As you might have heard, Nike has decided to step back from surfing after a period of heavy investment in the sport. The main team riders will apparently switch onto the Hurley team for 2013, meaning Hurley, the only brand in surfing to be named after a dude with two eyes (unless you count Stussy as a surf brand), will have 8 of the 34 World Title Race surfers.

Whilst some folk out there, ones who have been angrily rocking DON’T DO IT STICKERS on their skateboards, lunchboxes, etc, who consider Nike some kind of heretic, infidel outsider, an impure mainstream sport giant unwelcome in ‘boardsports’ may be filled with glee, I’m not. (Some of those might be known to tune into the X-Games from time to time, which is owned by Disney, but hey let’s not split pubes over ‘core’ credentials.) I was pretty stoked with Nike’s involvement, hey I did several trips with em for the magazine to Tahiti, Hawaii, Mentawais… and other wonderful things. Call me easily impressed, but for the Mentawai trip which left from Paris (I was in London), I got the Eurostar and was met by a man in suit, tie and driving gloves holding a card with my name on it who whisked me to the hotel before departure… is that shit? No, it’s not shit.

Anyway, tough times for the surf biz apparently get tougher. Our advice: use teabags twice and only flush after no.2’s … and only then if absolutely necessary.

Julian Wilson, who graces the cover the forthcoming SE95 with a Nike logo on his chest the size of a house, will soon be on H. Photo: Miller