Matt Meola, how do your knees still work? Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Matt Meola is one of the most interesting surfers around. Sure, you know him. You know him because he’s one of the best aerial surfers on Earth. You know him because the things he does on a surfboard look impossible. But Matt Meola isn’t a guy that’s dropping clips to YouTube every 10 seconds on the hunt for eyeballs. He just does his thing, and every once in a while we’re invited to see what his thing is. And every once in a while is right now.
In One of a Kind, Take Shelter Productions took a look into Matt’s life. It’s hunting and fishing. It’s farming. It’s music and friends. And it’s surfing. Lots and lots of surfing. Surfing weird waves, using the wind to his advantage. Maui surfers in particular have a certain fondness for the wind.
“It gets windy so often that if you don’t learn to take advantage of the wind, you’re going to be a real sourpuss of a surfer,” Dave Kalama once said, “because it’s not that good over here very often.”
To the non surfer, surfing is really only seen in a few ways: there’s the swaying palms Endless Summer/Spicoli version and there’s the WSL/Olympic sport version. But surfing to the surfer is a whole lot more. It’s everything in between those two things and a bit on the outsides, too. Matt Meola represents a tiny little niche of it that is, to me at least, one of the purest forms. He surfs because he loves to surf. He pushes his limits because he wants to push them. His surfing is for him and him alone.
“There are so many different aspects of surfing,” Shane Dorian says. “Someone like Matt really represents that. He goes big and he goes fast and it’s super technical. It’s exciting to watch.”
In One of a Kind, Meola is joined by John John Florence, Billy Kemper, Shane Dorian, Albee Layer, and a few others. It’s a look into a life that’s being lived well. A full one packed with waves, friends, fun, and presumably very sore knees.
