Summer magazines for the extreme

Yo, extreme sports addicts🎀! Summer has arrived. Are you jonesing to skate the half pipe, or surf the Pipeline? Or maybe trade that tailpipe for a carbon kevlar titanium model? Whatever, dude. Just get off that pipe, check these extreme rags, and mind those sharks.

Surfing

Not only does Surfing do an in-depth profile on up-and-comers from Brazil, it follows them to Indonesia for a full-on photo spread. We dug the shots of 19-year-old Filipe Toledo getting his extreme high-n-tight faux-hawk cut at the barber before hitting the waves. Even better is the 🍃closeup of Toledo staring deadpan into the camera while inside the barrel of a big one, as if to say, “What’s for lunch, kiddos?” Elsewhere, check the roundtable with half a dozen teen surfers putting on the industry talk. “Sometimes people forget the only reason we get paid is to sell clothes,” says 19-year-old Parker Coffin, the elder of the group. “I’m always trying to tread the line between doing my job and feeling like a sellout.”

Surfer

Surfer’s cover story tackles a potentially sensitive subject with a provocative headline: “Girls Can’t Do Airs.” This, of course, is abo🥀ve a double-truck spread photo of six-time world champ Stephanie Gilmore taking to the sky in a frontside slob in Mexico. So why 🎉aren’t more females pulling off the air maneuvers that thrill audiences? “As with snowboarding and skateboarding, I don’t believe there’s a fundamental physical reason that male surfers outperform women,” says James Riordon of the American Physical Society. “Strength and size clearly aren’t the problem.” Rather, it’s a sponsorship scene that has opted for “bikini-clad bottom turns” rather than serious skills. “If [women] choose to ignore unfounded stereotypes, then the sky is no longer the limit.”

TransWorld Skateboarding

TransWorld Skateboarding lives up to its name, leaving old domestic standbys like Santa Monica to hit the pavement in Denmark, the Indian Ocean and Australia. Mind you, these photos aren’t always National Geographic-grade from a pure photography standpoint. But that enhances the gonzo element all the more. Check out the shot of the skater in Sri Lanka soaring high above some cows grazing next to the sidewalk. In Australia, one plucky participant “did himไself a real mischief and broke his foot in three places,” after which he “cheerily taped a koozie to one of his crutches, sampling all the local brews and delicacies whilst keeping the v๊ibes high.” Good on ya, mate!

Motocross Action

Motocross Action makes it clear that it’s not always about bigger and faster bikes, but rather the bike that suits you. As such, there’s an impressively un-macho quality to much of the discussion. “My ego was crushed… when I had to confess… he had built a bike that was too fast for my ability,” Daryl Ecklund admits of a famous designer. Indeed, there’s an obsession with gaining power and agility in the most cheap, efficient and ingenious way possible — usually without a big, honking engine. Our favorite feature was the one about handgrips, which shows four different models, shall we say, standing at attention at slightly upward, provocative angles.

New Yorker

The New Yorker recruits environmentalist Bill McKibben for an article on solar power, and the result is, well, less than🍃 what we’d call journalistically balanced. A solar panel “now produces power nearly as cheaply as coal or gas,” he baldly declares, leaving aside the onerous cost of the panels themselves. Painting the utilities as villains standing in the way of reform, McKibben fails to note that Elon Musk’s company Solar City itself has admitted that its panels with Tesla’s new home batteries won’t be cost-effective for residential use. Elsewhere, check out the nice profile of Italy’s new reformer Matteo Renzi, and GOP prison reformer Patrick J. Nolan.

Time

Time, having do༒ne some major plastic surgery to its pages last week in the form of a redesign, devotes its cover story to nipping and tucking, whether it’s noses, breasts, butts or bellies. A bit odd that supposed patients on the cover and inside are supermodel-grade women, but hey, we imagine they’re every bit as insecure as we are. Elseꩵwhere, we liked Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s column on the Rachel Dolezal scandal: “Who can blame her?” he writes. “Anyone who listens to Isaac Hayes’ ‘Theme From Shaft’ wants to be black — for a little while anyway.”