Last Thursday Quicksilver was potentially going to hold the prestigious Eddie Aikau surf competition. The contest is so serious that pro surfers will fly in from around the world to wait and see if it is going to be held. You see, the organizers wait until the day of the competition to decide whether or not the waves are big, and good, enough. If they aren’t, they call it off. It has only been held 8 times since 1984.
scary
Surfers Ride Record-Breaking 50-Foot Waves off the Irish Coast
Last week a group of surfers had the most intense rides of their lives on waves over 50-feet tall off the coast of Ireland, Galding reported yesterday. The waves were the biggest to recorded in Irish waters since 2005. The surfers rode the waves far from shore, presumably over a deep-ocean reef. Although there are a few surf spots around Ireland, nobody knows where the waves actually occurred, and the surfers, not surprisingly, aren’t telling anybody–they want to keep them to themselves.
Watch it Now! Don’t Freerun or You Will Die
This is a great video of freerunner (parkour) accidents.
Watch it Now: Illegal Border Crossing Simulation from VBS.tv
The good folks at VBS.tv are, in my opinion, some of the best documentarians in the world. They go after ridiculous and unthinkable stories gonzo style, resulting in a humanistic view of incredible tragedies, and incredibly weird topics. A couple months ago I posted the riveting, and extremely disturbing, Vice Guide to Liberia. Next, in a series of VBS videos I plan to post, is this documentary on a service that offers a simulated illegal border crossing from Mexico into the United States, complete with a shady ‘coyote’ guide and potential arrest.
Yenshuei Fireworks Festival 2010 Photo Gallery
The Yenshuei Fireworks Festival (Yenshuei Fong Pao) is a festival held in the Yenshuei township in Southern Taiwan every year. During the festival millions of fireworks are shot out of large hives into crowds of revelers dressed in heavy clothing and full-face motorcycle helmets. Each hive may contain as many as sixty thousand fireworks. If proper safety precautions are taken, the activity is not very dangerous. However, each year some people are injured. To learn more about this festival, read my post Standing in the Fireworks.
Watch it Now! The Vice Guide to Liberia
A few years ago Vice Magazine, a punk counterculture magazine that started out as a welfare work scam and grew into an international trend setting voice for youth culture, started an online television station called VBS.tv. Like the magazine, The television station produces borderline gonzo new journalism style documentaries about the edgiest and wildest topics that you could imagine. The work that the station has done is of such a high caliber, and so interesting, that CNN has partnered with them.
Standing in the Fireworks: A Trip to the Yenshuei Beehive Fireworks Festival, Taiwan
On Febrary 27, 2010 a Chinese New Year fireworks celebration in the Guangdong province went awry and killed 19 villagers.