Rob Machado is a well known professional surfer, local to San Diego, CA and is putting on his 6th annual music fundraising event at The Belly Up on December 5th in Solana Beach, CA. The lineup this year will include Nahko, Jon Foreman, Lukas Nelson, and Iron Sage Wood & Paul Cannon. The fundraiser is in an effort to go Green as Rob Machado continues his efforts in the community with the school districts and California beaches.
Rob Machado started with introducing clean water fountains to his old High School at San Dieguito Academy to help eliminate single-use plastic bottles, in addition to supporting the initiative to educate kids on staying hydrated instead of drinking sugar based drinks.
He also started a beach cleanup group where volunteers help keep our local beaches beautiful. It introduced new top covered trashcan to stop the seagulls from spreading trash along the beach and water and is using reclaimed materials to build these new trash cans.
“I literally go to the beach every day. And there were days when I would go down to the beach and there would be trash that I’d spend 30 minutes picking up. You can’t just walk by that and go surfing. It would just feel wrong. ?Installing the cans felt like it was the right thing to do and now that it’s been done, it feels even better,” says Machado.
I was lucky to be invited to last year’s event by Bret Bollinger of Pepper to come out and take photos of the event. At first I thought it was just a regular show. I was pleasantly surprised to find out what Rob Machado was raising awareness and money for. At the beginning of the event he showed a video of what his Foundation is doing for the community. The lineup was impressive and had a sense of community. The lineup from last year was Rob’s neighbor Tristan Prettyman, Paul Cannon Iron 
Sage Wood, Chris Shiflett (from the Foo Fighters), and Pepper.
I was asking Pepper’s Kaleo Wassman how they got involved with Rob and he just said they’ve known Rob for a long time and love him and were stoked to support him in this event.
He auctions off several items in between the artist’s sets. This all goes back into helping his organization, the Rob Machado Foundation with participating and educating the community to go Green. You can check out his website to see how you can get involved in his Green Team.
If you’re in the San Diego area on December, come out to his event at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, CA. You can find more information regarding that show at The Belly Up Tavern’s website by clicking HERE!
Related Links:
Rob Machado Foundation Website
Rob Machado Facebook
Article & Photos by: David Norris
Watch: Pepper live with Rob Machado at the Belly Up (2016)