I’m not proud of it, but I was in more than my fair share of fights when I was younger. If you’d asked me then I’d have sworn they were all justified, but if I’m being honest it was really all because I had a chip on my shoulder and pubescent levels of testosterone coursing through my veins. And also because I was a greasy little punk and no women would have sex with me.
In the decade-and-a-half since I’ve only hit someone twice. The first time was an unfortunate mishap at a baby shower that I won’t delve into right now. The second involved me squaring off with the senior partner of my wife’s law firm in a Honolulu parking lot. I won that one, but the dude was in his sixties, so I feel like it deserves an asterisk.
On a related note, did you know you don’t have to hit an old man very hard to hurt him pretty badly?
While I’m not an advocate of using violence to solve problems, I do think that, sometimes, not often, you’re justified in delivery a stiff right to the center of someone’s big stupid mug. And I do enjoy watching other people fight, especially over surfing. It’s just such a stupid thing to come to blows over, watching two guys bash on each other over a totally inconsequential part of life puts a huge smile on my face.
El Porto is such a garbage spot. A shitty closeout 364 days a year, home to worst ten million freaks, boomers, egos, and assholes that LA has to offer. I just love how the guy throws his nice white …Lost on the ground before they go at it like two dudes who’ve watched a ton of UFC but never actually tried to translate their sweet mental karate into action.
Getting mad at a little kid is such wasted effort. The little shit can run his mouth at you, even take a swing at you, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Because, if you try, Richie Collins is gonna come flying out of nowhere and kick your ass!
I take back what I wrote earlier about surfing always being a stupid thing to fight over. It’s a little more nuanced than that. For instance, I feel like Nathan Fletcher’s reaction in this clip is totally reasonable.
Thank the good lord for giving everyone video cameras, otherwise I’d never have seen a guy come pretty close to drowning a dude while two foot mush crumbles softly in the background.
There’s a moment in here when he realizes, “Oh shit, I’m way too old for this to end well for me.”
Remember, keep your chin down and your hands up and, until next time, here’s an old man falling down an escalator.
The online magazine/retailer still claiming that Sharkbanz technology provides "peace of mind!"
As of this evening a poor mother in Florida is beside herself with grief. Weeping into an already soaked handkerchief. Hitting her armchair’s armrest while screaming. “Why me? Why? WHY?”
And what is leading to such grief? Such sadness on the day before New Year’s Eve?
She purchased for her beloved son a Christmas present, you see. A Sharkbanz bracelet promising to protect him from watery beasts. He had never worn one before but strapped in on, paddled out and ZAP! Attacked! Attacked just last evening!
What could have made her fall for such heartless pseudo-science?
Maybe Stab!
The online surf website/retailer/fin maker just months ago promised wonders from the Sharkbanz technology being employed by very expensive Modom leashes. The writer was uncontainable in his praise. Shall we read?
Risk reduction never looked so good.
If you’re a regular to Stab, you’ll be aware that for some time, we’ve been (highly) anticipating the release of Modom’s Shark Deterrent Leash, developed in partnership with Sharkbanz. And now… it’s finally here.
Developed over 10 years by senior marine biologists and chemists, the leash creates an electromagnetic field around the surfer which is designed to irritate the shark’s electrical sense (without causing it or any nearby sealife any harm), reducing the risk of attack by sending curious sharks on their way.
No batteries, no charging, and an unnoticeable amount of extra weight. Plus, of course, the peace of mind that comes with reduced risk. Don’t sleep on this: It ain’t hard to foresee the first release selling out. Buy here.
The “buy here” kicked to Papa Surfstitch who was selling the product at a whopping $180 – $250 a pop.
Oh I am not casting a stone. We all make mistakes due economic pressure. I once wrote a lengthy treatise suggesting that children smoking filterless cigarettes would cure juvenile asthma. The Corvette Stingray gifted to me by Big Tobacco had nothing to do with the piece but when my research was proven less than stellar I had it removed and apologized.
Okay, so 2016 might have been a god-awful year but in our little pro surf world, it all ran to script. Legitimacy restored at the top end of the tour, continued ascendancy of women’s surfing, big waves etc.
Any critical eye trained on the WCT will see a moribund sport desperately in need of renewal. Renewal of format, of location. The whole narrative structure is looking tired: same old thing trotted out for thirty years. Too many dead heats, not enough peak performance. The format rewards conservatism and that’s exactly what we get dished up. Slater has been the exception to the rule for far too long and when he goes, that goes with it.
Since Rory abdicated hasn’t it been a hoot watching the surf writer step up? Establishing their bona fides: I’m a print journalist, I’ve got a blog, I know how to use a semi-colon. It’s grand, grand entertainment.
I feel I should establish my credentials. Surfer Mag, Surfers Journal, Surfline, Tracks, Surfing World, White Horses, Swellnet and a couple Euro ones I can’t remember.
But what if that’s all a pile of shit?
What if there is no superiority, real or imagined, of the published (surf) writer over the anonymous commenter? What if the anonymous commenter really is the highest and rarest form of the art? I believe it is, and in that spirit, I throw this take of the top 20 surfers in the world, right now, out there.
Not as any kind of definitive version but as kindling to the flame of the eternal commenter. Long may they reign.
20. Corey Colapinto
It’s a cruel but pertinent fact that California’s excessive continental shelf turns Pacific swells into surf as lugubrious and predictable as a 90’s sitcom, perfect for longboards or anything with inbuilt trim. Most surf spots between Point Conception and the border suck for shortboards, with the odd exception. Don’t shame yourself and and name the obvious counter-examples.
The reverse is true in Australia. Thus Corey Colapinto. Thus Joel Tudor. Thus Ryan Burch. Thus the shortboard revolution and everything progressive in surfing happening in Australia (even if at the hands of beatnik Californians harnessing the power of post-war blue-collar Australia and trust-fund America) then exported back to California. Current example: Dan Thomson and micro-planing hulls. Time and time again. History repeating.
Yet still this phony, internecine war between short and long, progressive and retro persists. Take Dane Reynolds out of the equation and Colapinto is the second most progressive surfer in California, hence America, after Ryan Burch. A progressive mid-lengther, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron, who takes the white man jazz of the shortboard revolution into a whole new dimension.
19. Derek Hynd
There’s a certain orthodoxy been developing on the Grit. It’s a justifiable reaction against forty years of surfing being represented as some kind of mystical communion with nature BS in the surf media. It downplays and even denigrates the lifer, the loner, the nomad, the dedicated few who pursue surfing to its ultimate ends.
The implication that surfing should improve moral character or cure cancer is ludicrous. It’s just another glorious, non-essential thing humans do between birth and death to wrest meaning out of a random and hostile universe. Hence, what separates us from the animals, hence art.
Isn’t it true that in our tiny little lives of quiet desperation we find ourselves a gal and settle down, selling ourselves like cattle for a scrap of grass and a roof, horizons shrinking every year towards infirmity and death, stripped of all hope, incubating our hate with a secret shame which seeps out through the keyboard (magnificently at the Grit!).
Surfing has been co-opted by capitalism magnificently but if you kick out of the cradle to grave consumer track and go your own way, as Dekka Hynd has done, it’s still one of the most revolutionary trips going. A pure waste of time with no measureable output. Fins-free surfing might be the last act untouched and untouchable by the domesticated and homogenized herd. A necessary antidote against the psychic impoverishment of a technocratic society. If you’ll pardon a little more pseudo-philosophical dick-gazing: isn’t it true that in our tiny little lives of quiet desperation we find ourselves a gal and settle down, selling ourselves like cattle for a scrap of grass and a roof, horizons shrinking every year towards infirmity and death, stripped of all hope, incubating our hate with a secret shame which seeps out through the keyboard (magnificently at the Grit!).
Meanwhile, Mr Hynd soars towards an a-historical death high-lining at J-Bay like an albatross who never needs to touch land, brutal and singular as Ahab. Is he sinning against life for daring to indulge this obsession with an implacable grandeur? By structuring his life to follow the lightning flash?
I say, no!
Restless, relentless non-linear exile who evades the technological whip I salute you. You Soviets of the spirit who mock him can eat a bag of dicks.
Also, practically speaking, work is a cooked goose, no matter what moral puritans like Bill Finnegan say, so you better figure out something to do to pass the time. Surfer as throw-forward as posited by Alvin Toffler might be an idea whose time has come.
18. Bob Martinez
Why does Bob Martinez look better than Gabe Medina on a wave? Nothing controversial about that inquiry. The answer was supplied on the Grit this by wave savant Bradley Gerlach, author of the soon to be released tantric surf manual Wave Ki. Brad ID’d the great stylistic advantage of using the hips, but limited the observation to small wave surfing.
The observation extends into other realms and when we watch Bob M surf we can clearly see how devastatingly effective it is in medium sized surf as well, especially backhand surfing in good Point surf. The hips are the fulcrum around which the board is leveraged through the turn. Upper-body quiet, knees and ankles fluid.
The main thing I love about Bob’s surfing, and miss so much watching live, is that it is relatable to crib the parlance of Turpel. In my fantasy, idealised version of my own surfing, I’m trying to surf like Bobby, not say, Clay Marzo, whose surfing is utterly incomprehensible to me.
And you too.
17. Stu Kennedy
When you cross the border from Byron shire and get your passport stamped at the gates of the Republik of Lennox Head you are entering the finest surfing Nation on Earth. You remember the penultimate scene in Taxi Driver? Before Trav Bickle goes ham? Harvey Keitels pimp is slow-dancing with Jodie Foster’s prostitute. He leans in and whispers in her ear, “How much I need you. Come to me baby. When I’m close to you like this I feel so good. I only wish every man could know what it’s like to be loved by you. That every woman everywhere had a man who loves her like I love you”.
That’s an accurate depiction of the interior monologue of every surfer lucky enough to reside in the shadow of of Lennox Point. Sunbeams dance out of our hearts when we surf the Point. Henry Lawson, Walt Whitman, Ralph Emerson couldn’t conjure up such an earthly paradise for the working man and woman.
No doubt this excess in nature’s blessings can be dessicating. There is nothing here for people seeking knowledge, education or self-improvement. What it demands are clear-sighted souls, and that it contains in abundance. Its principal genius lies in the innovation to the surfboard, something seen when Kennedy unleashed the Dan Thomson designed Sci-Phi at Snapper.
The Point carves chunks from bodies from pre-adolescence, a natural violence which imbues the lineup. A 52-year-old dentist from Manhattan beach, an ageing alpha male, got his teeth knocked out the other day. I’m not condoning ultra-violence as a method of constraining the more excessive impulses that human beings bring to a lineup predisposed to order, just noting it works wonderfully well here.
Do you understand Lennox Head, where our local punk band is called Booze Hag and the chief ditty written by legendary glasser/sander Kenchy glories in the title Off My Head In Lennox Head (not available on Tunes)?
Good, then you understand Stu Kennedy. Top Ten after the Aussie leg.
16. Clay Marzo
Marzo is the maestro of the late-spin-under-the-lip-and-knife-into-the-tube, a prerequisite to deep tube-riding on shallow reefs. You’ll see that guy every shallow reef you surf, sitting deepest and making calm under violent upheaval.
Sure the forehand fin-ditch-to-disaster-one-foot-recovery gets a big old, but that is a strange inversion of the pro surfing game. He saves his full-blown power turns as special sauce. I’d rather watch him surf than some ball of squat muscle wanksnap their way to the beach any day of the year.
A gaping Marzo-sized conceptual hole in the field exists every year at Cloudbreak while he is alive.
15. Mason Ho
I was slow jumping on the Ho train, mostly because in this world hype reigns and so rarely justified. What got me hooked wasn’t any of the web clips but a live heat at Bells. He rode a bigger board. There was creativity, historical lineage in every line he drew across a lumpy Bell beach canvas. He bought shit surf to life in a way that no other tour surfer keyed in to standardised testing could.
Now the wave of the winter at Pipe with a classic hood ornament look back. One more compelling argument for renewal in a conservative Tour format and locations that specialise in quashing talent like Mason Ho’s. Imagine an Indonesian leg with Mason.
Young man attacked in Florida wearing his new Christmas present!
And let the lawsuits begin! Shark repellent magnetic technology’s PowerBalance moment! First, let us read the tale of brave Florida surfer Zack Davis and his fight against a watery beast in The Mirror shall we?
Zack Davis, 16, was surfing in Florida, US, when he was attacked by a Blacktip shark.
The schoolboy, who had never been attacked by a shark before, says he was wearing a new shark repellent armband Christmas present for the first time when he was attacked.
The attack left him with gashes across his arm which required almost 50 stitches.
His mother has been left outraged and is seeking a refund from the maker of the anti-shark device.
The local CBS12 channel reports the teenager ended up in hospital with a large jaws bite on his arm.
Zack says he was wearing a new band with magnetic technology that advertises it repels sharks away from swimmers.
“I got this for Christmas,” Zack said.
The green plastic band that looks like a watch with no face “is a shark band and it was supposed to keep sharks away and the first time I wore it, and I go surfing a lot, but the first time I wore it- I get bit. “
“Zack’s mum, who is shaken by all this says she hopes to at least get her $80 back for the Shark Banz that the family say didn’t work.
The armband maker has been approached for comment but has yet to respond.
An outraged mom, a bloody mess, a Christmas present gone horribly awry! And do you recall how surf brand Modom incorporated Sharkbanz tech into very expensive leashes ($180 in the U.S. $250 in Australia)? Do you recall how our friend’s at Stab jumped in with both feet, thrilling at the product and pushing it through parent company Surfstitch? Oh read a wonderful piece of investigative journalism from the dearly departed Rory Parker here!
Now that the wheels are all the way and spectacularly off… read this sentence again… “the first time I wore it, and I go surfing a lot, but the first time I wore it- I get bit.” What will happen? Of course lawyers are circling the Davis family, promising forever riches. But will Modom pull the leash? Will Stab issue an apology? Will they disappear the embarrassing post?
Let’s wait and see!
But while we’re waiting have you ever seen a cooler post-attack look than Zack Davis’s?
So long Sharkbanz… Hello fame!
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"How's your small-wave game these days, sweetie?" Lewis' voice has a raspy, lung-cancerous tone to it. "Fine sir!" says the professional surfer Kelly Slater, laughing nervously.
A message in a digital bottle for San Francisco’s sultan of surf lit…
Dear Lewis,
First. Please accept my apology for the uncomfortable and public nature of this letter. I am drunk and have been writing Christmas cards all afternoon.
The reason I cast this message in a bottle in hopes that it washes ashore on your screen is because I have a gang of angry and anonymous misfits who are in need of their daily dose of unhinged surf lit.
I fear my unique and often misspelled last name will be tarnished if I do not find a replacement for Rory Parker. You see, the last time I got drunk and emotional and got behind the keys, Derek coaxed me into giving personal stories a whirl. I could tell he was growing bored of me and my WSL analysis so I poured double when nobody ordered a shot. It has inspired others to do the same.
I have let the foul odor of bad writing into the room.
While we’ve all been singing Rory’s praises, it was you if I recall that actually had your name mentioned on webcast for what you wrote. Something along the lines of Dion Atkinson’s surfing being meat and potatoes without the sour cream? Either way he called you out and your Power Rankings got pulled.
Can you come over and burn sage wisdom?
Not only for fun but to remember what it’s like to make pros squirm. Don’t you want to feel that again?
While we’ve all been singing Rory’s praises, it was you if I recall that actually had your name mentioned on webcast for what you wrote. Something along the lines of Dion Atkinson’s surfing being meat and potatoes without the sour cream? Either way he called you out and your Power Rankings got pulled.
Whatever it was. You rattled him. Probably ruined his life forever. That’s what the wolves of this website want. They want an outspoken hero. Someone that isn’t afraid to call out big brands and their team riders. Somebody who isn’t tied to the industry coin.
I meant to talk to you about this in person three days ago but you are like the Absinthe ferry on that neon green Lost Rock Up. For the last five months I’ve been seeing you down the beach, always on the peak I want to be on but can never get too. Maybe if Mayhem was my foam daddy again I could move like a ghost between peaks, but for now I clunk behind you in the whitewash, never to be formally acquainted.
