Jamie O’Brien is not quite normal. While other pro surfers follow the competition circuit on the hunt for a world title and others probe the Earth’s coastal nooks and crannies in search of the perfect wave, you’re more likely to find O’Brien at his home wave, Bonzai Pipeline. Perhaps dressed as a caveman. Or surfing the famous wave on a blow-up couch he bought at Walmart.
O’Brien documents all of the mayhem on his YouTube channel, which has drawn hundreds of thousands of subscribers. “It’s funny how our YouTube channel has taken off,” he muses. “We’ll get more views than an edit that someone will put up and they’ll spend a ton of money on it. We’re trying to show the world that surfing’s not as serious as everyone portrays it to be.” That agenda comes through in videos that are more reminiscent of Jackass than a dreamy surf flick.
O’Brien does compete a little though; he and his crew recently won Red Bull Party Wave by riding a knee-high wave on a giant, roughly 800-pound board. And he travels too; earlier this year, he and his team ventured to Bali, not to seek out the flawless waves the Indonesian island is known for but to go on vacation and have some fun. Of course, even low-stakes travel can produce hiccups — O’Brien seemed to hold in his frustration while recounting how his group arrived at the airport to face an extra charge of $165 for each surfboard they traveled with (nine in total).
Once in Bali, though, everything ran smoothly. “We ended up surfing this small wave in Bali called Dreamline. I think when people see a pro surfer and their crew going to film something, they think they’re going to get these big crazy perfect waves, and we went total opposite,” he recalls. There was no shortage of antics, either, mainly involving foam surfboards and a few inflatable pool toys from a convenience store. When it came time to fly home, O’Brien and his friends blew off their nickel-and-diming airline and bought tickets to Australia instead (and didn’t have to pay extra for their boards, either).
O’Brien is an atypical pro surfer, and as such, the packing list for a trip to Bali might not be what you’d expect.
Jamie O’Brien’s Packing List
Catch Surf Womper
It’s like a mini boogie board that you use for hand planing in body surfing. I brought some fins so if the waves ended up being knee-high, I could still get barrelled.
