Daniel Kim, our 2016 Q.S.S.O.T.Y., is honoring exemplary bouts of evolution since January 1, 2018 with his own, Stingwater-endorsed award, G.R.O.E.T.Y. (GRoE, of course, stands for Getting Ready tO Evolve.) Your 2018 GRoEr of the Year is Antonio Durao: medicine man, beach bully deterrent, gardener, and humanitarian. Daniel gave an eye-watering honorary speech for the occasion.
One of the most remarkable things about Antonio is that he treats skateboarding like the giant fun joke that it is, whether he’s switch back heeling some massive high-bust set on a whim, or skating off the foot-wide lip of a truck bed. The key difference between you or I treating it like a joke, and him, is that his talent on collides with this “joke” head on at every corner wherever he skates, never missing a chance to do something equal parts insane, fried and brilliant. (We’ve kept a small Twitter thread going of his third-eye vision since the middle of the summer.)
Congrats to Antonio. Keep evolving.