Barrels for a Cause

The Urban Barrels Instagram features waves both in and out of the water.

Brothers JP and Matt MacDonell started the page in 2011 as part of a photo-driven blog where followers could submit photos of themselves “getting barreled” in everyday things that look like waves.

In the years since, followers have gotten barreled by snowbanks…

…pizza

…sand

…surfboard fins

…and even peanut butter

“It was just weird and kinda funny,” JP said while sipping his coffee and checking out the surf at the Venice breakwater. “We didn’t really think anything of it, but we built this community of people who liked the ocean and are connecting by getting barreled.”

The MacDonell brothers grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and surfed occasionally on weekends, but got immersed in the sport when they moved to Malibu to play water polo for Pepperdine University.

“I became completely addicted to the ocean and all that it offers,” JP said.

The brothers have surfed regularly ever since, frequenting Malibu, Venice and El Porto. They also serve as LA County lifeguards and sometimes assigned to work in the South Bay.

Urban Barrels came out of the brothers’ love for surfing, and as their Instagram fan base expanded, so did their interests. In 2013, they started a Kickstarter campaign to make sustainable clothing and beach accessories.

“We always had this idea to make the Bag Towel,” JP said. “We went downtown and found a contractor to make some of them, and we sold 200. We had a really engaged community.”

The Bag Towel is exactly what it sounds like: a hybrid half-bag, half-towel. And if it isn’t enough to have two accessories in one, the product is also environmentally friendly, made using recycled sailboat sails.

“The summer before we launched on Kickstarter, we went sailing out on Minnesota,” JP said. “We took an old Hobie Cat sail from [our grandparents’] garage, and that’s what we used.”

The brothers really saw their idea take flight when they took the Bag Towel to a weekend-long craft fair in San Francisco.

“We sold all our inventory the first day, so on the second day we brought this wood wave into our booth and just took pictures of people getting barreled,” JP laughed.

Since then, the number of followers of the Urban Barrels Instagram account has more than tripled, and the brothers have expanded their product line, adding t-shirts, hats and blankets to the mix. All of the products are still made using recycled sails, which the brothers now get through repair shops and partnerships with sailing manufacturers.

“It’s very important for our business moving ahead and accepting the challenge,” JP said. “Recycling is a lot harder [than traditional manufacturing], but it’s cool to find people that understand what we’re doing and work with them.”

The people the brothers met through creating sustainable products also opened their eyes to other environmental issues.

“Just being in that world of recycling stuff we met all these cool organizations and people that are really solving a problem,” JP said. “The water’s not that clean and we really need to protect the playground. I guess when I was growing up, I didn’t really think about it as much, but when you’re kind of at the frontlines of it you really see it.”

JP also sees the impact of litter on LA County’s beaches through his work as a county lifeguard– a job he began in 2015.

“I’ll bring a trash can with me and pick up trash as I’m setting up my cones,” he said. “I tell people there’s a fine for leaving trash.”

Community engagement is important to Urban Barrels, and the brothers host events and meetups for ocean lovers to come together across LA County.

“We tell stories.” JP said. “Our bags are little adventure bags, so we try to inspire people through our photos or even just blogging for people to go out and get wet or go outside and do fun activities.”

“Purveyor of Rad” is a community engagement series on the Urban Barrels blog where the brothers highlight unique photographers and videographers in hope that they will inspire adventures. Urban Barrels also hosts parties to bring the ocean community together and promote their product.

By the end of this year, the brothers plan to launch an initiative that combines their love for beer with their passion for creating sustainable products. The goal of the “Beers to Bags” program is to recycle fabric, which they can’t yet disclose, that is used in brewing beer.

“We want to build this program, work with breweries and make bags,” JP said. “We’re just working with new materials to make new stuff. That’s the big idea for us.”