They were great at it. Patacchia had access--he was a competitor who dealt with the same travel and contest and sponsorship bullshit everyone else did--and provided a unique perspective that only a surfer on tour could. He and Oliver had morphed in different type of media, one that the surfers trusted and enjoyed talking to.
But it costs some jingle. And when Patacchia and Oliver chose to scuttle INS dot com, they left a lot of surf fans jonesing for more. It made sense. The demands of creating web content and the costs to do so on an a regular basis grew too much, Patacchia said so when I interviewed him once.
They produced some unbelievably candid and insightful videos--from Joel Parkinson's recollection on the 2009 season that he dominated only to bust his ankle between events and to lose the world championship at the final contest of the year in Hawaii to his boy Mick Fanning, to interviews of surfer and shapers that hadn't been given much thought, Patacchia and Oliver shared their connection to the realm of elite competitive surfing.
They have nearly 200 videos still posted on their Vimeo page that will eat an entire day's worth of productivity. But the most useful video they ever posted is called "J Bay Round One Perspectives." It's under five minutes long, from 2010 at South Africa's annual ASP contest. The details they extract from the late Andy Irons, two-time world champ Mick Fanning, and recently ASP-estranged back-sider Bobby Martinez are the type of knowledge NFL coaches couldn't dream of receiving from their Sunday opponents. On screen they carve through overhead-plus Jeffreys Bay point break waves, and on the voice-over they open-up on heat strategy, wave and board selection, style, and wind.
And you get to learn from it.
Insurfnews.com - J Bay Round One Perspectives from Andrew Oliver on Vimeo.
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