If you’re living in the northern hemi, you’re
drinking in the final few weeks of summer. Soon, there’ll be no
shredding before or after work, just a world of dark, and crowded
weekends.
My advice? Punch out a few pre-dawn to post-dusk surfs before
your part of the world starts to tilt away from the sun. Surf so
much you have enough memories to drag you through winter.
Right now, north of the equator, it’s possible to surf from
five-thirty am til eight pm. It ain’t easy but the rewards are
magnified for reasons I’ll explain below.
1. You’ll own the lineup: First surfer out
always has a proprietorship over the waves. Every single surfer who
paddles out early will see you as the wave’s caretaker and will
generally yield in those first few early hours. This is presuming
of course that this is your regular surf spot.
2. Surf yourself into form: By surfing for over
a dozen hours straight you’ll experience a sharpness in your
surfing you’ve never felt before. Want to know why John John
Florence and Dane Reynolds are the best two surfers in the world?
They’re hippos. They boil in their tanks! They never get out!
3. Meet your surfboard: Catch a hundred-plus
waves in a row, on the same day, and your surfboard will become as
familiar as an old friend (or a terrible foe). Suddenly, you’ll
feel your fins, the concave under the front foo
4. Experience thirst like a marooned sailor:
There’ll come a point when it becomes absolutely necessary to beach
a wave and suck on a tap. You hear about cats on life rafts, lost
at sea, drinking seawater such is their madness. Water never tasted
so fine. Better than ice-cold Coca Cola served from a dusty vending
machine!
5. It’s profound: See a sun rise and watch
it set on the same day and know that you’ve watched earth’s daily
360 at work.
6. The day belonged to you: You were the first
in and the last out. The day belonged to you.
Satisfying? Yes and yes.
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Troubling: Scientology recruiting surf
fans!
By Chas Smith
Group masquerading as anti-drug turns out to be L.
Ron Hubbard disciples! Chaos ensues!
If you think that the Billabong Pro, Tahiti is
the only show in town than you have another thing coming. The Vans
Pro, in Virginia Beach, is on right now. Surfer Michael Dunphy
wowed the home crowd last year with his small wave attack
and slack-jawed “who me?” expression. Will he repeat or
will Matt Passaquindici topple the king? Tune in!
Also, the Sooruz Lacanau Pro, at Grande Plage, Lacanau France is
running. Next heat features Andy Criere, Enzo Cavallini, Edouard
Delpero and Luis Diaz Urrejola. Which one is on your fantasy
team?
Speaking of fantasy teams, Scientology is also at the Sooruz
Lacanau Pro but secretly. The Local, France’s news in
English reported today that, “…the event’s organizers thought that
it would be the perfect place to spread information about the
dangers of drugs. Accordingly, the anti-drug association ‘Non
à la drogue, oui à la vie’ (No to drugs, yes to life) was granted
permission to set up a stall at the event, where members would hand
out notices to people about narcotics and get them to sign
petitions.
However, two days into the competition, which runs from August
13th to 23rd, the organizers noticed that the stall was not all
that it seemed. After being alerted to some of the
conversations taking place at the stall, the organizers reportedly
realized that the association was in fact financed by the Church of
Scientology.
‘They were converting. We were fooled, misled,’ a spokesperson
for the surfing competition was quoted as saying by Le
Parisien.”
Scientology is considered a sect in France, thus not afforded
the traditional liberte, egalite, fraternite, and the offending
zealots were forcibly removed from the event. Who do you think they
were after though? Do you think they wanted Nanook Ballerin to
swing on over to the L. Ron side? Do you think they hoped for a
true star like Michael Dunphy and his open-mouthed “huh?” appeal? I
would have to think that Michael Dunphy would grow into the Tom
Cruise of professional surfing in Scientology’s hands. An
unstoppable juggernaut.
“Any of you babes wanna hook up to my e-meter? We
could do some really fly auditing.” -Michael Dunphy
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Sufficiently Fierce: Day three, Billabong
Pro, Tahiti!
By Derek Rielly
…where John John loses, but only just, as Gabriel
rigs his sails, finally!
World title defences are, for the most, subdued and
Gabriel Medina, currently wearing a shame face in
fifteenth, is nothing if not conformist.
What we’ve forgotten in the furious gale of Toledo-fever is that
Gabriel has a weird witchcraft. This ability to look like he’s
sleep-walking and…yet… grab his competitors by the throat and
fling their carcass out of an event. It’s incomprehensible and
awful to some, genius to others.
Did you watch his round three with John John? As uncanny as John
John’s tube riding is, as much as his post-barrel turns take your
breath away, as much as he collects nines on every ride, he
couldn’t beat the stubborn world champ. John was lost in
astonishment.
And do you remember last year? When Gabriel beat Kelly Slater
who was in the form of his life, in the best waves surfed at a
Teahupoo contest?
A little prediction. Gabriel will wash the year away with a win,
maybe two (France, Portugal), finish top four and return,
enthusiastic and fabulous, for title two in 2016.
In the meantime, Aritz Aranburu thrashed Mick Faning, Italo
Ferriera, who could talk the hind-legs off his favourite dog in the
post-heat interviews, found ramps and Filipe ended Brett Simpson’s
fanciful dream of a ninth or better.
Full report here!
Billabong Pro Tahiti Round 3
Results:Heat 1: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 16.97 def. Brett
Simpson (USA) 12.50Heat 2: Kai Otton (AUS) 13.13 def. Bede Durbidge
(AUS) 12.00
Heat 10: Kelly Slater (USA) vs. Sebastian Zietz (HAW)
Heat 11: Jeremy Flores (FRA) vs. Joel Parkinson (AUS)
Heat 12: Julian Wilson (AUS) vs. C.J. Hobgood (USA)
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Scandal: Surfer caught plagiarizing!
Again!
By Chas Smith
In a move rocking the publishing world, Surfer
Magazine admits (basically) that it has run out of ideas.
8ish short months ago, Surfer Magazine
took a cover concept from the defunct, but brilliant,
Transworld Surf. It featured John John Florence with the
words “Watch the Throne” written bold. As stated on this very
website, the unattributed “borrowing” was, “Not a long enough time
ago for Surfer’s issue to be homage. Not a short
enough time ago to be ‘we thought of it first just printed late.’
Just the right amount of time ago to be uh oh!” (read whole story here!)
And they have done it again. Transworld‘s first cover
under its brilliant, yet enigmatic, creative director Sam Allen,
showed a young African boy bodyboarding a wave whilst sticking out
his tongue in black and white. It was as bold as it was perfect and
I asked Mr. Allen about it one day. How in the world did the
magazine agree to such different cover? He told me that he had to
swap everything out under cover of darkness and sneak it in. Have
you ever heard of such a thing at a major publication? His
instincts were, of course, right and today that cover is lauded as
one of the best of all time.
Though it is very well known, Surfer apparently has no
moral objection to borrowing the concept for their latest cover and
feature the same boy (maybe) with his friends standing in the waves
and smiling. In black and white.
Sources have confirmed that the Surfer staff is
thinking about re-naming their website PeachGrit. We will,
of course, keep you up to date.
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Reading: Five Breezy Escapist Books!
By Rory Parker
Who needs serious or wrist-slitting depression?
Elevate!
I like to read, and if you enjoy BeachGrit,
which is more than a little text heavy, I can only assume you do
too. Here’s a list of a few of my favorite books. Good books,
to be sure, but not heavy reading by any means. Reading should be
fun, provide escapism, make you laugh.
There’s a place for seriousness, but we don’t all have the
fortitude to slog our way through Joyce, or try to understand what
the fuck Pynchon is talking about, or deal with the wrist-slitting
depression Bukoswki brings to the table.
#1 Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne
What begins as a funny but relatively realistic
bildungsroman slowly but surely moves into the realm of
the absurd. This might be my favorite book of all time. It follows
Nick Twisp, a no more than averagely horny fourteen-year-old boy,
through a series of increasingly serious and ridiculous
misadventures, all motivated by little more than his desire to get
his dick wet.
#2 Dune by Frank Herbert
You’ve probably read Dune, it’s one of the most famous
and critically acclaimed scifi novels ever written. Herbert manages
to tell an exciting tale of space wars, knife fights and giant sand
worms, all wrapped up in an allegory about the danger humanity
faces every time they lift someone to the status of “hero.”
The first book in the series is the easiest to swallow, as it
progresses it wanders into philosophically strange territory. I
love them all, but the later installments aren’t for everyone. But
Dune... anyone who says they don’t love it is a filthy
liar.
#3 Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Robin Hobb is the second nom de plume of Margaret Astrid
Lindholm Ogden, one of the most hyper-prolific and soul crushing
talented writers in the world. Each year she drops a new
book, each year it is absolutely superb. Assassin’s
Apprentice is the first instalment in her Realm of the
Elderlings series, which currently numbers fifteen novels. It’ll
suck you in and leave you crying and she manages to make you love
her characters, then subjects them to utter anguish.
#4 Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn
Set in a pre-gentrification Huntington Beach, Tapping the
Source follows Ike Tucker, a desert rat turned surfer in an
attempt to find who is responsible for his sisters death. It
doesn’t wax poetic about ersatz soul, it portrays surfers as they
generally are, self-involved hedonistic scumbags. Violent,
cruel, graphic. It is, in my opinion, Nunn’s finest work.
#5 Can’t You Get Along With Anyone by Allan
Weisbecker
Just kidding, this book fucking sucks.
Like most, I was a huge fan of In Search Of Captain
Zero. Great story, especially if you take the author at his
word and assume it’s all true. Which it, of course, isn’t. Writers
are, by nature, professional liars and you shouldn’t trust a word
they say.
I’ve got a longstanding personal beef with Weisbecker, and by
all indications I’m one of many. CYGAWA is, ostensibly, a
memoir, but is in reality a pile of self-indulgent garbage penned
by a misanthropic prick with little to no personal insight.
The following Amazon review does a good job of explaining the
situation:
My biggest beef, I suppose, is this: Weisbecker makes a big
deal–A REALLY BIG DEAL–about the ins and outs of good writing.
Talks a lot about building suspense, carrying the reader along,
giving the reader a pay-off at the end. He talks about his
obligation to the reader. And yet, when it comes to executing those
very things he preaches (in a manner so pompous I can only assume
his picture is used to illustrate the entry for “blowhard” in
Wikipedia), he completely drops the ball.
About half way through I got sick of his mewling self-pity.
About three quarters of the way through I decided to stop reading.
At the end, with him curled in a ball, unable to confront his
toxic, two-timing lover, I all but threw the book across the room
shouting “That’s it? That’s it, you complete pussy?”
