Damien Fahrenfort used to be a pro surfer. Now he
is rich.
If you know anything about anything, you know
Venice, California is the world’s hottest locale. Who doesn’t want?
There is very delicious food (hello, Flake!), the sun shines
constantly and the people get more beautiful each and every day.
Some try to complain. “Oh…” they moan “…Venice is soooo
over…” while glaring from the corner of their eyes at people more
beautiful than they. Jealousy is ugly!
As you can guess, it is hard to establish in Venice, California
and that is why South Africa’s Damien Fahrenfort becoming a
commercial kingpin is beyond amazing. Over the weekend he opened
the magnificent store General Admission. They sell exactly what you
want, publish a journal, curate your lifestyle and all on Brooks
Ave which, if you know anything about anything, turns into Abbot
Kinney.
Damien Fahrenfort used to be a pro surfer. Now is he is a
financial heavyweight and it is definitely worth going to his store
because, also, the t-shirts and pants are spot exactly right. Shawn
Stussy, Danny Fuller, John Moore and Rick Ross went to the opening
party. You should go too, but not to the opening party. It’s over.
Also order here.
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Revealed: Robbie Maddison’s Teahupoo
Moto!
By Derek Rielly
Did you wonder how a 100kg machine stayed afloat
long enough to conquer Teahupoo?
Yesterday morning, shortly after we posted
Robbie Maddison’s Teahupoo clip, I got a droll phone call from
the most practical man I know.
Miles Pitt builds movie sets for a living and is responsible for
a ton of similarly gimmicky surf shoots (flares on Bruce Irons and
Jordy Smith’s boards, laser lights in a wave pool). He also owns a
sunglass label that is stupidly successful (Rihanna and Lady GaGa wear ’em.)
Click here etc.
Anyway,
He said, “You know this is fake don’t you?”
I didn’t.
When he explained all the physics behind keeping a motorcycle
afloat, I felt quite dense that I hadn’t even questioned it. We
soon realised that the curtain was going to be lifted on this
elaborate prank at the world premiere, Wizard of Oz-like, that was
happening… now!
I immediately called Chas Smith who was at the premiere. Chas
spoke to his old friend Raimana Van Bastolaer, who was the Tahitian
fixer behind the shoot, inspected the motorcycle, and called
back.
“It’s real,” he said.
And so it was.
The bike is a KTM250 SX modified with skis that
have little fins at the bottom to act as rudders and a paddle
steamer-like back tyre. Maddison chose a two-stroke ’cause it was
less likely to freak out in the water as opposed to a
four-stroker.
The bike was first tested on an eight-mile ride in San Diego’s
Mission Bay. But San Deigo ain’t Tahiti and Mission Bay ain’t
Teahupoo.
At one point, Maddison hit a west bomb, one of those kinky
straight-into-the-barrel waves only the best surfers dare
challenge, and nearly died. Maddison told Rolling Stone,
“There I was on a motorcycle, with the worst thing that could
possibly happen… My friends and crew were completely rattled,
having thought that I had drowned in the wave. It’s the gnarliest
thing I have ever been through.”
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Laird Hamilton saves Girls creator Lena
Dunham
By Ashton Goggans
"Laird Hamilton is the King of Triton!" says Lena
Dunham
Over the weekend a bikini-clad Lena Dunham set out on a
three-mile (SUP) Tour, taking part in the “Paddle for
Pink” event in the Hamptons, benefitting the Breast Cancer Research
Foundation.
Lena Dunham is, of course, the 29-year-old creator of the HBO
series Girls, a spokeswoman for mid-to-late-twenties,
directionless, dissatisfied, nocturnally-loose, diurnally
guilt-laden women everywhere, and the author of the memoir Not
That Kind of Girl.
Have you read? It’s all in there.
Here’s an excerpt, detailing an episode between Lena, aged
seven, and her one-year-old sis.
Do we all have uteruses?” I asked my mother when I was
seven.
“Yes,” she told me. “We’re born with them, and with all our
eggs, but they start out very small. And they aren’t ready to make
babies until we’re older.” I look at my sister, now a slim, tough
one-year-old, and at her tiny belly. I imagined her eggs inside
her, like the sack of spider eggs in Charlotte’s Web, and her
uterus, the size of a thimble.
“Does her vagina look like mine?”
“I guess so,” my mother said. “Just smaller.”
One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing
with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was
sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her
legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist and
when I saw what was inside I shrieked.
My mother came running. “Mama, Mama! Grace has something in
there!”
My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s
vagina. This was within the spectrum of things I did. She just got
on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent
that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother
removed them patiently while Grace cackled, thrilled that her prank
had been a success.
Anyway, out on her SUP, Lena apparently thought she wasn’t
going to make it.
We’re not sure if she meant she honestly thought she might not
make it, as in live, or if she just didn’t think she could get to
the finish line. Regardless, a bronzed, chiseled, savior would
appear in the distance!
“This is an image of Laird Hamilton coming to save me,” she
captioned a blurry Instagram shot. In it, Lena struggles. Laird,
just in the distance, approaches, looking the Hunter and Lena the
Hunted.
“He is literally King Triton and as I struggled to complete
BCRF’s Paddle for Pink…he appeared as if from the ocean’s depths
and guided me to the finish line…. I kept screaming ‘will I make
it?!’ like we were in a disaster movie. He said ‘yes, Lena, we
will.’ Ladies, there are still a few heroes we can count on…”
We all need a hero, sometimes.
#ThankYouLaird #paddleforpink #3miles.
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Honest question: Can we be
environmentalists?
By Chas Smith
Surfers are gross polluters. Can we be better?
I was at the Pipe Dreams premier last night in
Huntington Beach and wow. Robbie Maddison rode a bike into
medium-sized Teahupo’o. The crowd, tres moto with much Rockstar and
DC and Kawasaki, seemed to very much appreciate the stunt. Hoots
all around!
As a surfer, though, it was a bit off-putting. I love an
absurdist fantasy come to life as much as the next man, but
watching a motorcycle drop in. Watching it rip across the reef and
over Tahiti’s pristine blue. Watching brrrappp-brrrrappp-brrrappp
on the water turned my stomach slightly.
Now, I ain’t no great conservationist but last night made me
wonder if I should be. If we should all be. Kelly Slater is. Jeff
Johnson is. Cyrus Sutton is. Lots of surfers are and good for them
because we depend on the natural environment as much, or more, than
most other groups. But surfers travel more than most other
groups too and travel is massively polluting, no? A shaping boards,
even in the greenest manner possible, is pretty much poison,
no?
Yes, the evil we do, as surfers, is far greater than Maddo’s
evil at Teahupo’o because no one will ever do what he
did again. It was a stunt. A laugh. Not a sustainably fun new
hobby. We are the gross polluters. We are the yucky few.
And that got me thinking about Cecil the Lion. Zimbabwe
outlawed big game hunting through most of their parks due the
furor of a beloved cat being slain by a Minnesota dentist. But
sometimes the yucky few are the ones you need. Hunters, with proper
permits, practicing properly, etc. self-police. They take out
poachers, clean up others’ messes, know more about the region, and
what the region needs to be healthy, than the knee-jerk bleeding
hearts at home.
Which takes me back to the ocean. I don’t litter, dump motor oil
down storm drains or apply sunscreen when surfing over reef (my
skin is so brown!) but I also don’t march, sign petitions or go to
beach clean-ups. And I don’t give to Surfrider Foundation. I did
once but then they annoyed me with incessant email featuring a
worn-out, hysterical tone. Every little thing was of MAXIMUM
importance to the FUTURE of the OCEAN.
It all just seems so….tiring. Stylistically tiring, emotionally
tiring, physically tiring. Tiring. And annoying.
Does environmentalism have to be annoying? Hysterical? Tiring?
How can I be an environmentalist and not be annoying, hysterical or
tired? Is there a middle way between being oblivious and always
being wagged by the tail?
How can the yucky few be better?
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Mick Fanning gives $75,000 to
bodyboarder!
By Derek Rielly
Donates 60 Minutes appearance fee to the Ballina
bodyboarder hit by a white last month…
Well, how about this. The three-timer who has
been chased hither and yon like a goat in a game of Afghan polo for
his story about being publicly wrapped up by a great white at
J-Bay, has dropped his $75,000 60 Minutes appearance fee into
the account of bodyboarder Matt Lee, who’s still in hospital one
month after being hit by a White.
Matt, 32, was surfing dreamy little wedges
at Lighthouse Beach, the next beach along from where Japanese
surfer Tadashi Nakahara was killed by a white in February,
when the four-metre (15-foot) white hit. His two pals got him to
shore where a helicopter arrived to take him to hospital on the
Gold Coast, where he remains.
To make it a round $100k, Channel Nine boss Dave Gyngell, also a
surfer as it happens, has added $25,000.