Best Sections of All-Time: Grainy Occy at Bells

I am here desperately trying to get excited about competitive surfing. I want to love it so badly. And while it’s never been my true love — we all know I’m a surf video / non comp guy — I do love analyzing the most ridiculous nuances of contest surfing and plopping down to watch good surfing wherever it may be. That never gets old. No matter how much they mess with the format and presentation and do goofy gimmicks as an organization. I still like watching surfing so I’m here. But that doesn’t mean I can’t toss shells from the peanut gallery.

In my pursuit to fall in love with Bells or comps this week, I found this clip of Occy during the 1996 and 1997 Skins events — basically a contest that paid you for your highest wave in each heat you surfed. Occy surfed like 11 in a row and won $55,000 bucks and if you watch the video it’s easy to see no one could touch him this day.

I’m a regular foot Californian so Tom Curren and Kelly Slater are my style origin story, but watching this footage of Occy right now feels like a modern renaissance and has me feeling nostalgic for cold Bells Beach — one of the classic surf destinations I will happily board a 14 hour flight to go be a part of. Like I said, I was there with the Rip Curl heavies for the 50th anniversary and they showed me a damn fine time.

Anyway, see if this works for you, enjoy a deep throwback of Occ at Bells and see if you fall in love. I’m currently crushing on Bells pretty hard after this. We’ll see if it’s true love in a week or two. —Travis

And if you wanna get really deep, check out the entire event here:

[Above Photo: Joli]