Sweet Surrender

Mikey February’s power does not lie in brute strength or in bending waves to his will; rather, it lies in his ability to surrender.

I expected Mikey February to be the tour de force I’d read about and seen in films. The style god who defies the bounds of competitive surfing with moves most judges don’t quite know what to do with. The shaper whose designs commune with the sea. The revolutionary who, in 2018, became the first South African surfer of color on the World Tour. The 29-year old who was born one year before apartheid ended. To be clear, Mikey is a force, but not in the ways I was expecting. 

When I met Mikey, he was pushing a baby stroller in the valet lot of the hotel we were both staying at in Huntington Beach California. Nervously, I approached him and introduced myself. At six-foot-three, he towered over me, the soft edges of his hair backlit by the blue sky above. He had bags under his eyes from jetlag and traveling with a six-month old. He was on baby-duty while Zelti, his wife, caught up on sleep. We whispered so as not to wake baby Miles. When he pulled back the blanket to show me his blissfully sleeping baby, a gigantic smile spread across Mikey’s face. 

A few hours later, we met at a sculpture garden in the middle of a sprawling office park. The Noguchi Garden is a meditative oasis with six sculptures that represent different natural elements of California like desert, forest, and water. One sculpture honors the lima bean farmers who used to work this land; nature and agriculture being cleared away for the sake of technology and progress. It’s a fitting space for our conversation because much like the artist Isamu Noguchi, Mikey has chosen to help transform an ugly past with apartheid Africa into something new and beautiful. Today, Mikey and Zelti are building a brighter future for their son, Africa, and surfing.

Mikey, myself, and Thembi (Emocean founder) were all vibrating from the previous week at the Vans Duct Tape Invitational so we began our conversation with a short meditation. Here’s the discussion that followed, enjoy.

Publication: Emocean Magazine, Issue 4. Winter 2022.

*This issue is out of print so the rest of the story is unavailable but I hope you like this clip.

Surf image credit: Sonic Souvenirs Volume Two, courtesy of Blake Myers.

Black and white image shot on a Holga with expired film by Margaret Seelie.