Golden Age: A Chippa Wilson Story
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today is Chippa Wilson’s birthday and it’s a grey Sunday, so here’s a long read from a profile I did for the motorcycle publication Vahna Magazine. Check the full piece with Nick Green’s rad photos here and take a trip down memory lane of Chippa’s parts. —Travis
Chippa Wilson looks good inside an old bar. Especially at noon, tucked into a naugahyde booth that’s a bit sticky from years of booze and salt spilling over them. The dark windows shield us from the bright noonday sun of your average California Wednesday while Chippa’s thorough and ornate tattoo work proudly signifies his commitment to the art. He even has plastic wrap covering a fresh piece he had done yesterday by Nathan Kostechko in Los Angeles. Chippa’s been in town getting his knee looked at following a recent tweak and couldn’t leave without getting some work done by Nathan.
We’re at the Reno Room in Long Beach. It’s an old dive and they say Charles Bukowski frequented it when he was living in nearby San Pedro, playing pool on the notoriously crooked table in the back. He liked the hours (Reno Room famously opens at 6 a.m. and doesn't shut until 2 a.m.) catering to the local longshoremen community that services the port and your usual all-hours bar flies. And us. We don’t look entirely out of place here.
They recently fused a Mexican food spot called Cocorenos with Reno Room, joining two California institutions into one magical beacon of respite from the work-a-day world: dive bar and Mexican food, together at last. Chippa is wearing a black t-shirt and white denim with a freshly buzzed head and he perks up every time a loud bike rips past the busy intersection outside. Located on the corner of E. Broadway and Redondo Ave. It's not uncommon to hear the rattle of a vintage Harley pulling into the alley out back. Chippa perks up and glances outside to get a peak at every one.
Dion Agius and Chippa Wilson at Reno Room in Long Beach, CA.
“I crave margaritas man,” he says looking at the menu. “Where I live you can get beers off tap two minutes down the road, but no margis though.” He speaks in a one-of-kind drawl, fusing a subtle lisp with a more “country” Australian accent than his surf pals. His voice comes to you in off-beat rhythms full of kindness.
“The states and California are crazy, man,” he adds. “The amount of culture around here. Motorcycles, surfing, art, music, cars. I love it.” Chippa’s an American-made motor man and only recently sold a signature green 1963 Chevy C10 truck that had become synonymous with him.
Today, we’re not far from Scotty Stopnik’s Cycle Zombies shop in Huntington Beach either, a place that’s inspired Chippa for years. He admits to peppering Scotty with endless questions about bikes and even bought his first one — a ‘64 Harley panhead — from Scotty.
“Thank fuck for social media,” he says. “One good thing about it. I had my blinders on being a surf rat my whole life and I’ve been playing catchup on hobbies. Scotty has been an inspiration for me for a long time. His lifestyle is sick. Surfs every morning, skates, has his crew and his family all there building old Harleys. I follow him and learn a ton that way.”
The TouchTunes machine — one of the modern updates adopted in the Reno Room — kicks up and Interpol’s “The Rover” comes on. Chippa orders the house margarita with a basket of chips and salsa. Our dark-eyed waitress inquires about some of Chippa’s tattoo work before walking away to get our drinks. Chippa vibes with the song and says, “This song could be a really sick part in a surf video.”
Filmmaker Kai Neville once told me he thought Chippa was the most recognized surfer he’s ever traveled with. Foreign shores, airports, bars, coffee shops and parking lots, Chippa catches the eye and surfers all over the world have grown to obsess over his video parts. During filming for Kai Neville’s film Cluster, kids in the Canary Islands would follow the crew around to spots hoping for glimpses of Chippa. Chippa’s run in Kai’s now classic surf films — Lost Atlas, Dear Suburbia and Cluster — were an obvious fit and have become the standard of which all progression is held to. His surfing was exactly what excited Kai about his generation and what he felt inspired to showcase. “Consistency is the thing with Chippa,” says Kai. “To land things as big and technical as he does with the consistency he has is unreal.”
Frame Grab from Chippa’s shared ender part with Craig Anderson in Surf Film. Watch below.
Chippa’s gold eyes (the late Andy Irons famously called Chippa the Gold Lion) and tattoo work catch the eye, but his surfing is what keeps the jaws on the floor. His creativity and ability to tweak and manipulate his board in ways surfers have only dreamed of while maintaining his signature style has always been his point of differentiation in the water.
“He looks so good on a board,” says filmmaker Michael Cukr, who spent a lot of time following Chippa around before the pandemic, crashing with him for 3 months straight in Australia to film him surfing. “Nothing looks unnatural. And his whole vibe is a throwback, skaters like him, bikers like him, surfers love him.” But it wasn’t always like that.
Chippa didn’t have the same path many professional surfers do. He was a late bloomer and remains one of the most refreshing overnight success stories the surf industry has ever produced. In 2009 Chippa was surfing and working construction back home in Cabarita Beach, Australia — a sponsored local pro but not recognized much outside the town limits. Stab Magazine created a contest called “Little Weeds” that Chippa entered. The internet clip competition offered surfers, filmmakers and photographers the chance to submit their work to be voted on in one of the first successful online comps in the surf industry's rush to figure out the internet. Chippa’s segment, edited by Riley Blakeway, was a tour de force of holy shit proportions and probably still one of the greatest discoveries of the Internet age. He went from local ripper in Australia to international star with that clip nearly overnight. It led to a signature film in 2010 (Now), new sponsors — including one with Kustom shoes who put him on the first Kustom Airstrike trip, a contest that put up $50,000 for the best air of the trip. Kai Neville was on that trip and remembers it being the turning point.
““I knew after that trip he was one of the best in the world. His technique was way beyond what I thought and he stomped everything he tried.” ”
Surfing had just seen Kai’s debut film Modern Collective shatter the old guard, launching a progression push that would consume the next decade of surfing. Chippa was quickly snatched up and put into the crew thanks to his technical aerial surfing, easy going demeanor and throwback look of full-body tats, shaggy blonde locks and freckles. He quickly became a crowd favorite.
In the past, most surfers who injected skate tricks into their surfing did so at the expense of style or success rate — often ushering themselves into obscurity or tiny niche pockets of surfing. Chippa shattered that stereotype by doing tricks no one had seen before and did so with a style that was easy on the eyes.
“As a grom, I tried all this stuff and never pulled it much, which is why I did so bad at contests growing up,” he says. “I found doing shuv-its much easier than winning.” But his surfing drastically improved after that and his make-to-attempt ratio skyrocketed and his aerial surfing became elite, freaking out and inspiring a generation of surfers along the way.
During his first official magazine trip to France, Chippa tagged along with the legendary presence that is Nathan Fletcher — a surfer, skater, snowboarder, motocross rider, icon — and the admiration was instantly mutual. Chippa paddled around the French beach breaks on that trip with all the big names of surfing who were in town to compete. And the part that freaked him out the most: They were all in awe of him. The late Andy Irons paddled right up to him on the first day he was there saying, “Yeah Chippa! The only dude I know with gold eyes!” The entire lineup, a who’s who of surfers including Andy, Dusty Payne, John John Florence and Jordy Smith all made sure to say what’s up to the most exciting addition to surfing in that time.
A decade later Chippa Wilson has appeared in every surf movie that matters, adding tricks and his approach to the pantheon of surf progression. While rehabbing the tweaked knee and wading his way through the pandemic years, Chippa posted up in Tasmania, the rural, often chilly and isolated Australian territory with his partner Brinkley Davies, a marine biologist and adventurer. They’ve got their dogs and a garage full of toys: Motorcycles, surfboards and every odd and end you can think of to keep him busy in the isolated space. “Brinkley keeps me young, man,” he says of his partner. “She’s always swimming with sharks and whales and seals. Always up to something. I just try to keep up now and tinker on the bikes when I can.”
I ask him what got him into motorcycles and he quickly lights up. “My old man has always been bike oriented,” he says. “He was always sitting up late at night watching speedways and motocross and I remember he had photos of himself when he was young on all the enduro trials bikes, ripping around, so that’s always been an interest and inspiration. I woulda got into it earlier but surfing took a pretty good chunk of my hobby life for many years.”
But now, with his home set up in Tasmania, a good decade of game-changing surfing in the can and plenty of opportunity on the horizon, he’s focused himself on the garage.
“My mate Coco put me on my first Harley Davidson panhead with a jockey shift,” he says. “He just told me, ‘Go for gold!’ and off I went down the road all jenky and all over the place, not skilled at all. It’s the weirdest way to ride, but I came back with the biggest smile on me face and got into building one of those straight away.”
The bike, famously known as “Scorch” is Chippa’s first moto-child. “It’s a ‘54 panhead with a springer front end. It’s super mechanical and old school. The clutch rod is linked by an old rusty chain, it has a crazy sissy bar and looks like it might blow up beneath you, but it’s so sick. It’s my first Harley and definitely the one that got me hooked on riding.”
The Tasmanian landscape is vast and rural and old. It’s full of winding roads, lonely petrol stations and isolated nooks and crannies — the perfect place for riding and exploring. With a garage full of vehicles — from bikes to surfboards to trucks and jeeps — Chippa has plenty to tinker on as he prepares for the world to open back up. It’s funny we find one of the worlds’ most progressive surfers of all time obsessed with the past.
“Anything old I’m drawn to,” he says, which brings me to chuckle how a guy who’s spent his life living ahead of his time and progressing surfing so far forward has stopped in Tasmania to let us all catch up. He’s like the addition of a TouchTunes machine in an old bar. It doesn’t feel right until you learn how to make it work for you.
Back inside the Reno Room and into our second round of margaritas, Chippa whips out his phone and starts putting music on through the TouchTunes app as he tells me he’s recently bought his first new car.
“I just got a regular car the other day,” he says. “My first new car ever. I got a Jeep Gladiator, American, ute type of thing. I can’t even work it yet, it’s too modern.” Chippa smiles and finally makes his choice on music and the TouchTunes fires up a classic Social Distortion tune called “Telling Them.” As it kicks in I look over at the newly updated pool table, hoping to see the ghost of Bukowski stumbling around in the back, but I only see two college girls skipping class to drink margaritas and play pool. Things have changed here. You can get Mexican food, the pool table isn’t crooked anymore and it requires quarters; the juke box is connected to the Internet but somehow, if you squint your eyes and the song is right, you realize this place hasn’t changed a bit. The rare spot where the past, present and future all mingle together in a swirly modern vintage union that makes perfect sense. Sometimes it happens in a rural Tasmanian garage full of vintage bikes and progressive surfboards and sometimes it happens on the corner of E. Broadway and Redondo when Chippa Wilson is in town.
Main Image shot by Nick Green for Vahna Magazine. Link to more here.
