I couldn’t make it to Kelly Slater’s book release party Friday night, but special correspondent Peter “PT” Townend, with help from Leila Endersby, covered the event for me.
Here’s their report:
KELLY SLATER and PHIL JARRATT team up “For the Love”
We’re on “Kelly Time” as it’s referred to in the new autobiographical book “For the Love,” a just released collaboration between Kelly Slater and esteemed surf culture journalist, Aussie Phil Jarratt.
Friday night in Malibu at the Malibu Performing Arts Center it was “Kelly Time” as the man himself worked the room to celebrate the book launch. The party featured a packed house and the music of Brett Dennen, being introduced by Kelly in the photo at right.
Kelly, coming off a national book tour that included being interviewed in Time magazine, was loose and at home in an audience sprinkled with his LA surf buddies, surf industry insiders and LA scenesters.
Guests included Fuel TV host Pat Parnell, ZJ Boarding House’s Mikke Pierson, Life Rolls On founder Jesse Billauer. Also on hand was the fairy godmother of surf culture, the original Gidget, Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, right, with Leila Endersby, and Jesse Faen from Insight with Jessie Samedi, below right.
A number of Orange Countians ventured from behind the Orange curtain lead by the Quiksilver clan, Kleiny, Big Rog, Eddie and the Wellsey’s, the Vestal crew, avant-garde artist Wolfgang Bloch and Laguna Art Museum’s Mike Stice.
“For the Love” a hardcover, coffee table book, is unquestionably the best book released to date on the arguably greatest surfer of all-time, with all due respect to Duke Kahanamoku. This book is a must have and includes the words of Jarratt, a forward from Kelly’s longtime surf buddy Jack Johnson, the opinions of most of his peers, a dose of celebrities Pamela Anderson and Eddie Vedder and a collection of the best photos of Kelly’s three decade career.
And Kelly’s career is far from over. He just came off the most dominant world tour of his career, thus Jarratt might have to follow up with a part two somewhere down the line in “Kelly Time.”
