If you don’t go to www.worldsurfleague.com like, totally every day then you are missing out. The powers that be at BeachGrit do not believe in the zero-sum game (be damned John Forbes-Nash!). We love (or don’t love) other websites because there is room enough for everyone (except The Inertia) but we love love love www.worldsurfleague.com.
In any case, just yesterday www.worldsurfleague.com did a fab piece on Dane Reynolds receiving the coveted wildcard slot for the upcoming Fiji event. It was titled “Reynolds: Cloudbreak Is Intimidating.”
There were lots of hyperbolic adjectives used (as expected. MDMA flows like Dasani water, apparently, in the Santa Monica offices) but the best sentence read, “Few figures in modern surf history have been more popular, and subsequently more polarizing, than the 29-year-old.”
Polarizing? Dane? Do you know what “polarizing” means? The Webster’s Dictionary shall tell you. “To divide in sharply opposing factions.” That means some people LOVE Dane and some people HATE Dane. Do you know anybody on the street that HATES Dane? I can’t think of any. Do only people in the www.worldsurfleague.com offices HATE Dane? I think yes because he told them to take the tour and shove it. Did they tip their hand in writing this piece by saying they are the only people on earth that HATE Dane? For sure! Which is why I go every day.
Today Nland Surf Park’s CEO Doug Coors (same Coors as the brewery that’s raping the Rockies), announced that he would be opening a surf park nine-football-fields in size (football fields being the standard unit of measure in Texas, of course) with more than 10 individual waves to choose from.
To those poor Austin residents worried that opening a truly massive water park in the middle of one of the worst droughts in history may push the region towards a life not unlike Grapes of Wrath , Nland Surf Park says fear not!
Partnering with the Spanish engineers at Wavegarden, Coors claims that “even in the most challenging drought conditions, the lagoon will be self-sustaining with rainwater.”
The park will produce a bountiful 300 wave per hour. 300 waves that “never lose power or shape, ranging from one to six feet will be yours to hang ten!”
A wave every 60 seconds! Literally machine-like “one, four and perfectly tubing six foot waves.” Each wave offering a “lengthy surfing experience of 35 seconds per wave.”
The park is set to open in 2016. To celebrate the park’s official announcement, Nland released this remarkably clumsy promo, featuring kookiness like so much low hanging fruit.
P.S. Tobe Hooper, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s creator, came up with the film while working at the University of Texas at Austin. He was also born in Austin.
Your beloved BeachGrit broke the news yesterday that Surfing Magazine, a beacon of American journalism, was possibly being outsourced to Indonesia. Wages there cost Surfing’s parent company, The Enthusiast Network, a fraction of what they do in the United States, healthcare costs are minimal and not expected to be subsidized, 401ks do not exist. It is, theoretically, a sound business move but heartbreaking none the less.
Today, the rumor has proven true. Web editor B. Buckley wrote on the Surfing homepage, “We are not leaving.” (read complete missive here) The staff is holed up in a villa, apparently, watching pirated movies but the fun won’t last long. It is assumed Buckley and crew will train the monkeys who sit high above Uluwatu to punch out video edits and almost funny words before being sent into the night like those who worked at Cisco Systems or Dell Computers.
It may look the same but it won’t exactly be the same. Alas, progress marches forward but we will, nevertheless, remember.
In this second round, Rory Parker serves up an ethnic melange worthy of UFC. Ding ding! Now that's the sound of entertainment...
The first fight I remember taking part in happened around the corner from Newport Heights Elementary School a few minutes after the final bell rang.
I was in third grade, a newly enrolled student facing the grind of assimilating into one of the ravenous packs of jackals that comprise childhood social structure. I was having a tough go of it, identifying and conforming to the rough and ready norms and mores embraced by the various naturally forming cliques was proving elusive. My Airwalk sneakers were lame, all the cool kids wore black Vision Street Wear hi tops.
It seemed unfair. To my mind I was a shy and bookish kid who just wanted to make a few friends. In truth I was more than a little obnoxious. Too smart for my own good, with a tendency, never unlearned, to voice whatever comment was currently running through my head. Then, as now, that comment was all too often either rude, cutting, inappropriate, or some combination of the three.
My opponent was one Ben Dover. I have no idea if that was his actual surname, I imagine not. He was in special education, sharing time with us at recess but spending his time learning in a trailer parked next to the baseball diamond. He was a friendly, happy kid. Due to whatever learning disability he grappled with, he was openly referred to as a “retard” in a way that was, in retrospect, viciously cruel, though totally acceptable by late nineteen eigthies standards.
I don’t remember why we were fighting. I suspect that one of the “cool” kids had decided we must, and told everyone during lunch that we would, and by the third grade laws of social pressure we were then required to. I definitely didn’t have a problem with Ben. I didn’t even know him, really.
At 2:45 the bell rang, and we were released into the surrounding neighborhood. Some kids had parents waiting to pick them up, but more commonly we were trusted to navigate our own ways home.
We were around the corner shortly, out of the eyesight of any teachers or administrators. A circle of taunting, gibbering, lunatics formed, with Ben and me at the center. The battle was on.
I shoved him first, he shoved me back. I don’t remember what I said, but it must have been mean. He started crying and tackled me to the ground.
I had assumed, because he was a “retard,” that I could take him. I don’t know why. He was bigger than me, ruddily healthy in the way that slightly slow, but physically strong, people often are, while I was a short, slight, tow headed little grommet. He pinned me down and shook me, not sure how, or not willing to, inflict any actual damage. It wasn’t long before I realized I’d lost and stopped struggling.
Ben let me go, stood up, and the moment he turned his back I kicked him in the ass as hard as I could. He went sprawling, face first, on the concrete, then lie there crying. He didn’t get back up.
I’d won. I was crying and shaking and victorious when I heard an unidentified voice behind speak up in a tone that was impressively sarcastic, for one so young.
“Yeah, Rory, good job on making the retard cry.”
The US Open is such a delightful clusterfuck. Since the days it was called the OP Pro and people burnt shit, up until it became the venue of choice for drunken inlander store window smashing, it’s been a guaranteed source of drama and hijinks. The waves may suck, and you may be forced to park three miles away, but I urge everyone who gets the chance to spend a day enmeshed in the branded exercise in borderline anarchy and child nudity that is Huntington Beach’s yearly WQS10000 event.
1. You’d have to be an idiot to take a swing at Kainoa McGee.
2. What’s with Kala’s beanie?
3. My lawyer wife thinks the dude who got beat should have sued Kainoa, Kala, the company that runs water patrol, and the event sponsor. But of course she does, that’s her job.
I can’t place these kids’ accents. Are they Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans? Anyway, watching kids fight is great, I wish there was a youth boxing circuit nearby so I could do it regularly.
I’d be really hesitant to fight anyone in Hawaii. MMA and joo jeetsoo are just too popular, you never know who’s spent years training to rip people’s limbs off. These guys don’t look like they’ve spent much time in the gym, but the tall dude’s relaxed and nonchalant style makes it pretty clear this ain’t the first time he’s fought someone in a parking lot.
It’s during moments like these, when tempers flare and passion rules, that surfing almost becomes a sport. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of hippies playing in the water and talking about how much they all love each other during post heat interviews.
Current reporting states that the WSL is making moves towards moving the start date of the men’s Fiji Pro forward a few days in order to catch a “phenomenal” swell scheduled to hit Cloudbreak this Friday. That’s nice. Nothing would suck more than another tedious series of lay days followed by guys three-to-the-beaching it in junk surf.
The only problem, Friday is the final day of the women’s event. With the ladies constantly playing second banana to their penis bearing counterparts due to overlapping waiting periods this might’ve been an opportunity to display their skills in honest to god A+ quality barreling surf. Of course, that presupposes that the WSL sees the women’s division as a legitimate sport with world-class athletes, rather than some half-assed sideshow they’re obligated to maintain to stave off feminist indignation.
Today’s decision to run the final day of the girls’ deal in crumbly onshore slop makes the WSL’s stance pretty damn clear. The women aren’t good enough surfers to deserve truly good surf. Even if they somehow luck into it, it’ll just be ripped from their grasp and handed to the men.
I wonder how the girls will feel come Friday, as they watch guys get pitted off their gourds in six-foot Cloudbreak. Will it bother them? Will they rage against the injustice of the situation? Will they ponder their place in an industry that largely portrays them as sex objects unworthy of the respect due any truly talented waterperson?
Or will they heave a sigh of relief?
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
