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…
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“World Class Points” in North Korea!
By Derek Rielly
Coastline is like “northern California”…
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?
Let’s discuss!
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Rumour: FCS sold for $160 million?
By Derek Rielly
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.
And we’ll find out if it’s true soon enough.
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Peer pressure: Bruce Irons into Pipe!
By Chas Smith
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!