Ty Swan and Pascale Honore.

Duct-Tape Surfing Heroine Dies

By Derek Rielly

9 years ago

Paraplegic Pascale Honore made headlines surfing while strapped to Ty Swan…

You would’ve been caught up in the viral fingers of the Duct Tape Surfing a couple of years back. How could you not? It plucked heart strings like nothing else! Cute surfer delivers the thrill of the ocean back to a middle-aged woman who’d busted her spine in a car accident.

The surfer was South Australian Ty Swan (boo of BeachGrit favourite Brinkley Davies) and the woman was his pal’s French-born mom, Pascale. Ty figured, “I wonder if you can surf on the same board? I could duct tape you to my back and surf, I don’t see why not.”

Pascale said, “It’s shown me you can still have a dream and things are possible… I remember looking up, the colour, the sound, being part of everything, being part of the water.”

Pascale, who was 52, died over the weekend of complications following surgery.

“Ty and I have been in a lot of places in the last few months and we have met so many people who know of Pascale and are amazed and speak of her as an inspirational and a beautiful soul,” said Brinkley this morning. “We had a free-dive for you today and then listened to live music on the beach here thinking of you and could imagine you sitting there with us, Coyote, Morgs, Tom and the whole west coast crew… I’ll forever take you with me in my mind wherever we end up on this planet.”

Duct Tape Surfing from Mark Tipple on Vimeo.

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Just in: Kauai Locals Besiege The Inertia!

By Rory Parker

9 years ago

Much-loved, if racist, surf website, banned from Hawaiian paradise…

The decision to post a video of a well known and typically pretty shitty Kauai beachbreak landed The Inertia in hot water this week. Shot by local crackpot Terry Lilley, the video is about five minutes of freight-train rights and bottoming-out, near-dry reef left barrels.

It’s no secret that Kauai has very good surf, nor is it a secret that the locals have traditionally done a very good job of keeping it under wraps. Topography plays a factor, there’s no Seven Mile Miracle equivalent on Kauai.

Coastal access is limited, meaning it can fire all day without anyone being the wiser. But, mainly, people are pretty smart about not posting photos or footage. No one wants to become the next Oahu.

Online reaction to the post has been, by and large, negative:

Way to go inertia kooks

CLOWNS. THIS IS BLOWN. NO FCKEN RESPECT

Kauai boyz living in California will be paying you guys a visit real soon!!! U fucked with the wrong island!!! Rule number one you don’t fucking film on Kauai! Rule number two you don’t fucking post it!! You broke both of their rules nd I just got word they are searching for you in California pal! Enjoy yourself punk!!

you shouldn’t even put “reef guardians” in the video. In fact you shouldn’t even have made the video. These locals defending their area are the real reef guardians not you clown. And you will learn sooner or later. Kauai is one big family ready to fight for what they think is right weather people like it or not. And if you guys don’t like it #nocomekauai

Thanks for exposing our zones u dumb kooks.

You guys are fucked and engoy runing beatiful spots . Guys like u is why locals gotta move away from their homes. Bumbai you learn the hard way.. fucking kooks is right u should take this shit down. I heard guys are looking 4 you now

Just another stoopid haole for u. No respect. U is the definition of one HAOLE! Cannot just come here and film our surf zones. U just put a big target on ur back brah Remove the video!!

Kauai boyz living in California will be paying you guys a visit real soon!!! U fucked with the wrong island!!! Rule number one you don’t fucking film on Kauai! Rule number two you don’t fucking post it!! You broke both of their rules nd I just got word they are searching for you in California pal! Enjoy yourself punk!!

These guys don’t learn, they got punked out last year and hid in their rooms at turtle bay.. Fucken scrubs!

Chava Greenlee, Kai Garcia, Kala Alexander, find the admin…

Tell the whole fucken world dipshits!! Fuck the inertia..this is why when kooks come here they get slapped..

Inertia is fucking lame and always has been! Now you’re narking off more spots that will lead to increased crowds and more tension in the water. Stay in L.A. and keep your mouths shut!

Explore, exploit and claim. Mentality is still the same as the first white man that discovered Hawaii.

He is clipped. He can no longer show his face on Kauai beaches

I emailed Alex Haro, The Inertia Senior Editor and all-around nice guy, to see what he’s been dealing with:

“Oh god, that shit’s crazy. I can see their point, though… but it’s not a secret spot at all, is it? I only lived in Kauai for three months, and that was the first place I went, I think. Although it didn’t look anything like that at the time.

“Been fielding hate mail all day… but it’s still not as bad as the stuff we used to get from the entire country of Brazil. One of them wrote my girlfriend and told her that she’s ‘in a relationship with a xenophobic, dick-sucking homo,’ which I thought was nice. I had to Google xenophobic, because dick-sucking homos are illiterate, I guess.”

Personally, I’m stoked that I didn’t come in from surfing all high on adrenaline and post it social media myself. And, even if I, theoretically, had, I’m sure I would have seen the shit storm brewing in enough time to wipe my electronic trail clean and dodge any accountability during the ensuing clusterfuck.

Because, empty threats of violence aside, I’ve gotta live here.

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How to Enjoy The Minutiae of Surfing

By Derek Rielly

9 years ago

It isn't just about the grand gesture or the majestic "swell event." Find magic in the little things…

There is no other sport with such a potential for grandeur as surfing. Football? Tennis? No matter how good you get, you’ll still be in a court of the exact same dimensions. All that changes is the size and intensity of the crowd.

But, surf?

One week ago we saw the recently head-injured Jeremy Flores (but “not brain damaged”) win in an arena that could just as easily have peeled a new flap in his skull.

And all of us know of those great days at our own beaches, when spectators line the beach and choppers hover overhead, and we find, or at least experience, a momentary grandeur.

But surfing can’t always be magnificent.

In fact, it’s rarely even good. Most of the time we nose our boards around imperfect wind-swells while competing for the experience with dozens of other surfers. Grand it ain’t.

Lately, I’ve been trying a few things to squeeze even more joy out of my sessions. As in trying to find beautiful experiences in the smallest of moments. Perfect waves? They happen, and when they do you’ll embrace like an old friend, but their scarcity shouldn’t be something to fret about.

Here are five tips to punch up the thrill of your own sessions.

1. Learn a new move: Here’s a secret. Practise something enough and you’ll learn it. Surfing is tough because you might get that one wave and that once section that lets you try that frontside reverse or club sandwich only a few times every session. But the joy it gives you when, finally, that board spins around, the fins connect back in the face, and you realise you’ve completed your first air reverse, even at some ridiculous age, is profound. Your enthusiasm goes through the roof. And you don’t need – you especially don’t need – good waves to try new moves. Never become one of those homebodies who sees a pro throw the fins and says something along the lines of, “Oh, that’s amazing, I don’t know how they do that!” Yeah, you do. There’s enough HD slow-mo cam going around to dissect any move.

Never become one of those homebodies who sees a pro throw the fins and says something along the lines of, “Oh, that’s amazing, I don’t know how they do that!” Yeah, you do. There’s enough HD slow-mo cam going around to dissect any move.

2. Open your eyes underwater. There’s so much going on under there. Swim out without a board, before or afterward, and watch the waves from below. Discover how the three-finner generates tremendous cavitation and turbulence through turns while the quad is foam free. Actually witness the way energy spins through the tube.

3. Don’t check the surf. So many days are wasting driving from spot to spot. Drive to the carpark, suit up, paddle out and vow to surf, to the limit of your ability, the waves on offer. Futile surf checking is the ultimate killer of a surf buzz.

4. Study sections. Every wave has at least three or four different sections. Learn to identify what you should hit, where you should top turn, cutback, toss the fins, spin or jump into a straight air. Look closely! They’re like secret little doors. It’s our secret garden!

5. Watch the best surfers. It’s fortunate that we can so closely examine the ways of the sport’s best. Any other sport you’d be behind a fence or 100 yards away in the stands. There’s not a thing stopping you from paddling out at Emma Wood to sit side by side with Reynolds or doing the same at Snapper with Mick and Joel. Watch how they paddle, their level of focus, the way they drop into a ledging wave.

It might be the school of hard knocks but it’s there you learn well, and you learn fast.

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JOB? “Gross! Creepy! Old!” says Shaved Teen

By Rory Parker

9 years ago

But maybe case of mistaken identity!

Part of me feels like I should hate Jamie O’Brien. Not for any real reason, the few interactions I’ve had with him have been really positive and he comes across like a very nice guy.

It’s just that all his clips make him look like he’s having so much fun, and trying so hard to market that image. And, you know, trying isn’t cool. Cool people don’t try, they don’t care about anything. Because life is, like, pointless, man.

Damn, though, doesn’t his life look awesome? So much fun. Killer waves, a bunch of cronies, hot and cold running pussy.

Or so I assume.

A few years back I ate Thanksgiving at my wife’s employer’s house. It was lame as hell, everyone was glued to their cell phones like a bunch of spoiled teenagers. And there was only one teenager actually present. A smoking hot little eighteen-year-old nugget with small tits and a firm plump ass.

We’d been playing in the pool all afternoon and she was rocking this tiny little up-her-butt number. The kind that shows off how well her aesthetician handles waxing duty. God damn… if only…

I lost my temper and yelled at everyone for rubbing on their phones during dinner and made them put them away. Then my future unwed teen baby mama started talking about her previous night. Apparently one of her friends had ditched her at a North Shore house party so she could get humped on by some dude she just met, and girlfriend was pissed about it.

“It was so creepy, this one old guy kept trying to get me to come home with him. I had to leave and call a friend to pick me up.”

“What’s old?”

“Like, thirty. Gross. Do you know the guy? His name is Jake Brians or something, they said he’s a famous surfer.”

“Jamie O’ Brien?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He kept saying I could stay at his house if I couldn’t find a ride.”

Poor JOB.

I, too, know the sting of appearing elderly to the ripest. Little girls can’t handle body fur, they want their boys smooth and lithe as a shaved otter.

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Gimme: Shark attack inspired shoes!

By Chas Smith

9 years ago

The Bloodbath is here and it has never been so amazing!

Sneaker culture is something I stand very very far away from yet admire. The passion, lust, dogged pursuit. The always limited edition that turns a usually nerdy kid from Tokyo or Omaha into a vicious hunter, a Sherlock Holmes.

I don’t know what makes a great sneaker great. I don’t know what turns the crank of the sneaker head but I know what they feel. I once had a pair of Nike Air Pressures. They made me feel like Marty McFly in Back to the Future II and I loved everything about them and I would do almost anything to find a pair today.

While you’re looking for my Nike Air Pressures, though, (I’m a size 10!) check this out. Sneaker Freaker, a destination website out of Australia, has maybe done the greatest collaboration of all time. They paired with Germany-based Puma to bring not one, not two, but three sharky shoes!

The first, released in 2008, was called “The Great White” (natch) and dropped to universal acclaim. A version of Puma’s Blaze of Glory runner, they looked like a great white shark swimming on the feets. 30 pairs were even made with shark skin and sold out in seconds.

The second, called “Sharkbait,” is a turquoise terror with “hints of treasure-chest gold, mako grey midsoles and infinite black accents, it’s the perfect endgame for this predatory project.”

And the last just launched. It is called “Bloodbath” and is all red, like blood, and wow. To quote the website, “The shoe, drawing inspiration from the New Jersey shark attacks of 1916 (also the inspiration for the film Jaws), boasts a creamy crimson red leather-and-mesh upper with black accents, white and mint outsole, a gum bottom and metallic gold Puma branding.”

It is as delicious as it is insensitive. Just think of all the recent shark attack victims, more every day, seeing a shoe that glorifies blood in the water! They’d be so mad! But Sneaker Freaker proves, once again, that great design trumps all.

Go to Footwear News and read more!

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