What Youth
How much do you love a public blood feud? Do you love What Youth's universal contempt for mainstream surf?

Blood Feud: What Youth v Surfer!

And Surfing, too! Come read What Youth's universal contempt for everyone!

Oh happy day! The sun is shining and the birds are singing.

What about the blood, you ask? Oh it is gloriously feuding!

Surfer magazine, the grand ol’ dame, most notable today for stealing artwork from others, posted a nondescript photograph of the surfer Asher Pacey on their Instagram accountSurfer‘s one million and one hundred thousand followers rewarded the image with twenty thousand likes.

You are the “Bible of the sport,” and have a storied legacy of editors and photographers who are probably shitting themselves at seeing this. Please, we all deserve better from you. Surfers, editors, photographers, followers. This is our lives and just because you’re trying to appease a mil worth of followers, remember when you post something like this you make us all look like kooks. So please, stop it.
Sincerely, What Youth ❤️ PS: And for God’s sake people, stop “liking” this shit.”

What Youth, the magazine started five years ago by former Surfing editor Travis Ferré, among others, was enraged by this photo, reposted a screen grab, and publicly labelled it as a shameful abuse of Surfer‘s position as the “Bible of the sport.”

Let’s examine.

“Dear @surfer_magazine,
@asher_pacey and your million+ followers deserve better than this photo and caption. You are the “Bible of the sport,” and have a storied legacy of editors and photographers who are probably shitting themselves at seeing this. Please, we all deserve better from you. Surfers, editors, photographers, followers. This is our lives and just because you’re trying to appease a mil worth of followers, remember when you post something like this you make us all look like kooks. So please, stop it.
Sincerely, What Youth ❤️ PS: And for God’s sake people, stop “liking” this shit.”

Apart from the earnestness of “this is our lives etc”, I like the way Travis isn’t afraid to spit a basinful of blood at Surfer. Who has passion like this? Who else cares enough to do such a thing? I run out of energy just liking photos.

Australian minnows Surfing Life, joined the feud. The editor, Wade Gravy, wrote:

wade gravy Meow! 🐯 That’s the lamest tirade on the internet today. “This is our lives”. Wait, what? I’d hate to be working at @surfer_magazine or @surfingmagazine having to endure this barrage of wet-fish slap downs. Was this attempt at feud starting a decision made by the team, or the petulant elitism of one intern? Whatever it is, it sucks the most, but probably has the more pugnacious of your teenage fanboys busting with rigidity, hoping that by jumping into your corner might get them an invite to your next circle jerk. Focus on doing you and get that right, before you expend the effort required to rag on someone else.

But What Youth wasn’t finished! Now Surfing was in their sites! 

What Youth
What Youth’s contempt grows fiercer, this time at the magazine it decapitated five years ago!

Do you like What Youth‘s role as self-appointed guardians of surfing’s credibility?

Are you part of their radical class (What Youth) or do you see yourself more on the docile, pious side of the game (Surfer, Surfing etc)?

 


“Riding rollers to the big Kahuna-ville!”

Is this the worst depiction of surfing ever?

This Sunday is the Super Bowl and will you watch? For those unawares, the Bronocs from Denver are taking on the Panthers from the Carolinas and it is going to be a total dog, I think. But it won’t really matter because Americans tune in to the Super Bowl religiously.

It is why the National Football League is so extraordinarily powerful. The compulsion to view outweighs almost every good reason not to and so, either purposefully or accidentally, either in rooms crowded with party attenders or lonesome studios, it will be on.

And of course you know that WSL CEO Paul Speaker came from the NFL. He was the Director of Marketing and Ideas. I wonder if he came up with this one?

Which begs the question. Is this the worst depiction of surfing ever?


Memories...
Memories...

Eat Crow: Kelly Slater wins Pipeline Pro!

Minutes after I poke at his surfboards! This one's for you Nick Carroll! It's a trilogy!

I pressed publish on BeachGrit’s newest feature Real Talk not ten minutes before Kelly Slater won the Pipeline Pro a banana surfboard beating Jamie O’Brien, Bruce Irons and a gorgeous little McNamara.

Real Talk talks real and I had written that Slater Designs surfboard are very ugly and they make me not want to surf them and they are poor. And then Kelly Slater won, surfing like a demigod, top turning like Tom Carroll.

Nick Carroll wrote:

Real Talk: That’s about enough Kelly for a while. I mean fucken hell, just this week you’ve had him saving a (non) doomed family, going on about 9/11, and lying next to his wacky quiver for the second time in a row. How much attention does he need?

and then:

Christ now there will be another KS feature won’t there. at least this time it’ll be about his surfing.

Nick Carroll is right! Kelly Slater won and won convincingly and won smoothly and won in my face. Such Kelly style. A master of rubbing a man’s nose in his own excrement. But I still don’t want to ride one of them. Do you? Really? Do you really?


Real Talk: Slater Designs look awful!

Let's be honest. Just for once. Or maybe even twice!

I will tell you firsthand. The surf industry loves more than anything to pat a back whilst, at the same instant, gossiping feverishly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the same. Written glowingly about something I just, minutes before, gagged over. I’ve done it so many times, in fact, that I forget when I loathe and when I love. Which is why BeachGrit‘s newest feature Real Talk is so imperative. We, for the first time ever, are going to call it like we see it. Maybe we’ll be totally wrong but we’ll, at least, be totally honest and dignity may, in some distant future, come crawling back through the door!

Our first offering is Kelly Slater’s new surfboards. Surfing magazine wrote glowingly about them many weeks ago and Stab, as is its wont, just reprinted the same review today. I’m sure I’ve said they look sick to someone but I lied! Study them! I am no shaper, no surf design expert, but every time I see a picture of one of those boards I think, “UGH!” I think “My surfing would be set back 15 years!” I look at the weird Tomo one and think. “No. I’d embarrass myself badly both through the parking lot and on the wave.” I look at the one that has multi steps in the tail and think, “Why the hell does that board look like that?” I look at the one that is maybe supposed to be the high performance shortboard and think, “I don’t need any more potassium in my diet.”

I see many boards that make me want to grab their besotted rails straight away and dance them through a ten point wrap-around carve. I see Slater Designs and think, “If those were the last boards on earth I’d quit.”

But why? What about them disgusts? I don’t quite know. Something visceral for me, maybe, combined with Kelly’s boggy-turned World Tour effort last year. I reached out for expert advice from one of the world’s best shapers but was rebuffed. “I am not going to get suckered into any of that type of stuff right now. The boards are a bit out there, but if he proves successful on them, opinions may change…” he said. But I will say right now. UGH!

Now that’s real talk. Do you disagree? Are you dying to spend dollars on a banana? Are you begging to surf just like you did in the early 1990s?


Blood Feud: Kelly Slater vs The Cabal!

Kelly Slater talks politics, Ralph Nader and conspiracy!

Last night was the official grand opening of the United States of America’s 2016 presidential election. The Iowa Caucus! And if you are not from the US/don’t understand what a “caucus” is that’s ok! Nobody does! Quite basically, both Democrats and Republicans go state by state winnowing their fields to get down to one candidate each and then those candidates bash into the general election and voila! A president!

I was glued to the television all night watching the returns. Politics is a fascinating game. I love each and every nuance, each and every turn of that damning page. Will Bernie Sanders smash the Clinton powerhouse? How far will Donald J Trump ride a wave of populist rage? Can Ted Cruz tuck any more smug into his cellulite? All of it. Every jot.

Of course the country should have something bigger/better/funner than a simple two-party system but it don’t, much to Kelly Slater’s chagrin. Listen to the man talk politics here and also about the global cabal! Do you agree with him? Do you agree with his nod toward a broad conspiracy? Would you vote for his presidency? Since he is not running, though, who would you vote for? Are you a Marco Rubio gal? Do those ears stir your loins?

Nine-11 was a Zionist-CIA conspiracy!
Nine-11 was a Zionist-CIA conspiracy! By Rory Parker. 

It is great to watch Kelly talk politics but my favorite part of the clip is when his interviewer tells Travis Lee (I presume), “We’re in Hawaii. You can do what you want. It’s a free place. That’s what I love about this place here. It’s kind of very easy going.”