The five-part documentary series Fabric——pays homage to women making positive change in their communities through sport. Featuring athletes, artists, and activists across snowboarding, surfing, and skateboarding, it turns its lens beyond gnarly tricks and toward efforts like fitting a year of trash into a jar, or organizing free skateboarding workshops for Indigenous youth. Ultimately, the series is a testament to what athletes can achieve when they use their talents to fight for a better future.

Fabric was produced by Happy Okay Pictures and directed by pro freeride snowboarder . We spoke to Van Gyn about the series, and how the pandemic shifted her creative vision.

The first three episodes of Fabric are available now on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Watch. The fourth and fifth episodes will be released on March 23 and March 30, respectively.Ìę

OUTSIDE: Why did you want to pursue this project?
ROBIN VAN GYN: I saw a lot of amazing people around me doing incredible things, and I didn’t feel like they were getting the love that they deserved. And I really was just inspired by these athletes who were taking action in their communities. I wanted to see more of that in action sports media, and media in general. If I wanted to see that, then there must be other people out there who wanted to as well.Ìę

Fabric marks your directorial debut. What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered while making this series?
I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve always just gone where my head and heart want to go, and haven’t really thought about the logistics. In this case, it was so much more than I imagined. We started the project just before COVID-19 hit in 2020. Right away, we lost all of our funding. So, we had to move through letting it die, then bringing it back to life. And then when it came back to life, it evolved into something better. We found all the right people. All of the themes of the episodes came to life—everything became a lot more clear when we had this moment of negative space to pause and look at what was really important to us.

What was your vision before the pandemic halted production, and how did the series end up changing?
The first idea was to do one of the most groundbreaking board sport films for women, action-wise. But when we actually had to take a minute to reset, we thought, what were we missing? Is athletic achievement something that we really needed to celebrate? There were all of these amazing women being spotlighted in action sports because of their talent. But we became interested in what else made them shine. Ultimately, we decided that the athletes’ contributions to their communities were what we really needed to amplify. All of the people that make up our cast are absolute heroes.

Fabric celebrates young women and girls getting involved in these sports, regardless of their athletic ability. Why did you think it was important to portray that on screen?
First and foremost, it’s not even just about young women and girls—it’s about everybody. It’s about creating this bigger, broader spectrum of what matters and who can be involved. It’s not just about athletic achievement. Maybe it’s about creating sports camps in your community. Maybe it’s about art, or motherhood, or mentorship. When it comes to action sports, we look at our heroes and what they can do. But really, I think the perspective shift there is, what are they doing? What we wanted to drive home to anybody interested in snowboarding, skateboarding, or surfing is that there is a place for you. There is something for everybody out there.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Ìę

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It’s hard to remember now, but before , one of the biggest controversiesÌęheading into the Academy Awards was that Kelly Slater, Shaun White, and Tony Hawk were on the illustrious list of Oscar presenters—three faces you’d sooner expect to find on a rerun of the X Games than rubbing shoulders with Jessica Chastain and Denzel Washington.

It turned out that the superstar surfer, snowboarder, and skateboarder (respectively) weren’t there because the Academy decided to retroactively recognize or as the cinematic masterpieces that they are. (As Hawk , “If being in every Jackass movie, xXx, Police Academy 4 and Sharknado 5 doesn’t qualify me to present at the Oscars, then your taste in movies needs readjusting.”)ÌęNo, White, Hawk, and Slater traded their boards for tuxedos to present a tribute to the 60 year anniversary of the James Bond franchise.

But what exactly do these three American “extreme sports legends” (as a disembodied host called them when they walked onstage) have to do with the British martini-drinking secret agents?

It started when World Surf League CEO Erik Logan was chatting with an Oscars producer and had the idea to include “world-class action sports heroes” in the slated homage to Bond. Slater, Hawk, and White are —they all —and soon enough all three athletes were in. “These three are all legends, at the top of their field in three of the major action sports,” a World Surf League spokesperson told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű when asked why Slater and the others had been invited.

It’s hard not to see the decision in the context of the Academy’s larger goal of upping viewership after an number of people tuned in last year. And it wasn’t the only measure the Academy took to try to broaden the award show’s appeal: tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams presented Beyoncé’s performance of her nominated song “Be Alive” from the King RichardÌęsoundtrack; pop icon Billie Eillish also had a primetime slot; and the Academy that are awarded according to fan voting.

Would it have made more sense to have one of the actors who have held the iconic role over the years introduce the tribute? Perhaps. But whether or not you’re able to see a direct line between a tux-wearing government super spy who regularly jumps from exploding buildings and Slater, White, and Hawk, the three outdoor bros 
 sort of pulled it off?

Hawk began the presentation by announcing that it’d been 60 years since the release of Dr. No, the first film in the Bond franchise.ÌęAfter Slater and Hawk reeled off all the actors who have played the iconic role, White chimed in, saying, “As great as they all are, it’s impossible to ever be certain that just one star was clearly the G.O.A.T.”—setting up Hawk to get the comedy started.

https://youtu.be/OidFDOxIn18

“Well, I don’t know about that—there are a few athletes that you clearly know are the greatest in their field.”

“Really, dude?” White replied as the audience let out a refined Oscars laugh. “I’m talking about you two, of course!” Hawk said immediately, turning the braggy comment into a sweet one. But he just as quicklyÌętook a parting shot. “At least, you used to be,” he told the other two as he leaned away from the mic. This earned a bigger laugh, and a cut to an Andrew Garfield “Oh, shit, did he just say that?” reaction shot.

Finally, White tried his best to make a coherent connection between the three presenters and Bond before the presentation segued into a montage: “[Bond] was and is never afraid to take things to the extreme.”

It’s hard to say exactly what effect the presence of three world-class boarders at one of the glitziest primetime events of the year had on viewership, but one thing is for sure: they ended up being far from the most awkward attendees at the Oscars this year.

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In recent years, rock-star bassist Jeff Ament has dedicated himself to developing world-class skateboarding parks in the rural American West, particularly in his home state of Montana. For him, the point isn’t just to create concrete playgrounds so kids have somewhere to rip: he wants to give young people in small towns similar to the one he grew up in a place to gather and build community. This is desperately needed. America’s youth are facing a mental health crisis that was in the making long before the pandemic caused depression and anxiety to spike. What kids in small towns could use now more than ever is real-life human connection—and as Ament tells it, this happens best in a space that they can call their own.

This episode is brought to you by Hydro Flask, a company that believes every adventure starts with two simple words: let’s go! Shop Hydro Flask products for yourself or the outdoor lovers on your holiday list this season at .

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In nearly every interview, skateboarder Mariah Duran is asked about what it’s like to be a woman in a male-dominated sport. It’s easy to understand why: about of all skaters are male, and the sport has grappled with sexism over the years as female skaters for equal pay and fair sponsorship opportunities.

Yet almost every time she gets the question, Duran essentially says the same thing: she doesn’t think much about being a woman on a skateboard. And why would she? She’s just a skater working toward her goals. “It is kind of crazy how there is a pressure for women to try to break the gender barrier,” she says. “But it’s really like, we’re breaking our own barriers, and we just so happen to be women.”

As a two-time national champion and the United States’ in street skating—a style where skaters perform tricks on urban obstacles like stairs, handrails, and park benches—her hard work has paid off. Now the 24-year-old is headed to the Summer Olympics, where this month, for the first time ever, skaters from 26 countries will have the chance to compete, joining a handful of other newly debuting sports, including climbing, karate, and surfing. Duran is best known for executing aÌę, a difficult move she’s excited to show off in Tokyo.

It’s been a long path to get to the Olympic stage. Raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Duran got her first board when she was ten years old. She fell in love with it almost immediately and grew up skating with her two brothers, Elijah and Zeke. There was always a new trick to master, and the process of trying and failing felt limitless. Although she played several other sports, including baseball, softball, and basketball, she decided to focus solely on skating during her senior year of high school. Her mom was initially hesitant for her daughter to go all in with skating, but it soon became a family affair as Duran and her brothers began heading to competitions around the globe. “I had a good relationship with my brothers before we started skating, and this has just helped it grow so much,” she says. “We travel together, and we trust one another.”

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Most of the recent news about the forthcoming Summer Olympics has been bleak, from ongoing about COVID safety to the U.S. team’s not to include track star Sha’Carri Richardson after she used marijuana while mourning the very recent death of her mother. But there remains the promise of watching athletes do some pretty amazing things that none of us mere mortals could imagine. And this year, we’ll get to see three new adventurous sports on the international stage: climbing, surfing, and skateboarding. Whether you’ve never really watched people do these activities or you’re a lifelong fan, there’s a good chance you have some questions about what they’ll look like in their Olympic form. To up the awe factor as we get ready to cheer on new athletes, we asked some of our favorite writers what books, movies, and other media they’d recommend to better understand these disciplines—and to get a sense of how the format of the competitions in Tokyo will differ from the outdoor sports we already know. As climbing writer John Burgman puts it, “I think the great thing about these three new sports is that their Olympic versions are so far removed from their original formulations that fans can choose their own starting points for understanding the history and the nuances.” Here are a few places to start your own deep dive.

Surfing

Our recommendation: We love everything writes about water sports. In her personal essays and reporting on surfing, she highlights both the intangible things that make the sport special and some athletes’ increasing obsession with . She recently about how that shift might influence Olympic surfers this year. The piece provides helpful context about just how much goes into training for a sport that will be judged on like power, flow, and innovation—qualities that evoke effortlessness more than calculation. And Tsui even has younger fans covered with , her children’s book about big-wave surf pioneer Sarah Gerhardt.

Tsui’s recommendations: “I think even those who are not very familiar with surfing have a sense of what powerhouse athleticism on a wave looks like, and this clip of shows what that can look like in competition. But there’s also the subtle elegance and style that isnt necessarily displayed in competition surf: this clip of is a real favorite of mine, and it showcases the fluidity and flow that make her such a joy to watch.Ìę

“If you want to learn more about the deep history and culture of surfing, a dip into Matt Warshaw’s impressive project is a must. As with most things, though, the picture of the surf community is incomplete. I love that the surf collective is doing to diversify how surfing is portrayed in the media.”Ìę

Climbing

Our recommendation: If you want to understand competitive climbing, let alone the odd combination of disciplines Olympic athletes must master to have a chance at a medal, there aren’t a ton of options short of watching clips of competitions on YouTube (they are very fun!). Seeing this lack, wrote the book on Olympic climbing. was five years in the making when it came out last year, just in time for the main event. Burgman, a regular contributor to Climbing magazine, details the contrast between the sport’s increasing professionalization and its dirtbag culture—which, of course, are more in tension than ever heading to the Olympics. The book really does justice to describing the athleticism you’ll see in Tokyo, and gives you a sense of just how much history and technical innovation have led up to this moment. And Burgman’s Climbing article, “,” gives (surprise!) an accessible overview of how the competition will work.Ìę

Burgman’s recommendations: “ is the autobiography of Lynn Hill, the first superstar American competition climber. She was participating in climbing’s World Cup circuit in its earliest days (the late 1980s and early 1990s), and anyone who is really interested in climbing at the Olympics should definitely know her story. Robyn Erbesfield is unquestionably one of the greatest American competition climbers of all time; she’s also the mother of Olympian climber Brooke Raboutou, and the longtime coach of another American Olympian climber, Colin Duffy. is worth checking out for its introduction, in which Robyn gives an overview of her climbing career.Ìę

“In terms of hype clips, I can never get enough of Canadian Alannah Yip earn her Olympic berth. The crowd went wild, the commentators teared up, Alannah herself teared up. It was an epic moment. To better understand the nuances of the discipline, I’d recommend checking out of the recent speed climbing world record from the International Federation of Sport Climbing. And since the Olympics are all about the athletes’ journeys, I’d recommend this well-produced two-part video about the life of Olympian Brooke Raboutou— ‘’ and ‘.’ Beyond that, there’s a great content creator on YouTube named Albert Ok who has released some really good profile pieces on some of the Olympians. Consider he made about Olympian Nathaniel Coleman.”Ìę

Skateboarding

Our recommendation: Kyle Beachy does not mince words when he addresses how he feels about skateboarding at the Olympics in his new book, : “The commentators will tell you origin stories and explain things
 To borrow Annie Dillard’s voice for a moment, these relate to skateboarding but only ‘as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane.’” Understandable that Beachy, a lifelong skateboarder, simply wants us all to experience the joy of actually doing it. In that interest, his memoir-slash-essay collection is a heady, reference-heavy immersion in the culture of the sport and how it touches on nearly every aspect of his life, as well as an excellent glimpse into an obsession that transcends the Olympic podium. Beachy also co-hosts the skateboarding podcast , and many of his other give the activity an equally literary but laid-back treatment.Ìę

Beachy’s recommendations: “Iain Borden’s groundbreaking book, , gets at just what’s so theoretically rich about the skateboarding act. But in the 2016 video from Polar Skateboards and Pontus Alv, “,” you find everything that the Olympics exclude: artistry, expression, community, weirdness, and the gradient of human joys in which victory has no role.Ìę

“If it’s mythology and origin stories that you want, 2001’s documentaryÌędoes a real good job of establishing the figures behind the rise of California skateboarding. Bing Liu’s Oscar-nominated Minding the Gap is surely the best treatment of skateboarding and American masculinity ever produced. But in terms of introducing the culture and history of skateboarding, this year’s film All the Streets are Silent unpacks the vital convergence between New York skateboarding and hip hop culture, drawing a clear, convincing line between the early nineties and today’s fashion, music, and sneaker cultures. The exceptional and wonderful organization has spent the last few years producing what to my eyes are some of the best explainers and how-to videos for new skaters. A lot of the people making ‘how to kickflip’ vids are really building a brand, fishing for clicks, practicing the standard hideousnesses of life online. Skate Like a Girl is the opposite of that—generous teachers building an inclusive, safe community through shared expertise.”

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Ìębelieves in “endless curiosity.” ThatÌęguiding philosophyÌęled her to come up with the goal ofÌętrying something new every month. When BlountÌętold us about her challenge, we thought, Now that’s something we can get behind. So she and șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűÌęteamed up with the folks at Topo Designs to bring you Beyond Familiar,Ìęa video series about “the journey, the joy, and the try.”ÌęFollow along as BlountÌęexplores activities that she’s never tried before. In the firstÌęepisode, she learns to ride a board amid theÌęredwoods of Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about BlountÌęin this recent șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű article.Ìę

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presents The Uninvited II trailer: an all-womenÌęurban snowboarding film built on hard work and passion, featuring an aspiring group of riders with more talent than budget. Check outÌęthe full-length film .Ìę

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Shelby Stanger always knew she’d be a journalist—and she finally found the perfect medium in 2016, with her podcast, . She’s a longtime surfer, native Southern Californian, had her first national newspaper clip when she was 15, and has doneÌęalmost every type of writing since then—magazines, marketing, public relations, radio, online, and finally, podcasting, where she’s able to publish full conversations with explorers, scientists, authors, athletes, and entrepreneurs who have taken risks, challenged themselves to think differently, and found success in unconventional ways.

Some of Shelby’s podcast guests over the past few years: Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi, Alex Honnold, Rebecca Rusch, Scott Jurek, Beth Rodden, Cheryl Strayed, and others. She’ll put out her 100th episode this spring, a milestone that’s a testament to taking a risk, following her gut, and figuring out how to build a business. The ethos of Wild Ideas draws from some of the tough decisions Shelby’s made in life and her career: quitting a dream job to start a business, chasing an assignment or a hunch across the globe, and paddling out into the occasional overhead or double-overhead wave.Ìę

On Her Job Title

When people ask me what I do for a living, I say I have a podcast about adventure and getting out of your comfort zone. It’s the best job I have ever had. Some people still don’t know what a podcast is, though. Often the easiest thing to do is have them subscribe right there.

On Growing Up Surfing

I grew up in San Diego in a small beach town called Cardiff-by-the-Sea in North County, San Diego, that’s evolved from flower fields and farms to a pretty chic beach town with really good coffee shops. We moved to Birdrock, another really nice small beach town in La Jolla when I was 13. My mom got a deal in the ’90s on a house near the beach, and I grew up by some of the best surf breaks around San Diego. I’ve been pretty blessed to grow up near the water.

I started surfing when I was 12. My father was a dentist from Brooklyn, and my mom was a college professorÌęfrom Pittsburgh. Neither surfed or knew anything about the sport, but I would see male classmates surfing after school and it looked fun. I didn’t know any girls who surfed then. I played soccer in a really competitive league, and my parents were very supportive of my soccer career. I remember as a kid begging my dad to get me a surfboard, and he just wouldn’t, but he’d take me boogie boarding. He passed away when I was 11 of a sudden heart attack. It was really hard. A few months later for my 12th birthday, my older sister bought me a surfboard. It was bright green with a big sticker on the front. I loved it and slept with it in my bed the first night. I didn’t realize until I was older that the board had been owned by a pro, then buckled (or broken in half and sealed back together). I learned to surf on that board even though it was too small, totally beaten up, and hard to stand up on. I still have it on my rack and can barely surf the thing, but I still love it. Surfing is the best thing that happened to me at the time, especially after losing my dad so young. Being in nature, especially in the grand Pacific Ocean, I was able to answer a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer on land.ÌęI was a very energetic kid, and still am, so it was also a great place to release all my energy.

Surfing will wear you out and it’ll humble you. You’ll never master it. You’re always learning, which is a beautiful thing. It was difficult to learn on that short board. Eventually, I used a big, yellow eight-foot longboard at camp. My mom was a teacher at San Diego State University, and through SDSU, there was a water sports camp for kids called the Mission Bay Aquatics Center that she sent me to, and got a big discount at. It’s a great facility on Mission Bay in San Diego and directly across from Mission Beach. I would always take surfing, but you could also take sailing, water skiing, or kayaking. Every morning for surfing, I’d walk across the street and surf for two to three hours. Then, in the afternoon, we would do all the other activities and often sailed to SeaWorld or to lunch.

I had all of these great male instructors that were gorgeous. I was 12 years old, so excited to have these cute college guys teaching me to surf, but then one week, I had a female instructor. She spoke fluent French and Spanish, she taught SAT classes, she knew how to have a good time, made funny jokes about the boys who hit on her, and was a competitive surfer and swimmer. Her name was Izzy Tihanyi, and I just fell in love with her. My mom was a single mom at the time, and she needed someone to drive me places and babysit me when she went out of town. Izzy became our babysitter. She would have amazing parties at our house and take me surfing all over San Diego. She also made awesome jokes that were sometimes inappropriate. A few years later, she started an all-women’s surf school called Ìęthat’s become world-famous.

My mom remarried an incredible guy who was a coach and college athletic director a few years later. We had a happy ending, to be honest. My mom rented the studio we had off the back of our house to Izzy, who started Surf Diva there. I learned all about the surf industry as a kid, and Izzy became like an older sister and now my best friend to this day. We talk every day, and later she encouraged me to teach surfing in Costa Rica, where I met my fiancé.

On Getting Her Start as a Writer

When I was a little kid, my teachers and adults often told me I’d become a journalist. I loved writing stories, pretending I was a TV host, and I loved writing marketing ads and commercials for brands I used. When I was 15, an english teacher at my public high school said, “Hey, there’s an essay contest in the San Diego Tribune, and if you guys enter it, you’ll get extra credit. If you win, you get $100 and an automatic A for the year.” I found out later the winner’s teacher also got a $100 gift card to Nordstrom, which was a big deal at that time in the ’90s. I entered the contest with a feature story about a meaningful experience I had in a leadership program I was involved in called the Aaron Price Fellows Program, started by the folks who started Price Club, which sold to Costco. The story was about a diversity program we did that made an impact on me in 1995, and it won.

I got an automatic A, 100 bucks, which is about how much you make for an article today. Ha! And my teacher got to go to Nordstrom’s. It was great. It gave me a lot of confidence that I could get paid to be a writer. The next year, I took a job as a journalist for this youth magazine out of Washington,ÌęD.C. It was by, for, and about teens. I wrote a story about a family member’s battle with alcoholism, and then I interviewed one of my mom’s students. My mom taught human behavior and social work at SDSU, and one of her students was date raped, and wanted to talk about it, which was a huge deal. It wasn’t talked about, especially back then. I wrote those two stories at age 16, and people wrote in saying they thought they were powerful, and that my stories made an impact on them. I learned really young how far words could travel. But then I decided I wanted to write about surfing and action sports, because it was just the language I understood the most, and it was a way to get in the water as much as possible. I am also really sensitive and it was hard to cover such deep topics.

I went to journalism school at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. My first journalism class assignment was to spend the night at a homeless shelter and write about it. A subsequent assignment was to interview a member of the mafia in class. The professor ofÌęthat course wrote for Esquire. He later got fired from Emory, but he advised me to get a summer internship at a local newspaper. That was great advice.

The summer after my freshman year of college, I taught surf lessons at Surf Diva in La Jolla. I also walked into my community newspaper in San Diego and got an internship, and they paid me for every story I wrote. I did everything they asked, and was so excited to see my name in print. By the second week there, I told them I wanted to write about surfing and adventure sports. I pitched a few stories, made it happen, and they ended up giving me my own adventure/surfing column every week called “Breaking News,” with a picture of a wave over my face. I interviewed famous surfers and adventurers for five newspapers all over San Diego county, and basically did the same thing I’m doing now when I was 19.

The next summer, I traveled to and interned for a newspaper in Cape Town, South Africa. The current topics of the news at the time were racism, drugs, crime, and AIDS, topics that would really test me emotionally if I took them on. I decided to write about sports, and I ended up covering all of these topics through the lens of sports.

On Her First Job

For my first “real” job out of college, I was the .

I graduated early, and I was up for jobs at the Associated Press, at MTV, and the Eco–Challenge, which was the precursor to the Survivor show. I met someone at Vans earlier that year when working for a newspaper in Atlanta and covered a Vans Skatepark opening. We stayed in touch, and when I graduated I asked if they had any jobs open. They didn’t have anything, but the next day, he called back. “Actually, there’s this guy who was supposed to be the journalist for the Vans Warped Tour, but we think he just wants to be a roadie and he does too many drugs, sooo
”

The VP hiring for the job was leaving that afternoon to Canada, so I got in my car, drove two hours north, and talked my way into that job. No girl had ever been hired for that position, but I had just spent sixÌęweeks camping through Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand so told them I could handle life on a tour bus. ÌęThat was it. I was on the Warped Tour. I had a little digital Cannon Elph camera, and I took hundreds of pictures a day, and I wrote two daily stories including profile pieces on all the bands, nonprofits, and roadies. It was two months, and a hundred or more bands a day played at every stop.

There was no Wi-Fi then, so the hardest part was sending the stories because back then I had to find a phone line to do so. Most Vans Warped Tours are held in parking lots or fairgrounds. Often, the phone lines were being used by the tour managers and agents, who to 21-year-old me, were very intimidating. I often had to hitchhike with the most non-axe-murderer-lookingÌękid to the nearest Kinko’s or to their house to send in the stories. Each photo took two minutes to send. I traded a lot of free Vans shoes to use phone lines, and Vans was very generous to me. I had to be resourceful. Also, all sorts of chaos happens on a traveling punk rock series so I learned to adapt quickly. It was a really good experience. It taught me a lot about how to get the story and do good work under deadline every day.

The biggest interviews I did were about people like musician of Bad Religion. Instead of a traditional story about his music career, we went to a book store in Montreal and did a story called “A Summer Reading List by Greg Graffin,” because he was a professor, I think at Cornell at the time. A lot of the punk rock guys are really smart. I wrote about Greg, the guys from NOFX, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and went surfing with a band called No Use for a Name every time we stopped near a beach. I tried to do less obvious stories since I got to see these guys every day.

I had some really good experiences when I was younger, and I think having a first job like that out of college made me think all jobs should be that exciting. I ended up going in-house at Vans from about 2004 to 2009 in different capacities, first running women’s marketing. I’m not very coordinated in terms of style, and styling photo shoots wasn’t my strongest trait. I ended up getting to do international sales and marketing for Australia, New Zealand, all of Latin America, Asia, and Canada two years after running women’s marketing. I freelanced a bit for different sports magazines on the side, but I quit in 2009, because I wanted to tell stories full-time again.

On Deciding to Quit Her Vans Job

People said I was absolutely crazy for quitting my job at Vans. I also thought that maybe I was a spoiled millennial, even though I am almost too old to be a millennial. ÌęEverybody thought I was a trust fund kid ‘cause I grew up in La Jolla. I asked my mother, and she’s like, “Yeah, no. Unfortunately, you’re not a trust fund kid.” But I grew up with a lot of trust fund kids. I thought maybe, somewhere tucked away I had one. But I don’t. At the time my dad died, we were well-off, because he was a dentist, but he didn’t know he was going to die so young at age 47, so there was no life insurance, business insurance, nothing. People sued my mom when he died for dental work that he didn’t finish. It was crazy. But my mom is a total survivor, and just went back to work and kicked butt and made it happen. Today she is one of the leading interventionists in the country, speaks all over the world, writes books, and has positively impacted countless lives.

At 28, I had this dream job at Vans. I was helping run international sales and marketing for everywhere except the USA, Europe, and Africa with one other guy. It was a great job. I was making good money, and I really loved the people there. The Vans crew was like family. I felt spoiled, ungrateful for my job, and I went into a deep depression. It took me about a year and a half to quit, but I started freelancing on the side. I sold a small story to șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. Once I had that, I figured, OK, șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s a big enough name that once I’ve sold a story to them, I can probably sell stories to other magazines. I know now from my experience they are one of the hardest magazines to pitch. I took a freelance writing class on “how to pitch magazines.” You have to know how to pitch to do this work, and that was a game-changer for me.

On the Wave that Changed Her LifeÌę

Before I quit my job, I’d been freelancing at night and after work, and primed myself to be in a position to quit. I saved up money from Vans, and I had unused vacation time. The day I went into my boss’s office to quit, a PR contact called me. She said, “Hey, Shelby, there’s this opportunity; A guy backed out to go on a boat trip to the Mentawai Islands, (this beautiful island chain off of Indonesia) to go surf these giant waves with a group of watermen.”

I told her, “I can’t surf those waves though,” and she said, “You don’t have to surf, you just have to write about these guys. Ideally they want you to be a guy.” Because if you’re on a boat and if it’s just dudes and you’re the one girl, it could be a little awkward. But I convinced them, because I had done the Warped Tour on a tour bus with mostly men, I could handle it. They said yes.

It was a trip where the guys were the first to paddleboard some of these big waves in Indonesia. I just thought I would stay on the boat and say, “I’m a journalist; I’m just here to write about you, not surf.” I didn’t think I’d actually have to surf the waves. But after being on a boat for so many days, you just want to get in the water and surf. I kind of had no choice but to drop into these waves.

It became a good metaphor for life; You eventually have to get off the boat and go. Or you just get seasick, sunburnt, and salty.

I didn’t surf the biggest of the big waves, but I definitely surfed a wave that was double overhead and took some big ones on the head. I was with this guy, Brian Keaulana, who’s one of the best lifeguards in the world and he . He gave me all this sage wisdom while I was there. I’d ask him these dumb questions, like, “Brian, what do I do when I get scared and I’m held underwater?”

And he says, “Sing a song.”

So I picked “That’ll Be the Day” by Buddy Holly, you know, “That’ll be the day when I die.” That’s a terrible song when you’re underwater. I told Brian that, and he says, “Pick a different song.”

So I picked, “You Are My Sunshine.” So, I’d get held underwater and I’d sing “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …” And then eventually I’d come up.

I would paddle for waves, and I had way too small of a surfboard. Somebody on the boat gave me their board to borrow. Which was nice—you want a bigger board for bigger waves to paddle into them. I had mostly surfed waves in San Diego my whole life, and now I was in Indonesia, at this reef break. If you fall at La Jolla Shores you have nice stuff under you—sand. In Indonesia, if you fall, it’s coral reef.

So I paddle for these waves and I just kept falling, or I wouldn’t make them. I asked Brian what I should do. And he says, “You can start saying ‘make it, make it, make it.’” I had just quit my job, I’m the only girl on this boat trip, and I have a lot to prove to myself. At one point, everybody else is on the boat eating lunch except for Brian and I, and all of a sudden, a triangle of water comes up.

Usually when waves come up from the sea, they come up like a rainbow, they’re arced and gently slope to the sides like a rounded A frame. At this one break, called Mutz, which translates to “pussy” (this is no pussy wave, and it’s a totally sexist name for a wave),Ìęthis wave comes up like a triangle and juts out, and it’s basically hollow inside and I’ve never been barreled in my life.

This triangle of water is coming toward us and he says, “You gonna go?” And when this Hawaiian god-like man looks at you and says “are you going to go?” you go. So, I’m paddling and start saying, “Make it, make it, make it. Make it, make it, make it. Paddle, paddle, paddle. You are my sunshine, make it, make it, make it.” The wave goes, I get to my feet, I stand up, and for like a nanosecond crystal clear water goes over my head, I’m covered up, maybe not fully barreled, but smiling ear to ear. I have the worst style. My butt is sticking out, but I have the world’s biggest smile.

I come out the other side and I’m changed. I just wanted somebody to see it. Just then I see a photographer who I thought was eating lunch, sitting in the channel, and he got it all on film. I ended up sending that picture to everybody back home and at Vans from the boat, which cost like $80 per email to send via satellite phone. I think my bill came to $500, which is what I’d make for a story about the trip. The boat captain was so excited for me, at the end of the trip he waived the bill.

A few years later, I would interview a famous older surfer named . He said, “You know, Shelby, one time I got barreled in Indonesia and I came out 15 years younger on the other side.” And I believe that. I know it sounds hippy, but I think if you have an experience like that in nature, you come out changed. For me, I wasn’t younger but I went from depressed, scared, self-doubting Shelby to this confident girl who’s like I can do anything. So from 2009 to 2016, I carried that and then I started the podcast because I knew I needed to evolve.

On Starting Her Own PodcastÌę

I’d written for , but podcastingÌęwas just so appealing. I had sold a story in 2015 to a popular magazine, and the conversation was so great, but it was edited in the magazine and the whole conversation wasn’t captured well in print.

It felt really good interviewing these people for stories, these adventure outliers. One day in 2009, I was seeing my parents in San Diego for the weekend and I had to interview someone over the phone for a story I was working on for șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű about the fittest athletes who weren’t sponsored, but did their extreme feats for the love of it. My stepdad overheard me taking a call, and he said, “You just look so alive talking to this guy.” That’s exactly what I love doing, ever since I was a little kid. I love interviewing people with awesome stories of having taken the road less traveled and going for it.

I decided on podcasting in 2016. I like that podcasts are whole conversations, in context, the most old-school form of journalism, and it’s a business too. You have to have business sense to run a podcast that makes money. I could do both. In 2015, I took a business accelerator course through an all-women’s co-working space called Hera Lab in San Diego—the woman who taught the class also teaches entrepreneurship at UCSD. It was 12 weeks, every Monday. The first Monday was: write your business plan.

The course was an actual hands-on, just do it, approach to start a business and we didn’t really talk about theory because we just got busy on our business. We started with the finances, which is a big reality check and a must-do if you want to start a business because starting a business often costs money. For a podcast, you need to know who your audience is, but also who your buyer is. We wrote profiles of who our audience was, and I wrote profiles on who my potential sponsors were and the people making those decisions. That was impactful. I actually got my first sponsor from the exact avatar I created of who I thought was behind the dream company I wanted to work with.

I had an idea of who my listener was. My listeners were my friends. They liked their jobs, but they kind of wanted to do something else. They either wanted to go on a grand surf trip or a big hiking trip, write a book,Ìęor start a business. They just wanted something a little bit more extra in their life, and they knew what they wanted to do, but they needed some inspiration and courage to go for it. I thought most of the listeners would be women since I am, but turns out it’s a pretty even split between men and women and I have some die-hard male fans. I think that’s cool because I just wanted to showcase great people–men and women, going for it.

On Making It as a FreelancerÌę

Back in college, I had taken a magazine journalism class, and the professor said, “You’re never going to make it as a freelance writer. That doesn’t exist.” So I dropped his class, and I was really mad. I just found this guy to be so un-encouraging.

I think from 2009 to 2015, I really wanted to prove that one professor wrong. On the side of magazine writing, I did some other things—I did copywriting and PR for Nike and Prana. I went in-house for a year and did marketing for Body Glove. I learned a lot in that time. I also was a business reporter, which is the job that impacted me the most. I reported on the business of the outdoor and action sports world for a site called . I worked for this awesome woman who had been a business reporter for the Orange County Register, and she started this website to report on the business of surf brands. My job was to interview CEOs of companies. I learned a lot about business, and wanted to start my own. But the only thing I know is media. And I didn’t want to put another product we didn’t need into the world. I wanted to create something that helped people.

On Giving Back

I teach surf lessons once a year during an annual veteran’s surf clinic. Many of the veterans were wounded and/or have PTSD and they come for a week. I take the week off in September, and I’ve taught a blind vet to surf, a bunch of amputees and other amazing men and women who have served our country. It’s so powerful and so emotional that week. That’s usually the best thing I do all year.

I get so much out of it. I mean, they get a lot out of it. Surfing’s just such a good metaphor for life. There’s so many unknowns, and no wave is the same, so you have to let go of control and just learn the feeling of catching a wave. There’s really nothing like it. To watch someone without arms and legs catch a wave, and see the smile on their face, it’s pretty incredible.

On Doing Something Different

If I were to do anything else, I’d probably like to work with teens. I’m still like a big camp counselor. And, I just like teens—they’re sort of at the maturity level where I have stayed, at least in terms of their sense of humor and zest for play. I thought for sure by almost 40, I would be different and I wouldn’t still skateboard—I thought by 21 I wouldn’t skateboard. I remember seeing a 21-year-old skateboarding when I was 15 being like, “That is so weird—she is 21 and she’s still skateboarding.” And now I’m 38, and still skateboarding.

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From filmmaker , TheÌęMystery of Now presents the story of artist and ÌęfounderÌę,Ìęwho empowers youth in his community through skating. Miles discusses the history of the San Carlos Apache Reservation, his own journey, and the challenge of finding a meaningful path in uncertain times. Learn more at .

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Sal Masekela steps off a helicopter onto the white sands of Tavarua Island Resort, a tiny speck in the Fiji archipelago, and walks into a gorgeous open-air restaurant that overlooks a world-famous reef break appropriately dubbed Restaurants. He greets the Fijian staff by name, hugging them, asking them about their lives since his last visit.

Masekela, you may recall, was the face and voice of , hosting both the summer and winter events for more than a decade. With his iconic dreadlocks and smooth baritone, he was a fixture at the center of the action-sports universe, narrating nearly every history-making moment at the games, from on a motorcycle in 2006 to in 2012.

Today, six years since a breakup with ESPN, Masekela remains deeply entrenched in action sports. He is here, on the surf mecca of Tavarua, for a vacation with a group of friends comprised of athletes, movie stars, entrepreneurs, Instagram influencers, and their families. As he makes the rounds, a guest compares him to Ricardo Montalbán, the suave Mexican actor best known for playing Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island. Somehow, despite the fact that Masekela is a stocky black man, and recently bald, it’s a rather apt observation. It can be challenging to walk anywhere with Masekela, because everyone who sees him wants to stop and talk with him and he wants to talk to everybody. He is Larry David’s worst nightmare.

This is Masekela’s 16th trip to Tavarua but nonetheless a special one, because it’s his first visit since his father died from prostate cancer six months ago. Hugh Masekela was a trumpeter and is often credited as the father of South African jazz. He played and toured with everyone from Paul Simon to Dave Matthews and was nominated for three Grammys. During apartheid, Hugh left South Africa to study music in the United States, but he remained outspoken against the brutality of South African racial segregation. In 1986, he recorded “,” a song demanding the release of Nelson Mandela that would eventually become a rallying cry for the anti-apartheid movement.

Tavarua is Masekela’s favorite place on earth, and he’d implored his father to travel there with him. They made plans for the fall of 2016 and even purchased tickets, but at the last minute, Hugh postponed. A year and a half later, he passed away. This trip, these waves, Masekela says, are for his dad.

The vacation also comes at a significant moment in Masekela’s career—a moment when he hopes to find a path back into the limelight. Since walking away from the X Games, he has continued to work in television, hosting a series for Red Bull Media House, reporting stories for NBC at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and hosting a sports documentary series on Viceland, among other gigs. He’s had bit parts in movies. His band, , which blends jazz, soul, and R&B, has been featured on HBO and Showtime and released its second album last summer. Still, Masekela has grander ambitions, though he struggles to define them.

Like many major figures from the heyday of action sports, Masekela is still coming to grips with the fact that his world has lost much of its cultural and commercial cachet. As recently as 2011, an average of more than a million viewers tuned in to watch the four-day-long Summer X Games on television. By 2017, that number dropped to 385,000. (ESPN says viewership is actually up when you account for streaming and social viewers, but declined to share year-over-year numbers.) The formerly rebel sports of snowboarding, BMX, and skateboarding have been adopted by the Olympics. The bad-boy stars of yesterday are now middle-aged dads.

Masekela has ridden the action-sports wave as far and well as he could’ve hoped, but no ride lasts forever.

That Masekela became the face of the X Games in the first place was wildly improbable. He was born in 1971 in Los Angeles, the first child of Hugh and Haitian immigrant Jessie Lapierre. By the time he turned four, his parents had moved to New York City and split up, and his mother was remarried to a Jehovah’s Witness, who raised Masekela in the church. But despite his stepdad’s best efforts, Hugh’s influence endured. Masekela split time between marijuana-clouded jazz clubs and going door to door spreading the Truth. “Growing up between those worlds gave me a strange set of skills,” he says. “For a long time they felt like a burden, like I was always working to fit in.”

His mom and stepdad moved around a lot, ultimately abandoning the East Coast for Carlsbad, California, at the start of Masekela’s senior year of high school. Relocating across the country was difficult for him. During the drive out, he spent rest-stop breaks at pay phones. “I was calling my girl back east and not saying anything,” he says. “Just weeping on the phone for like ten minutes, that high school heartbreak shit.”

But on his first morning in Carlsbad, he discovered that his new house sat on top of a steep hill with a view of the ocean, a feature that he credits with shaping the trajectory of his life. “Imagine, you walk out of this house onto this lawn, and you look and you’re like, Oh shit we’re right here.”

Surfing became the focus of Masekela’s life. As a Jehovah’s Witness, he was discouraged from playing organized sports, but several of the members of his congregation surfed, and they loaned him a board and a wetsuit, which he put on backward the first time. He spent his downtime at school paging through back issues of Surfer, neglecting his schoolwork to study board sports. He refined the basic skateboarding skills he’d started developing back east, and he learned to snowboard. “Nothing else sounded as good,” he says. “I didn’t want to be around people who did it. I wanted to be around people who lived it.” He became a full-on disciple of what he would call the shred life.

The tension between his new passion and his commitment to the church began to mount. At 19, Masekela went to South Africa to meet up with his father, who had recently returned home for the first time in 30 years. It was 1991, and Mandela had just been released from prison. During the trip, Masekela explored life a bit too enthusiastically for the church’s standards. His sins were, in his words, “that I made out with a bunch of girls and smoked some pot.”

When he confessed, the elders chose to disfellowship him. “You have to keep going to church, to the meetings, but no one talks to you,” he explains. During his exile, Masekela remained close with his mother, but the social isolation was a brutal punishment. “It was without a doubt the most difficult time in my life,” he says. “I was severely depressed. I held a knife to my wrist in my kitchen many times.”

He moved to a new congregation in a nearby beach community called Leucadia. In 1993, while working at a restaurant, he crossed paths with several employees from TransWorld Media, which produces board-sports magazines and films, and he charmed his way into a job as a receptionist. In no time he worked up to sales jobs and small-scale announcing gigs for skateboarding competitions. His circle of friends expanded to include the pros he was interviewing at contests. By 1996, he was the team manager for Boks, the nascent action-sports division of Reebok, where he helped build the brand’s surf, skate, snowboard, and BMX teams.

The more entrenched he became in action sports, the further he drifted from the church, leaving religion behind for a new gospel.

Masekela’s big break came in the winter of 1997, at a snowboarding conference in Vail, Colorado. Boks had just folded, and his future was uncertain. He knew he had to do some networking.

The event took place in the wake of the first X Games, which was an embarrassment to everybody who cared about action sports. Purple skateboard ramps and clueless commentators left the community and industry furious at how their lifestyle and products had been represented.

During a Q and A session that included executives from ESPN and MTV, Masekela decided to speak up. “At a certain point, I don’t even know what happened, but I was ­standing on top of my chair in the back. I said, ‘You know, I watch all these things—the X Games and what you guys are doing on MTV—and you don’t have any voices that represent our culture to tell people about what they’re seeing. Bill Bellamy doesn’t fucking snowboard. Here’s the deal: I’m young, I’m black, I surf and I snowboard, and I know that I could get in front of the camera and do that.’ ”

He got a standing ovation. “People were buying me beers all night like I had just given some weird ‘I Have a Dream’ shred speech.” At an after-party, an executive from MTV gave him a business card. The next year, Masekela was commentating the MTV Sports and Music Festival, offering the insider’s perspective he’d cultivated since landing in California years before.

By 1999, Masekela had landed a job as a reporter for the Winter X Games. The following summer, when Tony Hawk landed the first 900, Masekela was standing at the top of the ramp. From there it was pretty much game on. The action-sports wave was barreling into the mainstream, and Masekela was pitted as its chief evangelist.

Masekela’s presence on Tavarua is conspicuous for many reasons, but even if he was less gregarious, he would still stick out. Other than the Fijian staff members, he is the only black person on the entire island. By contrast, the kids on the trip are named Chili, Coast, Country, Fin, Hazel, Jet, Lyon, Oz, Rider, River, Roman, and Tashen. That list may not be exhaustive or spelled exactly right, but the point is: the only thing whiter than the sand here is the people.

Tavarua, like many tropical-island resorts, is a destination for people with money. There are spa treatments. There’s a yoga space. There’s an artificial-turf tennis court. Speaking of tennis, Masekela loves tennis. He also loves golf. When you grow up as a skateboarding Jehovah’s Witness, perhaps adding golfer to the list becomes easier.

But still, as a black man at the center of a nearly all-white industry, Masekela has encountered racism many times. In the early nineties, the owners of a surf shop where he was working let him go, telling him that business was slowing down and they needed to cut back on staff. But a friend who was still working there told him that the owners didn’t think Masekela matched the image of what a surf-shop employee should be—which is to say, white.

“Even though I had gone through all sorts of fucking racist shit as a result of starting surfing and snowboarding—people making fun of me and calling me a nigger and telling me that we don’t even swim—I still didn’t think something like that would happen,” he says. “It really, really fucked me up.”

When he got the job as the host of the X Games, the racism became more pernicious. People would assume he was a marketing choice made by network executives—that he had studied up on the difference between a heel flip and a pop shove-it after he got the job, when in reality he could do both of those tricks. “There were people who started to be like, ‘Wow, that’s really gutsy of ESPN to pick a black guy to do this. So smart. You don’t really do this stuff do you?’ ” The same authenticity that got him the job was suddenly being questioned because of his skin color.

“I didn’t have an agenda to be like, I’m the fucking Great Black Hope of action sports. I wanted to be the best commentator. I wanted to be seen as on par with the greats in broadcasting and entertainment.”

One warm summer afternoon on his couch in Venice Beach, Masekela was in a reflective mood. We were surrounded by boxes that he hadn’t unpacked since he moved to the house 12 months ago. The front door was open, and sunlight streamed in.

He told me about his split with ESPN, back in late 2012, saying that the network had wanted to renegotiate his contract. He said that a big reason he left was a feeling that ESPN had begun to devalue action sports in general. For Masekela, this was unacceptable; they were his life. A few weeks after quitting, he cut off his dreads.

“I was kind of wrestling for identity,” he said. “I cried while doing it. There were people who told me, ‘You just lit your career on fire.’ And I’d be like, ‘If you know me and consider me a friend, and you’re telling me that my hair is my calling card, then you’re telling me that you don’t hear what it is that I have to say.’ ”

As a host and announcer, one of the greatest strengths Masekela brought to action-sports events was his credibility. “We had a lot of these bro-type announcers who didn’t really capture what was going on,” says snowboarder Shaun White. “Sal knew us personally, so he could kind of talk about how a guy has been wanting to do this trick for so long and what it would mean if he did it during this run.”

Today, though, being respected by core board-sports athletes doesn’t do much for a guy’s rĂ©sumĂ©. Masekela is eager to begin a new chapter but admits he doesn’t know what that will look like yet. Which is why he’s trying a little bit of everything. He’s starting a podcast, tentatively called What Shapes Us, for which he’ll interview the deep well of exceptional friends he’s made over the years, and possibly broadcast conversations with his father posthumously. He’s touring with his band, he’s hosting more traditional adventure and travel stories for National Geographic, and he’s trying to do more acting. He says he’d like to host another TV show, but only if it feels right.

One impediment to Masekela’s career reboot is the fact that he’s not the most organized person. He doesn’t like budgets or spreadsheets. He has a tendency to lose things, forget stuff, and miss flights.

Case in point: he arrives on Tavarua a day later than planned, after a fundraising event for his charity, Stoked Mentoring, ran long and he didn’t catch his plane to Fiji. But after he finishes unpacking, he hops on the evening boat to Cloudbreak, an infamous wave that detonates two miles from the island on a barrier reef. Just about anywhere else, you’d call the conditions good to great, but by Cloudbreak standards things are looking somewhat pedestrian. The wind isn’t quite right, the lulls between sets are long, and the wave isn’t barreling like it should.

Then, just before dusk, the wind dies a bit, and the reef starts to grab the swell. All of a sudden, Masekela is on an absolute gem—green and gold, backlit by low-angle tropical sun. Miraculously, the inside section gets hollow, and he tucks into the barrel. You can hear him whooping with joy. Finally, just before the wave ends, he kicks out the back. He’s probably 100 yards or more down the reef, but he reels in his board and heads straight for the lineup.

The sun is setting, but Sal Masekela is paddling back out.

David Shultz () is a freelance writer in Santa Barbara, California. This is his first feature for șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.

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