5 (or so) Photos with Warren Smith of Welcome Rivers
Warren Smith is a man with range. There isn’t an obscure sector of the surf, skate, art, photo, fashion or music world he can’t navigate his way through with ease. He’s appeared in surf vids with Dion Agius, he’s photographed for big name clients, he’s the co-founder of Welcome Rivers, he art directed with Former at its inception before going on to WR, and unbeknownst to many: he’s a Southern boy through and through. We should all be so lucky to have a text/email thread going with Warren at any given time. He’s the funniest fucker I know. And the dude rips at surfing and skating to boot.
His brand Welcome Rivers is ahead of its time and always has been. It is high end, but with a surf twist that will provide answers for any fashion emergency you come up against. High quality, tailored and field tested from Paris to Hooters. We buy pieces with every drop and there is great news in the world of Welcome Rivers: their Spring collection will be hitting the website any minute, and if you live in Australia Welcome Rivers will be hitting stores there in September.
We asked Warren to take us to sweet home Panama City Beach, Florida and he did not let us down. This is what Southern hospitality looks like.—Travis
All Photos and Captions by Warren Smith
Warren Smith at home in Panama City Beach, Florida. PHOTO: Joey Knight
This was the best spring for surf I can remember on the Gulf. We can regularly go a month or two without surfing at all. But I was legit surfed out this season, which is not a thing here. Growing up in P.C.B. I was pretty eager to leave, but it took me a long time to realize how special this bizarre place is.
This is Hooters, right on the freaking beach. It’s epic. I don’t know if all the other Hooters on the planet are somehow completely empty but still open, but this one is. The food is real close to meh, but thats not the point.
Southern grocery haul.
My beautiful babe Lindsey.
Backseat mobile shrimp boil.
Our beach cottage.
This is the disco ball salt shaker that comes out of a plane at Margaritaville randomly while you're eating. It’s a goof about the time Jamaican authorities mistakenly tried to shoot Jimmy Buffet's plane down, so he wrote a song about it called “Jamaica Mistaica.”
One of our favorite bars, Medhis. It’s a trailer right on the beach, and if you go with like eight people its completely filled.
My beautiful babe Lindsey, this time screaming at spring breakers from our front porch.
Spring Break in PCB in the ‘90s was totally insane. MTV Spring Break for five straight years, all the fights, people peeing on each other, naked humans you could imagine, and at one point we had the two biggest nightclubs in the country. It was awesome, when you're like 17. Now I’m old and it's the worst. So, like most tourist towns, we have a new short term rental problem, and right next door to us is one that advertises "sleeps 18” on Airbnb for a 3 bedroom. So spring break this year was hell. Every week we had like 20 different children too young to go to the bar going bananas right next door, and every week I had to go outside with no shirt on and yell at kids for partying on a Tues. One of the kids from this particular group of Alabama breakers was peeing on Lindsey’s car, so I went out a little hot and next thing I know I was surrounded by like 10 teenagers. But I guess I looked so crazy — steaming red hot in my little shorts with my babe in her nighty ready to rumble right behind me — that instead of getting a beer bottle to the head and jumped by children, I very luckily got a bunch of "Yes sirs, we're sorry.” I probably won’t be doing that move next year.
