The Fizzlot Kids – Grom Bash 2018

A Surfing World Surf Video
Video by Max Zappas
Words by Vaughan Blakey 

There’s a lament doing the rounds nationwide that the classic Aussie grommet has lost their mongrel. Though our most recent graduates from junior series to the CT spotlight include Mikey Wright and Wade Carmichael, a couple of heathen junkyard animals grunty enough to match the best grom talent from any previous generation, it’s feared that through things like “competitive pathways” “high performance centres” “cotton wool parenting” and “a distinct and worrying lack of crow pecks, crumb cutlets, dead arms and atomic wedgies at boardriders comps” the next crop of Aussie talent simply won’t have the minerals to become our next MRs, TCs, Occys, Laynes, Fannings, Stephs and Parkos. Well fear not! For there is one long running institution that cares not for the gentle fostering of the next wave, that chucks chia seed salads out the car window at passing koala bear crossing signs and washes down post surf sausage rolls with a bag of mixed lollies and a can of Fanta. It’s the SW Grom Bash and it’s here to save the freckle faced piss-ant population from total annihilation at the hands of the Nanny State! And if ya don’t like it you can go and get stuffed!

This year’s groms were handpicked from the Billabong Bloodline series by the cream of Australian surfing royalty. Parko, Occy, Taj and Otis Carey – themselves once prodigious shoulder-peeling all-day wetty wearers – were tasked with each sending SW a surfer who not only packed mad skills but also a lot of something extra, let’s call it… true-blue cheeky munga fizz! Thus, the Fizzlot kids were born. Four surfers from different parts of the country who capture the best of what it means to be a young surfer in Australia today. We took them out of school, away from their parents, away from their sponsors and away from anything resembling rules and unleashed them on a week of the cleanest A-frame beachies you’ll ever be likely to come across. The result was high performance flare mixed with total tube piggery and a handful of photos that will now sit in the annals of SW history alongside Carroll, Horan and Corrigan, Barton and Crammy, Hoy and Egan, The Cooly Kids, Ace and Wilko and the rest of the classic trips of Grom Bashes past.

Rest assured, the future is in good greasy-nosed hands…

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The full epic feature of The Fizzlot Kids can be found in the latest issue of Surfing World, SW 399 – Andy Irons, The Truth Will Set You Free – on sale now.