…publicity photo for Brad Gerlach and Martin Potter's heat at the Hurley Pro, Trestles. You like this Grace Jones/David Bowie/Steve McQueen vibe? Yeah, so do we. The ASP? Not quite so thrilled. "They thought it was too racey, too much bikini in it. Dude, it's laughable. Don't we do our fucking sport at the beach? And don't they wear bikinis at the beach? It brings a bit of showmanship to the fucking thing. If I was still on tour, I'd be fucking bringing the show. These guys need some serious consultation!" | Photo: Kane Skennar

Opinion: Five Surfers Who Rip Trestles

By Derek Rielly

10 years ago

Brad Gerlach on who lights up Lowers on the occasion of the Hurley Pro, day one…

Brad Gerlach is the 40-something former world number two, fashion maven (Banks) and surf coach (with book of advanced surfing techniques coming out next spring) who, let’s be honest, ain’t so into stroking his days away at surf events.

“I don’t fucking watch that much,” he says. “My life is fucking exciting and fun and to stop and watch… it’s a fucking arrogant thing to say but the contests are too slow a lot of the time. I have my favourite guys and I watch the replays.”

As part of the event, Gerlach will surf a heat with commentator and ’89 champ Martin Potter. And to bring a little show into the game, Gerlach had the LA-based fashion photographer Kane Skennar shoot this rad photo (with notes of Grace Jones, David Bowie and Steve McQueen) to publicise the heat. The ASP, howevs, reacted with horror.

“They thought it was too racey, too much bikini in it. Dude, it’s laughable. Don’t we do our fucking sport at the beach? And don’t they wear bikinis at the beach? It brings a bit of showmanship to the fucking thing. Instead of (and here Gerr puts on mid-west hick voice) ‘Oh! Two old dudes, you got a couple of old dudes!’ Fuck that! If I was still on tour, I’d be fucking bringing the show. These guys need some serious consultation!”

As far as an observer of technique goes, Gerlach is without peer. I wanted to find out whose surfing at Trestles hits him just… there.

1. Gabriel Medina

You wanna know why? Medina’s posture is really good. His arms are a little fucked up but he has this spring in his legs and he doesn’t look too predictable. He has a lot of spark in his surfing and if he cleaned up his arms a little bit, if he hired me to coach him for a couple of weeks, I’d find all these places to make his surfing look prettier and make his transitions smoother. But right now he’s so fucking good and gnarly and fun to watch. I learn from him every time. I don’t think he knows how to do a nuts frontside carve, however. He kinda slams it and he doesn’t torque it enough. I’d love to teach him that one.

2. Jordy Smith

He’s a big smooth cat. His technique is so good and his ass is really, really low. The whole magic to a good surfer is having that low centre of gravity and having a straight back. Because if your posture is really good you barely have to put weight on your toes or your heels to turn. Think of the best golfers in the world and their swing. It’s effortless because the posture is really good and the head of the club does a perfect circle. There’s very little effort but the goes 350 yards. It’s the same with posture and surfing.

3. Felipe Toledo

He’s unpredictable with a lot of board control. His posture is good but his arms are fucked up a little too. But so were mine at 18. But there’s substance coming through. His back is good and straight and he’s low to his board. He’s technically really, really good.

4. Dane Reynolds

I’d love to see Reynolds in the event. His technique is so fucking good. But what’s interesting about Dane is when he’s going down the line he looks horrible. He does so much shit with his arms. I think he does it on purpose. He has to. I think he does it to look ugly. He’s such an artist that he wants to look raw; he doesn’t want to look too polished. He has the best style in his turns. His arms are amazing, his butt is super, super low and he’s very, very powerful without being a brute. He has that hidden competitiveness and comes across as an annoying underachiever, like Rob Machado, sometimes. It’s so annoying! Why don’t you just try so we can watch you? You fucking asshole! It’s okay that you care! We won’t think you’re uncool! Dane’s a funny speech giver too. He’s a rad dude

5. Conner Coffin

Yeah, I wish Conner was in this event. Because I fucking coach him, of course, but he really fucking gouges the wave. When he connects on a turn you can… feel it. Conner’s got that thing that just gets you in the guts.

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Kelly Slater has decided to join forces with John Moore underneath the funding of the Kering Group to mastermind and launch, “Outerknown.” What in the actual fuck is that, you may ask? Well it’s, and to quote Kelly Slater. "Our team, lead by designer John Moore and supported by our strategic partner, The Kering Group, are tirelessly working on a brand that blends the relationship between style, sustainability, and travel. I believe we have an obligation to build better products and understand the way our consumption impacts the world around us." So… tell me Kelly, you’re ripping off Patagonia? And you’re working with the group that owns Balenciaga, MCQ, Alexander McQueen, St. Laurent, Brioni, Bottega Veneta & Gucci (among others)? I’m going to loosely quote Anthony Bourdain here in saying, “I don’t give a shit if my tomato was local, organic, sustainably farmed, GMO free and was “artisan.” All I care about is that my tomato tastes good!”

Opinion: I don’t give a shit if it’s organic!

By Johnny Unitas III

10 years ago

Johnny Unitas III on Kelly Slater's new label OuterKnown…

Is there ever going to be a brand, a fashion, and a style that emerges from the barren wasteland that is the surf industry? Is the surf industry eminently doomed by the regurgitated designs peddled by the Billabongs, Rip Curls, Hurleys and RVCAs of the world!?

Yes. We are all doomed. The surf industry is doomed and son of a bitch! I have to go to the NYC boys of Saturdays Surf to get a pair of aesthetically pleasing boardshorts when I don’t want to look like another faux pas douche with my four-way stretch catastrophes.

And here comes John Moore. He launched M.Nii (and he created Hollister for A & F and the label Modern Amusement) and I’m not getting into the Wikipedia page on M.Nii but their boardshorts are amazing. They are clean, simple and functional. They fade perfectly in the sun and they break in oh so well. Just like my St. Laurent dry denim jeans, they are expensive and they are perfect.

With all that said, Kelly Slater has decided to join forces with John Moore underneath the funding of the Kering Group to mastermind and launch, “Outerknown.” What in the actual fuck is that, you may ask? Well it’s, and to quote Kelly Slater:

“It’s been a long time coming and I’m proud to let you know that the clothing brand I’ve been working on has launched our ‘Handshake Website’ at Outerknown.com this morning. Our team, lead by designer John Moore and supported by our strategic partner, The Kering Group, are tirelessly working on a brand that blends the relationship between style, sustainability, and travel. I believe we have an obligation to build better products and understand the way our consumption impacts the world around us.

So… tell me Kelly, you’re ripping off Patagonia? And you’re working with the group that owns Balenciaga, MCQ, Alexander McQueen, St. Laurent, Brioni, Bottega Veneta & Gucci (among others)?

I’m going to loosely quote Anthony Bourdain here in saying, “I don’t give a shit if my tomato was local, organic, sustainably farmed, GMO free and was “artisan.” All I care about is that my tomato tastes good!”

My clothing does not need to be sustainable, if it is of the highest quality. I do not need to know how or why my purchasing or consumption of them has impacted the world as long as I look damn good. And I would bet the amount of money I owe Visa, which is a lot, that, the consumers shopping today’s fashions do not care either. Just like myself, the consumer buys, purchases and splurges on fashions, clothing and style because it’s fun and looking fabulous is important to them.

With that said, and putting you aside, Kelly & John, until I’m proven wrong, thank you Kering Group and thank you Alexander McQueen for delivering the always-stunning Kate Moss for the new Alexander McQueen campaign. I’m going to go read Maureen Callahan’s book, “Champagne Supernova,” and try to imagine that I was friends with Kate Moss as she ruled the modeling industry with week-long partying and benders that ended in Ibiza. I would have traveled and partied with her in unsustainable style. Isn’t that fashion, after all?

Who is Johnny Unitas III? Let’s steal straight from Esquire magazine: Johnny Unitas was one of the premier quarterbacks of all time. His name is synonymous with poise, all-American grit, grace under pressure, and an arm as true as it was strong. His grandson shares the very same name though maybe none of the adjectives. But goddamn it if he doesn’t know his way around a showroom. He is the fashion equivalent to, well, Johnny Unitas. And now he writes for BeachGrit!

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Exclusive! The desk speaks!

By Chas Smith

10 years ago

That long suffering ASP escritoire comes clean about life underneath professional surfing's mouthpieces. And Pat Parnell.

“I used to be happy…” the Association of Surfing Professional’s wooden desk tells me on a perfectly crisp San Clemente evening. I set my daiquiri on his head as he continues. “…I used to be where I belonged, at the very, very, very, very back of Office Depot’s Garden Grove location. Doesn’t sound like much but it was home. A fake Eames chair and I had even started this little thing… Anyhow, one day a man from the ASP came in. Said his name was Hardy, Terry Hardy, and went on and on about how he was Kelly Slater’s big shot manager and how he now also owned all of professional surfing. The sales manager didn’t care. He only spoke Vietnamese.”

I nod and know this story is not going to have a happy ending.

“Hardy got me for a steal. Said that while professional surfing was a totally rad can’t miss money maker, the Association was a bit cash poor at the moment and so Mr. Nguyen gave him a discount. Before I knew it, I was boxed up and shipped to Australia. I didn’t understand what was happening. When I came to, there were weird LED lights on the floor around me, even though I was outside, and a TV monitor hanging from my chest. The ASP logo was stuck to both my arms and, when I studied it, assumed that “professional surfing” was something kindergarteners did. Have you seen it? The sun and wave look like they were designed by a five year old with no natural talent.”

I nod and push my daiquiri’s umbrella out of the way.

“Then the four men sitting at me started to talk. Whoa. Never had I heard such stilted dribble in my entire life and, remember, I was living in Garden Grove. They talked incessantly about absolutely nothing. They used the same exact phrases over and over again. They seemed to think that surfing was a real sport. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that LED lights, a TV monitor and the drawing of a gift-less child do not the NFL make.”

I nod and give an empathetic frowny face.

“After the Gold Coast, I was sent to Margret River, then Bells Beach then it became an absolute blur. They’d try to dress me up. Sometimes in wooden pallets, sometimes in a grass skirt. And look at me now. What the hell is this shit?”

I nod and don’t quite know. Maybe pier pilings with retro airplane propellers affixed?

It’s all just so strange. I mean, why am I on the beach? Why can’t the men who sit at me turn their necks even a little bit? Why are some of them so old? Why do they dress in the costumes they do? Did you see us in Tahiti? Their Hawaiian shirt mélange was so bad I tried to slide off the dock and into the water. Where is the money Terry Hardy promised?

I nod and soak in his existential dilemma.

“At this point? Someone please burn me. Just take me outside, dump gasoline in my drawers and set me on fire. I, honestly, can’t take one more second of Pat Parnell. Where did he come from? What does it mean to ‘jam it into the foam climb?’”

I nod, light a cigarette and definitely can’t answer.

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"If you're going to surf big waves," says Lewis Samuels, "be willing to fucking be held under. If you're going to surf in northern California you might get hit by a shark. It's part of surfing around here."

I SAW A GREAT WHITE ATTACK (UP CLOSE)!

By Derek Rielly

10 years ago

The writer Lewis Samuels and the day he watched his pal in the mouth of a giant shark…

Lewis Samuels is what you’d call a soul surfer if that term hadn’t been so corrupted. Lew surfs lonely big waves in the sharkiest of northern Californian waters and he ain’t afraid of either.

Lew has five pals who’ve been attacked by great white sharks. One, Royce Fraley, has been attacked… twice. Lew was there for one of ’em.

“We were really far out to sea, literally, about a kilometre out to sea. It took 45 minutes to paddle out,” says Lew. “Out of the corner of my eye there was this explosion. And as I turned around, I saw the shark breeching out of the water with him in its mouth. Then they fell down in an explosion of whitewater, like when a whale breaches. Fifteen feet is as big as a car and they’re a lot fatter in person than you’d think they would be. And he was in the fish’s mouth and there was this fucking impact in the water and then there was nothing there, gone, like a fucking whirlpool of displaced whitewater where he’d been. There was no one else near him, just another friend way up the line, and so when the attack happened, what are you fucking going to do? You’re not going to leave your friend out there.”

But, says, Lew, “Let me be fucking honest. My first fucking response was to paddle away. But I thought about it, he was my friend, and whether or not he comes up he needs my help. And so I paddled back over, got there and he popped up out of the water and he pretty much paddled up onto my back, literally, trying to get out of the water. I said, ‘It’s alright, man! Hold on! I’ll paddle you in, man!”

What does a shark attack victim look like? “I didn’t want to look. We were 45 minutes out to sea and I figured he’d have a leg missing. I had this 200 pound guy on my back but… he fucking seemed okay. We started paddling next to each other. A friend, Britt, a lifeguard, saw what happened from a distance and started paddling with us, checking him, and he goes, ‘Where’s he fucking hurt?’ It didn’t make sense. Finally, we got in, I ran to a pay phone a mile away ’cause there’s no cell phone service and when I got back down there he was with an ambulance.”

The injuries, says Lew, were “like little scratches. The whole attack was a like a cartoon, like a toothpick in a dog. The board had gotten stuck in the mouth of the shark and it didn’t clamp on him. He was holding onto the board as the shark took him under and he got the scratches when he bounced off the shark.”

Lew says he finds comfort in the fact that great whites in northern California are different to the more energetic South African and Australian breed. In that, they have a different hunting pattern. They might bite but they’ll let go after the initial bleed and wait for you to bleed out instead of taking you down straight away.

“That gives you time to get medical help,” says Lew.

How did the attack affect Lew? Did he surf the spot again?

“What are you going to do? I was out there the next day. The waves were good.”

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Tyler Wright turns her fury to Lowers, that longtime punching bag. | Photo: ASP/Rowland

Essentially Useless Stats For A Non-Essential Contest

By Blasphemy Rottmouth

10 years ago

You want stats from Trestles? Here's something audacious!

Just like the main games of NFL and NBA, stats are everything in surfing. Heat totals, heat-winning percentages, event wins, the tweaking upward (or downwards) of a surfer’s results depending on the location, surfer-against-surfer heat-win records. They all count. They all matter.

BeachGrit’s electronic-mail pal Blasphemy Rottmouth ain’t one to bend over and touch his toes for the white man (represented here by the governing body of professional surfing). His stats are on the razor edge of something you might wanna call humour. An intellectual buck dancer but with sophistication and style!

Chances a post-heat interview includes questions about: board size 59%, training regimen 46%, legal medical prescriptions 0%.

Commentators spend 6% of the time referencing a pro “enjoying himself” during a heat vs. 99% of the time a surfer is “checking off the criteria.”

Number of times ASP rulebook pages will be mentioned 80 times & the judging criteria 25 times while defining a subjective sport.

Zero piss cups will be filled after a heat with any surfers over 32 years of age, but there will be a combined 105 shots of Johnny Gannon’s lips and Maurice Cole’s beard.

Kelly Slater’s new brand “Outer Unknown” will be referenced -5 times in the same sentence with either Monsanto or Quiksilver.

At one point, a pro surfer’s heat winning percentage will mirror his chances at contracting an STD in San Clemente.

Kelly Slater’s heat winning chances in rounds 2, 3, 5, Quarters, Semi’s, and Final: 50%

ASP audience is comprised of 11% “trolls” and 92% surf industry employees… +/- 4%

Mick Fanning will apply the same number of lip smacks (47k) during a heat as Dooma Hardman did in 1987.

Commentators will mention the passion of brown people who claim 99% more than the 6% of white people they mention for their claiming and passion.

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