The WSL is not (currently) on the block but if it
was......
The markets are emotionally unstable 13
year-old girls aren’t they just though? One day it is blue skies
and soaring stocks. The next day plummeting depression and Chinese
corrections.
And speaking Chinese, did you read today that Dalian Wanda
Group, headed by China’s richest man Wang Jianlin ($37.5 b) bought
the Ironman Triathlon today for $650,000,000.00? The Ironman
Triathlon! Swim/bike/run!
Six/hundred/and/fifty/million/United/States/Dollars!
The original Ironman is, of course, Hawaiian, being first run on
the Big Island. There are lots now, maybe 200 or so but the season
ends each year back where it all began. Kailua-Kona!
In any case, DWG wanted the event to diversify their portfolio
(because Chinese stocks are all shit right now. Buy low! Sell
high!) and are actively looking to purchase more sports’
properties. Sports are hot across the board right now because they
are generally enjoyed in real time and have multiple revenue
sources. Which brings me to the real nut. Will the Chinese try
to buy the World Surf League?
Let’s pretend they do want it. How much do you think it is
worth, really? Oh, don’t be a hater. Whether you love or very
dislike, it must be admitted that professional surfing is a going
concern with growth potential. And Ironman actually had massive
debt. So how much? How much do you think it is actually worth and
how much do you think CEO Speaker and co. would take for it?
Also, do you think if we all got together we could crowd fund
that amount?
Terrorizing gutless Florida peaks. Ain't a thing
funner!
Three months (or has it been four? Maybe five…)
of gloom and doom, fog and wind have come to an end here in San
Francisco.
Save a few short hours of rare light, breathless afternoons,
small southerly pulses, it’s been a summer of lowered expectations
or jaded proclamations.
I haven’t surfed in months, some say! But I have.
Growing up on the Gulf Coast of Florida, with even the slightest
hint of swell we’d be out there, trading logs in trunks, boiling in
the balmy brine. For twenty years I lived like that.
A too-many-year-long stint in New York City, a brief foray back
home, and now three years of San Francisco. I’m still a goddamned
child as far as groveling goes.
For three years I’ve surfed more and better than I have in my
life, even these last three months. The right boards, the right
drugs, the right amount of desire, and piddly windswell feels
fresh and fun and easy fucking breezy.
At night, like all of you bastards, I get lost down rabbit holes
of surf clips. I’ve watched Nathan Florence’s gorgeous Chopes
grinder 100 times.
I’ve fallen asleep (not out of disinterest, though!)
to Sampler and Brother and Cluster – ripe
with boosts and barrels and boring fucking lifestyle filler
– regularly, waking alone on my couch or in my office, my dog
snoring like freight train.
But more than anything I’ve watched clips of Cory and Shea, Eric
and Evan, Gorkin and Hopper, absolutely terrorizing gutless Florida
peaks and Dirty Jerz beachies.
Because that’s the real shit right there.
Brighter and bigger days lie ahead for us here in the land of
ripping tidal currents, schizophrenic wind and weather. Surely this
fall will be a dream.
But never forget summer, you bunch of babies.
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Jill Hansen is the Hawaiian surfer and "model" who was
charged last year with second-degree attempted murder after a
73-year-old Hawaii woman was seriously injured after being struck
by a hit-and-run driver in the garage of her own apartment
building. In 2010, Ms Hansen spoke at TEDx on supernaturalism,
divinity, omnipresence, telekinesis and spirituality. Like,
yike!
The “professional” surfer Jill Hansen has been
found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity…
A quick recap: Hansen, a self-styled
“professional” surfer in her early thirties, was charged with
second-degree attempted murder for an attack in which she stole a
73-year-old woman’s car, ran her over with it, and attempted to
flee.
Somewhat notorious in the surf world for her delusional self
aggrandizement, Hansen is also known for performing what may be the
best TEDX talk ever.
The trial, delayed due to her ongoing mental health issues, was
a brief affair, involving only testimony from three mental health
experts, “who all agreed that she suffered from multiple symptoms
including voices, paranoia, and grandiose delusions and was not
capable of understanding what she was doing was wrong.”
Dr Tom Cunningham, a psychologist who’d examined Hansen both
before, and after, the attack asserted on Wednesday, “She has had
this very serious illness for a long time. I know that the
prosecution pointed out just because you have this disorder doesn’t
mean you are not responsible for what you do, but she has been
seriously impaired for a long time.”
Lest the ruling confuse any of the more bloody minded among us,
this does not mean Hansen gets off scot-free. Far from it.
Rather than a clearly defined sentence, Hansen now faces an
indeterminate time in Hawaii’s only state run mental institution.
(Click here to read about that.)
It is NOT a happy place.
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Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! | Photo: Steve
Sherman/@tsherms
How I sometimes wish I was born in 1995 and on
gorgeous Copacabana.
Yesterday’s discussion of Filipe Toledo’s brave
cowardice opened my social accounts’ floodgates. Brazilians
unfollowing in droves! Angry messages in the inbox!
And oh how the jealousy burns in my heart. As
a middle-aged American, you see, it is very difficult to
get excited about other American’s accomplishments. I grew,
unfortunately, in the 1980s-1990s and it was uncool to show any
sort of patriotic love for country. It was very cool to be ironic
and slacky and shoe-gazey.
And oh how I’ve been robbed because I watch young Brazilians
defend Filipe Toledo on the merits of him being a Brazilian and how
fun does it look? Like a wonderful extra pastime. Like pure
heaven.
Of course, it is thinly veiled racism to say Brazilians are
“passionate” or “fiery” and that is not what I am saying. I am
saying I’m jealous of the ones who have unfollowed, the ones who
post screeds on message boards, who dance in their hearts when
Adriano de Souza wins and cry in their caipirinhas when Gabs Medina
loses because it looks a lot funner than gazing at my shoes.
Brasil, eu te amo.
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"You cannot be a hero without being a coward," said the
playwright George Bernard Shaw. So wise! Watch Filipe turn this
worst-heat-in-the-forty-year-history-of-professional-surfing into
the motivation that gets him over the ledge at Pipeline in
December.
Is not taking off on a wave in a WSL heat, in front
of the world, the bravest thing ever?
Filipe Toledo put on a stunning display of cowardice in
his heat 5 round 1 battle vs. I. Ferreira. His score total
(0) matched his moxie and wow! The lowest point total in
professional surfing history.
As the Brazilian bobbed in the water, not surfing, he surely
must have known the haters were boiling in their tanks but he chose
to bob, lonely against the steel grey sky, and brave.
Yes, brave because I would, and will, argue that it is sometimes
more difficult to not get smashed in order to prove a larger point,
thereby getting smashed by public opinion.
But wait. Is Filipe somehow bigger than that?
WILL he get smashed by public opinion. Hello, surf historian
Matt Warshaw, curator of the Encyclopedia of Surfing (click
here)!
Charlie: Is Filipe going to get smashed by public
opinion after Teahupoo?
Matt: He is.
Charlie: Fair? Or not fair?
Matt: Depends on how Filipe plays it. He needs to humble this
one out, big-time. Fail-wise, it was just beyond epic. And so very
public. And after what Sally Fitz did at Cloudbreak, and with
Flores surfing with a brain injury or whatever, you can’t play the
injury card. I mean, Filipe’s deal is un-spinnable. He isn’t ready
for prime time at Teahupoo. Or Cloudbreak. Or even J-Bay. I’m his
biggest north-of-50 fan, and I feel sort of crushed by what I saw.
All Filipe can do now is come out and say that he’s got a mile of
hard work to do in the premier WCT breaks. And meanwhile, like Sean
Doherty said yesterday (read here), if he does go on and win the world
title, which is totally possible, it’s gonna come with an
asterisk.
Charlie: But what if Filipe got really brave, steeled
his backbone and said, “Guess what bitches? I love to surf
head-high, puntable waves. It’s who I am, yo! And I’m going to win
a title surfing only Gold Coast, Rio, Trestles and the rest if they
small enough. Booya!” What if he admitted, to the entire world,
that he ain’t brave. Wouldn’t that be brave?
Matt: Damien Hardman won two world titles that way, except he
didn’t say anything. Gary Green didn’t paddle out for his heat at
Waimea one year, I think it was the ’86 Billabong Pro, when it was
huge, and if he didn’t own if with total gusto, he shrugged and
said “I’m a smoker, never done a day of exercise in my life, never
surfed this horrifying place, so fuck it.” Then again, Green quit
the tour the following year, so maybe he wasn’t feeling so casual.
Even if Filipe has the game to say he’s a small-wave specialist,
God he’d just get so smashed in the media. And I think he really
does want to be magical in heavy surf, like he is in small surf. He
must just be choking on frustration right now. He’d never say it,
but you know what makes it way harder for him I bet?
Charlie: Italo.
Matt: Italo, exactly. Rookie paddles out there and keeps up with
every big-swinging dick on the lineup. Italo could have won the
thing! First time at Teahupoo!
Charlie: Brazil-bashing isn’t so vogue this
year.
Matt: Italo! Anyone who tuned this week and didn’t fall in love
with guy is heartless.
Charlie: I’m heartless! Theoretically, I liked that
Italo tried his best but, in real life, trying one’s best does
nothing for me. For example. I was in Tahiti last year, in a boat,
in the channel, obvs, because it was pumping. Mikey Wright, Owen’s
brother was doing magical things but poor young Kanoa Igarashi was
there and looking completely terrified. But nobody made him be
there. He clearly did not like that vibe and good for him! Get back
on the boat and pop a Hinano, or whatever it is young boys are
drinking these days. Own the gutless or paddle the fuck in. I have
done both in my life and both are wonderful in their own
ways.
If you are telling me that Filipe really wants to surf
those waves then why did he not surf those waves? Nobody in the
line-up? Manageable size? He don’t! He wants to punt and
dance!
Matt: But Filipe could kick it up. People find that gear later
on. Potter didn’t like big waves as a kid, then later he did.
Fanning couldn’t surf Teahupoo early on, now he can. Who knows.
Could just my own wishful thinking with Filipe…
Charlie: And give me other examples guys who don’t want
it? Because you just made Gary Green my fav surfer
ever.
Matt: Dora said he was a “four-foot-and-under man” and gave
loving long descriptions of how scared he was on the North Shore.
Except then he flipped the thing on its head, because he actually
charged Pipe and Waimea. Kylie Webb, you’d love her! Gorgeous
blonde, and drank herself off the tour in the ’90s. But before that
happened, she paddled out for a heat at Sunset, in big waves,
pulled a Filipe and got a zero, then threw her 17th-place
prize money check back at the contest director in disgust and said
“I don’t deserve this. Buy the judges some beer.”
Watch Filipe’s zero-point heat here!
And remember when the Margaret River Pro moved to the Box?
Gabriel Medina, I’m told, had to be coaxed into the lineup with the
words, “You’re the world champ! You have to
surf!”
