In Part 2 of his D-Side Interview with Dibi Fletcher, Kolohe “Brother” Andino discusses fair treatment in contests, experimenting with board design, Dancing with the Stars, fashion trends, and big wave riding… among other things. So check it out, and if you missed out on Part 1 of Kolohe’s D-Side Interview with Dibi, find it somewhere here on www.astrodeck.com to view it. So do that. Do that now. Well, we mean after you watch this first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDmgQCYO4Ic

Kolohe Andino on The D-Side

We’d like to give a huge shout-out of congratulations to one of our own, John John Florence.

If you haven’t heard by now, John John just snagged his first WCT contest win at the Billabong Rio Pro in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil with an impressive 16.37 tally over Joel Parkinson’s score of 11.44. To get to the victor’s podium, John John also went through a series of heats against Josh Kerr (in the semi-finals) and another one of Astrodeck’s favorites, Julian Wilson (in the quarter-finals).

This puts John John as #6 in the current ASP rankings while Parko is on top as Numero Uno.

The guys will be heading to Fiji next. And we can’t wait to see some more of the John John Florence Show. World Title this year? There’s a good chance. Future World Champ? That’s a definite.

Here are some frame grabs from the Billabong Rio Pro. Congrats again, John John!

The Fletchers and Astrodeck are featured in the September 11th issue of The New York Times Style Magazine. If you happen to have an extra copy around, send it over to us!

In the meantime, here’s the online version of that article, as well as a video piece on the family made by the guys at NY Times.

Click on the link below or copy and paste it to your browser. You know the drill by now!

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/family-values/#more-175333

Now, we wouldn’t take ALL the credit, but it’s pretty cool that a week before the US Open, Kolohe Andino stopped by the Astrodeck Office to pick up some of our traction pads for the contest. Heat after heat, he became the giant killer, and found himself in the semi-finals where he was eventually taken down by overall 2nd place finisher, Yadin Nicol.

Kolohe Andino with some sweet Adeck on his board.

Kolohe again. All grip, no slip. That's Astrodeck for ya!

And speaking of Yadin, check out the pic below as he prepares to leave the competitor’s area and hit the water. Looks like the Aussie contender jumped on the Astrodeck bandwagon. Yeah, you like that, just as much as we do, dontcha? That board looks really solid with the Adeck.

Congrats on placing 2nd, Yadin! And a bigger congrats for using the best surf traction in the world!

In fact, we’re stoked that a lot of guys who were riding Astrodeck did pretty well overall: Ian Crane, Shane Beschen, Timmy Reyes, the Gudauskas trio, etc.

Pretty good representing Astrodeck, guys. Pretty damn good.