An iconic Newport, Oregon vista. Photo: Casey Felton
Editor’s Note: The Hometown Hype film tour is presented by White Claw. The Newport, Oregon film premiere is October 9th at Newport’s Tastee Tiki. RSVP here.
Travel along Oregon’s 363 miles of coastline and you’ll find no shortage of surf. What you won’t find, though, is consistency. The state is rife with sandy beachbreaks that reward tenacity as much as skill, and it takes a relentless breed of wave rider to brave their cold waters. Within that lies Newport, a Pacific Northwestern surf hub, and the subject of Casey Felton’s addition to The Inertia’s Hometown Hype series.
“The benefit of Newport is that we have a lot of breaks,” explains Felton. “Probably more than any other place on the Oregon coast, there’s just more options within reasonable driving distance. Even if it’s really busy in the summer, you can usually find somewhere to surf where maybe it’s not as good, but there’s still uncrowded waves you can surf. There’s just a lot of options.”
Casey’s been filming since high school, though not always surfing. He grew up on the Southern Oregon coast, in the Coos Bay-North Bend area. His first exposure to surfing was a teacher of his, but he himself didn’t get into the sport until the age of 22. By 27, he was behind the lens.
Felton credits the Newport surfing community as the reason he’s been able to make his way as a videographer. While there are many surfers in the area, it’s still a small community in the scheme of things – a tightly knit group that nevertheless invited Felton into their fold.
“It’s interesting because Newport is a small town, but it’s a small and educated town,” he says. “It’s got your blue-collar workers for fishermen, and it has a lot of science – it’s got NOAA. People are just friendlier, a little bit more accepting. When I started, I had to learn quick the etiquette of filming. Some people think [there should be] no filming at all, but people were pretty cool about it. People appreciated me sharing the shots with them. People were accepting and just friendly. It wasn’t like going to Seaside and surfing the point.”
It’s been 10 years since he started filming in Newport, and footage from that decade has made its way into the film, which premieres at Newport’s Tastee Tiki the evening of October 9th. The earliest shots go way back to 2016, originally appearing in the very first “Wave of The Month” – a series of YouTube videos that kicked off his filming career. Since then, he’s learned a lot, though, including how to find good waves in a place where they can be few and far between.
“The trick is that you have to team up with really good surfers,” he explains. “It’s kind of a sacrifice. You got to sacrifice your time to go when it’s good, when they’re going. Because if you just randomly go, you get random results.”
In all that time, the most memorable moments came from 2020 – a 20-foot, 20-second interval swell that produced some of the most monstrous surf Newport has ever seen. “It was the biggest swell of the decade,” he recalls. “Those are the biggest waves I’d ever seen. Those waves were just so f****** big, and nobody was around. There was hardly anybody capturing it, hardly anybody surfing it. And the people that did catch waves, it was just so unforgettable.”
Casey was there to capture it all on film. And we get to experience the same awe he did as he profiles this rich surfing community in the Pacific Northwest.
Shot/edited/directed by Casey Felton
Featured surfers
Kirk Tice
Ollie Richardson
Dan Hasselschwert
Billy Wood
Louie Cole
Meira Cole
Additional appearances
James Book
Trevor Tice
Sandy Blackman
Executive Producers
Luke House
Joe Carberry
Find Casey Felton here:
YouTube
Insta/Facebook
Special thanks to our friends at White Claw for making this celebration of surf communities happen.
