Electric Acid Microdose With Lungi Slabb: Oil-Made Tubes In The Middle East

Описание: (See more of Stab's Microdoses here: https://stabmag.com/tag/microdose/)

Not many people look good on a surfboard doing nothing.

Lungi Slabb does — which is part of the reason we tasked him with surfing the largest, longest, and saltiest man-made wave pool on the planet, Surf Abu Dhabi, which will host its first ever CT event next week.

Days after Jeremy Flores’ Quik Festival bustup finished in Hossegor, Lungi, who had been ambushing hungover pros and industry big wigs with a baguette stuffed with a lav mic, received a phone call from Stab to surf the newly-built KSWC pool on three boards from past Electric Acid projects.

Among them: the Ian Byrne Fangtail – which won Shaun Manners’ EAST, a Simon Jones twin fin made for Kelly Slater, and a board co-shaped by arch nemeses Peter Schroff x Hayden Cox for Mick Fanning in the Maldivian atolls.

Following a series of car rides and planes, Lungi arrived in UAE airport at midnight. “I was so tired, I bought some KFC and ate it in the bathroom because Dyl [Roberts] (filmmaker) was sleeping,” he laughs.

When Lungi rose the next morning, he was confronted by the “surreal” landscape of Al Hyduriat Island – a dedicated ‘sporting island’ furnished with soccer fields, cycling tracks, skateparks and of course, KSWC’s latest wave tank, piled atop the oil rich Arabian Gulf.

Lungi explained, “You walk into this sleek, air-conditioned building and from there, I didn’t lift a finger. The staff took the boards off me and led me inside into this little locker room where you can watch the waves — it’s full luxury. I felt completely out of place, and a little uncomfortable being treated like a princess, but I suppose that’s just how they roll. Taj had surfed it the day before and was just grinning watching me react to it. Chris Hemsworth’s kids were out trading waves — the luckiest kids in the world — and I just stood there tripping, unsure what to say or do. It looked like home — long, perfect tubes —but being guaranteed tubes was a spinout. The machine makes these wild whirring noises, and the countdown before each wave is so nerve-wracking. I surfed it for three days straight, and every time I stood up, I had butterflies. I think Taj would say the same.”

“I actually loved all three of those boards,” said Lungi, who’s no stranger to riding different shapes and sizes between his homebreak Fingal and the surrounding world class pointbreaks. “They all had different fin setups so I tried my best to surf them all uniquely.”

And uniquely he did. During the World Junior Championships in the Philippines, Stace showed a draft version of Microdose to the WSL’s Head Judge, Luli Perreira, who will be factoring in the uniqueness of tube riding technique into the CT judging criteria to prevent another incredibly monotonous wavepool CT. Something about Lungi educating Alejo Muniz on how to bend his back knee feels both poetic and long overdue.

Over the years, Stab has seen Microdose cameos from Ian Crane, Parker Coffin and Jai Glindeman. Lungi’s inclusion this year comes both as a result of 1.) Quik paying us (yes, we’re coin-operated) and 2.) him being one of the most creative and instinctive barrel riders of his generation – refer to The Most Spectacular Waves of 2024 for his under-the-lip Houdini takeoff at all-time Kirra, which landed in our top 10 waves last year.