The interview process needed a facelift, so we lifted it from the couch and decided to take it to lunch, shopping, surfing, outside, anywhere we like. On the road. And this week we're in Hawaii with Tanner Gudauskas, Kolohe Andino, Balaram Stack and Dillon Perillo. Check back for more episodes later this week.
In this installment we managed to briefly sadden a Gudauskas, and I think he also says he'd eat snake if he had the chance. [...]
This past summer we did something we've always wanted to do: we drove across the heartland of America and we documented every sketchy detail. We took surfers, skaters, Americans, Australians and women. The trip was a sweaty cockfight of celebratory nights on the town and endless drives through nowhere. Every night we premiered Dear Suburbia at a new surf shop, and following the credits we'd careen into the streets with our new friends to find the essence of the American night in some of America's most interesting towns.
Be sure to come back tomorrow for the premiere of Jean, only at What Youth dot com. [...]
PHOTO: Lawrence
From a suite on the sand here at the exact center of Waikiki Beach I can see Threes, Canoes, Queens, down to Walls and Tongs and then Diamond Head bookending the strip beyond which the landscape comes down off its yen bender to a merely moderate upscale suburbanity.
Looking SSW straight out to sea from here, nothing is much different than it's been for many decades. Humans float on blue, some are ripping, but more, like this white woman out front, fail unselfconsciously in basic feats of balance on par with a roadside sobriety test. She trembles as if her surfboard were a tightrope, when actually it's a stand-up as wide as her rental car and more stable (we're learning) than many coastal cities, being held steady in chest-deep water by an instructor who neither blows a Pipe whistle nor calls her haole nor in any other way makes her to feel less than welcome in his Hawaii Nei. She'll get her legs soon enough and if not, retail therapy, cocktail therapy, golf, spas, restaurants, a poolside chaise and Nora Roberts novel or a thousand other diversions — mostly replicated from the proven white-label vacation templates of Vegas and Europe and Asia — are waiting on shore to highlight her trip. She could be anywhere really. [...]
PHOTOS: Neville
On Friday we'll be premiering a new film by Kai Neville. Jean is a just-under 20-minute documentation of What Youth's journey across the United States of America in support of Dear Suburbia. The schizophrenic, sweaty, often inebriated journey includes stops in Sugarloaf, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Austin, Panama City, Lafayette, Wrightsville, New Orleans and New York with Craig Anderson, Conner Coffin, Dillon Perillo, Mitch Coleborn, Dion Agius, Kolohe Andino, Jack Fardell, Kai Neville and more.
And let's just say we did not go gentle into that good American night. We saw Iron Maiden, skated, swerved, sang, danced, ate and drank our way across this odd place we call America and documented every hazy moment. After the jump on this page you'll find a gallery of photos to get you in the mood for Friday.
Be sure to check back then for the full-length mess, including a never-before-scene session from Dear Suburbia and a skate section Kai strung together while on the road starring our pro skater roadie Jack Fardell. Click MORE to see all the photos. [...]
PHOTOS: Lawrence
Photographing "lifestyle" on a boat trip is generally regarded as trite. The look has been overdone and there just aren't many places to take photos when you're on a boat and not surfing. When Nate went to Indonesia with Dane Reynolds, Taj Burrow, Kolohe Andino, Jack Freestone and Evan Geiselman we challenged him to make it feel timeless, unique and sick. That prompted him to dig through old cameras and buy loads of film. He returned from the trip inspired and very excited about what might be in those rolls. Nate left the film here at What Youth to be developed. And we promptly lost it all.
But what was lost was then found in the corner of Kai's editing bay and has now been developed and called brilliant several times. Here is the first glimpse at one of the 12 lost rolls from Nate Lawrence. This is all of roll 3. [...]
PHOTO: Neville
Jack London is a writer — rather famous one too. He wrote The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, Iron Heel, White Fang and tons of other famous novels in the early 1900's that you may have been told to read and probably didn't. Turns out London wrote about surfing too. In 1907 he was in Waikiki and wrote A Royal Sport: Surfing in Waikiki. They are some of the most interesting words ever penned about our outlandish activity. Here's a brief excerpt:
Where but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect, full statured, not-struggling frantically in that wild movement, not buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on which he stands. He is a Mercury — a brown Mercury. His heels are winged, and in them is the swiftness of the sea. [...]
Epokhe is a new sunglass brand that Dion Agius, Mitch Coleborn and Kai Neville have dreamt up. Being's how Kai is a founder of What Youth and works here, we had the pleasure of watching this shoot for the line come together. It was a relatively normal day, couple meetings, a few kick flips in the back, surf at lunch etc. In between all of that Dion and Kai had a few phone calls:
"Yeah, sweet, pick me up on your way to the airport," Kai said to Dion finally.
And just like that, as we all packed up and went home for the evening, Kai and Dion and our good friend Grady Archbold went to the deserted desert somewhere in the middle of America, shot the sunrise with these models and returned the next day with magical imagery and film. All in 12 hours. Kai was back in here like nothing happened the next day.
Check out this behind the scenes video and be sure to peruse the site and get some sunnies at www.epokhe.co [...]
PHOTO: Screenshot from Pretty Sweet
I think it's the scene in the new skate video Pretty Sweet where they are spraying, toasting and blasting beer into the air. It's snowing and it's shot on RED, just a brilliant moment. Someone must have stomped a sick one. It's unfiltered fuck it! Right there on the screen. I felt it. I finished the rest of the film, which is co-produced by Spike Jonze and has a sick soundtrack, and somehow manages to keep a high-end, high-budgeted production feeling bad ass and a cross between Crusty Demons of Dirt and Where The Wild Things Are. And once I watched Elijah Burle's part and then the final section starring Guy Mariano, I was pulling kick flips in the warehouse. First-try Tuesdays! [...]
