By Teri Bayus
Part of lineup for Wine, Waves and Beyond is a showing of the surf movie, “Attractive Distractions,” at the Fremont Theater in SLO. This feature film that was created by Albee Layer and will be shown Wednesday, April 29 with tickets at just $10 each.
There will also be a special presentation from Chris Burkard, who recently presented a TED talk called, “Surfing In The Ice.” Burkard is a local surf photographer who found himself burnt out on tropical locations.
“I began craving wild open spaces,” he said. “So I set out to find the places people had written off as too cold, too remote, too dangerous to surf.”
How does he get to such remote locations? Well, he said that’s half the fun. Only a third of the earth’s oceans are warm, he explained, showing photos snapped while on a surfing trip to Norway, on a fjord with a greater population of sheep than people. That’s where he found himself in the water when a blizzard hit.
“Every photo, I was forced to earn,” he said. “All this shivering taught me something: in life, there are no shortcuts to joy. Anything worth pursuing requires us to suffer just a tiny bit.”
Attractive Distractions follows 12 of today’s most progressive young surfers on a journey from their hometowns to far-off destinations, capturing surfing at its highest level. Showcasing scenic landscapes from Maui, Portugal, New Zealand, Mentawais Islands, Indonesia, South Australia to West Australia — each unique location is more captivating than the next. Attractive visuals constantly distract a surfers mind; this film highlights the surfer’s world of attractive distractions and the emotions it entails.
Created by Layer, Matt Meola and Dan Norkunas, the film has been heralded as an absolute game-changer that has had little to no commercial support, but contains some of the best surfing you have ever seen. They were on a mission to capture surfing at its highest level, from paddling Jaws at 50 feet, to airs that have yet to be seen and they have succeeded.
With appearances from some of your soon-to-be favorite surfers (Nick Von Rupp, Ryan Hipwood, Kai Barger, Hank Gaskell, Ricardo Cristie, Tyler Larronde), some of your already favorite surfers (Meola, Clay Marzo, Chippa Wilson), and one of the gnarliest airs is seen stuck by John John Florence, there is no shortage of high action in this film. Offering deep surfer poetry, beautiful scenery and live music by the Lily Meola Band, this is a unique movie that even non-surfers will enjoy.
One of the crowd favorites is a scene where they go to Indonesia with Wilson and Marzo, and the waves that they got were pretty ideal for their approach. They all do similar maneuvers but with really different styles, and you can tell in the footage that they were really pushing each other.
Not wanting to focus on just big waves, they wanted progressive new riders trying new things. Sighting the best waves was caught in the desert in Australia it was all about barrels. Even though the air sessions are super fun to watch, and the big waves pump adrenalin, this full time surfer believes it is all about the barrels.
See Attractive Distractions at The Fremont Theater in Downtown SLO on Wednesday April 29. Tickets and more details are available online at: www.winewavesandbeyond.com or by call, (805) 556-3306.
