Scary: The Lunada Bay Boys strike again!

Wanton violence erupts on Southern California's beaches.

We at BeachGrit take the issue of surf localism very seriously and, as such, have reported on each and every turn of the Bay Boys saga. “Boy” may confuse the reader due the “middle-aged” nature of the “gang” that “terrorizes” Southern California’s Lunada Bay but the fear they strike into the heart is very real.

Recently, a British journalist was teased when he tried to surf (read his terrifying account here). And even more recently, one 56-year-old surfer told another 66-year-old surfer to “Get out of the water.”

According to the Daily Breeze:

Just before 7 a.m. on July 31 a 56-year-old surfer called police to the 700 block of Paseo del Mar in Bluff Cove to report alleged harassment from a 66-year-old surfer who told him to get out of the water, said Sgt. Tony Gonzalez. The man said he feared retaliation on his car parked above the beach.

When officers arrived, the alleged heckler told police the caller actually was the aggressor and pointed to a group of fellow surfers to back his claims.

Officers took down the man’s information and returned to the blufftop to inspect the caller’s car, finding no damage, Gonzalez said.

But about an hour later, the victim called again to report that his flip-flops were stolen from the beach while he was surfing and his vehicle had been kicked with muddy footprints.

You read it right. His flip-flops were stolen and his vehicle kicked with muddy footprints. It’s hard to think of such wanton violence in relation to our meditative art but such is our fallen world. Read the rest of the story here if you have the stomach.


Pragmatic: “Shoot rogue sharks!” says surf legend!

Wayne Deane, yeah Noa’s pops, ain’t one to mess around… 

If you came of age, like I did, on Queensland’s Gold Coast, when the surname Deane comes up, you don’t automatically think of boy wonder Noa.

You think of Wayne. The shaper. The minimalist surfer owning the sets on any swell of note that swings around Point Danger. One of the tough, old-school men.

Respect? Yeah, he got.

When Ballina, an hour south, started turning into some kinda bad remake of Jaws, with Great White attacks and sightings of 20-footers common, Wayne said what was on a lot of surfers’ minds.

A shark hits someone? Shoot ‘em. 

After surfer Craig Ison was hit by a White at Evans Head last week, Wayne told the Gold Coast Bulletin (who thought I’d ever quote the Bulletin!), “They should’ve killed that shark. That’s what happens when a dog bites a kid, they euthanise the dog… I wouldn’t go surfing down there (Northern NSW) unless there was a drone hovering over my head keeping watch.”

According to the GCB, “Mr Deane said sharks were coming close the beaches in such large numbers and it was only a matter of time before another attack. ‘I just think something needs to be done,” he said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether they are being protected, human life is being lost and life is being maimed.’”

The Gold Coast, as the story points out has had drum-lines in place in 1962, and you want to know how many fatal attacks that’ve happened in 53 years? This little stretch of coast with the most dense surf population in the world and one that’ll surf, quite literally, at night? Take a guess. Twenty? A dozen?

Zero.

Read the full story here. 

 


Mesmerizing: Teahupo’o from the air!

The land of crushed skulls, or whatever, has never looked so beautiful!

Have you never been? You should remedy! But while searching for air fares, open up another window and watch this lovely footage from Ashley Gasper. The prettiest corner of the world? Excluding Nusa Dua lot S 6, probably.

Surfing Teahupoo Tahiti Huge XXL Waves July 2015 Drone Footage from Ashley Gasper on Vimeo.


Help Get Scott Aichner Back in the Water!

Buy an original Aichner transparency! Get the king back in the drink!

Scott Aichner is a Ventura-based bodyboarder with a wrestler’s neck, torso and hams. He is also, or at least was, maybe still is, more on that soon, one of surfing’s great exponents of the wide-angle water shot.

In the early to mid-2000s, Ike based himself on Oahu, never missing a swell at Off the Wall, and when that season passed, would walk the camino trail to Puerto Escondido. Ike was Surfer magazine’s prized staffer and his images filled 80 magazine covers across the world.

A thinker, Ike even came up with a dual-camera device able to shoot a 270-degree angle. But, like a lot of surf photographers, Ike quit the game when print mags began their inevitable contraction as surf co’s moved to cheaper, more effective advertising online.

“The mags were shrinking rapidly,” he says. “This was in 2009 and selling print ads was becoming harder. I also wanted to surf when the waves were good.”

Ike says he always had this “little guilty dude on my shoulder whispering, ‘You should really be shooting not surfing.”

Lately, however, the old itch is back.

“I miss the hunt and the score, when you and the surfer realise you just nailed it.”

But it ain’t stills this time. Ike wants to shoot motion. Slow motion. Using the vaguely accessibly ($25,000) RED cams developed by Oakley founder Jim Jannard.

And so, in the words of Ike, he’s selling “30 of my most-prized images to raise enough dollars to buy a high-speed movie camera. Get a housing built and jump back in the water.”

Ike says it’s like “selling a little bit of your soul, Yeah, it stings.”

He’s posting one image a day on ebay. “Opening bids are $US1400 for the main image. The image is an 8 x 12″ print with the original slide mounted below, lit with a  battery-powered LED light box behind. The matte is 16 x 16 and the total frame size is 19.5 x 19.5″. I wanted to produce one-of-a-kind surf art.”

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What thrills him so about slow-mo that he’s willing to give up a crucial slice of his body of work?

“It’s where I started before stills. I was always fascinated by Jack McCoy’s films. The watery wide-angle slow-mo’s just captured me. The ability to expand time in the barrel from one second to 20 seconds or more. Back then, I bought a high-speed 16mm camera, had a housing built and moved to Hawaii. Then I gave stills a go and had a couple of covers in my first North Shore season. I was hooked! But I love motion!”

Got room on your wall? Room to move on your credit card?

Click here to see the pieces on ebay. 


New study: Surf tourists rob, drug and sex!

Also, Jordy Smith punts a massive one after getting barreled!

Oxfam is a fantastic organization that seeks to put an end to global inequality and poverty. It operates in almost every country, bringing food, education, medicine and help to the most needy. Today one of their interns, Ben Fortun, wrote a piece on how the surf industry is, for the most part, shit.

Ben, apparently, used to be a pro longboarder but got hurt and then got thinking. “I remembered the farmers in Cardon, Mexico forced off their land to build resorts…” he wrote on Oxfam’s blog “…leaving them with the choice to either become resort workers or turn to illicit activities. I remembered the gangs in Costa Rica that have grown out of the massive inequality there. I remembered the sweatshops in China and elsewhere that produce surfing products, from board shorts to surfboards, by the thousands with little to no safety regulations to protect their workers. I have seen the dark side of the surfing community, that existed then and persists to this day, but is rarely seen or talked about.”

Bummer. But it gets worse!

He cites an Argentinian study that found “Costa Rica experienced a 700 percent increase in robberies and a 280 percent increase in drug related crimes between 1990 and 2006. Similarly, Indonesia’s Tourism Department recorded more than 13,703 child victims of sexual exploitation between 1972 and 2008. Coincidentally or not, these trends parallel the emergence of surf tourism in each locale.”

Bummer. Are there any bright spots?

I don’t think but BeachGrit still believes, above all, that surfing is anti-depressive so watch Jordy launch! (don’t worry about the privacy business just click and watch on Vimeo!) (Rob, drug, sex)