The Legend of Flip Bellinzoni Transcript

[00:00:00] Tyler: The Swell Season Podcast is recorded by the new stands Studio Ed Rockfeller Center in the heart of Manhattan, and is distributed by the Swell Season Surf Radio Network.[00:01:00]

[00:01:12] Hello and welcome to the Swell Season Surf podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Brewer. On this episode, we have one of New York's most core and committed surfers. He subscribes to the shred, tear and destroy philosophy of surf. You can find him sending Gushes of Water at Lido and other undisclosed locations in Western Long Island.

[00:01:38] Many will remember him from the cult classic film, lost the Decline. He's a surfer who deserves a moment in the sun, and we're stoked to have the infamous Flip the Zoni as our guest for this episode of Swell Season[00:02:00]

[00:02:11] Flip: Flip. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you for having me here. Dude, it's

[00:02:15] Tyler: great. It's, it is such an honor. We've been trying to do this for like the last six months. I thi I feel like, you know, trying to just time it right. So I'm really excited cuz honestly like. Most of, like, I was talking to people, I'm like, yo, I'm getting flip on.

[00:02:30] And people are like, no way. That's fucking awesome. And you, you don't understand like how respected you are, how many surfers like have said, how much you influenced them growing up and how much you're, you're surfing and just everything been really influential on New York surfing. It's, it's, it's awesome.

[00:02:50] Like, I mean, shit, man, my matcher and I, when we were grams, always seeing you, you know, just ripping and surfing well. So it's like really cool to get you in [00:03:00] here.

[00:03:00] Flip: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it, man. I've just, uh, I've been outta it for a long time. Yeah. , I like to, uh, be athletic and, uh, my training's probably the best part of myself, , is just keeping up with my body and, uh, trying to do the right thing.

[00:03:17] You know, taking vitamins, training, putting those extra time hours in, stuff like that. Stretching, you know, Looking for boards that work, looking for snowboards, that work, looking for dirt bikes, that work, looking for everything that, you know, you could fly ride you fully cross trained basically. Yeah, I'm doing pretty much everything.

[00:03:36] You know, I, I want to be the worst guy in the room with the best guys. I'm not scared to step in the room with these pro guys and stuff like that, cuz that gives me initiative to, uh, move and I train and uh, you know, I do my thing man. And uh, I think, you know, I surfed and a lot of people were just like, ah, he was just a surfer, you know, like, and then, then I was like, wait a minute, I'm not just a surfer.

[00:03:58] I'm gonna show you everything else that I could do. [00:04:00] And then all of a sudden it became a game of everything else that I could do and not even surfing anymore. So it became, you know, you know, I was training jiujitsu, I was training Muai and uh, I had met the Gracie. and people that trained with them years ago and they were always like, yo flip, you gotta come down and check it out.

[00:04:17] And I was, you know, we were watching the first UFCs and stuff and I was like, I don't know if I want to go down there, man. I'm nervous. These guys are gonna get me in a choke hold or put me in a arm bar or something. And I was worried. But then when I got down there, I was a wrestler for so many years that, uh, I went down there to watch one night and they were like, I was sitting on the side and they were like, what are you doing?

[00:04:37] And I was like, I'm watching. And they're like, you're not watching. Take your shoes off. Come out on the mat. And then as soon as I got on the mat, it was like second nature

[00:04:45] Tyler: Gracie family. That's crazy, man.

[00:04:47] Flip: That's legendary. Yeah, that was, that was pretty pristine. Uh, thing that happened in my life where I was able to train and meet the Gracie family and, uh, become an instructor to kinda like set me [00:05:00] up to be like a fight encyclopedia.

[00:05:03] When, when

[00:05:03] Tyler: was this? Like, when did that,

[00:05:05] Flip: when did that happen? This was happening for a long time. This is like,

[00:05:08] Tyler: it, like 93 or

[00:05:10] Flip: like, like No, it was probably more towards the 2000 era after the first bunch of UFCs and stuff like that. And then, uh, they recognized me from the lost video. So like, the Brazilians were a big part of surfing.

[00:05:23] Yeah. As you see on a wsl, they're a different animal. Yeah. And a different animal comes from Jiujitsu because, uh, their country is founded on Jiujitsu. So the reality is every sport in the world, like a country, has every sport. Like w would you say in the United States we would have baseball, baseball, football, maybe basketball, basketball, stuff like that.

[00:05:45] In Brazil, it was a third world country. And what happened was the Gracie's were originally, I believe from Holland. Mm-hmm. . I was told the story and they had come over to, from Holland and. One of the Gracie's [00:06:00] became friends with the emperor son, I think, of Japan. Wow. And he taught him the Jiujitsu. Really?

[00:06:07] And that's how it, that's how it became established as they originally from the Dutch, and they went to Brazil. And Brazil was just a third world country rural place. And they started building schools, I think, from the top to the bottom. And then everyone started practicing that. And then it morphed into Brazilian Juujitsu because it became, from Japanese jujitsu, it became more of like a wrestling role.

[00:06:31] Mm-hmm. where it would constantly go and like, you know, and then it, it morphed itself into Brazilian jujitsu. So, uh, You know, I was trained in martial arts my whole life, but I never knew, uh, Brazilian Jiujitsu. I only saw it in the magazines. They always had the black belt magazines. Mm-hmm. , when you were a kid, you'd always be looking at it and you'd see the, you had the nunchucks, you had all the kung fu stuff in there, Chinese stars, and you were a infatuated in that stuff when you were a kid.

[00:06:55] I don't know. I was, me and my friends were, we were looking at magazine all the time. We were always reading that [00:07:00] magazine. We were, you know, we like surfin, we like skiing, all that different stuff. But, uh, we ended up, you know, uh, training, wrestling. Mm-hmm. because it was an American sport in high school.

[00:07:13] Yeah. So my family was wrestlers, hockey players, surfers, fishermen, hunters. And then, you know, my mom's side was, uh, you know, military, stuff like that. So my father's side was, you know, a bunch of athletes. And let me

[00:07:30] Tyler: ask, Like where did, like, where, what's the, your family's background? Actually, Belloni,

[00:07:36] Flip: like, uh, it's a town in, uh, on the boredom of northern Italy and Switzerland, the town of Bellona.

[00:07:43] Wow. And has a castle and has a church. And that's where my great-great grandfather came from. Really throwing the wars. Uh, he had been left on the church steps. His parents left him there during the war. And, uh, he became a war [00:08:00] often. Wow. I believe probably his parents got killed in the war and he grew off in the church as a war, often from the town of Bellona.

[00:08:08] Wow. And that's where my family name comes from. That's wild. And so it's in the mountains and there's, uh, big castles and the whole thing, and it's just on the border of, you know, where Have you been

[00:08:21] Tyler: back? Have you been there at all? My

[00:08:22] Flip: family. Have been there. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I would like to go there.

[00:08:26] Tyler: I was gonna ask, like, have, do you have any desire to kind of discover

[00:08:30] Flip: that? Yeah, I would. I would like to go there in the wintertime so I could go snowboarding, in that area, because the mountains are Torino over there from the Olympics. Yeah. And all that stuff. So that's in that area. So I would like

[00:08:41] Tyler: to typical check that typical surfer snowboarder always got a side thing.

[00:08:44] It's like, yeah, we could go there as long as there's waves or snow . Oh

[00:08:48] Flip: yeah, of course. Like when I go on a trip, it's like a survival trip. It's not even like you're resting . You, you have to get back from the trip and rest after for your vacation, because [00:09:00] the vacation that going on is gonna be like a survival quest.

[00:09:03] Tyler: By the way, you just came back from some powder, it looked like.

[00:09:06] Flip: Oh yeah, it was up at Stratton. How was it looked like it was a storm. Thomas Stone came in. Yeah, we were lucky. Me and my friend, uh, Walter Schmidt, he, uh, has a place up there. He's from Long Island. races, motocross, nice, likes to wakeboard, snowboard, surf.

[00:09:21] And uh, we grew up together and uh, he went and bought a house in Stratton. Nice. And so he is been, uh, up there hanging out and building the compound, doing work, meeting friends, snowboarding, stuff like that. And so like, uh, we went up there for the weekend. We usually have a boys weekend and we get everyone together.

[00:09:40] We come up there, we do some riding. Then I stayed up there a few extra days and uh, the storm came in and we ended up getting more snow than they thought. It. Pretty fun. Yeah. It was a good time.

[00:09:52] Tyler: It was crazy. They were, they were having the, uh, demos up there around that time too, weren't they? Last week?

[00:09:57] They had last week.

[00:09:58] Flip: No demos. Yeah, demos. Yeah. [00:10:00] I've seen some guys going up there. They're doing all the demos. It's always a fun time to get up there where you could ride some different boards, different designs.

[00:10:10] Tyler: I gotta ask, you know, and this is like, I'm kind of embarrassed about this, but like you, I've only known you as Flip.

[00:10:19] And I'm like, what? What's your real name? . I'm like really embarrassed. My real name. Yeah. What's your real, because you, I mean, I'm, I'm sure your parents, you know, no Feds, but Flip wouldn't be . No. Well,

[00:10:32] Flip: Robert, Robert, William Belloni is my real name. And where did Flip come from? Bobby, also. Bobby. They called me Bobby.

[00:10:40] And uh, where did Flip come from? Flip came from my family and my grandparents and my mom and everybody, how they named me when I was a baby. What were you doing? I was always doing things, jumping around. I would probably hyper a little bit, always doing things active, you know, and. They would tell me, I would sit in the highchair at the dinner table.

[00:10:59] My grandmother would [00:11:00] cook Sunday dinner for my whole family. Mm-hmm. , everybody who would come from everywhere. So like, you know, traditional Italian family. My grandmother would cook from nine in the morning till nice. Everyone was eating at five, six o'clock at night and, and she would have everyone over.

[00:11:15] There'd be 30 people at the house, aunts, uncles, cousins, you know, father, mother, brothers,

[00:11:22] Tyler: and they're just like, Yeah,

[00:11:24] Flip: I was a big, he was doing a flip and I would sit in the highchair. Right. Yeah. And he told me different stories. Yeah. But I was trying to figure it out. So like, I sat in the highchair and they said when I wanted to get out, I would rock the highchair back and forth and flip over and they'd be like, okay, you gotta watch the guy cuz he wants, he wants to get outta the chair.

[00:11:43] You don't want be sitting there. So he's going, he's gonna rock this thing back and forth until he falls over. And then they used to tell me, I used to sit there and they'd put macaronis on my little, uh, plate and dish and stuff. And I used to flip them at everyone at the table. . I was kinda like aiming him, everybody.

[00:11:58] So, [00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Tyler: but it's, it's funny how that name kind of like mm-hmm. . Has escalated . Well, well, yeah, it, well it has in a sense of like, you know, flip can be seen as like, you know, doing flips, you know, surfing, snowboarding too. You know, it's like, oh yeah, I made sure. All of that sort of stuff. Right. Like you, I made sure you've grown into

[00:12:17] Flip: the name almost.

[00:12:18] Yeah, I made sure like, you know, because it was like, you know, like when you do any sort of sport, every extreme sport, anything like that, the flip is like the move that you want to do, right? So you could be swimming, you could be doing dives off a board, you're gonna do flips. You could be racing a BMX bike, you could do a flip, you could race a motocross bike, you could do a flip, a snowboard, jet ski.

[00:12:41] Yeah. You know, skis. It's surfboard gymnastics. Gymnastics. Right. Monster trucks, . You know, you are gonna flip everything you can find. Yeah. And make that thing spin around. And if you could do. It's an incredible move. , it's the most incredible move, pretty much. But when you start adding two, three [00:13:00] together, clocks been, you know, but you gotta stick with one flip.

[00:13:02] You stick with one flip, you get that down, and then all of a sudden you start morphing off it and it becomes, you know, metamorphosis of, of different things. And it's, you know, it's not a, it's not a bad thing. It's a, it's not a, it's not a bad thing. No, it never, like, to me it was never a bad thing. I think sometimes it got blown outta proportion.

[00:13:18] People would try to use it outta context. Take the name, take the word, try to blow it out, try to use it for fear, try to use it for this, for, you know, like, but it was never that. It was about more, it was about intelligence. Mm-hmm. , it was about, you know, people would be like, oh, he's crazy. And I, you know, I would always say, I'd be like crazy.

[00:13:34] Why are you seeing 'em crazy? Because I can understand it. So I would. Intelligence is crazy to the dumb. Ooh, I like that. And that was something I made up because they would always be like, yo, you're crazy. And I'd be like, no, I see things differently. Mm-hmm. , I can focus certain ways. I could, you know, like pinpoint certain ways.

[00:13:52] I could study certain projects. I could study certain sports, I could study certain cultures, I could study all this different stuff, artwork, this, [00:14:00] that, and then progress it. How, where did

[00:14:03] Tyler: that come from, do you think? Like attack, like, like being able to see something a little differently? Like was it, was it something like, did your family encourage that?

[00:14:13] Did uh, like a brother or anything? Was it, or is it just, well, just something you kind of innately had. Well,

[00:14:19] Flip: you know, I had my grandparents mm-hmm. and they were, you know, my grandmother, grandfather on my father's side. Uh, my grandfather was a stockbroker. He worked out at Wall Street. He was, uh, vice president of Merrill Lynch.

[00:14:34] Whoa. and my grandfather on my mom's side and my grandmother, my grandfather was, uh, he was like a professor. Really? He was like a scientist. He could speak like eight languages. And, uh, he used to travel around and I think, you know, he was working with computers like when they were first starting up. So like when a computer in a phone was so small, now you could, [00:15:00]they broke it down so small, but back in the day, like, say huge.

[00:15:03] Remember the movies ? Like, uh, the game. The war games. War games, exactly. Okay. The movie war games, they had that whole super computer and it was the size of a building, and

[00:15:12] Tyler: their phone is probably way more powerful than

[00:15:14] Flip: it now. . Well, yeah, but that's what it came from. That's the original source, the power source, the, the, of the computer and everything.

[00:15:23] They had the, it was huge. They were building buildings and building supercomputers in the buildings. Mm-hmm. and I knew this stuff because me and my grandfather. . My grandmother was a seamstress and she, they, my grand, my grandmother and my grandfather were in a act guild. What? They were in an Actis Guild.

[00:15:40] And they were in the masons. Fuck.

[00:15:43] Tyler: I heard about this. Match me mentioned this actually, that, that they were

[00:15:47] Flip: masons. Yeah. And they, and they would, you know, every year we would, they would put on a Christmas play for, you know, for kids and families and stuff like that, and have a whole show. And my grandfather, he would, uh, [00:16:00] he would design all these costumes?

[00:16:02] No, like they had all these paper mache costumes in my grandparents' basement. So they were like giant, like, you know, paper mache heads with like my grandmother's. So she would make all the costumes. Wow. And they would make these paper mache heads. They would have like Snoopy, they would have Fred Flinstone, they would have Rudolph, and they would have all these different charact.

[00:16:24] and all the, all the people in the Actors Guild would, my grandfather would write a play and then they would have this whole play and they would have like Santa Claus come at the end. It was always like a story and everything. And every Halloween my mom would make me a costume. My mom was a artist really?

[00:16:41] And my mom was a, like, she, she liked to make things and design things and sew things and sculptures and stuff like that. And, uh, so every year she'd, since I was a kid, she'd be like, what do you want to be? So one year I was like, I wanna be doth Vada . When Sta was, came out. Well,

[00:16:59] Tyler: I [00:17:00] mean, it. I'm a Star Wars nerd, so Yeah, I I can understand.

[00:17:04] Yeah. I was, I was always the Luke Skywalker and my mom would then just take like, um, tablecloth and made it look like shit,

[00:17:13] Flip: you know, . But, but that was like, you know, when you had the costume theaters like next level man. Yeah. But you know, when you went to the costume store and they bought the plastic face, oh, those things sucked.

[00:17:21] Yeah. You had that, like, you know, you had a regular, you know, costume that anybody could buy. Yeah. But then when you made something that was intricate and, and it was 3D and gosh, yeah. It was kinda like, you know, like full thing. Cuz they used to have all those fabric stores, remember? Like fabric, bananas and stuff like that.

[00:17:35] Absolutely. So my mom, my grandmother was always in there and they would always be buying materials and sew and they would sew wedding dresses. They would sew the whole like wedding party, the, you know, for everybody. And the neighborhood used to come over and whenever they needed their clothes, like seen or something like that, you know, they would do to alter alterations.

[00:17:54] So you

[00:17:54] Tyler: grew up in Baldwin, right? Yes. So like, it's. It's really [00:18:00] interesting, like, you know, because fuck, like I've only known you from surfing, right? Like, I only know you from seeing you in the water, and we only get to talk like 10, 15 minutes at a time. So this is like fascinating. Like your family sounds really interesting, man.

[00:18:14] Like you're, how, where the, is it just you or how many brothers and sisters do you have?

[00:18:19] Flip: I have, uh, two younger brothers. Yeah.

[00:18:23] Tyler: And like, so you were the older one. Were you, were you keeping them in

[00:18:27] Flip: line or, oh yeah. All my, my family's all good people. Yeah. You know, all athletes. Everybody was always like hard work, hard workers.

[00:18:38] We were all from the water. We

[00:18:40] Tyler: were all from. Looks like you're really close it sounds like too. Yeah, we, we,

[00:18:43] Flip: we still close. We were always out in the boat, out in the bay. At the beach, surfing, camping. And then, you know, when we weren't at the beach down here, we were always up in the mountains. And so my family liked to hunt.

[00:18:57] Mm-hmm. . So my father, my [00:19:00] uncles, uh, they liked to hunt. And we, and so when I was a kid, I always got to learn, you know, how to fish and how to hunt because those are important traits and individuals and survival. So like, people would be like, oh, how come you go and hunting? What are you shooting? Bambi and stuff like, I'm like, no, no, no.

[00:19:16] Like, I'm like, no, this is, this is about like, this is about like say, okay, we're gonna play a game called, uh, I don't know, colonials. Yeah. But like, whatever, you know, like back in the day when it was, you know, there was, you were kids. Yeah, of course. Well, pioneers, I called it more pioneers. That was, the game was more pioneers.

[00:19:34] So like, I would've tried to explain to people, I'd say, okay, back in the day there. ball bounds. There was no 7-Eleven. There was no stop and shop. There was no electric, there was no clothing store, there was no shoe store, there was no cell phones. There was none of this stuff. You weren't going down to, you know?

[00:19:48] Yeah. Like it wasn't an easy task. You had the survive. So now you have a family. Yeah. And you have a wife and you got kids. How you gonna eat? That's right. You gotta hunt. Taking to survive. How you gonna survive the winter? How you gonna get [00:20:00] clothes? That's right. So you either have to know how to fish.

[00:20:03] Mm-hmm. , you gotta know how to hunt. Mm-hmm. , because they ain't always fish

[00:20:06] Tyler: there. No, no,

[00:20:08] Flip: not at all. And then when you go to hunt, everyone thinks it's easy. Oh yeah. I'm just gonna walk in the woods and shoot something. No, you not. It's not gonna happen like that. No. And so you learn techniques, so you might have a rifle, but still, it's still tough with the rifle.

[00:20:21] But where you learn your technique is from archery. Yeah. And so archery, so like the Indians, the Indians when had to survive back in the day before. Pioneers came over to the United States Yeah. And started pioneering and building colonies and stuff like that. So you had the Indians that survived. So they built tents, teepees and stuff like that.

[00:20:41] And how they survived. They had to survive. They had to learn how to hunt. So they learned how to hunt. They learned to read the land, they learned to read the ground, they learned to read the animals. Everything works together in unison. You don't realize that if you're not in the woods enough to learn how to hunt, all those animals communicate with each other.

[00:20:59] Yeah. From the [00:21:00] birds to the chipmunks, to the squirrels, to the deer, to the Turkey, they all communicate with each other, and so like you have to learn to like blend into those spots and become part of nature. It's almost the same thing in the ocean, like when you're surfing. I was just

[00:21:17] Tyler: gonna say, there's this perfect correlation between hunting and surfing.

[00:21:21] I've always seen that. Mm-hmm. like especially. Fishing. I've always seen like reading the currents. Reading you're reading nature basically. Yeah. In order to, and surfing is definitely a hunter gatherer kind of mentality. Yeah. You know, you gotta hunt for your waves and you want to hunt the

[00:21:37] Flip: waves. Exactly.

[00:21:38] The waves, when you know when the conditions are right. The conditions are right. Before we didn't have all these apps. Oh gosh, no, we didn't have all these cameras. 9

[00:21:47] Tyler: 76 surf

[00:21:47] Flip: was pretty good. 9 76 surf, but we were getting 9 76 surf and that was in Montauk. We'd call Ganzi. So you'd call and the guy would be like, yeah, the surf's like waist, the chest, you know, like we'd, you know, but we would go to the beach anyway cuz we wanted to surf.

[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Yeah. And Ricks action

[00:22:00] Tyler: sports too. Rick's actions.

[00:22:02] Flip: Rick's was good too. Yeah. So like, you know, someone go down and look at it and it was on a, you know, on a regular payphone you could call from the payphone, you know, take a quarter and you call from the payphone. That's how you learn. But then we learned from looking at the flag.

[00:22:14] Exactly. We watched the flag. in school, we sat in inside and watched a flag all day. Mm-hmm. , and we'd watch that flag and it would be south, then it would change the north. We knew when we knew when to go. Yeah. We just, we had that formula. That's you, you, you got that like instinct. Mm-hmm. to go. You're connected to nature, then got connected nature and you studied it.

[00:22:37] Tyler: Let me ask, where did surfing enter in your life then? How did that, how did surfing, uh, come

[00:22:44] Flip: about? Okay, so my uncle surfed, my father surfed, uh, my, we used to go down to Daytona Beach every year. My grandparents and all their friends, everybody was from Brooklyn. Yeah. [00:23:00] So they were from Park Slopes. So my family originally all came from Brooklyn.

[00:23:04] Mm-hmm. . And uh, they would go down to Daytona Beach every year and they would rent a hotel and they'd all be in this hotel. And and you'd go down there and it was like a movie. Nice. They'd all be sitting around the pool with their glasses on. Yeah. Mm-hmm. all old time sitting around the pool and stuff hanging out, you know, and they, and they would, they would leave

[00:23:29] Tyler: like Robert, no.

[00:23:30] Running around the pool. . They would leave

[00:23:33] Flip: November. Yeah. Thanksgiving. Yeah. And not come back till Easter. Yeah. They would stay down in Daytona Beach the whole time. Snowbirds they call and they'd stay there the whole time. And we used to drive down. My father would drive this Monty car. We had, I think it was like a 1976 Monty Carlo.

[00:23:48] And we would drive all the way down to Daytona Beach, stop at south of the border. Stop every time you know it.

[00:23:53] Tyler: South of the border.

[00:23:54] Flip: Pedro's watching. Yeah. You couldn't wait to get there. I was like, you know, halfway point you'd stop Digg, check out all the fire. [00:24:00] Totally. Yeah.

[00:24:01] Tyler: absolutely that in

[00:24:03] Flip: the stuckey's

[00:24:04] And I remember going down to Daytona Beach and every year I would tell my parents, you know, like we would go to the beach up here in the summertime. Yeah. And we would go to. , short Beach. Mm-hmm. . And we always had a boat and they used to be the island out there. Mm-hmm. , we used to anchor in the boat and everyone used to camp on the island.

[00:24:19] Nice. The island was big enough. Yeah. That people used to be able to stay there and camp for the weekend. Mm-hmm. and then something, we'd be in the boat slips where the Coast Guard station is. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And I would tell my mom, I'd say, Hey mom, I'm gonna walk down to the bridge over there and I'd point over towards the Meadowbrook.

[00:24:36] Mm-hmm. . And she'd be like, all right. And she knew it was far away, you know, there was no cell phones. Yeah. As soon as I got around the bend, yo, I would start sprinting towards the ocean and I'd run all across, all the way across West End. That's sick to the ocean by myself. Yeah. And I would go body surfing by myself and there was no one here and I'd be getting thrown around and body surfing by myself.

[00:24:57] And I was probably, I don't even know how old I was, seven years old, [00:25:00] nine years old. Mm-hmm. , no one knew where I. I was in the ocean. They'd be looking over here for me. I was way over here. I'd come back like 45 minutes an hour later. My mom would be like, where were you ? My, I was over here.

[00:25:12] Tyler: How'd you miss me?

[00:25:13] I was, I was running over here. Whatcha you talking about ?

[00:25:17] Flip: They didn't know I was running all the way to the ocean. I, I was like, infatuated. I would, yeah, we would get there in the boat and we'd get off the boat and I knew we were gonna be there for like five, six hours. I'm like, all right. . I gotta make my escape

[00:25:28] Get down to the ocean. So, so when

[00:25:29] Tyler: did the boards

[00:25:30] Flip: come into play then? Then I would, every Christmas I was always like, Hey ma, I need a wetsuit. You know, my dad would always be like, I need a wetsuit in the board. Cuz I knew we were going down to Daytona Beach. Yeah. And then when we got down to Daytona Beach, I would, you know, I would always go out on the surf by myself.

[00:25:44] Then my father would grab me with the lawn board and he'd be like, come on and get on my back. And he'd get on his back. I'd get, we'd paddle out, my father would take off on waves with the old school lawn board, you know, when we'd be getting rides down the beach. And I remember getting, you know, taken off on a head high wave with my, on my father's back and we're going [00:26:00] down the line and then just getting like tumbled and being on the water as a little kid.

[00:26:05] Like, not exp ne never experiencing like such a cartwheel in fest underwater. Cuz you're a little kid. I'm like underwater doing cartwheels. And my father would grab me and pick me up and he'd be like, Hey, you know, I'd be like, I don't know if I was ready to cry or, or, or laugh. But he would be like, yo, you are right.

[00:26:21] Let's go back out. You know? And then dude and then. Do that with me. Yeah.

[00:26:26] Tyler: And that's, that's where it started. Ayona Beach. And we will be right back. And now back to our show. What was your first board?

[00:26:38] Flip: My first board, I think I was riding my uncle. My uncle Chris has had a, had a lightning bolt. No way. Sherry Lopez.

[00:26:45] Shut up Single Fin Jerry Lopez. Sick. Borrowed it from him, . You know, he'd be like, make sure you bring it back, . I said, yeah, I'm gonna bring it back. No problem. You know, and then I would take his board. And then I think the second board I, I had was a dick brewer. Oh wow. Like a [00:27:00] six, six pintail. Wow. And it was one of my friends, and he couldn't ride it cuz it was so narrow.

[00:27:04] It needed like some real waves. And, and you had to probably be real light cuz the board was so narrow and gunny. Yeah. You know, and then I, I rode that board and I was always riding at the jetty. Yeah. We, we don't talk about

[00:27:17] Tyler: where that is though. They ruined it. they ruined it. It

[00:27:20] Flip: doesn't, you go down there all you want , they'll never be the same.

[00:27:24] Tyler: They ruined it. I know. They really did.

[00:27:25] Flip: They ruined all the waves. It's a spot. These guys don't understand how the waves were back in the day. Ugh. And you witnessed it because they just changed old jetties in Long Beach. Yeah. And those old school jets were like magic. They were, they were. And you had always had three streets that were lining.

[00:27:40] with waves coming in and you'd go down there and guys were spreading out and guys were getting roded, you guys getting rods left and right, left and right, left and right. Jetty to jetty all over the place. Yeah. All over the place. And you could drift and you could go to the next beach and drift, go to the next beach and there was always waves there.

[00:27:54] And he and I had a whole sci, you know, like I had a whole scientific [00:28:00] formula. Mm-hmm. for every wind direction and all, you know, the tides and everything for each jetty. I knew what each jetty was gonna do. So I always knew and I was always, I always liked jumping from wave to wave cuz I felt like that helped me out.

[00:28:13] Like instead of being stuck on one wave all the time mm-hmm. , I liked to try to all the different waves. Absolutely. And I was gonna adjust my style. It was gonna help me, uh, you know, create difference in my saren. You.

[00:28:26] Tyler: Who, who were like some of the local surfers that influenced you as a grom? Like, I know for me, like it was Charles Beic, like I always just, oh yeah, Charlie, I was always like Charlie, I mean, I pet the cat like Charlie man, like I just pet that cat, you

[00:28:40] Flip: know?

[00:28:41] Oh yeah. Charlie was always out there. I love Charlie. Charlie was great, man. He was always surfing the good surfing Hode, you know, always, he was always at Lincoln, he was always taking off on those rights in the, in, you know, in the middle of the beach and he just surfed Good man. Yeah. And, and for guys, you know, like coming up, you know, we didn't have too many guys that could surf good.

[00:28:59] There was only a good [00:29:00] handful of guys that could surf. Good. And I wasn't even one of 'em in the beginning. Like there was guys that were like Charlie, you know, you had Al he had, you know, Chris Faye,

[00:29:09] Tyler: Chris Fay, and um, uh, oh, what,

[00:29:12] Flip: trying to think. Had McInnis Larry, Larry, Larry Herrick. Yeah. McGinnis Yo know Larry Herrick.

[00:29:17] Larry Herrick was a, was a, was an Olympic swimmer. Yeah. And, and the funny part is when he had an interview, I'll, I'll always say this, I was like the underground guy. Yeah. And there was all the guys that they were trying to present mm-hmm. , they were always trying to present these other guys. Right. Right.

[00:29:32] But I was more, my, my training was more like snowboarding, wakeboarding. Mm-hmm. out of the ordinary stuff, trying to blend it together. Yeah. And I would surf against those guys and you know, they would shoot pictures and stuff, but I wouldn't always see my pictures. Right. I'd be like, I know I could do stuff.

[00:29:51] I'm like, you guys are just not showing what's going on. You know, like, so, but then Larry Harrick had an interview. Yeah. And in his interview he said, he [00:30:00] said, this guy's like flip Bell and Zoni who you should be watching. Yeah. And paying attention to and you know, like, and that always, that always stuck in my mind and resonated me cuz I thought that was the coolest thing he could say.

[00:30:12] Yeah. Was to be like, you know, he was an Olympic swimmer. Yeah. And he knew how hard it was to dig. and Progress. Yeah. And Excel. So when you got someone else coming that's giving you a challenge mm-hmm. and you're an Olympic swimmer, my methods of training were a little different. Yeah. To get to my point.

[00:30:33] Yeah. To get to my, uh, you know, like the things I was looking for. So like, I always, I always thought that was cool, man, that he would say that and stuff

[00:30:42] Tyler: like that. I, I, you know, like I get, I still, uh, get messages from him once in a while on Instagram, you know, Larry, and like, yeah, that guy, I haven't seen him in a long time.

[00:30:52] That guy, he ripped, ripped, like, oh yeah. Listeners like Larry Herrick was probably, yeah. up there in the nineties foot. In [00:31:00] the nineties.

[00:31:00] Flip: The waves were good for goofy footers. In the New York Long Island, if you were goofy foot, you know you were front side, the waves were stood up for you. You were able to rip it front side that that was a big advantage.

[00:31:10] I was the opposite because I came from a jetty. Yeah. So I came from a jetti, it was a refracting wave that went the opposite direction, but it was so much more powerful and heavy where I was coming from. And when I was a kid, I didn't know anything about that spot. Cause my father fished. Yeah. And so like in the summertime, my father would be going out fishing.

[00:31:26] Yeah. And we'd be all on the boat, me and my friends, and we'd be like, he'd be like, oh, I'm gonna drop you off in the jetty. Yeah. And he'd pull around the corner and I'd see all the guys that was the underground, the jetty underground. Let's, let's talk it

[00:31:37] Tyler: about this. All right. All right, listeners. So we're what we're talking.

[00:31:41] Is West End, uh, field two, Jones Beach, the jetty at the end. This jetty was like Sebastian Inlet. If, if it were flat everywhere else, there was always a wave there because the wave would, like you said, it was a magnifier. It refracted off the jetty and wedged up. Doubled in size. Yeah. [00:32:00]But it was one of the most hardcore local lineups too.

[00:32:04] Like you couldn't just go there. No. Like you would, I mean, I've heard so many stories as a gro, the war zone. I was terrified as a kid to go surf

[00:32:12] Flip: there. It was the war zone. You weren't allowed to talk about it. No. If you talked about it, you got banished. Absolutely. If you brought a camera down, you got banished.

[00:32:18] Oh, forget about it. And if you told anyone about it, you got banished. And if you said the name about it, you got banished. You weren't even allowed to, you weren't even allowed to say anything about it. You had. , pull an Irish exit and disappear and be

[00:32:31] Tyler: like, yeah, I'm going home. And it's like a 20 minute, 15, 20 minute walk from the parking lot.

[00:32:35] God help your car. If it was unfamiliar, you know? Yeah. . Hell

[00:32:40] Flip: yeah. Well, yeah. You know, . But if you went there just to surf and you, and, and you surfed good. And you surfed hard and respectful, you get recognized. You know, it wasn't like you couldn't just paddle out. Like today everyone just paddles out at these spots and it's like, these guys don't even know how to surf.

[00:32:54] No. And they're coming out the first peak and they're crowding the peak and it's like, yo, back in the day, you weren't [00:33:00] allowed to do that. No. You wouldn't paddle out. Cuz we, I see, I learned from guys that were in the hooey. Yeah. And I learned from guys that were like from Mavericks, before you even talking about Mavericks, Mavericks wasn't even on the map.

[00:33:10] Right. I surfed the guys from Mavericks and I surfed the guys at the Huey and I knew how they, I knew how the code was. There was a code. No one's living by the code now. No, this is, you're gonna see me and I live by the code. This is why the way I am. . And so like the code was, you'd go to the beach, you didn't tell people where you were going, you didn't tell 'em the waves were going, no, you didn't, you didn't go there to take pictures.

[00:33:34] You didn't show up and make a documentary cuz you figured out surfing or you like this whole thing that's going on now is like, I don't wanna say, but it's ass backwards. , you,

[00:33:43] Tyler: you know what, it's, you hit a a point, you hit a nerve. That's so, it's kind of true. Like I, as someone who's grew up surfing, you know, like with you, my family owns one of the oldest surf shops in New York.

[00:33:57] Like, I, you know, I'm, [00:34:00] I'm very polite to people in the lineup, but there's, there's like, you gotta earn. Your place. You know, there's something about earning your place in the lineup. You know, and, and that's not to say you, you will never earn your place, but you have to show respect to get respect and surf Good.

[00:34:15] Yeah. And

[00:34:15] Flip: surf well, you know, or you weren't allowed to show up at a spot and then think you're gonna sit on a first peak or second peak. You'd get ejected down the beach so fast. If you blew a wave, everyone saw it was your chain of the line up. You're going the end of the line. , you weren't paddling back to the peak.

[00:34:30] Oh, you were going down the beach with the other guys that didn't know how to surf. And we're gonna watch you from a hundred yards on the beach and we're gonna watch every wave you get. We were gonna watch to see if you could stand up, if you could get barreled, if you could make a turn, if you could make an air.

[00:34:43] Then you started gaining notoriety. Yeah. Then you start gaining respect. Then maybe you could come over near us. Then we start we're we are moving it. So it's like what I say in the water. , it's turned into a free for all. Mm-hmm. , because they've not projected the scene the way it should be. Under [00:35:00] the codes, there's codes, and the codes are, it's almost like a jiujitsu school.

[00:35:05] Yeah. You go into the Jiujitsu school. Yeah. You're going in there to learn how to fight. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. and you're gonna learn how to survive. Mm-hmm. and you're gonna learn how to build yourself. Yeah. You're gonna learn how to move and mm-hmm. and, you know, do the whole thing. But you're not going in there as a black belt.

[00:35:19] No. You're going in there as a white belt. And you gotta understand that there's other guys in there that have been in there for years and years and years and see everything, and know everybody, and know every situation, and know every critical and have thing

[00:35:33] Tyler: put in the work and have, have had injuries and have, you know, earned their scars.

[00:35:38] You know, which, which I think with surfing, . Look, I, I've spent winters CR with crappy gear and you know, when our beaches were closed to surfing, gosh, remember like how illegal surfing was? We used to get rusted surfing. Yeah. Boards would be confiscated. And, and we put in that time and I think it's like, look, give us a little bit of [00:36:00] respect here because we've, we've been doing this for a while.

[00:36:03] There's a whole, and that's the thing. Era.

[00:36:04] Flip: Yeah. There's a whole era Yeah. From the nineties. Mm-hmm. through like the two thousands mm-hmm. that they didn't say nothing about. Yeah. They said a little about it, but they weren't really touching base on what was really going on. And I think that was from like the point break era.

[00:36:19] Yeah. When it came out, the movie point break. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it was like, yo, these guys are surface. They must be troublemakers. . They must be like robbing banks. That's right. Dealing drugs or something like that. We like, as we looked down upon yo, we were look down upon Harden and then we used to get chased off the beach.

[00:36:36] The, you know, they used to arrest us. Yeah. We're going to surf. Yeah. And we, we had the formula down. We knew when the storms went by, the wind was gonna go offshore. The lightning was gone. Yeah. You weren't gonna get in trouble. Yeah. There was nothing going on except good waves. And it was like hurting their feelings.

[00:36:52] And it was like, you know, some, some of these people, the problem is with surfing, it hurts people's feelings cuz they can't go to store and buy it. It's [00:37:00] not like something you could buy like a car. Yeah. Or like a suit. Mm-hmm or go get a nice haircut or a pair of shoes or something like that and be like Oh I got all this stuff cuz no it is in the water.

[00:37:09] No one cares. Yeah, that's right. They want to see you surf good. You want to see guys surf good. You don't wanna see guys like struggling and going over the falls and almost killing the guy next to him. No. Or blowing waves. You're trying to utilize the wave the best you can. So other people that have trained for years and years and years, Yeah.

[00:37:27] See things differently and so like all this exploitation of the surf scene. Yeah. And like trophies for everyone. And the surf camps and the jet skis they used to use to tow into guys, into waves and all that stuff. I cons, we were, we considered that cheating. Yeah. Yeah, because I, I paddled into giant waves my whole life and I was training my ass off, fighting, working.

[00:37:53] I was getting up at four in the morning coming into Manhattan, working eight, 10 hour day, [00:38:00] lifting, glass, lifting, metal lifting, steel climbing, putting stuff together, buildings in Manhattan. Then I would go home. I would've to jujitsu school. I would sleep for about a half an hour. An hour maybe on a train.

[00:38:12] I would get home, take a shower. I had to go open the school. Damn. And now I'm gonna teach private lessons. People teach, I teach one-on-one private for like two hours. And then I had general population class. Yeah. General population class. That could be 25 guys, that could be 50 guys, that could be a hundred guys.

[00:38:28] Geez. Now they're gonna come, everyone's coming to train. That's when we get it on . Guys are pushing the level, guys are pushing, moving, moving, moving, running, jumping, you know, whatever we're doing, we're doing, we're training every different scenario. Fighting scenarios, all different cardio, everything like that.

[00:38:44] And so, like, you know, you're, you're pushing that envelope. So I was pushing, pushing the level of, you know, surfing, working, snow, you know, just to get athletics. Yeah. And so, , the jet ski. We were wakeboarders. Yeah. And we wakeboard behind a boat. [00:39:00] Yeah. But pulling into a wave. And that was like cheating to us.

[00:39:04] Cause we wanted to paddle into the wave. We were like, yo, we're the engine. Yeah. We're building the engine. We're the body. We're the body. That has to be

[00:39:10] Tyler: the engine. Well, it comes down to what you talked about earlier, like with hunting, right? Like survival. Mm-hmm. with all these amenities, you can't survive.

[00:39:19] And a lot of times in the water, when all that stuff craps out Yeah. You have to rely on yourself to survive, you know? Yeah. That's the one thing I noticed with a lot of mm-hmm. people. It feels like they're, they've got too many safeguards and, and it's like, it, it takes away from, from the, the essence of it.

[00:39:37] Flip: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of, you know, things a lot safer now. You know, if you, you give into it, yeah. Okay. It's a lot safer, but No, it is. I charged big waves. Mm-hmm. and, uh, I pretty much died. Whoa. One time. What happened? On a big wave. I, I want to hear this. I was surfing in Cape Hatteras. Mm-hmm. . [00:40:00] We followed a hurricane up the coast, went down there with two van loads of guys, got to the beach four o'clock in the morning, got to the lighthouse, the place blacked out.

[00:40:12] There was no power anymore. The, the storm was right offshore. We got up in the morning, the beach was rumbling. It was shaking right. The ground was shaking. The waves were massive. There was nobody really out unless you jumped off the end of the pier. Mm-hmm. like you, you did a bailout off the end of the pier,

[00:40:28] And so like, people were driving up and down, up and down the coast and it was massive waves. Massive waves. And I ended up seeing a guy, this was, I was in the first Lito Yeah. Head. Yeah. With my head shaved. Yeah. And said, Lito surfing Sport . So I went down to, I go down to Cape Patas with all these guys from New York and we get there and I see this guy standing on a dune.

[00:40:51] and he looks like Conan, the ball bearing. He's standing on doing the long hair, you know, like big muscles. And so I go up to him, I'm like, Hey man, where's their waves [00:41:00] around here? Can we surf? And the guy looks at me, he's like, why you wanna surf? I said, yeah. He goes, all right man, follow me. He gets in this white van, he starts driving north.

[00:41:08] So we're at the lighthouse. He starts driving north. I get in the van with two much, you know, two van loads of friends. They're like, who is this guy? What are we following him for? I said, he's gonna bring us to the waves. We pull over the side of the road after we drive a half an hour, we get to the spot and the waves.

[00:41:24] I get out, I go over the dunes. It's just giant A-frames. Wow. Perfect. A-frames. But like huge 30, 40 foot waves. Like huge shaken, shaken the ground, like probably some of the biggest waves I ever seen on the east coast. And I go to, and he paddles, he opens the back of his truck and he, and he's got like 20 boards in there and he pulls out this big giant Hawaiian gun

[00:41:45] And everyone's watching him and they're pulling up binoculars and there's people pulling over and everything like that. So every, he starts paddling out. And so I start grabbing my stuff and everyone's looking at me. They're like, where you going? I said, I'm paddling out . They're like, yo, you [00:42:00] outta your mind.

[00:42:00] You're on a six one. How you gonna paddle out there, ? I said, don't worry about it. I'm just gonna paddle out. I'll be all right. Fucking

[00:42:06] Tyler: ke had, uh, you're like, Curin, man. . And it was the craziest thing. Cause there

[00:42:10] Flip: was giant bombs coming through, and if I got hit by one bomb, yeah, I probably would've been back on the beach.

[00:42:15] It was like, God let me out. All of a sudden I was paddling out and these giant massive sets were just coming by the sides of me. And I just squeaked out dry hair. I had long hair at the time. I Dr. Paddled right out and all of a sudden I'm like 200 yards in the middle of the ocean with this guy and this guy's looking at me and he's like, what the heck?

[00:42:32] How the hell did you get out here? ? You know, he's looking at me and I'm watching him and it's just me and him and all these people are way off. You know? I'm way offshore now. Yeah. I'm like out in the middle of the ocean. I see this guy take like four or five waves and they're massive. Right. So I'm like, all right, let me line up one of these waves.

[00:42:46] And I take off on a giant left and I make it and I do a big fly out. Yeah. And now I'm all amped. Yeah. I'm like, yo, I could do this . I'm catching these waves. I'm on a six one. I'm like, all right, next thing you're gonna go to take a Right. [00:43:00] But when I paddle out, I realized to the left meter, it was a sandbar.

[00:43:03] It was like the kill zone. Oh gosh. And I end up taking off on this giant, right. And I go Right. Kill zone. Yeah. And it was just like, I'm on a big giant, right. It was like the city block. It was like a city block. Like if you're looking at buildings. Yeah. And you take off and you're looking down at city block and, and all those buildings are like this.

[00:43:21] And just the whole city block coming and landing on you . And that's what happened to me. I took off on a right. I made it to the bottom. I looked way up and the whole thing was just throwing it. And I was like, I'm not gonna make this next section. I'm pretty much dead right here, . And I just got obliterated and it just took me and threw me all over the place.

[00:43:37] And I heard my spine go like a zipper. My hands, my body were going all over the place. I just, it was the most violent turbulence, you know, like in a long time. I've been through a lot of it, but I really got worked, you know? And I'm in North Carolina. Yeah. Oh shit. The graveyard of the Atlantic. Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:57] And I'm getting worked and all of a sudden I came. [00:44:00] And I didn't think I was gonna survive the first wave. I came popping up. I didn't have a life vest on. There's no jet skis out there. Yeah. I'm in the middle of the ocean and I got all these guys on the beach watching me. And the next thing, as soon as I came up, it was like slow motion.

[00:44:12] I looked up and this wave was just coming right at me, like real slow, big, giant, massive mountain coming right at me. I had a few seconds to think and then I took a breath of air and next thing you notice, this thing just totally straight down detonated me. Like, exploded me like a bomb. Like, you know, like a whole building fall on you just exploded me.

[00:44:32] And next thing you know, I was underwater and it just blew the shit outta me. And I was under so far, I started realizing, I'm like, I'm not gonna make this. And I'm looking way up at the, I'm looking up at the sun. Yeah. Way far high up the, the waterline. And I, I'm like, wow, I'm way down and I'm outta air.

[00:44:51] I'm done. And then all of a sudden I started like letting myself die. Yeah, it was the weirdest thing cuz I just started letting myself die [00:45:00] and I started seeing my body sinking into the darkness. And it's so weird because like, I came outta my body. Like they talk, you talk about like these outed body experiences mm-hmm.

[00:45:09] when people say they came outta their body. And all of a sudden it was the weirdest thing because I could see my body sinking into the darkness. Right. And then all of a sudden I just started seeing people crying. Mm-hmm. . And I'm watching and I'm seeing all these people crying and I'm like, what am I witnessing here?

[00:45:25] I'm, I'm seeing something. I don't know what it is, and I'm watching all these people crying and all of a sudden I realize it's my friends and my family, and all of a sudden I'm at my own funeral. Whoa. And I'm like, wait a minute, this is my funeral. I'm at my own funeral. . I'm like, and then all of a sudden my mind just started, like the gears started ticking because I was like, I can't let my friends cry.

[00:45:49] Yeah. Yeah. I can't let my family cry. They can't cry for me. I'm not gonna let 'em down. And then all of a sudden my body just started, like, the gears in my brain just went into gear again. It was like, [00:46:00] and all of a sudden everything shook and then all of a sudden I started swimming again to the top. And my bo all of a sudden everything came back into my body.

[00:46:07] Mm-hmm. like at once there was all these different things going on. I was watching myself die. Yeah. I was separating from my body and I was at a funeral that was in the future, and then all of a sudden my body came back together and I was like, whoa. And then I just started swimming to the surface. Yeah.

[00:46:22] And I, and I didn't think I was gonna make it, but I did make it. And as soon as I came up, I was like, I caught it. That one breath of. . Yeah. And then I looked up again and it was another bomb. . like motherfucker, yo. And the third one, . The third one was the, probably the worst because I took my board at that time.

[00:46:40] Yeah. And I turned it towards the beach trying to ride it and tried to lay on it like I was gonna ride in because I was like, yo, I had enough. And it's like, gotta get outta here. I just almost died. I just came back to life. Now I'm gonna ride this sport. And next thing you know, I'm facing the beach. Yo, this thing detonates and took, it took me and cartwheeled me for like a football field end over end.

[00:46:59] Like ragdolled [00:47:00] me, like end over, end over, end over, end over. You know, like, and when I got outta the water, After four of those waves. Yeah. I didn't know where I was. And I got outta the water. And I got outta water and I kissed the ground. literally kissed the ground. When someone says they kissed the ground, I kissed the ground.

[00:47:16] Yeah. I got outta the water and I was walking in. I didn't know which way the car was now. Oh gosh. I was like miles away from where I was. I'm like looking around like, which way did I go? I, there's like no markers in

[00:47:26] Tyler: outer banks. In the outer banks

[00:47:28] Flip: just dunes. I'm like, and then all of a sudden I'm walking and I'm walking and all of a sudden I look and there's some lady laying there naked in the dunes Sunday and I was like, oh, thank God it's a sign,

[00:47:39] I'm like, oh, thank God. And I was like, and I walked back to the car. Right? Yeah. And everyone was like looking, they were like, yo, what happened to you dude? We seen you take off on two waves and then you got obliterated and we thought you were dead. And they were scared. They were like, yo, we were scared.

[00:47:55] We're gonna have to call your father and tell 'em they lost you in the ocean. [00:48:00] That you were dead. And I was like, nah, man, I'm alive.

[00:48:07] And I was like, that was weird. That's a great story.

[00:48:11] Tyler: And all these things, that is a gnarly story. That's

[00:48:14] Flip: a great story. That was, yeah, that was death, dude. That was the death, uh, that's experience. And then I think after that, I never had any other fear. Really. Yeah. Until I almost died again.

[00:48:25] Tyler: doing, doing one another story Whoa.

[00:48:27] Was surfing again. So jeez, man, surfing again. I

[00:48:30] Flip: got obliterated into the bottom. like pounded and, uh, like broke. I don't say I broke my shoulder. Yeah. Just, but the did the injury was, I felt like I got shot from a cannon, geez. From outta space. That's how, that's how crazy the wipe out was. And I got so obliterated on the.

[00:48:50] Where was this Alito?

[00:48:52] Tyler: Of course. Alito, Escondido.

[00:48:54] Flip: Everyone got outta the water. Yeah, because it was breaking so heavy. And it was on, it was on Halloween. Yeah. [00:49:00] And it was, I think it was during maybe the Covid. It was during the Covid. Yeah. Yeah. And I went down to the beach and it was bombing. Everyone got out.

[00:49:07] I sw all the Long Beach guys. They were like, yo, watch dude. It's breaking so heavy. You know? We all got out. And I was like, all right, man. I'll go in. No one was out. I was by myself. Wow. And I seen this wave breaking from one side of Alito all the way to Lido Towers. And I never seen a break like that. It was like a freight train.

[00:49:25] It was coming through one giant massive wave. And Azos had a wave coming from the middle of the ocean like I'd never seen before. And I was like, wow, this is pretty fucking crazy. I never seen the waves like this. So I end up paddling out by myself, . And I'm studying it. Yeah. And I'm like watching this wave and there's like a five wave set.

[00:49:43] And I'm like, I'm like, all right man. I'm gonna study to wave the sets and figure out which one's gonna let me out of the barrel. And so I started studying it and then next thing you know, I let five waves go by. Yeah. There's no one around me. Yeah. There's like [00:50:00] 20, 30 people down near the houses. Yeah. I'm by myself near a concession stand.

[00:50:04] Yeah. On the surfing beach. And it's so shallow, like it would be flat. Mm-hmm. . And you could stand in the water like up to your knees and then like a 10 foot wave would just come outta nowhere and just mow you down. Like five waves would just come outta nowhere. So like, I didn't realize it, but I'm getting ready to take off on a set and I see the set coming in and I start digging.

[00:50:24] Yeah. I'm digging and digging and go to take off on a wave. And now I'm committed cuz this wave's gonna freight train. And I never seen a wave break like this. Alito like. Like a death wave. Like a freight train down the beach. Yeah. On that sandbar that's in front of the surfing beach. A dead low moon tide, dead low moon tide.

[00:50:42] And next thing you know, I go to take off on a wave and there's some guy standing on the sandbar, no. With a lawn board. right in front of me, right in front of me. He walked exactly out to the same spot I was surfing. Oh my gosh. And I'm taking off on a wave. And now he's standing directly in front of me and I'm on the [00:51:00] crest, this like 10 foot section.

[00:51:01] Oh. And he's standing in like nehi water, ready to get obliterate with a lawn board, like sideways. And he's like looking at me like, and I'm like, headlights. Yeah. And I'm like, where did this guy come from? . Now all of a sudden, that millisecond that I needed for trajectory Yeah. To move down the line, to get my body moving in the right direction.

[00:51:20] All of a sudden I, I hesitated a split second. I went, should I go this way or should I go this way? Oh. And that split second hung me up. Next thing I did, airdrop grabbed the rail, landed on the wave. Set the rail and this thing started going like a freight train. And I thought I had it because you know, I surfed blacks.

[00:51:38] Yeah. When I was growing up, I always surfed blacks. Black was, blacks was a hairy. Yeah. Heavy beach break. So I thought I had it and I was like grabbing the rail and I'm pulling in and all of a sudden this thing just picked me up and it. Detonated me in like, no water. It put me on that bottom. I felt like I got shot by a cannon from outta space.

[00:51:56] Geez. Like, I didn't know what hit me. And I was like, [00:52:00] boom. And I trained my whole life, kickboxing, fighting, playing hockey, you know, wrestling, all impact sports, training for impact. This thing hit when I fucking hit the bottom, man. It was like, I didn't know what the fuck hit, man. I thought like a fucking SCD missile from fucking outta space at me.

[00:52:17] Yo. It blew me up so fucking bad. And I got up and the weird part was I never got knocked out before. Yeah. I've never lost consciousness, even in fights. Yeah. Even getting hit by things. Not nothing like that. And when I hit the bottom, man, I, I popped up and I looked around and I was like, yo, am I still alive?

[00:52:35] Fuck. Because that's how vicious and violent it was. Geez. Because I think if it was someone else, I think they would've been dead. Oh yeah. A hundred. Because I trained my whole life for that impact and I've been trained for that. You know, like waiting for that. Yeah. But I didn't expect it to become that hard and that guy learning how to surf paddling out at that break, not knowing what he was doing, got me so brutalized and almost killed that.

[00:52:57] That's why like I scream at guys in the [00:53:00] water because I could see it coming from a mile away. I can see when you don't know what's going on. I can see when you're paddling out, I can see when you're getting in the way I'm watching you surf down the beach. So it's almost like a jiujitsu. School's like when you're paddling out, like the whole lineup.

[00:53:12] I treat that as my school. It's like almost like my fight is they're coming in here to train, they're gonna come here to fight. They're coming in here to do their thing. Yeah. So like when I see the school, when I see the water and the lineup, it's almost like the jujitsu school now. It's. Now this guy's learned how to surf.

[00:53:27] Almost got me killed. So I was outta work for a full year. Whoa. I had to go to physical therapy. Whoa. My bones didn't break, but everything, my muscle structure. Oh, all your ligaments and everything. Muscle structure and everything got twisted and like stretched. So like I would say that was almost the second time I died.

[00:53:43] Damn. Because I was in the hospital when the Covid thing was going on. Yeah. And I was banged the holy crap. And I was like, holy crap, I'm in a bad spot right here. I just got murdered on a beach knowing how to surf because some guy was learning how to surf. got me destroyed and now I'm sitting in the [00:54:00] hospital and all these people are dying from the Covid.

[00:54:02] I'm like, this is a bad place to be in right now. . Yeah, you, yeah,

[00:54:06] Tyler: definitely did not want to be in the hospital during Covid. No. For anything other than Covid. I

[00:54:11] Flip: didn't sleep in a chair for like four months sitting there. Holy shit. I couldn't, like I was dating a girl and I felt so bad because I was so destroyed.

[00:54:18] Like our relationship was like we were have, you know, we had like a relationship where, you know, yeah, everything was great and awesome and stuff like that, and then all of a sudden I just got brutalized and like destroyed

[00:54:28] Tyler: and depression. Man. That's like full depression though. When you get injured like that, it's so easy

[00:54:33] Flip: and you get out of it.

[00:54:35] To really get out it, like to get over that hurdle of okay, you're injured. Okay. I broke probably every bone in my body. I probably had hundreds of stitches. I've banged my head on the mountain snowboard and where I raced my brain and didn't even know what mountain I was on. I didn't know what time it was.

[00:54:51] I didn't know how I got there. But like, you know, that's part of playing sports. You want to play the sports', gonna pay to play. Yeah, pay to play. That was always, that was always my thing. And to [00:55:00] train. You weren't gonna get the results if you weren't training. Right. So like I was training, I would, I, you know, I go to the gym, I go home, I eat, I watch tv.

[00:55:08] I start training at 11 o'clock at night. I'm training at 11 o'clock at night and I'm getting up at six in the morning. Either go to, you know, four in the morning, go to work, not go to surf. Yeah. Not go to the mountain. If not going to train, fight school.

[00:55:22] Tyler: That, that must have been really difficult then to be out like at a commission.

[00:55:27] Like not be able to train even, you know, like that would totally mess with your head. And

[00:55:33] Flip: not be able to work. Yeah. Pay you bills. And we

[00:55:37] Tyler: will be right back. And now back to our show. So let's, I want to, dude, there's so much ground. We're not gonna have enough time. We're gonna have to do this again. That's what I said.

[00:55:49] But, but honestly, like, I want to talk about, you know, you what your job is too. Cause this is super fascinating. We were talking about before you're architectural glass and metal worker, [00:56:00] correct? Yes. Like how long have you been doing that

[00:56:02] Flip: for? Well, I'll start it out. Well, when I was a kid, my father, uh, he liked, he was doing construction all the time.

[00:56:10] He worked for United States Steel. Wow. He was in the teamsters and he delivered steel. He drove a truck and stuff like that. My father was 17 when he had me. My mom was 18. My father was a hockey player. My mom figure skated. They both skied, they both surfed, did all this stuff. But, uh, My father had a bad accident when I was a kid.

[00:56:30] He felt two and a half stories. He broke his back. Oh. Father was in a coma holy for a year, almost died. Whoa. And he, you know, how old were you in that? I was nine years old when that happened. So like between like seven and nine, that's when my father showed me sports. Yeah. Showed me, you know, hockey, wrestling, surfing, hunting in that, you know, I, I didn't have a lot of time because my father got injured and, and was, you know, partially paralyzed.[00:57:00]

[00:57:00] Well, so I remember going to look in the refrigerator for something to eat and there was nothing in there but ice trays. And my mom had my little brother, Mike, and he was a baby. And I was the oldest boy. Yeah. And now my father was disabled. And I go to hospital every night and see my father hooked up to all electrodes and stuff like that.

[00:57:22] And I think that's where it gave me the. Fight instincts. Yeah. Cuz all of a sudden not having nothing, people would be like, you know, you had to scrap not Yeah. Had to, you know, had to, I had to work. So like I started working at 12. Wow. And so friends of my family, my uncles, people, my father knew stuff like that.

[00:57:40] They did construction and they'd always be like, take the kid with you. Take the kid with you. So when I was a kid, you know, I knew these people. They were Greek. They were Sicilian. They would take me to do tile and stuff like that. And I started learning how to do tile as a kid. Yeah. And stuff. And then my other uncle, my uncle Wally, he always brought me into construction jobs and I worked with all his friends and [00:58:00] stuff like that.

[00:58:00] And so I learned to do construction. And then I had friends in my family, my father, my father from years and years and years. He was never a hundred percent. Yeah. But he was recovering. Yeah. And he had a hunting camp up in the mountains. And so he would go up there to, you know, rest, hang out. Yeah. Go in the woods a little bit, do some fishing.

[00:58:21] He wasn't really. able to do high intensity work. Yeah. Stuff like that. Friends of my family had a glass shop and I started working in the glass shop. My father was working in the glass shop, helping out and stuff like that. They knew, they knew, you know, he was having a hard time. Yeah. So people were trying to help us out with some work, you know, they always gotta be grateful for people like that to come Absolutely.

[00:58:43] To help you. You know? That's how I learned. And, you know, learned, learned. Construction people helped me do the construction. People showed me stuff and that was always a good thing. That's why, you know, I feel, I feel like it's good to teach people a proper way to teach people a correct way. To teach people efficiency and stuff like that.

[00:58:59] Yeah. So, like, [00:59:00] even with surfing now, like, it's like, okay, you got surfing, you can't just be a bum. No, you gotta go get up work. You gotta work, man. There's, there's things you gotta do. So like I started. . The glass work I was doing, the construction. I like to surf. I like to train. Yeah. You know, we like to go in the boat, we like to do all these things.

[00:59:21] But you had to maintain. Mm-hmm. , maintain paying your bills, taking care, your family. Yeah. Taking care of your friends. Taking care of your stuff. Yeah. Doing the right thing. So I wasn't into partying. Yeah. You know, I knew people like own clubs, bars, stuff like that. I'd go to visit, say hello and stuff like that, but they knew me from the surf magazines.

[00:59:41] Yeah. People would be like, yo, flip, come on, come in here . You know, hang out, man. I didn't have to pay for nothing. Yeah. Everyone's giving me drinks. Everyone's giving me shots, you know, like I'm not, I wasn't a big drinker. Yeah. I wasn't into partying, but I like to hang out with people and stuff like that, so I had to, I had to fight the urge of just doing nothing.

[00:59:58] Yeah. And partying and making life [01:00:00] into a party because I wasn't into that. I was more into training. Yeah. I was more into being like, all right, well now I'm friends. , these guys from California. Mm-hmm. , guys from Lost. Yeah. And they made surfboards. Yeah. And I met them one day on the boardwalk. Nice. In Long Beach, and they came walking up and that was the, that's another funny story.

[01:00:19] But, uh, yeah, I always did construction and I worked in the glass shop and I did residential glass, so I'd fix Anderson's, I'd fix P windows. Yeah. I'd do double insulated units, fixed storefronts. And then, uh, new people that were in the union and did bigger jobs. So like, you know, I, I did, you know, work with guys, you know, the union had 'em in wear, architectural glass and, and uh, metal.

[01:00:47] And it's awesome to do these big giant jobs. All the guys worked

[01:00:51] Tyler: work would've

[01:00:52] been,

[01:00:52] Flip: you worked on the Freedom Tower, right? Yeah, I worked on a lot of jobs, you know, and, and the, the crew of guys is great cuz like you get up in the morning Yeah. And you're [01:01:00]up at four in the morning and you see where the heart of the.

[01:01:03] City pumps from those guys coming into work. Mm-hmm. , and you see that whole work group of gnarly guys Yeah. That are gonna go into the city and do gnarly stuff. They're gonna be concrete. They're doing rebar, they're doing electric, they're doing plumbing, they're doing framing. You know, it's, it's, it's everything.

[01:01:21] You're doing glass, you're doing the steel, you're running the cranes. Operating engineers, the elevators, the alimax. Yeah. And they would do it professionally. You in the union, you wanted to be safe, you wanted to go home to your family. You wanted, that's get right. A honest day of work, prevail a wage, honest wages, your benefits, stuff like that.

[01:01:40] And you had the work. , that's what it was. And you had to commit to it and you, you had to get to work. I'm up at four in the morning, man. I come to work. I love it. I love coming to work. Yeah. I come into Manhattan, five in the morning, everyone's sleeping. Everyone's coming over from the club, whatever they were doing, no one's on the street.

[01:01:55] It's empty. Start to see like the solitude Yeah. Of Manhattan in that early morning [01:02:00] hours and it's pretty cool. It's awesome. Right? See that? Yeah.

[01:02:03] Tyler: You just love seeing the city come alive too. Like all of a sudden everyone starts to come in and all of a sudden it's like, Crazy how it turns on like that.

[01:02:12] And we

[01:02:12] Flip: try to get our work done early in the morning. Yeah. Cuz we're moving glass, we're moving metal. So we don't need all these people like around, we're trying to get that stuff established Yeah. Before they get to work. So we, that's why we start so early. We start moving around, we start moving in different time patterns to, to get these jobs done and stuff like that.

[01:02:29] But it was always, it was always a great thing to be able to do stuff like that and build an, and, you know, nine 11 happened and that was one of the most horrible things I day I could ever remember. Probably, you know, for the history of the world to be there to, to have no people and see it and have, you know, like it was just a horrifying thing.

[01:02:49] And like people that didn't live around here Yeah. Didn't see it and didn't witness it and didn't understand kids that weren't even born or kids. Yeah. You know, and, and it was the weirdest thing cuz it was, it was so [01:03:00] heartbreaking cuz like there was such damage done. . And I remember just being like, we gotta build the towers again.

[01:03:06] We gotta build the towers again. We gotta build the towers again. And then, you know, like there was a lot of things. They had to dig all these people out of the, out of the rubble man for years. And I was going down to going down to downtown ground zero. And I remember seeing all the people standing there with their pictures of their family that they never found and they was sitting there waiting for them.

[01:03:27] Shit, dude, that shit waiting for them, shit,

[01:03:29] Tyler: that, that stuff killed me when I saw that horrible, it was, it was like, it's heartbreaking. I remember like coming in and then seeing the pictures and you're like, wow, it just hits you, doesn't it like, it like something I've never felt before. Emotionally, it just, ugh.

[01:03:45] Still,

[01:03:45] Flip: still, I got like chicken skin. Yeah. And, and, and like, you know, just the, just the thing about like, Terrorism in war and just, you know, like a sneak attack or like just, just not for me it was, it was about being a good [01:04:00] citizen, about being a good American, about being good to your countrymen, to your friends, being honest, even if the truth is not what they want to hear, but the truth is what you need.

[01:04:09] Mm. You know? And that was the thing. And all of a sudden it was like being vigilant and being, being a good person and being vigilant and just because you're a dangerous person doesn't mean you have to go harm people or hurt people or do anything like that. Cuz that was a lot of outta control.

[01:04:25] Frustrations. Yeah. So being professional and helping people like the training and the jujitsu and stuff like that. So from all those years in that time it was weird because I had a lot of friends that were in the military and they were going to fight and they would come to me. Yeah. And I trained with the Gracie's and they were like, yeah.

[01:04:43] They wanted to know hand, hand combat. . And, and so you trained with the gh. The GH was what you were prestigious to wear. Mm-hmm. because you had your belts and a lot of guys wanted to train the nogi cuz it was easier. But to wear the gh Yeah. Was the more chess game. Yeah, that was [01:05:00] the chess match. Because there was so many more moves.

[01:05:02] There was thousands of more moves. There was thousands of more holds. So like when I was in the Jiujitsu school, we had lots of different people that were coming in. Guys were world champion judo guys, world champion Jiujitsu guys, world champion karate guys, Kung fu guys, Russian military guys, Israeli Kab, McGraw guys.

[01:05:22] Yeah. You had American wrestlers, you had moi Thai guys, you had, you know, boxes. You had women, children, yeah. Doctors, lawyers, professional fighters. Yeah. So I had all these people that I trained with and all these people that came to me for help. Yeah. Because I was, I was given these chances and, and showing these weapons and.

[01:05:46] That's what they were, they were weapons. They put weaponized my body. . Yeah. The Gracie's

[01:05:50] Tyler: weaponized my body. Yeah. Well that's that. Isn't that like the case with a lot of the bjj, you know? Oh yes. It's like,

[01:05:56] Flip: yeah. You know, and so like a lot of stuff I was sworn [01:06:00] under oath not to never to do Right. Not to do.

[01:06:04] Yeah. But not to like share Yeah. With people that weren't worthy. Right. So it was almost like watching all those kung fu movies back in the day. You'd always see the mask that he'd be in the mountain . He'd be out there sweeping and stuff, you know, . Yeah. And it was always the one kid, he would come, he'd be like, yo, I wanna learn.

[01:06:26] I heard you to man. You're like, are you

[01:06:27] Tyler: worthy? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:30] Flip: I'd come and, and the teacher would be sitting there and he'd be like, it's almost like surfing. It's like, these guys are gonna come and they're watching me the whole time. They're watching me surf, they're watching me snowboard. They're watching me wakeboard, they're watching me do all this stuff.

[01:06:43] and all of a sudden everybody had one story about flip. Oh, well, I, uh, box and one guy, oh, I do this. And one guy I snowballed one. But no, it is, when he added all those stories together, it was me, . Right. So these guys are coming and they, you know, it's like that kung fu guy in the mountain. He, he wants to just [01:07:00] disappear.

[01:07:00] He knows he did all that stuff already. Yeah. And now he's just trying to relax. He's sitting in the mountain and a guy comes to him and says, Hey, can you teach me? Can you show me this stuff? And he looks at him and he's like, Bob, I'm gonna show you, man. You're gonna go all the way. A hundred percent.

[01:07:13] That's right. You're gonna get halfway and betray me. That's right. You understand? Yeah. Man, dude. And so now when you have those secrets, you, you have to prove

[01:07:23] Tyler: the worthiness of that. And there's like always, you know, it's like you reject them and then they have to keep coming back until they show that they're

[01:07:31] Flip: ready.

[01:07:32] So when I showed up at that school every day in those graces over there, and all the people that I knew that trained under them mm-hmm. and all the other black belts and all the other people, I had to win every time. Every fight I had to win and I won and won and won and won and, and, and like, I was relentless.

[01:07:48] Yeah. Like I wouldn't let no one beat me. You'd, I'd rather have you break my arm or break down my leg than tap out. And I could hear the Brazilian guys. They would always be like, I was doing a seminar with [01:08:00] Daniel Gracie one time, and he was showing me this move and he was showing it to the class, but me and him were doing the demonstration and he was choking me and I wouldn't tap.

[01:08:09] And he is telling another guy, he's like, what's with this guy? I don't wanna tap? And they're like, and, and in Brazilian they were like, flip on tap . He's, he, he was, he's merciless. You will not tap. You'll never surrender. They're like, you have to understand that about him. And then they'd be like, you have to be in the ufc

[01:08:26] You gotta be in the tournament. And I would tell those guys, I'd be like, I don't have to do nothing. Yeah. And he'd get so mad , they'd get so mad at me. They'd be like, flip, what are you talking about? You're gonna go in there and kill everybody, you know, G S P, you're gonna be better than G S P. They'd tell me, I've said, But I don't wanna, yeah, I, I come to train with you guys and then I leave and I go home and surf and they'd be like, you just wanna surf , you only care.

[01:08:48] And they knew they knew me from surfing. Yeah, that's what it's, I was in a lost video. Yeah. I was in a, see the lost video was never made the way it was supposed to be. Yeah. This is another subject, . The decline was never made the way it was supposed to [01:09:00] be cuz when I met those guys from California, yeah. I would go surf with those guys and I would go down to the lows and I would surf with them and I would surf at blacks all the time.

[01:09:07] And all the guys in California started knowing me and they were like, yo, this guy flip comes from New York, man, we don't understand how he could surf, but he does as, and he does all these spins. And he'd be like, how come they call you flip? And I'd be like, cuz I could do flips, . And they'd be like, come on.

[01:09:21] And this was like when they. Flips weren't even Pioneer did yet. Yeah. So I remember meeting Aaron Cormick Yeah. Before I even had it on film before the Gorkin flipped. Yeah. Before the Gorkin flipped. Sitting with Aaron Cormick at Lower Trestles. That's awesome. And we'd be talking about this stuff and I'd be telling Ola and be, I'll be like, yo, we're gonna be able to do flips in the future.

[01:09:39] You can see, watch all the moves. We're gonna turn the snowboarding. Mm-hmm. , it's gonna be from skateboarding, skateboarding to snowboarding, to surfing. And it's gonna morph and it's gonna turn and everything's gonna turn into like, you know, until what it is today, into what it is today. Yeah. And now your moves are probably, you know, like snowboarding, you see all those big spins.

[01:09:57] Yeah. All those flips. Then you got, moves from [01:10:00] skateboarding and stuff. Shove, its as you know, almost flips, stuff like that. But those were like high tech moves. Like you had to really be dialed in on a good wave, like at a wave pool. That's. You could try that stuff all day. You could have, you know, the Waco muscle memory.

[01:10:13] Yeah. The Waco Wave pool. That's a great spot. That's a great spot. You could sit there all day and train and do that stuff and it's great. But like in the ocean here, like where we are, it's so rare. Yeah. To set up that opportunity to try to do that move or do any of those moves sometimes, you know, like you have to get really dialed in or waves Only last two seconds.

[01:10:30] I

[01:10:31] Tyler: know, like yesterday, .

[01:10:32] Flip: Yeah. But there was some fun waves. You know, I got to surf yesterday. It was good. The, the waves were good. I got down there at the right tide, you know, I knew the equation, you know, as the swell, you know, stuff like that. So I ended up locking out. I got down there yesterday. But like, you know, to do all those moves, I was, you know, I was about efficiency.

[01:10:49] Yeah. I was about timing. The, the word flip, I called it Operation Planet Flip because I was trying to progress these moves from wakeboarding because like when it was [01:11:00] flat, me and my friends were out on a wakeboard boat. Yeah. We were out. I have a whole crew of guys that I wakeboard with building that muscle memory.

[01:11:06] Yeah. All those guys, I wakeboard with my friends. We all go out there and it was flat. We, when we were young, we built the wakeboard boat and we would go out there and wakeboard when it was flat. And it was awesome because we water skied, we barefoot skied, you know, we did all the other tricks in the bay.

[01:11:22] I was living on the bay. Yeah. So like I learned seamanship because I came from the bay. Mm-hmm. . And you had Freeport next door, what the charter boats was. Yeah. And when my father, after his accident, he got his captain's license. Nice. And he became friends with the guys that owned some of the charter boats and he bought part of Charter Boat and then he started driving charters outta Freeport.

[01:11:43] So outta Freeport you had this, you know, super spray Captain Lou. Nice. All those big boats. So you had to learn seamanship, you learn seamanship driving a boat, dude.

[01:11:56] Tyler: Like I could keep going , but [01:12:00] we gotta cut it, unfortunately. We're gonna have to have you back flipped. I mean, fuck yeah, that'd be nice. Fuck man.

[01:12:06] Man, you got some great stories and like, I really, I really appreciate you coming in, making the time and, and, and sharing your stories here. Flip. Appreciate it, man's really, really, really awesome. And, uh, if our listeners wanna follow you on, on social media, where can they follow you?

[01:12:25] Flip: Well, I'm on Instagram, uh, flip Bells, black Ops.

[01:12:29] Tyler: That's right. And, uh, and where, where can they see you surfing? Uh, you know,

[01:12:35] Flip: I go down on the beach here and there. Yeah. We're not gonna disclose that. , whatever. I, I try to go all over the place. I go, you know, wherever, wherever there's less crowd, I usually try to get out there. So like, even if it's not around here, it could be in.

[01:12:47] Nicaragua. It could be in Costa Rica, it could be in Puerto Rico. It could be, you know, Hawaii, it could be California, it could be anywhere Jersey. It could be a Montauk. Yeah. You know, but we, we try to surf as much as we can and we try to snowboard as much as we can. We try to hit [01:13:00] all the mountains. We try to go out west, we try to go up north, you know,

[01:13:05] Tyler: well flip.

[01:13:06] We really appreciate it. Super stoked to have you on swell season. We're definitely gonna have to have you again. Thank you. And, uh, for all our listeners, you can follow us, uh, at swell season Surf radio on Instagram. Or you can go to www.swellseasonsurfradio.com. And it is recorded here at the newsstand studio in, uh, Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan.

[01:13:28] And we are sitting here. And Joe, our engineer, wanted to give a shout out and thanks. Being here and hooking us up and uh, yeah, we'll all catch you all down the line soon.[01:14:00]