GREATEST: Frankie Harrer
Beyond the beach with Malibu's free-surfer going for Olympic gold.
As a free surfer, Harrer has managed a successful career without the cheesy trappings that come with the job: no sandals, no coaches and no beach within 20 miles of her home. Growing up in Malibu as a competitive phenom, she made a name for herself as a record-breaking machine. After years of monotonous grinding to win, Harrer snuck away from the structured “jockey” side of the sport and decided to break the mold.
When she’s not skipping around the globe and creating groundbreaking video pieces, you’ll find her cruising around Frogtown, on the Eastside of LA, where she currently resides. As one of the few women to attain enough clout in the surf industry to wave the competitive scene goodbye, she has found her identity in aspects of life outside the water. Her talent, work ethic and effortless style combined have made her the wave-dancing, tattoo-giving tastemaker she is today. I spent an afternoon packing with Harrer for a last-minute trip to Europe, as she gave her take on being a free surfer, trying to qualify for the Olympics and what it means to work with a company like adidas.
Does it get under your skin when people ask you if you’re an artist or an athlete?
Never heard it before, but I’m definitely not an artist.
So this means you’re an athlete?
Well, no, not really. It’s interesting that people call surfers athletes because in some sense you are and some sense you aren’t. In terms of being a traditional athlete, then no. Surfing is definitely more of a lifestyle sport than an athletic sport, especially the way that I do it. At the moment, I’m not doing any contests outside of Olympics qualifiers, so it would definitely be more of a hobby that I get paid for. Now that surfing is in the Olympics, I guess you can say as a sport [it has] entered more into the realm of traditional athletics. It’s pretty confusing, even for me.
It definitely plays into the argument about whether surfing as a whole is a sport or an art form. I feel like that’s sort of a dated dispute.
Totally. In my eyes there are definitely surfers I would consider athletes that partake in a sport, and those who are artists and ride waves like it’s an art form. A big part of that, I think, comes from there being two large aspects of the surf industry: competitive surfing and free surfing.
Personally, I treat it as something that I love to do and am lucky enough to get paid to do.
With surfing being your source of income, does it ever feel like a job that you have to do sometimes?
Yeah, but I mean it’s still the most fun job you could have. Even if I was competing and the conditions were horrible, I know I’d be completely over it, but that would still be way better than sitting in an office.
Are there certain aspects of pro surfing that make you cringe?
Of course. When you’re at a contest and you see kids brought up by coaches and surf only to put up a score, it’s pretty bad. The jockey side of surfing is cringy, because it’s like, yes, someone can be doing exactly what they need to be doing in order to compete well, but it’s not always the nicest thing to look at.
With that being said, I know you were a bit of a child prodigy when it came to competing. You have countless titles and have the record for the most wins in amateur surfing. You were a hardcore competitor at one point—did you have the same feelings about competitive surfing back then as well?
I think growing up competing, it was normal to me. It was just something I did. I started surfing a lot and ended up competing. As I started winning it was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool, I’m sponsored and getting paid. This is fun. Why not?’ Then as a teenager I hit a point where I realized I didn’t really enjoy surfing anymore. I was just going through the motions doing what I knew I had to do to win. That kind of freaked me out a little, and as I got older, I slowly strayed away from competing and really began to enjoy the artistic side of surfing. I was lucky enough to have support from my sponsors to make a living traveling and working with filmers a lot and creating shorts, rather than solely competing. It definitely changed the way I surf and the way I looked at surfing in general.
With your feelings on competitive surfing, you are looking at potentially representing Germany for surfing’s debut at the 2020 Olympics. Are you taking that seriously?
Yeah. I’m not that big on competing, but the Olympics is something so rare and different. I’m going to try really hard to qualify, because I’d like to go, and if I don’t qualify, then that’s cool, too. I think it’s a huge opportunity to go to the Olympics, and I wouldn’t want to throw that away. Regardless of how I feel about competing, it’s an amazing experience that most people don’t get to have. I’m not going to act spoiled and say, ‘I don’t like competing, so I’m not going to try.’ I have this opportunity, so fuck it, like, I might as well.
Do you experience any pushback from friends about surfing in the Olympics?
I have friends who think surfing in the Olympics is super wack, and I have friends that think it’s super cool. I’m somewhere in the middle, I guess. I don’t really like competing, but I want to keep an open mind and not write it off completely just because it’s different than what I’m into. We haven’t seen what the Olympics have done to surfing and surf culture yet, and I think it’s a cool time to test it out.
It will get more eyes on surfing, bring more money into surfing, which can create more room for people to do what they want, whether it’s competing or free surfing. I think people should be able to do what they want and not care what people are saying about it.
You just made a move from Malibu to Frogtown, which is about an hour from the beach. As a free surfer looking at doing the Olympics, what was your thought process on that?
I still surf every day, and I make even more of a point to surf longer and more seriously. When I lived in Malibu, I would paddle out for 15 minutes, decide it sucked and go in. Now that I’m driving from Frogtown, if I’m going to the beach to get clips, or to try boards, I know I have an hour’s drive back if I decide to get out of the water in 15 minutes.
I moved out here so I wasn’t only surrounded and influenced by surf culture. I also just want to hang out with people who don’t surf and be in a more active and city-like environment where there are other things going on. At the end of the day, I’m not always going to be a professional surfer, so I want to have a life outside of it. Surfing is amazing and it’s been the best job, but there’s a lot of other cool shit going on and I want to experience that, too. I don’t want to be so saturated in one scene that I don’t know about anything else. I didn’t do it to be prepared for life after surfing, but I kind of think of it a little now, like, I can be happy outside of just being a surfer. The world is fucking huge, and I want to learn about other things.
Regardless of how I feel about competing, [the Olympics are an] amazing experience that most people don’t get to have. I’m not going to act spoiled and say, ‘I don’t like competing, so I’m not going to try.’ I have this opportunity, so fuck it, like, I might as well.
So, by working with adidas do you think it’s helped your personal brand and let you be your own person, and not just a surfer?
Yeah, for sure. It’s opened my eyes to a lot of other things. adidas isn’t a surf company and they aren’t in surfing, so it’s made me have to find myself. When you ride for a surf company, especially for a long time, their brand identity can easily become your personal identity. They market you the way they want their brand to be portrayed, you wear the clothes they want you to wear and you end up changing yourself to fit the company you ride for.
adidas has really given me the opportunity to do what I want and to find myself. They let me wear what I want to wear and surf the way I want to surf, which has given me freedom to sort of grow up and be my own person.
Have you always been into clothing and shoes, or is that a passion that you found with adidas supporting you?
I think as I hit my late teens, and now my early twenties, I just started hanging out with enough people outside of surfing that I finally got some sort of influence from outside of the surf industry, you know?
Absolutely. How many pairs of sandals do you own, then?
I don’t have a single pair. I have a pair of slides, though. [Laughs] But, yeah, I mean, I wear sneakers in the sand. I’ll go somewhere tropical and other surfers will kinda look at me funny. It’s fun to weird people out, though.
With support from brands like adidas to be a free surfer, does it feel like a large part of your career is dependent on social media now?
I think right now, if you’re in any type of self-promotional career, whether it’s being an athlete, artist, musician, actor, model, you have to show your personality through Instagram. It just ends up being kind of sad when people end up being more of an “influencer” than what got them there in the first place. Like, I definitely see pro-surfers’ Instagrams that are so perfect, it literally looks like they care more about their feed than actually surfing. For me, I don’t really take it seriously, but it is a platform to show who I am.
I know you’re pretty handy with a tattoo machine. In fact, I have my own Frankie tattoo. It’s a pretty random hobby and I don’t think you hear ‘professional surfer’ and ‘tattoo artist’ in the same sentence very often. How exactly did you get into tattooing?
I have a couple of friends who are tattoo artists. I started getting tattooed a couple of years ago, got pretty into them and learning about the culture behind it. One day, one of my friends had a machine at my house and he let me give him a couple tattoos, and I found it was pretty soothing to do. From there, I was pretty lucky to have a bunch of friends who were trusting enough to let me practice on them, and I just got pretty into it.
Surfing is amazing and it’s been the best job, but there’s a lot of other cool shit going on and I want to experience that, too. I don’t want to be so saturated in one scene that I don’t know about anything else.
Frankie Harrer
How many tattoos have you’ve done at this point? Do you have a flash book that you work from?
I don’t know, like, hundreds. I’m not a very organized person, so in my room there’s just pieces of paper everywhere with tattoos I’ve done, which at some point I need to organize. For the most part, I’m kind of just down to do whatever: People will show me things they want to get and I’ll draw something similar with my own spin on it, or I’ll draw original things. I have a couple notebooks I draw in—some are just drawings and some I want to do specifically as tattoos that I show my friends.
I think I saw a photo of you tattooing Johnny Knoxville. How did that happen?
I’m just friends with him because he lives in Malibu part-time and he ended up asking me to give him a tattoo, so I tattooed his wife’s name on him.
That’s funny. Do you think that could end up being a career somewhere down the line?
[Laughs] I’m not sure about a tattoo career down the line. A lot of people ask me that actually. I definitely am not opposed to the idea. I really enjoy it, which is good. I’m just going to keep on doing it and see how good I can get.
On top of surfing and tattoos, there’s also a little bit of photography. Am I allowed to ask about Leica?
Yeah, definitely. I have some mutual friends that have worked with Leica before and asked if I could come in and talk to them. They saw surf culture as a pretty interesting niche and wanted to work with someone in that world. I think they also saw that I’m a young girl just trying to break the mold a little bit and trying to do my own thing and were kind of intrigued by that.
You are definitely breaking the mold in a way—a female free surfing career isn’t something that really existed until our lifetime, and even now is pretty rare.
I think about it sometimes, like I just sort of fell into it naturally. I caught a couple of waves that people thought were cool and people watched a couple of videos that I made and started to back it, and I thought, ‘Oh, I can maybe do something with this.’ I have always thought that girls’ surfing is beautiful and different from guys’ surfing. There’s a certain aesthetic and a style that girls can have and that guys don’t. It’s pretty cool that now there’s an opportunity for girls to show that side of things. There’s a feminine way to surf. It’s more of a dance, and it can be pretty beautiful.
You are definitely breaking the mold in a way—a female free surfing career isn’t something that really existed until our lifetime, and even now is pretty rare.
I think about it sometimes, like I just sort of fell into it naturally. I caught a couple of waves that people thought were cool and people watched a couple of videos that I made and started to back it, and I thought, ‘Oh, I can maybe do something with this.’ I have always thought that girls’ surfing is beautiful and different from guys’ surfing. There’s a certain aesthetic and a style that girls can have and that guys don’t. It’s pretty cool that now there’s an opportunity for girls to show that side of things. There’s a feminine way to surf. It’s more of a dance, and it can be pretty beautiful.
Interview by LOGAN RAUHUT
Photography by TAYLOR CURRAN