“Waves are crashing over the boat. It’s a strong boat though. One of the strongest. It rocks and rolls but stays steady. Plates crash to the floor. Everyone runs up to the deck. There’s a fire downstairs! Wake up. Wake up. There’s a fire on the boat!” —Nate Lawrence, page 64.

“I look at what looks good. People’s style. And we all know there’s some people who got it and other people who don’t and it’s like —  I don’t necessarily care about the degree of difficulty because you could just do something simple and it looks good, you know? I think I’m always into what you call the “classic era of skating” the early to mid-90s stuff. I love that footage.” —Andrew Allen, page 78.

“I was into it when I was way younger, but I wouldn’t sign up for a contest now. I think it feeds the wrong message. If I think back on myself as a kid, I wish somebody would have told me way earlier on that to snowboard you don’t have to do contests. That you could ride your snowboard however you want and just enjoy it. That’s all you have to do.” —Keegan Valaika, page 86.

“Ty Segall is 10 minutes late to our interview at Footsies in Highland Park. I’m sipping on a whiskey in the back when he shows up, yellow paint on his hands and arms and maybe his clothes. What’s with the paint? He whips out his phone to show me. “This is a portrait of my girlfriend,” he says, revealing the explanation for his lateness. The portrait is amazing. There’s a psychedelic American flag in the background, filled with the kinds of colors you see while on acid. Bright, not at all complementary, yet somehow soothing, seductive. “I have a character named Assman,” he says, and so begins our interview.” —Maya Eslami, page 118.

“When you get paid to surf, you try to maximize everything you do to make yourself more valuable. At the same time, you don’t want to slut it out. You want to keep it hard to get. Because I’m out there every day, but if we pressed record and posted edits every day, people would get burned out on it. Funny is only funny for so long.” —Mason Ho, page 122.

“But tonight, I’m walking toward the Billabong house wondering if this place is still creating folklore like it used to. If it’s a place where the young surf and risk life all day and then return to the shore, crack beers and invite every pretty thing from the island over. Or is it now covered in WSL cables and lame Inertia ‘journalists.'” —Travis Ferré, page 139.

Pick up your own copy of What Youth Issue 17 here.

And don’t forget to swing by The Wayfarer in Costa Mesa this Thursday night to ring in the new issue in good ol’ WY fashion.

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