Hello everyone, and welcome to the first installment of Double-Barreled. The idea here is simple. Get two surf-world legends on a thread at the same time, wave in all Encyclopedia of Surfing subscribers, and let the conversations run where they may.

Thrilled to be kicking this thing off with a pair of surf-world giants: 

Nat power-surfed his way to a 1966 world title, was on the bleeding edge of the shortboard revolution, and starred in 

 He was simply overwhelming. Nat surfed the way Cream rocked—hard, loud, serious, aggresive—and for a half-dozen years the sport revolved around his curly-haired well-muscled form.

Drew Kampion was editor at SURFER from 1968 to 1972, then a long-time contributor to 

. Wrote a lot of books, too. More to the point, Drew defined what it meant to be a A-list surf writer—he was, still is, intelligent, soulful, critical, and good-humored. Here's a taste:

Robert 'Nat' Young was a pompous, arrogant, opinionated son of a bitch back in 1969. He and that other pompous, arrogant, opinionated son of a bitch from Australia, Bernard 'Midget' Farrelly, were always firing off at one another. Everybody hated Midget, Nat told me. Everybody hated Nat, Midget told me. But Nat was also the best surfer in the world in 1969. He's been a quality surfer throughout the last four or five equipment eras, but the boards of 1969 were completely in synch with Nat's imagination, power, and foot size. He was the Animal at his peak, he was a beast of a paddler, and the rhythmic cadence of his S-turning, climbing and dropping, deep-carve wave-riding was the most coherent thing happening out in the water in 1969 . . . or maybe ever.

A quick note before we get started: all comments will be vetted before posting, and I can't promise that every comment will get a response. I'm new to live chat myself, so we're all going to just jump in and see what happens.

And now (is it 4:00 yet?) . . . hello Nat and Drew!

DOUBLE-BARRELED, WITH NAT YOUNG AND DREW KAMPION

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