy Neco Padaratz back from obscurity. He also tells me how his brother Guto is killing it in surfing and life in general and making him so proud and keeping him inspired. He couldn't stop talking for like an hour or maybe three 22oz's. Well, old age, new wanderer. Old bar, new plans. Old habits,new dreams.

Productions

If you guys out there didn't realize yet, I will let you know that professional free-surfer Fernando Fanta is one of the best brazilian surfers for video parts and has one of the most unique and beautiful styles ever. The mellow tattooed red-hair sponsored by MCD (MoreCoreDivision) and HotButtered Sunglasses travels around the world looking for good surf, filming, photographing, editing, drinking beers, smoking gudangarans and wandering. In his last visit to California in november 2013, he told me that he has a new life project in mind. He is working on to create a new video production company in association with his girlfriend, called 'Hi On Sugar'. Basically they gonna take wedding's video production to another level. As trippy and genius Fanta is, I imagine he is gonna transform boring wedding videos to Oscar's award level interesting films. But this time, wasn't a wedding that he putted his hands on. He produced a video for OutraCultura that impressed a couple hundreds of people out there and reached an amazing number of views after few days that it was posted on YouTube. Thank you so much, Fanta, for you creativity, inspiration, laughs, vibe... it's always a great pleasure to have you around. To see the video go: outracultura.com

Competitions

OutraCultura rider Guto Morelli got two more good results in recent competition at Joaquina beach, Southern Brazil. He took the Joaquina Beach Association Open division and Master division. After two second places in the last two contests, he took it to another level and brought home a couple more trophies for his huge collection. Guto is an amazing surfer, very consistent in heats, a crazy big wave rider and has a great personality. Humble, he is not exactly what you call a pro-surfer 'cause he doesn't get paid to surf, but he definitely takes surfing more serious than his profession, a Real State agent in the magic island of Florianopolis. Yeah Guto!! We are proud of you!! You keep proving that you are one of the best!! Congratulations!!

OutraCultura - the movement

Outra Cultura

Dadá Figueiredo

Like I mentioned on the posts before, Dada Figueiredo was one of the most important surfers of the generation that was there before mine, the generation that pretty much started the professional surfing in Brazil, or the first ones that started to take it more serious and turned it into a real profession. And consequently influenced many people in many ways. Even that Dada himself was very controversial and considered for many people the "anti-pro", he was so talented that he stayed for years in the top of the rantings.

Dadá Figueiredo

Around 1990, Dada Figueiredo was the highest paid pro surfer in Brazil. Despite his fame of "trouble maker", he was as hardcore as a surfer can be. Long nasty sun-burnt hair, skull tattoos, high-performance competitive approach, rad lay-backs, thrash metal loud music, black spray air-brushes on his self shaped boards, black Ray-Bans with yellow mirrored lenses... He started (with Eduardo Crivella) a surfboard brand called Anti-Fashion and a clothing brand named Necrose Social. Life full of controversies, but very interesting. Until these days he is considered one of the best surfers ever in Brazil.