MIKE STEWART INTERVIEW

A few months ago, after El Fronton King event in Gran Canaria, Mike Stewart came one day to Lanzarote to have a meeting with us, about the distribution of his brand Science in the Canary Islands. It was one of those strange days without waves in the island, so instead of taking pictures of him getting barreled at El Quemao, I had the chance to interview him.
I was pleasently grateful, to find such an open, easy going and humble person. I enjoyed a lot having a conversation and getting to know him a little bit.

"EL FRONTON IS MY NEW FAVORITE WAVE"

-You just came from Gran Canaria, how was El Frontón King and what do you think about that wave? 

-First of all, the event was incredible, it's been amazing to see the level of riding, and how technically challenging the wave was. That was really good; I haven't seen the broadcast, but just little peaces, and what I've seen, I really like it, I think it was pretty amazing, and I think El Fronton is my new favorite wave. 

-Yes? 

-Yeah! 

-But you already knew the wave. 

-I knew the wave but I hadn't really surfed that big, I surfed it big, but that was very intriguing to me, like Pipleline was intriguing the first time I surfed it, you know, I just felt like being in the water and the way the wave was breaking, was really unique, it was a challenge. 

-The last day of competition at El Frontón I was watching here (La Santa) and it was massive, so I can't imagine how big El Frontón was that day, and I heard you went out alone early morning with low tide and you kind of lost your board.... 

-Yeah, I went out, I saw a couple of amazing waves, like aaamaaazing, and I was trying to get one of those. 

-Amazing in the gnarly way? 

-Yeah, amazing in the gnarly way, but makeable, like if you were to make one, it would be an incredible sensation, so that was what I was looking for. So I went out in the morning, I saw a couple of amazing ones, I figured I had like an hour before the contest maybe, so I went out trying to get a couple and I tried to get a big one from the outside (a left, it was only lefts at that point), if you get the right one, you can take on the cap, on the outside, and you can ride it backdoor to the hole inside section, so that was my goal, but for some reason the wave I selected, decided not to be an open barrel, I tried to dive through it, but of course you can't dive through a wave there, it was kind of unsettling, because when I got out I could feel myself pretty sucked over, and I was myself accelerating towards the reef and I said myself "oh, that's not gonna be good" but nothing happened fortunately because most of the water got underneath me and it was no problem. 

-In the movie Sprout, you are introduced with Mark Cunningham as "Water scientists" does it have anything to do with the name of your brand? 

-Yeah (he doesn’t thing this one for even half a millisecond) a little translation is "knowledge gain through experience" so I feel I have quite a bit of experience and I apply that knowledge to the products I'm doing. The name actually was a friend of mine who came with it, he knew me really well, I'm pretty analytical when it comes to products and stuff, like I really like to know how things work and why they work, and then I'm constantly looking of ways to improve something, trying to make something as perfect as possible, but as soon as you do, you realize there's always room for improvement. So he kind of knew that about me and said "this is kind of the appropriate name for you". 

-And I guess you have also that kind of approach when looking at waves, because no matter what they ride, all waveriders respect and look at you when they talk about waves and wave knowledge.  

-Yeah, well, I think there is a great respect for all high level waveriders. The guys who are high level waveriders, to get to that level you have to have an open mind, you can't just be closed minded, otherwise you won't get pass certain levels, so you really need to embrace an open minded spirit, and with that you can appreciate the nuances of many people and many things, and the same is with my discipline of wavering, it might not be a discipline that a lot of people want to do, but those open-minded people, they can feel, they can understand it, they can relate to it and enjoy the contribution it can potentially do to their own surfing and the potential experiences they can get from it. 

Alan, Mike & Salomon; Mike didn't hesitate on standing up on a 7' softboard to enjoy a flat day with the rest of the group.

-Talking about gnarly conditions, once, after a photoshoot a big day at El Frontón with some local kids, I asked them if they had fun, because one of the guys took off on a huge righthander and he was shouting in the barrel, and it looked like fun, but I was not sure, and they said me "we are not having fun, we go there for the photoshoot, but the truth is we don't have fun when it's like that", is that the same with you? 

-Yes, in a way, it is not playful, but it's exiting, it's a rush, and that's what drives me anyways, that excitement, and it's always been like that, I always had that spirit, and I don't know if that's being naive or I don't know what it is, but I always had that spirit of wanting to explore and experience how big I can push that scenario. So in big surf, like that morning at El Frontón, I was not feeling like "this is playful" but I wanted, I really wanted... it was an incredible challenge, and I really wanted to get a good one, to see if I could get though it, that challenge is very compelling to me, very interesting, so even sometimes in big surf, really big surf, it's scary, but the scary it kind that keeps you awake and I mean that in the most literal sense, like your senses are going through the roof, everything is like a real high sense and your experience is really... you're awake, you are living, you are really close to disaster but in that contrast you really find a greater appreciation for life and understanding of life. 

-Most of the people who I know, that are world champions at their own sport, they're the kind of people "all about performance" and really competitive no matter what they are doing, but on the other hand, I've seen you in videos like, with Mark Cunningham, just fooling around, doing silly stuff, so are you like the "all competitive kind" or there's another side? 

-No, oh no, I'm a clown, I like to have fun like everyone else, but I'm super competitive when it comes to certain things, like to become world champion you have to be a little crazy, so I have that craziness, that compulsive feeling to really be competitive, be successful. 

-Who were your inspirations when starting in the sport, because there was not too much before you? 

R-Yeah, no, it wasn't really, there were some local guys who were rpping, they were charging, mostly surfers in the lineup, drawing lines, and most of my inspiration came just from watching other surfers in the lineup, there wasn't a lot of bodyboard back then, but I did have a lot of imagination and I think that really played a significant part in my wavering, because where I was living, a lot of the time I was surfing by myself, so I always was thinking about other things that I could do, always thinking about different maneuvers, or riding different parts of the wave, you know, I was an addict and my room... I filled my room with waves, I would get the posters from the magazines and I just wallpapered out my room, and that was like my little domain there, even Shane Dorian used to come over just to come and look and get inspiration. 

-Besides bodyboarding, you also won the bodysurfing contest at Pipe like 15 times, so I guess bodysurfing it’s more than something you just do when waves are not good or something. 

-Yeah, that's right, bodysurfng is to me another form of waveriding, a different sensation altogether; in certain conditions I prefer to bodysurf and in other conditions to bodyboard. 

-What conditions? 

-Usually if there's a wave that is hollow, super-hollow and not that fast, that don't run down the reef supequick, then I bodysurf, or if I need a break and the waves are big I'll go out and bodysurf, it just depends on how I'm feeling, sometimes I just want to grab my fins and swim out and don't have any... when I take my board out is kind of more like business a lot of times, that's how I make my living, it's also my access point to the ocean world, it's a multitude of things, so once it becomes too much business, I just grab my fins and swim out, but my competitive spirit is there as much as bodyboarding 

-And speedos? 

-I wear regular trunks, but I used to wear speedos, they feel pretty good actually. (....) 

-Are we going to see Science handplanes or something? 

-I've been working in a couple of things, maybe not handplanes, when I bodysurf I like to be as free as possible, just my fins and my trunks, so I'm looking to make some shorts or some wetsuits or something like that for bodysurfing, that'd be pretty cool.

-So, talking about equipment, when you start your own brand, what do you look to make different from previous boards or... 

-Yeah, you know, I go through trial and error basically, what works and what doesn't work. I started actually, my first peace of equipment were leashes, I just wanted to make something that worked better, so that's what I did, I made a leash that feels really good in the wave, so that was the first product and then, you know, everything from my view, there's always room of improvement, and so with the boards, it's the system, it's a system of flex and shape, those two things working in conjunction, it was pretty simple, the things that worked we implemented and the things that didn't work, we didn't, so the boards are very very refined and fine tuned, so that each shape works with the flex in a certain way to accomplish the objective, like in the case of the Launch is more about speed and lip projection, and on another side of that, is the Pocket which is more maneuverable, with more versatility and the Style is kind of somewhere in between. So each board has a purpose and based on what you want what your objectives are and also what kind of waves you ride. 

-You have quite a bit of experience filming in the water, how did all started, you wanted to film, or someone asked you to do it? 

-My first experience, if you go back to the first issue of Bodyboarding Magazine, I was working in Hawaii with this film group that they had a camera helmet, I'm always been mechanically inclined and really interested in how things work, so of course I took apart the camera, looked inside, try to see how it worked. I was really fascinated; that was my first introduction to it and then I got my own camera helmet that I made with a video camera, I used that at Pipe, with a backpack and the camera wasn't very small, and with the housing and everything was very scary, so that was the first camera that I owned, but that was it, and I hadn't really been filming from the water until the movie Blue Crush, they asked me to shoot at Pipeline, it was kind of an interesting scenario, I had time on my contest, they needed someone to operate the camera, they couldn't think of anyone who was around at the moment, so I said "hey, I'll do it" they liked what I did, I also had a lot of fun, so before I knew it, they hired me on and I was working full time for them, it was super fun, really cool and a great experience, I didn't know practically anything about filming and kind of learned on the fly from the assisting camera people. So after that I brought my own film camera and came some really cool projects which you can watch on my website. 

-Changing the subject, what about the waves in the Canary Islands, I guess we could talk about El Frontón, I don't know if you know El Quemao, here just around the corner (the interview is in La Santa)... 

-I've seen videos of El Quemao and it looks just like Pipe, but I haven't surfed there, but the waves in the Canary Islands are amazing, some of the best surf in the world, El Frontón I think is the best bodyboarding wave in the world right now.