Gabs: Next time Micro says fuck off I will teach him!

World champ ain't real thrilled about coming second last to average surfer… 

Let’s be real honest. Glenn Hall, an engaging falsetto from Australia’s Central Coast (forget that dubious Irish ancestry that got him into the world amateurs years ago), ain’t the kinda surfer you’d spend money on a webcast to see. (It’s coming!)

And, yet, here, at Snapper Rocks, in miserable little waves the WSL has waited 10 days to surf, and were forced to surf because of the unwieldy nature of having concurrent men’s and women’s events with a total of 45 surfers, he just beat the reigning world champion, the 21-year-old Brazilian Gabriel Medina. By an interference.

The interference was plain enough. Micro had priority. Gabriel pushed it too far; Micro milked it and got it through. Y’could see Micro lighting up on Gabs but you could also sense he pulled his words, just a little, because as every surfer knows, you don’t smack talk a Brazilian, not when his countrymen are “passionate” and whom also enjoy practising a lethal form of jiujitsu.

In his post-heat interview, Micro, who looked like he’d been outfitted by a stylist from Back to the Future with his giant plastic watch and plastic sunglasses housing reflective blue lenses, was smart enough to talk up Gabriel.

“He’s a really good dude, passionate in the water and a legend out of the water.”

What was Gabriel saying to you? the interviewer asked.

“He was telling me to calm down…”

Soon, Gabriel appeared. He was very sad. He said, “You know, the waves are pretty bad. Ten days for waves like this? KP didn’t do a good job… I hope he can do better.”

Gabriel said he was confused by the rule that sunk him and then… unexpectedly… although perhaps it shouldn’t be unexpected given Gabriel’s sulky form, he said, “Next time Glen Hall say fuck you to me, I will teach him…”

Peter Mel, who has never panicked in his life, even at 20-foot Mavs, stole the air and sputtered:

“Uh… uh… uh… not a happy man…”

Ironically, it’s the best thing to happen in this contest. Will the WSL recognise it as such?


That's you, by the way, unable to catch the micro surf on your longboard (mal).
That's you, by the way, unable to catch the micro surf on your longboard (mal).

Surfline has no shame!

It trashes the WSL while taking its $3.50 paycheck.

The Quiksilver Pro is continuing its li’l bit depressing march today, and by the grace of God it will soon end. Those waves! That ugly! And it must be one thing for the WSL to cop flak from what Tracks magazine (the surfer’s bible no less) deemed, “…bottom feeding journalists.” But it must be quite another for them to cop flak for shitty waves from forecast sponsor SURFLINE!

It was poor Pete Mel who usually stood on the beach during those lay days and hyped the upcoming swell, courtesy of Surfline provided models, information, science, “It is going to get good! Hang in there!” But then Surfline runs the story “The Quiksilver Pro Round Two: Because we had to.” Ouch! And to end with a preposition! Double ouch! And “Because we had to” why? Because you were desperate enough to take the $3.50 media partnership that the WSL was offering and forced to cover the event? Triple ouch! The story continues with the clearly snickering line, “The world’s best surfers in the world’s best waves…” Well they got it half right. (Read here!)

But what of all that Pete Mel hyping courtesy of Surfline provided models, information, science? Just rude. They fed the WSL a line and then trash the event after it was clear that no, and I mean NO, waves were ever coming. I guess it is very easy to slap Graham Stapelberg when he is down. “BUT…” I shout as I mount my high horse “…the horrible, unsurfable surf is the one thing I have liked best about this inaugural WSL event!” I like it because it is honest. The ocean is, of course, cruel and the WSL is reacting as best as it can, which is as good as anyone could have reacted. There is absolutely nothing to do with shit surf except cancel, which is just as pointless as running in slop.

Yes, the WSL chose to trot out a silly commentary crew (Pete Mel and Chelsea Cannell totally exempted), chose to change its name to the most asinine thing ever, chose not to change its logo even though it was drawn by an art school drop-out, chose not to pay anyone, chose to let surfers choose stupid numbers, chose to commission a graphics package that looks the way it does, chose to try and be the NFL, chose an almost endless amount of very bad things. But it did not choose this shit surf. This shit surf chose them. It chooses us all. And Surfline can go fuck itself.


Yellow surf trunks
You like a little detail? Wait til you see the care tags and the history of BeachGrit inscribed inside… 

FREE SHIPPING ON BEACHGRIT SURF TRUNKS!

Anywhere in the world! And tees too! But so limited!

Just arrived, and already mostly sold out (friends!), are the BeachGrit four-button fly surf trunks. New colours, too, House of Bourbon red and Zipperhead yellow.

The Zipperheads are all gone; there are two pairs of the House of Bourbon reds (both in 31″ waist); one pair of the Black Eunuchs (black) in 30″; White-ish Eunuchs (grey) in 31″ and the Black Virgin Marys (zebra stripes) in 32″.

All are $US69 with free shipping anywhere in the world. Tell me your t-shirt size (email [email protected]) and I’ll include a sleeveless tee.

All trunks were made as per below.

BeachGrit believes that a pair of trunks must be flattering, a little sophisticated and has some edge and follows these design principles:

1. It is made from the soft cotton. Nylon is so… retro-future don’t you think? Oh, it doesn’t dry as fast? Do you really care enough to wear the same material factories use to manufacture tents?

2. The leg is short.

3. Button flies. With custom buttons. Velcro catches, zips corrode and threaten your vitals. Buttons?  A little extra work, at times, but as reliable as the continual victory of capitalistic democracy over facism.

4. It must be designed by the best in the biz, in this case, a Mr Rama McCabe, a Byron Bay-born surfer of impeccable style. How else can we be assured of the perfect silhouette and detail?

Size-wise, they fit a little big so order one size under.

Click to buy here. 

Any questions email [email protected]


Ask Pam: “I hate you right now!”

And, hey, I'm going to have a baby brother!

Pam Reynolds is the French bulldog of American lovers Courtney Jaedtke and Dane Reynolds. Over the past six months, Pam has become the animal kingdom’s own Dan Savage, giving frank, and often surprising, advice on love, loneliness, whales in captivity, existentialism and the Beyonce-Solange-Jay-Z split.

In this episode, “D” from the British Virgin Islands writes of a love let free and the pain contained therein. “D” also included the synth track “I hate everything about you.”

Alexander from Sydney bemoans humanity. “Some people just shit,” advises Pam.

And from Spain, Andrea Aparicio is curious of Pam’s mama’s impending birth.

“Hi beauty!

Im so expectant about your mother’s last post

Is true you are going to have a sister or brother???


Fighting cock
…but wait, Rory has change of heart and performs emergency surgery on brave little bird.

Candid: I get my kicks killing little animals!

Who knew removing creatures from our earthly kingdom could be so much fun!

It’s a hair past five in the morning and I’m crouched behind a cinder block wall on my back patio waiting for a rooster to step out from the cover of our lychee tree. By Kauai standards it’s freezing, hovering somewhere in the low sixties, but I’m shirtless, being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

My shoe-less feet squelch in unidentified muck (I really need to clean up out here) and a pair of too-big shorts, hastily pulled from the clothes hamper in my mad dash to kill this fucking bird, are falling off my ass, revealing more succulent flesh on which the hovering skeeters can feast.

I’m hunkered down on the balls of my feet, calves starting to scream, barely able to make out the silhouette of the bird over the lip of the wall. The shadow hops to a branch above, seeking a higher vantage point from which to watch over its harem. It freezes, alert to the fact there’s a predator somewhere nearby. I slowly drop behind the wall and count to thirty. My six-month campaign to murder every crowing nuisance with the temerity to set foot on my property has done little to reduce the local rooster population. The sheer number of feral fowl means that killing one only serves to open new territory for landless adolescents to seize.

Perhaps my efforts only serve to cull the dumb. Maybe I’d be better off leaving a single rooster to establish a domain within my yard, patrolling its boundaries and driving off interlopers. Maybe I should just learn to live with a tiny dinosaur that spends its days screaming its ownership of my domain. Maybe.

I’d much rather sit in the cold and wait for it to turn, to present an opportunity at either the head or the area between its shoulder blades, to drop it in a single shot. Failing that I’ll hurl this .177 cal hollow point pellet at 1200 feet per second through the center of its body and leave it to die a slow death in the underbrush. Not exactly humane, but I’m far past such concerns. Dead is dead, and the local environment will break it down into its constituent parts before it has a chance to stink.

According to local lore the feral rooster population on Kauai is a result of Hurricane Iniki, which in 1992 tore through the Hawaiian archipelago doing nearly 2 billion dollars worth of damage. The majority of devastation was on Kauai, thousands left homeless and the entire island forced to live without electricity for months. The hurricane also freed countless roosters, bred for local cockfighting rings, into the verdant wilderness that comprises the majority of the land. They reproduced at an explosive rate and nowadays it’s impossible to set foot anywhere on the island without seeing a dozen of them running around, standing watch over their hens and chicks or fighting for dominance in a gas station parking lot.

With the exception of exceptionally courageous feral cats and the odd pig-hunting dog lost to eke out an existence in the hills until it’s killed by starvation and parasites, the birds have no predators. Further exacerbating the situation are soft-hearted fools who would seek to protect the birds, claiming that they add a quaint charm to the island. Which I suppose they do, if your only exposure comes during the three weeks a year you spend in your Hanalei vacation rental.

But those are the type of people who feed feral cats at a local park, the kind who ask, “Why don’t you just trap them?” as though tricking a large vicious bird into a cage somehow eliminates the need to wring its neck and drive its corpse to the dump.

I know that I have no real chance of victory, that every rooster I kill just allows another to thrive. I’m little more than a sanguinary Sisyphus, following Camus’s exhortation and reveling in my pointless task. The struggle itself must be enough to fill my heart.

So, slowly, I raise my head, peering through the scope of my rifle at a living being I’m about to remove from this earth for no other reason than that it has annoyed me. It shifts on its branch and in that moment I have my shot. I squeeze the trigger and put a piece of lead through its body.

It is not a clean kill. The rooster drops from the tree, squawking and thrashing in a hopeless effort to rid itself of the pain. The hens and chicks scatter. In its panic the rooster runs toward me, then turns and makes a crippled hopping effort to find the safety of cover. It drags a wing, dripping blood in the dirt. I have time to reload and take another shot. I’m rewarded with a burst of feathers. The rooster’s struggles slow. I fire once more from close range, an easy shot to the head.

I head back inside, wide awake, and crack a Pacifico before dawn. The corpse needs to be picked up, but still doesn’t mean dead, and I have no desire to have a spur slash me open. I drink the beer, letting the rooster bleed into the dirt. Garbage pickup is tomorrow so I can skip the drive to the dump.

The corpse gets double bagged and tossed in the trash.