A phone call to Mr Irons yields the fruit of his RVCA signing and the power of social…
Almost exactly two hours ago, the Hawaiian surfer Bruce Irons signed with the clothing label RVCA. Yesterday, the WSL announced that he would be squeezed into the Pipe Masters on the back of an injury wildcard.
It ain’t been easy for the 36 year old these last few years. Big brother dies, sponsors disappear, baby mama ain’t around so much. A few biscuits thrown at him at this juncture is very welcome.
In this twenty-minute call, Bruce talks about the obvious, RVCA, Pipe etc, but he also jams on the brevity of fame, what it feels like when pals evaporate from your life, and a few other things.
As with all phone calls, and especially phone call interviews that I make with a pounding heart (I still watch The Bruce Movie), there’s a few misunderstandings, a few misheard things, some pauses, awkward laughter from me, mumbling questions even I don’t understand when I played it back. If I was a little better at trimming voice memo files you’d get a cleaner, more cohesive interview.
Starts slow but warms up.
If you like Bruce, this is what it’s like if you were to call him, right now…
Four months ago, it was reported here that North Korea was open for surf tours. If you peeled off $US2400 (plus airfare) you could throw yourself straight into the mouth of what the West rightly, or wrongly, calls a “hermit kingdom”.
But who can speculate about such things?
Maybe chairman Kim Jong-un has a beautiful thing going. Maybe his animal vitality is reflected in a smiling well-fed populace. Maybe there is no famine, no summary executions, no anti-everything narrative. Maybe, by side-stepping globalism and porous borders, the glorious chairman had created…perfection.
The NBA Hall of Famer and former Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman has famously visited North Korea six times. About Kim Jong-un he says: “When he’s around his people, he’s just like anybody else. He jokes and loves playing basketball, table tennis, pool. They love American ’80s music. They do karaoke to it. He has this 13-piece girls band with violins. He gets a mic and they play the whole time. He loves the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. Oldies. When I first went, the live band only played two songs for four hours: the theme songs from Rocky and Dallas.”
Anyway, the eight-day tour (operated by the New Jersey company Uri Tours) went in September and I was curious to examine the results. The Italian surfer, Nik Zanella, who is also the current coach of the Chinese national surf team, led the tour.
Potential for surf? Yes?
“There is potential in the DPRK for world-class pointbreaks, especially during typhoon swells,” he says. “Google Earth shows astonishing images of actual waves breaking on perfect setups. While we didn’t have full access to the coastline, the setup we had on Majon Bay was as good as a single location could be along that coast. The bay faces straight east and receives swell from over a 90 degrees angle, SE to ENE. The beach break activates also with minimal swells. When it gets bigger, there is a clean pointbreak just under the cliff.”
The coastline, he says, “looked like Northern California, deep bays of golden sand, interrupted by ferrous cliffs. I was surprised by the overall beauty of the place.”
Were the people kind, nice, fearful, terrorised? “Traveling to North Korea was an eye opening trip for me,” says Zanella. “People were beyond nice and we were treated with respect and curiosity. I found that Koreans are hard working smart and have a sense of humor.”
Why would you go there? The German entrepreneur Markos Kern, one of the heads behind surf tours to North Korea, says, “North Korea is the last white spot on the map and there are many amazing experiences to be had there. The country is beautiful and the people you meet possess a rare type of curiosity and kindness. Unconventional travel destinations always hold a certain amount of magic and I think trips like these may be the last few off the beaten path adventures we can really have.”
Yeah, this does all read like propaganda, don’t it.
Mass global conflict is around the corner! What this means for you...
Of course you don’t come to BeachGrit for your world news but why not? I feel the collective IQ of our commentary team is higher than the average public radio listener’s (here’s looking at you Negatron, longtom, Audit in Progress, Trogan, Badger, mullet, Mariano, Landa Super Jr. etc.) and as such, could provide helpful advice for the surfer staring down the barrel of World War III.
In case you haven’t been keeping up, here is the short of it. The United States invaded Iraq a decade-ish ago, deposing Saddam Hussein under the guise of deposing Osama Bin Laden. It worked, on both fronts, if we feel like being solely results-oriented, but left the Middle East with power vacuums in the strongman arena (bye-bye Saddam, Hosni Mubarak, Mums Gaddafi, etc.) and in the terrorist one as well (so long, Al-Qaeda and welcome, ISIS).
Now, ISIS is behaving extra-badly, carving out large swathes of the Middle East and calling it a caliphate but also attacking continental Europe and threatening both the U.S. and Australia. There is only one strongman left, Syria’s Bashar Assad, and Russia has decided to go all in on him but the rest of Europe and NATO ally Turkey don’t like but also don’t like ISIS so are hamstrung. Russia is bombing ISIS but also bombing Assad’s enemies in Syria. The U.S. and Europe are sad but stuck. And Turkey just shot a Russian fighter jet out of the sky.
Hello, World War III!
Now. What is the generally shortsighted surfer to do? He doesn’t typically care about the Middle East because he thinks there is not very good surf, thus no reason to go or miss it when it explodes. He is wrong. I have surfed fun waves in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Oman and seen fun waves in Israel. He also doesn’t think geopolitic matters and he is also wrong because to the victor go the spoils, which is to say, a working knowledge of the globe’s situation will allow him to surf better waves alone, especially when things start really going to hell.
In any case, for both his future surf vacations and if caught in an unfortunate holiday meal debate, what should the surf position be on WWIII? Should the confused surfer back Putin and Assad? Europe/Turkey and a nonexistent Syrian democratic resistance? ISIS? Is there another party he should throw his support to? Also, what board will be most effective?
Is Australian bank offloading fin pioneer Surf Hardware?
You can react two ways to the merciless and aggressive greed of the biz world. Either crave, pointlessly, for less rapacity or you can marvel at the ability of those who can grab a co with potential, polish it a little, and offload it at fantastic profit.
“Vulture Investors” Oaktree Capital Management, which owns 19 per cent of Billabong and now controls Quiksilver Inc after its recent bankruptcy, is one company very good at this kind of biz.
Surf Hardware, aka FCS, meanwhile, is in the process of being sold, at least according to a recent phone call I received. Now, if y’aint au fait with the biz and its importance to our surf game, maybe y’should.
It all went pear-shaped when the new company’s CEO and McCausland didn’t, uh, get along. The company sacked McCausland but, wait, he had thirty per cent of the company. A receipt for harmony, yes? But, no.
Anyway, looks like McCausland came out of it with a few mill. Enough to keep the wolves at bay, but maybe tough to swallow when y’hear the biz is rumoured to be sold for $160 million, and your share would’ve peeled you off $50 million.
I called FCS for a comment, got a nice enough accounts guy who refused to comment either way but obfuscated enough to make me think, yeah, the sale is under way.
What other hashtags can we cook up on the stovetop of liberty?
Oh glorious day! As first reported on Stab yesterday, and followed up by the World Surf League themselves today, Bruce Irons has received a wildcard into the Billabong Pipeline Masters in Memory of Andy Irons!
Let’s examine! Stab‘s Elliot Struck says:
And now Bruce is in the event. But not because of any hashtag. It’s because WSL Commissioner Kieren Perrow is a fucking lord and knows how to pick his cards. Bruce will paddle out, not because of any Internet peer pressure, but because Kiz was always gonna put him in.
The WSL’s Kieren Perrow says:
Bruce and I have been talking about a possible opportunity and it’s great to see him charging Pipe again this season. He’s always been a standout at Pipeline and remains amongst the world’s best surfers when conditions get critical out there. With the withdrawals of Frederick Patacchia (HAW) and Matt Banting (AUS), the WSL is in a position to allocate one of the replacement spots to Bruce and we feel like he’s certainly a worthy candidate given the form he’s in. Looking forward to a great event.
And bullshit!
The #bruce4pipelinewildcard is to thank. The angry Internet forced a feeble WSL hand and voila. Bruce is in. What else would you like that paltry WSL to do? What other hashtags can we cook up on the stovetop of liberty? Let’s think!
While we think, and at the end, congrats to Bruce Irons, who says:
I’m so honored to be given the opportunity to compete in the Pipe Masters in memory of my brother, I reached out to Kieren [Perrow] a couple of weeks ago and asked if it would be a possibility and he’s been completely open with me through this whole process. I understand that the opportunity is coming to me due to someone withdrawing, which is never what you hope for, but I’m really pumped to surf Pipe with the world’s best. Really looking forward to the event and I hope the waves fire.
But back to our other hashtags. Is #nomorenolosersround too technical? Would #1swell1event fire the masses? Help me help you!
