BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HANDSOME MEN (or, Derek Rielly Talks About Sydney)

Posted: May 19th, 2009

Derek Rielly is handsome, whip smart, and currently topping my “Men I’ll Sleep With When I Come Out Of The Closet” list. He’s also the founder of Stab, by far the most X-rated surf magazine in history. In my quest to get up to speed on 21st century Sydney (as opposed to my dated, nostalgia-tinged version), I interviewed him after a sunny, offshore, double-overhead session at South Bronte. He wore a white headband, white vee-neck tee, Louis Vutton high-cut shorts, and snowy white tube socks pulled up to his knees. He resembled a late-‘70s Bjorn Borg with an Oscar Wilde wit. At one point he whipped out a ping-pong paddle.

 

Define Sydney’s personality, character, etc.

Like most joints, walk a few hundred metres down the road and you’ve gone from gold-rimmed, red lens aviator, sunshine yellow with vintage belt, electric blue RL Black Label shirt with epaulets and two breast pocket boat shoe-wearing gorgeousness to black polar fleece hoodies and tracksuit pants far too short and far too big. But, if we must generalise, Sydney is a shallow city where making it big is everything. There is no design consciousness or anything world-class except its fabulous harbor and northern peninsula.

 

Tell us about the tall poppy syndrome.

It exists only in the imagination. You get famous, you make a little money, and you start to get paranoid about who’s your real pals and who’s in it for the connection or to shower under your money. Are the famous above criticism?

 

Best and worst things about Sydney?

The architecture is ghastly. Wartime and pre-war shanties and morose apartment blocks abutting astonishingly ordinary high-rises and developer Meriton’s crude attempts at dense housing. That said, I do understand the basic concept of the psychology of taste and realise beautiful Sydneysiders may wish to commune with their ugly side. The weather is fabulous. The women are all-time. The drugs are expensive. The food is great, and great in the quality-produce kinda way, not in the Michelin Hat kinda way, but that’s here as well. The waves are varied, but rarely of excellent quality.

 

Anything else that might help the foreign surfer better understand Australia?

If you want to understand Australia, you can apply the usual template over it, i.e., big cities are inclusive and exciting while the outer areas are insular and dull. But, it’s these dull places where you’ll find good waves. Australians like to fight and root at night. If we can’t get a root we get furious. Livid, even. And then we fight.