Surfing 50 States www.surfing50states.com

“Yo, are you filmin’ for Mtv or somthin? Coz I’m a rapper”, whined ‘J’ into the camera. J actually was very buzzed, and having a fun night in Vegas. “We from St. Louis. We got big stacks in St. Louis”, ‘C’ chimed in as he pulled a large handful of scrunched up $20 bills from his pocket and proceeded to drop them from his hand to the ground, all the while flashing his shiny gold grills into the camera. Then as the wind started to blow his ‘big stacks’ away he shuffled around the ground collecting the bills. “Don’t show this bit, just show the bit of me dropping it on the ground”, he slurred. It’s amazing who you will meet when you have a semi-professional video camera on Las Vegas Boulevard at night. But these two topped them all. ‘J’ and ‘C’ proceeded to explain that they own a Hip Hop clothing store aptly named ‘The Shop’ in St. Louis, MO, and that we have to come and visit them when we come through. After we told them that we were travelling all 50 states and attempting to surf in each of them they felt obliged to narrate to the camera in drawling street slang that, “Jonno and Stefan are surfing the 50 states, they’re surfing from East to West, North Meridian to South Meridian, it don’t matter if there’s aint no waves or water, they gonna surf anyway.” “Yeah and when we come to St. Louis were gunna surf with you”, announced Stefan, who had become a bit too excited at encountering these over the top white boy gangsters. And even after explaining to the camera our quest was to surf anything possible, C replied, “You can’t surf in St. Louis!” We exchanged business cards and went our separate ways on The Strip, taking with us over 30 minutes of gold footage of white boy Hip Hop at it’s finest. We tried to call J & C on the number provided on their card a few times over the trip but they never answered or called back. After being lost in the ghetto of Nth St. Louis for over an hour we pulled our Ice Cream Truck up in the parking space directly in front of The Shop. We looked into the wire mesh covered windows and saw the bemused faces of C and J staring back at us and then exchanging confused conversation. “Ay, dint we meet you boys in Vegas?”, twanged J as we entered the store. “Yeah mate, do you remember you gave us your card, so we found your shop to take you surfing”, Stefan replied nervously. “Wooooooooooo, we must have been toasted!”, cackled C as slight comprehension came to him. The next hour consisted of us trying on ghetto clothes way too big for us, burning some Aussie Hip Hop cds for the boys, and ever-flowing priceless home-boy pearls of wisdom. We talked C & J into closing up the shop. “Yeah, we the bosses, we can do what we want”. Posting a closed sign on the door. ‘Gone Surfing, back later’. Then escorting us through peak hour traffic to the banks of the Mississippi River, under the Welcome Arch in the city. We got out our trashiest boards and all took turns sliding down the stairs and the cobblestones under the Arch and laughing like little girls (we found out after that they had smoked a bit on the drive in). There were some big stacks of the falling-over kind and some big quotes, “Ay, we aint just people off the street, we got money!”, C kept yelling into the camera. Whenever we left anyone we tried to remember to ask them all the same question, “If you could pass on one piece of advice to the kids of today, what would you say?”. “Don’t look at anyone on the TV, or in the streets or at school and try and copy them, just be yowself”, answered J ironically. “Also”, C added, “when your parents tell you to start saving for a car when yow young, you do that, coz when you are in high school you can afford a pimp car, then you get ALLLL the girls”. The moral of this story – you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, these were the nicest boys, but just by looking at them on the street we would have crossed over the other side to avoid them I rekon!