Once, Lewis Samuels was the biggest thing in surf
lit. Oh how we miss his raspy, lung cancerous tone!
The dessert spoon overflows with choux pastry and
chocolate-flavoured crème patissiere. The surf blogger is
nervous at first and uses a sentence with the word “gay” in it. His
protests are short.
Like every other man before him, he soon begs for the éclair,
mouth open. I upturn the spoon upon his tongue, which greedily rims
the crème patissiere, suddenly free to explore and experience.
“Delicious?” I ask.
“This is a joke! This is a joke,” he repeats, suddenly
ashamed.
One hour later, Lewis, the half-Jewish surf blogger from
Bolinas, 45 minutes north of San Francisco, is sitting naked and
cross-legged, his naturally-curly hair teased into a brown ball,
MacBook balanced in his lap.
Lewis is at Stab magazine, an Australian surf title
that I once edited and owned. He had agreed to an interview and to
a studio portrait that you can find here. The interview, that
I’ve reproduced below, charts the rise of the online surf community
he created for his now-defunct website PostSurf, praises
him for the sharpness of his keystrokes and his excellent sense of
humour, but puts him to sword for his dreadful Andy Irons interview
for Surfline in 2009 and for his juvenile liptstick communism.
I asked Kelly Slater for his opinion about Lewis. Kelly replied:
“Lewis just basically riles you up and puts a flame under your
weaknesses and does his best to expose you and keep you honest.
Every sport has it’s detractors but few actually get through on a
personal and visible level to a lot of athletes but that’s probably
cause of the nature of surfing and the lifestyle and accessibility
surfers have to people around them. I have emailed with him a
few times. Not sure if it was between heats meaning I was
needing a pep talk or something but may have been between
rounds. I think he’s funny. My brother wanted to punch him
out for what he had written recently cause he didn’t see the
humour in it and was being protective. He tends to ride the line
with people and will probably get punched by someone soon or
barred from going places comfortably. That’s kind of genius
to put your true thoughts and opinions out there for people
to read like he does. Not a lot of people are truly honest in this
world with what they are thinking cause they’re scared of the
repercussions. He definitely rattled a few cages in his short
surf-writing career. He did probably inspire me to step it up at
Trestles after gassing out at J-Bay to Taj. Probably helped me stay
more aware of keeping myself fit and ready and hydrated during
contests. He actually has gifts for people if they take it the
right way.”
Such memories!
DR: On your website PostSurf you once wrote: “I feel for
Dane. It’s professional courtesy – one false messiah tipping
his hat to another. It’s a tough business, leading from on high,
tacked on that cross.” Do you think you are seen as a messiah,
and are you false, and are you crucified?
Lewis: People give a little too much credit to what I write and
they take it too seriously. In terms of being crucified, what I was
alluding to for both Dane and I, was that people expect you to have
some great importance when realistically most of the things we do
in our lives don’t have much importance.
You are the biggest thing in surfing, word-wise. You are
the leader, the thought-provoker and the trendsetter. Is it a
revenge of the nerds scenario? Skinny Jewish kid, sorry half-Jew,
uses keyboard to slaughter the jocks?
There’s an interesting trend in popular culture and you see it
in the hipster thing and in movies like Juno where everyone wants
to be the quirky, unique one. Getting credit for their ideas, not
just fitting in, non-conformity being a plus instead of a minus.
There’s an aspect of that to it.
Are you thrilled that top pro surfers hang on your every
keystroke?
It’s baffling they read it or care. I don’t blame them for being
affected by it. It’s pretty gnarly reading what people say about
you. At the same time, it never occurred to me that they’d take it
seriously. Why the fuck would they care what I had to say? There’s
no reason to. It’s trying to say the things that haven’t been said
because the surf media’s pretty controlled, there’s a pretty tight
lid on it. And, you just wanna be able to see that discourse that
you hear when you’re at a party, having a drink and talking about
surfing. You just wanna hear those things said out loud.
You often write about your hardboiled drinking. Yet,
when we drank together you nearly fainted after a couple of
long-balls and a few vodkas. What is drinking to you and how
hardboiled are you?
It’s all about a consistent intake during working hours. Staying
consistently drunk in your working hours, that’s where I’m at.
Does drinking give you a feeling of
boldness?
It’s not about being in the office and conveying things in a
responsible manner, it’s about trying to get to the heart of the
emotions behind it and that comes out better with alcohol on your
breath. That’s all it is. It’s not so much that I’m constantly
drunk, but consistently drinking.
A constant theme on postsurf is the lack of spine in
surf media. Yet, I must put you to the sword for your dreadful Andy
Irons interview. In the middle of AI’s public meltdown, you didn’t
go near the reasons or causes. Like the rest of us, you crumble at
the moment of truth. Tell me about the feeling of capitulation and
weakness.
Ohhhh, man. The Andy Irons thing. At that point, I was still
trying to play the game. And the numbers were huge. And the
repercussions were huge even if people like you read it, snickered,
and said, “Aw, that’s a bulls**t piece.” Some of the frustration
with that experience manifested itself in creating Postsurf. At a
certain point, I no longer was happy writing stuff that was
controlled by a corporation that had relationships with advertisers
and managers and surfers. I just wanted to say the things I wanted
to say. And, now it means I don’t have an active mainstream career
in the surf media.
On your site you wrote, the three biggest problems in
surfing are: shithouse writers, jiu-jitsu and Joel
Tudor.
Well, I’m responsible for one of those three problems. The
jiu-jitsu thing, on the other hand… where I live, if men want to
have sex with other men, they just do it.
You mentioned the ironically named Fred Van Dyke saying
big-wave riders are “latent homosexuals”. Latent homos, as you
know, never consciously express their desires. It is a covert, not
overt, desire. But, isn’t jiu-jitsu an overt expression of a desire
to hold men? Can I ask you this: do you think Joel Tudor wrestles
for sensual pleasure rather than to satisfy a competitive
urge?
You can definitely draw some conclusions that there are sexual
undertones. I’m not noticing the technical holds or the moves. I’m
just going, there’s a man’s face and there’s Joel’s crotch. And the
man’s face is being grasped and pulled into Joel’s crotch. By
Joel.
What’s the problem with Joel?
People look at him like another false Messiah. If he’s really that
talented of an athlete I would love to see him ride functional
surfboards instead of archaic pieces of shit. He’s never really
challenged himself to go ride modern equipment in perfect waves to
see what would happen; just to see. For me, there’s a place for
that stuff, when the waves suck. When it’s big and barreling, why
do you want to hold yourself back? It’s a marketing gimmick.
Technology has offered us better equipment to enjoy surfing. Better
wetsuits, trunks, legropes. And, I’m not sure why, but when it
comes to surfboards some of us ride shitty surfboards from 35 years
ago that barely work. There was a great quote from Wayne Lynch,
years back, on how Joel was trying to get some vintage Wayne Lynch
board to ride at Tavarua and Wayne laughed at him and said: “The
board sucked at the time and it sucks now, so why waste your time
riding it.” And, that’s my feeling.
You are the self-proclaimed most hated man in surfing.
Is there a pressure to keep the insults coming?
I definitely don’t think I’m the voice of a generation when it
comes to surfing. I just think that there are some crazy
motherfuckers out there who take what I say way too seriously. I’m
just taking the piss in the end. – Derek Rielly.
