"There was no swell in the ocean so we decided to hit the streets!"
Catch Surf got some good exposure on Fox News recently. It’s kind of funny, you should watch it.
But it’s hard to laugh, because I hate myself right now. It is absolutely firing by my house right now. There’s a left that looks like fucking Western Australia come to Kauai belching its guts out, a right careening off the point and bottoming out across the inside, and I’m too scared to paddle out.
It’s something I’m struggling with. Almost two years out of the water, I feel so out of shape, no confidence. Rattled when it’s overhead.
Shame is a powerful motivator,and, sometimes, looking in the mirror and saying, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Get your act together, you pitiful pile of shit!” is enough to get the ball rolling.
I tried to bodysurf yesterday because I didn’t think I could punch a board through the inside and spent two hours pulling back. Finally caught two waves and went in. Not super proud of myself. It’s not like it’s that big. Butterflies would be fine, full blown puss-out is not.
I think it’s okay, though. Shame is a powerful motivator,and, sometimes, looking in the mirror and saying, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Get your act together, you pitiful pile of shit!” is enough to get the ball rolling.
I guess I could give meth a shot. That should work with both the confidence and the weight.
Every day these things drop, like nuggets into a McDonalds fryer: cheap and momentarily pleasant but with a sickening aftertaste. There’s so many of ’em, maybe half-a-doz a day, that they elude any concept of good and bad. Our ability to discern gone forever.
And there’s something like this.
Where so many surfers, even among the best, struggle with their airs, looking like huge, awkward chickens torn squawking out of their coops, Julian Wilson is a flying volcano.
That sharp oop-and-a-quarter just before the one-minute mark shows Wilson to be in marvellous voice.
And, mentally, let’s read as Julian swings a scimitar at the famous Proust Questionnaire, seen below.
Your favourite Virtue: Industry. Your favourite qualities in a man: Integrity and loyalty. Your favourite qualities in a woman: Kindness, self respect. Your chief characteristic: Perseverance. What you appreciate the most in your friends: truthfulness and sense of humour. Your main fault: The sometimes impossible pursuit of perfection. Your favourite occupation: Surfing. Your idea of happiness: Home. Family. Love. Your idea of misery: Permanent disability. If not yourself, who would you be? Adam Scott. Where would you like to live? Near my family. Your favourite heroes in fiction: Peter Pan. Your heroes in real life: Mum+Dad. Your favourite food and drink: Roast Lamb and milk. What you hate the most: Thieves. World history characters you hate the most: Hitler, Stalin, the usual. The natural talent you’d most like to be gifted with: The ability to draw. How you wish to die: Content. What is your present state of mine: Determination. Your favourite motto: “Forever fun”.
Yesterday, on the excellent Surfer magazine website, the surf historian Matt Warshaw posted a story on the iconic surf photographer Ron Stoner and his young girlfriend Paulette.
Now I ain’t one to swing back in time to 1967 and start pointing 2015 fingers at a man and an almost-woman clearly in love. That same year, the singer Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu, a girl he met when she was 14.
Here we see the once-famous surf photographer Ron Stoner, aged 21, with his nymphet Paulette, then an almost womanly 14.
Meanwhile, American boys were getting shipped off in their thousands, against their will, to die in the muck of Vietnam. Back home, everyone was either soaked in LSD or living in a Mason Family commune in Death Valley. Or both.
Why wouldn’t you chase your kicks?
Anyway, the idea of young girls has always been anathema to me. In year five I had a big-tittied teacher whose uniform was a canary yellow jumpsuit unbuttoned to the naval (did I dream this I often wonder in hindsight?) and, ever since, the sight of an aged, and freckled ideally, cleavage has sent me into the stratosphere.
Which brings me back around to Ron Stoner and Paulette Martinson, the sweet lil 14 year old, he swung with. Apart from the moral question, there was the issue of teen pussy v the seasoned woman.
I had a little back-and-forth with Warshaw on the merits, or not, of both.
BeachGrit: Tooling a 14-year-old?
Warshaw: Fuck, did you even read the post?
BeachGrit: What?
Warshaw: Stoner was, I don’t know what you want to call him — not just schizophrenic, but otherwise damaged. So yes he was 21, and Paulette was 14, and I’m not saying that’s great. But they dug each other, her parents were okay with it, and when Ron went down the tubes, Paulette was pretty much the only person from his past who didn’t bail out. The story here isn’t about sex with a minor. Can you even understand that?
BeachGrit: You’re invested in Stoner, aren’t you.
Warshaw: If you’re a Southern California surfer of a certain age, like I am, Stoner is a touchstone not just for your surfing, but for the whole place, the whole era. He’s Brian Wilson. Terrible beauty and sadness. Paulette, for me, and who knows, maybe I’ve built this up in my head, but Paulette was probably the best thing in Ron’s life. For just a little while, anyway. And how fast it all goes away, it’s like that mid-‘60s period in California surfing. You know the Beach Boys song “Caroline, No”?
BeachGrit: Hmmmm, maybe not.
Warshaw: Paulette was always going to leave Ron, cause of their age difference, and also because schizophrenia was taking over. So yeah, she leaves him, and before Ron falls completely into the abyss, when he’s just heartbroken completely, he does some of his best work with the camera. It’s this last burst of color before his career, his health, his sanity, all of it just gets blacked out. And that’s like Stoner’s version of “Carline, No.” He knows he’s losing it, but still has it together enough to make art. It kills me. The song kills me, and Stoner’s story kills me.
BeachGrit: So the 14-year-old pussy angle. That does nothing for you?
Warshaw: You’re fucking retarded, you know that?
BeachGrit: Answer the question!
Warshaw: Okay, first of all, again, fuck you, you’ve missed the whole point here. But look, I’ll say this. You saw The Graduate?
BeachGrit: Oh my god, yes!
Warshaw: Okay, so . . . Katherine Ross or Anne Bancroft? Daughter or mother?
BeachGrit: Easiest question of the day. Anne Bancroft! Mrs. Robinson!
Warshaw: Yeah, that imprinted on me at age eight. Older woman all the way.
BeachGrit: So what is it about older gals? Describe the thrills you receive.
Warshaw: Older women know how to do subtlety. Sexy-wise, Anne Bancroft does more with an eyebrow and a bit of exhaled cigarette smoke then whatever teenager you’re watching on PornHub right now.
BeachGrit: Oh, Matt, I couldn’t hear you any louder. I’ve been pushing up against older gals since I was a teen and I always found little ones to be unfinished masterpieces, works that wouldn’t be complete until mid-thirties, forties, or later. Nymphets? With their dull, sucked-a-hundred-cocks-already looks? I’m not sure how many people picked it up, but a piece I wrote on Noa Deane’s gal Zoe was all based around Lolita. But, there must be some fire in your groin, for some of the more famous surf teens. Do you like Sage Erickson for example? Malia Manuel?
Matt: Of course. Knockouts, both of them. But I’d crawl over Sage and Malia and a dozen like them to get with Helen Mirren.
Palm Beach is what you would call a recovering suburb, at least if you wanted to be kind. There’s a veneer of hipness, like most of the Gold Coast, but you don’t have to scratch too hard to find the hopelessness that lays just beneath.
Dirty apartments with kids curled under dirty fur blankets. Open cans and cigarettes on the floor. The TV on a perpetual whining cycle. Unemployment (yeah, there’s a social security building on the beachside of the highway) is its major trade. Welcome to Palm-y.
But then there’s the beach, a stretch, five or so miles long, from first avenue on its southern border to 28th in the north. It’s sand so the quality varies but, often, with the wind out of the south, and the swell a little east, you’ll be struck by how good it gets. I lived there for a few years and found it a sublime escape from the crowds and the predictability of the points.
Maybe it’s why Kelly Slater just dropped just over two mill for a whole-floor beachfront apartment, with its own lift access, on sexy little Jefferson Lane.
Shall we stroll through its features, as offered by the real estate pages?
“A boutique low-rise that consists of 7 levels, one unit per level with absolute, pure beachfront luxury! Designed to embrace natural light, capture panoramic views from Surfers Paradise to Coolangatta and offer alfresco beach balcony living all year round…Each level is accessed by a security-coded lift that opens directly into your home.
“It comprises an ultra-modern style of architecture and has reset the benchmark for quality beachfront apartments with high quality fixtures and fittings and standard of quality finish throughout.”
It ain’t Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture wise, though there are notes of Mies van der Rohe, at least in spirit, but what is on the Gold Coast?
Y’got plenty of room and, best of all, it faces due north-east, which means the stiff summer heat is tempered by a sea breeze.
It isn’t Kelly’s only Gold Coast crib. Ten years ago, he bought a little apartment, with no views, in Tugun, just south of Palm Beach, for $445,000.
Note: all photos are from the same building but not Kelly’s exact apartment.
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Five stitches in his elbow, unable to surf during a week of lay-days and not a murmur of complaint! "Have you ever surfed with stitches?" write Chas Smith. "I’m afraid to even touch the ocean water when my skin is sewn together." | Photo: WSL
Filipe Toledo and the real reason (?) he did not catch a wave.
Filipe Toledo’s refusal to catch a wave in his round 5 heat versus fellow Brazilian Italian Ferrari caused such a stir! Some calling him a coward, others pointing to strategical blunders as the reason he carried a 0 point total to the final horn.
Back and forth the two sides went like cats on a hot tin roof. Video proof was posted, on both sides, to show that either he was brave or he was scared.
Well, man, I’ve got certain information, alright? Certain things have come to light and, you know, has it ever occurred to you that instead of running around blaming Filipe…well given the nature of all this new shit…this could be a lot more….uhhhh…..uhh.uhhh.uh complex.
I mean it’s not just…It might not be just a simple. Uh. You know?
According to our inside source, young Toledo bonked his elbow even requiring five stitches.
“I was staying with him and he got 5 stitches in his elbow banged it really hard and couldn’t even surf for a week during the laydays. He tried in his rd 4 heat and that night at dinner was saying it was almost impossible to stand up… I thought he wasn’t even gonna surf his rd 5 heat.”
Have you ever surfed with stitches? I’m afraid to even touch the ocean water when my skin is sewn together. Staph infections and things like that are not very funny. So antibiotic resistant these days!
Now how do you feel about your courageous little warrior?
