"Hosted by STAB and Kona Big Wave, the inaugural live event shipped a handful of the world's best shapers and surfers into Palm Springs. There were boards to test from past seasons and chances to share sessions in the pool with your favorite pro. The event was an atom bomb of surfing's most charged molecules, the equivalent of MoMA putting on a paint and sip with David Hockney and Yayoi Kusama."
"It was also an opportunity to tear down surfing's professional barriers. "Surfing can be a little bit separate," he says. "You don't really get to interact and be close to the people competing - their boards are like this secret thing that no one gets to touch." And so the typically untouchable for us mortals gained physical form, as California's surf-obsessed demo came together to ogle its heroes, sample a revolutionary quiver of boards and hunt a few baby blue barrels along the way."
E.A.S.T Fest gathered world-class surfers, shapers, and California surf enthusiasts at a Palm Springs wave pool, offering hands-on access to pro boards and sessions with top riders. The event featured past-season boards for testing and live sessions in a machine-made wave pool that produced remarkably consistent, high-quality waves. Participants experienced close interactions with competitors and shapers, breaking traditional separations where pro equipment remains secret. The festival encouraged generational mixing and design experimentation, blending grassroots participants with elite talent. Wave pools and curated events signaled a shift in surf media, community access, and how surf culture may evolve.
Read at InsideHook
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]