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Everything we know (for now) about the allegations against Al Cleland Jr, and a Rip Curl Pro Portugal preview.

The sun never sets in the EAST, and New York City never sleeps. A match made in insomnia, and we figured the two ought to meet. Last week, we gathered at Vans Skate Space in Brooklyn for the finale of EAST starring Harry Bryant, where we crowned Ashton Pickle heavyweight champion of the weird. The next day, we took the party to 90th Street, where attendees got to test drive Haz’s EAST quiver. Having made a day of the beach, we made an evening of the bar. Ashton, Harry and Dooma took the hot seat at Bungalow Bar retired for a live StabMic, with special appearances from Mikey Feb, Danny Johnson and Dugong breeder, Will Solly. Our thanks to Kona Big Wave and Vans for bringing EAST to New York, and to Red Bull, Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, Devium, Yucca Fins, Roark, and Vaer for making StabMic possible.

Who said it? If you watched the EAST finale with Harry Bryant, you already know the answer. If not, have a listen here as Mikey and Buck discuss the spectacular way in which our annual alt board fiasco concluded. Genuine shock and awe thanks to the wizardry of Danny Johnson (and a bit of Haz). Also in this ep: - Does Japan have the best localism? - How many rails is too many rails? - Which surfer is owning 2026? And more.

In Episode #33 of StabMic, Hunter Martinez, Dane Reynolds, and Jake Kelley sit down with Dooma to talk through the making of DEFECT. We let the film run, and we let the boys talk to it. Stories of great value ensue: misadventures in an Indonesian corner named after the phallic appendage of one sailor-surfer, the music choices, the trips, and an additional clip of Dane running shirtless through a cemetery, narrated by Chris Hemsworth. This is DEFECT, explained by the chefs themselves. For those keeping score, we missed a week. DEFECT was meant to be Episode #32, but music licensing issues threatened to consign it to the dustbin of digital history. Happily, the threat has passed, and DEFECT shall remain on the internet for eternity. Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, Devium, Yucca Fins, Roark, Colby +, and Vaer for making StabMic possible.

What's off limits in 2026? Mikey and Buck discuss our members' response to Steko's divisive new film 'Fudo'— namely, the "crimes "of IP theft and sex appeal. Also on the docket: a Quik Fest review, an EAST Fest pump up (more below), a Stab High announcement, interviews with the Lowers winners, our first 2028 Olympians and more. PS: If you're in NYC, join us this Friday, Oct 2 and Saturday, Oct 3 for EAST Fest with Harry Bryant, Mikey Feb and Mason Ho. October 2 is the world premiere of Harry Bryant’s EAST finale at Vans Skate Space 198. Doors open at 6 pm. Live music to follow, and Kona Big Waves available for those 21+. October 3 is a group surf day at 90th st. in Rockaway Beach, followed by a live Stab Mic recording. Times TBD, check our IG for more info.

“I look back on that moment as the single most important moment of my life.” Quite a thing to say about the day you died. On December 21, 2012, Greg Long suffered a three-wave hold-down at Cortez Bank and clinically drowned. Greg was wearing the first iteration of the flotation vest developed by Shane Dorian and Billabong. He yanked the trigger, but it didn’t inflate. He tried again. And again. Nothing. No air came. The vest was faulty. His team found him, and he was brought back from the brink. The vest emerged around 2012, as paddle surfing began pushing into territory that had previously been reserved for tow surfing. Sion Milosky’s death made the risks harder to dismiss. If the pursuit was going to continue, they needed a way out when things went bad. Greg eventually began working with Patagonia. After years of R&D, they released the first PSI vest to the public in 2017. Nobody has drowned while wearing one. Now, nearly a decade later, they’re releasing its second iteration. Alongside the new vest, Patagonia and Stab are releasing Inflation Point, coming soon to Stab Premium. Greg joins us at the desk to talk about the new film, the experience of drowning, the importance of safety, and the paradox of the PSI vest: the safer you make something, the more tempting it can become to push further. Greg says more people are paddling out underprepared, convinced they’re harder to kill than they are, with the vest as a kind of guardian angel. It was never meant to be used that way. We also hear from fellow big-wave surfer Izzi Gomez, who recently released Chrysalis, a film about her own journey with big-wave surfing and mental health. Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, Devium, Yucca Fins, Roark and Vaer for making StabMic possible.

When the sun sets on one lineup (Lowers), it rises in another (La Graviere). This week, Mikey and Buck discuss the last CT event before the post-season plus the non-sanctioned event that is currently taking France by storm (Quik Fest). Also: Ageist theory from the latest EAST ep + how many hours you need to improve at surfing, according to Nate Florence.

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell this story… But I’m gonna do it anyway.” The best stories tend to live on the wrong side of the velvet rope, and every so often a gentleman must ignore the bouncer and let the public in. Parko, being a gentleman of considerable repute, has brought several such stories with him. Bisous! Fresh off the Surf100 $100k Finale, where the public judges may have been a touch less charitable than the man deserved, Parko joins Dane and Dooma at the StabMic desk to unpack the experience of putting a jersey back on, and what he’s been doing since hanging it up for good in 2018 after almost two decades on tour. There’s an obvious bit of crossover here, too. Joel spent the entirety of Dane’s relatively brief CT career on tour, before Dane left the building and Joel eventually did the same. Between them, they’ve seen enough of the institution from the inside to have developed some opinions on how the thing is constructed. It’s a good old-fashioned trip down the rabbit hole. The contents of said hole: waking Adriano De Souza from his slumber for the traditional Namotu Skulldrag onslaught, the night before a heat, only to face Dane Reynolds in that very heat; rescuing Kelly Slater; the early days of the Cooly kids; Joel’s diagnosis of what the modern tour has lost; and a tantalising hint at a new film project in the works with Mick. Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, and Devium, for making StabMic possible.

Surf100 spoilers + a Lowers preview. Mikey C is joined by Buck and Stace.

Cloudbreak just concluded with more questions than answers... Who was actually surfing well, and who was doing the bare minimum? Who gets priority when skis are involved? And how does the Abu Dhabi news affect the world's best surfers? Stace G and Mikey C investigate.

Coming into this year’s Surf100 Challenger Series, Zeke Lau’s reputation preceded him. Part of the calculation in casting him was that his history of hyper-competitive, occasionally confrontational surfing might make for good television. Zeke as antagonist, Zeke as disruptor, Zeke as villain. But, as anyone who’s been keeping up with the show knows, Zeke doesn’t really seem to be that guy anymore. He was also only a kid when he was on tour. Now he’s a dad, humble in defeat, generous with the other contestants, and enthusiastic about drinking beer. Josiah even wrote an essay about how much he loves him. Here, in episode 30 of StabMic, Zeke revisits both the John John incident at Bells and the Jacob Willcox incident at Margaret River, offering previously unknown context around what led to each, alongside a little insight into his upbringing and psychology that might explain why he did what he did. And looking back eight years on, does anyone even still have a problem with Zeke big-dogging John? Sport is, after all, a ritualised form of conflict. The old human appetite for competition, dominance and spectacle, with most of the blood taken out. We’ve agreed not to kill anybody these days, but the appetite hasn’t changed. Conflict creates stakes, and stakes are what make us care. Every good story needs a bastard, and Zeke, for a while, seemed happy enough to volunteer. We could certainly use one on tour now, eh? Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Vaer, Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, and Devium, for making StabMic possible.

A Drop of epic proportions. Harry Bryant fin discourse, a Dane vs. Joel Tudor music beef, Shane Dorian's tips on aging and an interview with the Hog? Yep, all inside.

Though not quite as internet-breaking as Kim Kardashian’s bare-cheeked, gravity defying Paper Magazine shoot back in 2014, nor inspiring quite the same conspiratorial energy as the great Slater-Mann affair of early 2026, the first episode of Harry Bryant’s EAST produced a similarly divided response. Some hot and bothered, taking a long, appreciative look at the unusual shapes, admiring the more exaggerated features; others left jostled by the jarring exhibit, muttering that they’d seen enough. Not entirely dissimilar from Kimmy, actually. Before filming, Haz was our most requested EAST pilot, and in episode one he certainly came in hot. Direct and matter-of-fact, he offered his opinions on boards with the bluntness of a mechanic telling you what’s wrong with your car. It was the kind of thing Mikey Feb was heavily criticised for in the opposite direction: being too polite with his feedback. Haz, well, he’s certainly on the other end of the spectrum, and the comments section was quick to let him know. “It doesn’t always have to be brutal, but the best boards I’ve ever had, and the best relationships I’ve had with shapers are when you provide them with honest feedback,” Haz says here. “If you just say the board goes good, then they’ve got nothing to go off.” Viewers also took issue with Harry’s refusal to ride the fins the shapers had supplied specifically for their boards. One submission came with a 2+1 setup rather than a thruster. Harry, having been handed the diminutive rear fin, chose instead to trust his own theory, replacing the dwarf with a fully grown one. The decision was particularly spicy because the board had been submitted by Tom Morat, with whom Harry has some history, including a rather uncomfortable exchange at the Palm Springs wave pool last year. To his credit, Harry addresses the whole thing here. He says he had no idea the board was Morat’s when he made the call, and insists his fin decision had nothing to do with their previous beef. He also concedes that he may have got it wrong, while making clear that he respects shapers who supply fins with their boards — a gesture, he says, that shows care and consideration for how the board is meant to be surfed. All of which, plus considerably more, makes for a rather different Harry Bryant from the one the comment section spent the past week flogging. Affable, thoughtful and refreshingly willing to interrogate his own behaviour, Haz gets his chance to make his case. Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Vaer, Dome Dust, Colby +, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, and Devium, for making StabMic possible.

How does it feel to jump from a two-story building onto three feet of reef? We asked Cole Houshmand after a recent Cloudbreak hiding... from the sands of Tavarua Island Resort. Finally, Stace G and Mikey C dive into their Cloudbreak picks and predictions. Comp starts tomorrow!

“Between Christmas 2003 and New Year 2024, packages of cocaine started washing up along the beaches of Southwest France. National television news reports carried the story of the coke de la plage — the beach cocaine, around a month after the first local rumours of finds emerged. One TV report on France 2, 30th Jan 2004, stated one-and-a-half tonnes had been recovered along French and Spanish coasts that month. If that’s just what the authorities had found, it’s safe to assume lots, lots more had been picked up by members of the public, mostly surfers.” - Paul Evans. Our guest this week is WSL commentator, Surf Europe editor, Stab contributor, and, as of a couple of weeks ago, the creator, producer and host of a long-form narrative podcast about cocaine. It was late 2003, and Paul had recently moved to southwest France from the UK, initially seduced by the prospect of good, uncrowded waves and rumours of mystics like Tom Curren and Robbie Page having made a life there. A few months later, bundles of pure Colombian cocaine started washing up on the beach. Paul first heard about it from a hitchhiker he picked up. The man had travelled several hundred kilometres from Toulouse and seemed remarkably determined to reach the coast that day, despite the weather. It had something of the sirens about it: a gift from the sea that was difficult to resist. Only here, instead of a beautiful song and certain death, it was exceptionally pure cocaine washing up on the beach, floating around in the lineup, offering a direct challenge to your capacity for restraint. What followed was a summer of abundance, debauchery, good waves and various forms of personal ruin, eventually building to a crescendo at the Quiksilver Pro France in 2004. The waves were pumping. Bruce and Andy Irons met in the final. The afterparty that followed, you'd have to imagine, given the situation and what was essentially being handed out to all, was fairly substantial. As Paul says in the podcast: “It’s kind of cliché… everyone refers to their youth as the best times in the world, but objectively, some of those people are right.” If you’re partial to good, uncrowded waves, a cacophony of beautiful women, and happen to possess even a passing curiosity about the sensation of your mouth going numb after sampling some uncut Colombian cocaine, then you’d have a hard time arguing against this as a purple patch in the history of mankind. Humanity has definitely had worse summers and here, Paul talks about how he went about telling that story. This is the making of Hossegor Beach Cocaine, told by its creator, Paul Evans. his is the making of Hossegor Beach Cocaine, told by its creator, Paul Evans. You can listen to the episode one for free here. Episodes 2-4 will live exclusively on Stab Premium and the Stab Premium app. Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Vaer, Dome Dust, SlowTide, TurtleBox, and Devium, for making StabMic possible.