Derek Rielly's feature on the Drive-Thru series ran in the July 2005 issue of Stab magazine. This version has been slightly edited.

You surf? Oh, I get it, so you ride longboards, paint, play a beat-up acoustic guitar between sessions, enjoy photography, gallery openings, shooting Super-8 film and staring into exotic sunsets while your long hair billows in the wind.

I don't do any of that. But I still like to call myself a surfer. I detest longboards and the damage they wreak, nostalgia makes me wanna puke, and the thruster is just about the most perfect thing on earth.

Which makes it tough during this period of the New Bohemian Rennaisane. What movies does the man on the street, who doesn't buy into the slo-mo, single-finned Sprout view of the world, watch? What movies accurately reflect our version of surf culture?

. The fruity little series created by former pro surfing Greg Browning that dumps four surfers in a van for two weeks at a time in countries all over the world and then records the results. No gimmicks except for the obvious one of watching pro surfers self-destruct on the road, and all ruthlessly cut to pop beats. 

 is so ruthlessly successful that it's a brand now. Shops can't stock enough. Which is something in this era of free DVDs with surf mags.

So what does that tell you? That surfers . . . relate. And you know why? Ask yourself: what's the one thing that makes surfing still cool despite every marketing company in every country getting their paws on it and using it to sell everything from tampons to cola? Surf trip, man. We all do 'em, we all know what it's like to cup a hand under an angry ass and stick that hunk of bad air under the driver's nose; we know what it's like to run out of gas in the middle of the night on a lonely stretch of desert highway; we've all played the smart guy to the check-in girl at the airport; we've all lost our minds in drinking games, busted cars up, and we all know how it feels to own a set of teeth that hasn't been brushed in week.

The series set a tone with its 2002 debut, 

. Four surfers in a van for a month traversing the entire length of California. They surf with snow on the beach, they parody surf contests, a chapter is devoted to removing shit from the van, they meet up with locals surfers in each town, you see wipeouts, blown moves, crap surf, good surf, and the surfers great each occasion with alternatively good and bad behavior. 

Great Line: Donavon Frankenreiter to an unseen Greg Browning and Keith Malloy—“Greg, all you do is complain, complain, complain. Keith Malloy, change your diaper, let’s go surfing.”

, every year has featured a new destination. So far, Japan, Australia, South America, Europe (out in August) and the next stop is Africa.

The formula is simple. Get Donovan and Benji Weatherley (the humorists) on a surf trip with a couple of ultra hi-fi surfers (Kalani, Dorian, Machado, Slater, etc), have a camera on 'em at all times and tie it all together with cartoon graphics and a cover version of a tune relevant to the destination ("On the Road Again" for Cali, "Living in the Land Down Under" for Australia, "Turning Japanese" for Japan). What Greg Browning and series producer Taylor Steele quickly realized is you can't just force chemistry between humans. And you can't manufacture humor. It just all gets poured into the mix and, for the love of Allah, somehow it comes together.

 works because it’s real. The surfers do live in a van for two weeks. They do get the shits with each other; they do revel in each other’s company.

And it works because it doesn’t take the unimportant act of surfing so seriously. Like, kids are getting their brains blown out in Baghdad streets almost every day while the little fellas in Sierra Leone are fending off or perpetuating machete atrocities. All this and surfers dare pontificate about the sport's importance and ability to influence the world? Like, open your eyes.

"LAST NIGHT A DRIVE-THRU SAVED MY LIFE" - WHY THE DRIVE-THRU SERIES IS THE COOLEST THING IN SURF CULTURE RIGHT NOW

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