“Tough, God-fearing blowjob specialist” Tamayo Perry was reportedly killed by a shark

And when surfer of the year Nathan Florence dumped Vans for Florence two months ago, Nathan delivered a long but poignant monologue in his wildly popular vlog about his decision to leave the struggling shoe brand and enter a stock deal with Florence.

He also spoke about whether or not Ivan Florence, who he calls Mr Cool, would join.

“What’s Ivan going to do?” says Nathan Florence. “Mr Cool has always done what Mr Cool wants. Looks like he’s sticking with Vans, surf, skate, snow, Ivan is a real badass surf snow skate athlete. He makes his own decisions. We would never pressure him. Hey, Mr. Cool, what do you want to do? We are a family, we are there for him.”

Nathan Florence added: “Who knows what happens in the future…obviously we would love to have him.”

Ivan Florence, who turned twenty-eight in May, has emerged from the shadows of his overachieving eldest brother and Prince Harry-esque middle brother in recent Hawaiian seasons, proving to be magnetic in both the water and the skate park.

The trio’s story: from poverty on the beach to a job where they can buy vast beach complexes is a good one.

A while back, a long time ago, I spent an afternoon with Alex trying to figure out how the pack got from here to there.

We pick up the story just before the turn of the century.

Three little boys. There’s not a lot of money in the house they rented in Rocky Point. My father soon disappeared into the penal system.
Alex remembers driving her old Valiant, the ex-husband gone, John, five, Nathan, three, Ivan, a one-and-a-half-year-old baby, looking at her sons and saying, “What do you want? To do? We don’t have to do anything or be anywhere? We can stay outside until 10:30 am! We can go to the thrift stores!”

Alex took her children everywhere and despite what you might call a massive broken hand, she felt this sudden freedom. A total freedom. She took them everywhere. And that summer, after the father separated, Alex packed up the house and flew with her three little ducks who followed her everywhere to Bingin, Bali, where she knew a local family who let them stay cheaply in their warung.

Sure, she didn’t have much money, but here they were living on ten dollars a day, stretching their resources ($1,200) for a sublime four months. Little Ivan, who was just over two at the time, had broken his leg on the trampoline before they parted ways

Alex was cool, she just carried her kid everywhere.

Back on the coast, Herbie Fletcher, a pioneer of jet skis in the surf, towed John John into bombs when he was seven. Here they were, in Rocky Point, just one house away from the sand, financed by taking in up to ten boarders at a time and squeezing them into three bedrooms. Alex rented out floor space for $250 a month. Whatever it took.

They built a halfpipe in the garden. British Vogue, US Vogue and Elle magazines couldn’t help themselves when they heard about this beautiful solo surf mom and her shaggy-haired boys. Alex felt like she had a guardian angel. No money, but she was on the beach, feeding her three boys and you’re telling me this isn’t life.

Meanwhile, Alex studied for her degree in English Literature at the University of Honolulu. And this is where it gets really good. Alex says that if you saw the size of her student loans, which she only just paid off, you’d think she was the “gnarliest surgeon ever.”

But her actions used her loans to support the family and raise the children. She didn’t want to just leave her children with anyone. So she went to school at night and took in boarders. Yes, sometimes dinner was cereal, but the kids played outside in the sun and were pushed (or dragged) into the waves by a role-playing cast of surfing icons, including Nathan Fletcher, Danny Fuller, Kala and Kamalei Alexander, Herbie Fletcher and Pete Johnson .

Jamie O’Brien too, but he was always a bit crazy and sometimes threw dog poop at the kids. But he also entered John into competitions and pushed him into the waves during his very first heat, when he was four.

And it wasn’t all surfing. Nathan, a smart boy, gobbled up all the lit books Alex threw at him, from Bukowski to Tom Wolfe. He went through a thousand-page book in one day.

Still, these were, are tough little kids. Alex has lost count of the times she’s thrown a bleeding child into the car and rushed him to emergency. John broke “almost everything,” his neck, his back, legs, wrists, arms, ankles. Ivan earned 55 stitches in his face (rogue fin) after paddling a 25-footer that would later be nominated for the Billabong XXL wave of the year.

Eventually they were forced out of the house through a sale, with the owner moving out, whatever it was, Alex doesn’t remember.
So Alex and John John, now 10 but mature beyond his years because he’s seen some shit out there on the Shore and he knows what it’s like to live on nothing, walked down the street that runs parallel to the beach and talked about the situation, saying things like, “Oh man, what are we going to do now?”

And as they’re walking, there’s a little beach house, just around the corner from where they live now, and Alex, being Alex, sees this car in the driveway, looks at John, who nods, and they walk right over . the owner, their brown faces break into billion-watt smiles, and they say, “What about it?”

And suddenly they’re at Pipe.

And here, you might say, we are.