Mike Stewart can read Pipeline waves like his favorite book. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
When it comes to riding waves — whether you’re standing, kneeling, or lying down — Mike Stewart is up there with the best to ever do it. He has an innate knowledge of what a wave is going to do, when it’s going to do it, and how he can use it to his advantage. “Surfing” doesn’t actually need a surfboard, and Mike Stewart is the best proof of that.
In the 1980s, Stewart was routinely doing things so far ahead of the times that no one really knew how far ahead of the times those things were. He’s still doing those things, but now he’s in that realm of living legends.
“I bow down to the greater wisdom of Nat Young, who bowed down to George Greenough,” says surfing’s greatest encyclopedia, Matt Warshaw. “I bow down to the greater wisdom of Tom Curren, who bowed down to Mike Stewart.”
In this clip from Off Da Lip — a YouTube channel that has been dumping hours of incredible footage online in recent weeks after a swell event in Hawaii that still has shoulders sore — Stewart kicks into a bomb off second reef, dodges a few speed bumps on the face, loops it back to the trough, then proceeds to casually get a massive tube with a spit that wanted to take his skin off. All in day’s work for a guy like Mike.
