Hawaii don't need tourism money, sustainable is a scam, you're a terrible person and more!
One thing I miss about writing for The Inertia, people used to get so angry at me! So easy to push buttons, get all the kooks up in arms.
I get a lot more positive feedback on BeachGrit, which, to be honest, always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Like, if most people enjoy what you’re doing, maybe it’s not that good. Right?
Or maybe Negatron just removes all the mean comments. I don’t know.
I think the piece that pissed the most people off was some low-effort junk titled, 5 Unpleasant Truths About Surfing that Everyone Needs to Hear.
Oh, did the internet ever get up in arms! And over such mundane, obvious, pointless stuff too.
Today Derek suggested I do a follow-up.
Okay, no problem, easy stuff, always got plenty to rant about.
Hawaii doesn’t need your tourism money: I see it come up every time someone mentions the problems caused by a constant stream of visiting pasty skinned lookee-loos. “Hawaii wouldn’t be able to survive without tourism.”
Nonsense. Hawaii would do just fine without below living wage hospitality jobs. The local populace would be more than happy if every illegal vacation rental flooded the long-term market and caused rental prices to plummet. No one would shed a tear if the legions of befuddled turtle gazing morons stopped bringing Kam Highway traffic to a screeching halt.
Yeah, a handful of people make a mint siphoning money out of visitors’ pockets, but the state as a whole bears the burden.
I will admit the chronics probably enjoy having a steady influx of rental cars to pillage.
“Sustainable” is a scam: Our boards are poison, accessories made in Third World hell-holes, and sustainable just means something can go on forever.
But that hasn’t stopped several groups of money minded “social entrepreneurs” from cashing in on branding efforts.
By the way, I’d like to use this opportunity to offer my own “Rape Offset™” program. For a small fee I will promise not to abduct and molest any unsuspecting individuals, thereby freeing you to buy a rusted-out van and start snatching.
Let’s examine two of ’em. Sustainable Surf which peddles its “Deep Blue Surfing Event” brand, and The Center for Surf Research, the same people behind STOKE certifications.
Acquiring a “Deep Blue Surfing Event” label is relatively simple, throw money around. Purchase some carbon offsets, gift a local charity a few bucks, then lie about how “green” you are. Like, did you know that the Van’s US Open is a sustainable event? Yep, great for the environment. There definitely isn’t a massive amount of garbage swag abandoned on the beach every year.
By the way, I’d like to use this opportunity to offer my own “Rape Offset™” program. For a small fee I will promise not to abduct and molest any unsuspecting individuals, thereby freeing you to buy a rusted-out van and start snatching.
Their own site states “The 2015 Vans US Open of Surfing (USO) has exceeded the minimum requirements in four categories, and has been designated as a Deep Blue Surfing Event™ by Sustainable Surf.”
Then follows up with “The Vans US Open of Surfing did not meet the requirements of the renewable energy category, which requires a minimum 25% renewable energy overall. Biodiesel usage was not reported, although the generators did have signage declaring biodiesel.”
There’s nothing special about riding a wave: Yeah, we all want to pretend we’re somehow keyed in to Mother Gaia, that our favorite hobby makes us somehow more pristine and pure than your typical landlubber. But it’s just a hobby.
You know that awesome feeling you get after an amazing session, how life seems brighter and better and makes it seems like every single shitty aspect of life isn’t so bad? You can get that anywhere.
Jump out of a plane, play a game of golf, build a model train set in your basement. It’s all the same, just a fun activity that makes the average day a little easier to get through.
You’re probably a terrible person: If you don’t believe the average surfer is a xenophobic, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigot, please do me a favor and go click around social media for a few minutes. Start with The Inertia‘s Facebook comments, then hit up the Surfer Mag bulletin boards, swing on over to Stab when you’re done there. Go ahead, I’ll wait here…
Brutal stuff, huh? Amazing how much close minded hateful rhetoric spills from our collective fingertips when we can hide behind anonymity.
Supporting your child’s professional surfing aspirations makes you a terrible parent:
Got a batch of crotch fruit you’d like to turn into failures with the emotional depth of a kiddy pool? Then go ahead and home school ’em, spend each weekend shuttling between NSSA comps.
Maybe you’ll get lucky, they’ll be talented enough to slog through the ‘QS for a few years, then snag a job repping for a sponsor.
More likely they’ll end up hanging drywall at forty, drinking away every night at a local watering hole, reliving the time they got a two page spread and the resulting $500 photo incentive check.
They’ll find some small solace in the fact they’re the best surfer at their local spot, eventually knock up some trash bag, and pass along the tradition of failure to the next generation.
Thanks for posting this. I’m glad someone else noticed the racist, sexist, and homophobic commenting that is allowed on Surfermag Forums.
The most interesting part of this is Derek trolling old Inertia articles in an attempt to direct more traffic!
So, I did a little research and discovered that any Hawaiian, bloodline or transplant, can buy a nice piece of property on Moloka’i and live a ‘salt of the earth’ existence by growing your own, fishing, wind turbine, etc. Not sure about the Internet speed or the need for legal advice (Rory, you ready to make the jump?), but it sure sounds romantic.
Assuming here, but it sounds like you don’t know if Moloka’i is part of the United States. It is.
Of course it is. That’s the point: a Hawaiian resident, who no longer wanted to live with the shackles of island tourism, could move there and get along just fine.
I guess thats why I dont really have any surfer friends.
That’s why you don’t homeschool your kid so he can become a pro surfer.
Fuck the sustainability liars, fasho.
Aw man. Are we Raiders Fans? That’s the most depressing thing I’ve heard. Ever.
The real problem in Hawaii is that Hawaii is full of hawaians. Hawaians fart really hard releasing a lot of methane in atmosphere. While methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, there is over 200 times more CO2 in the atmosphere. Hence the amount of warming methane contributes is 28% of the warming CO2 contributes.
Have you ever heard a Hawaiian fart? I thought that was an old wives tale.
If a hawaiin farts…and nobody hears it, or smells it………
Roy (O’Neill ad in Transworld surf?), I think most of us would love to hear how you would replace the tourism revenue so as to provide an equivalent income stream for the residents of Hawaii. It’s a loft perch but is it really realistic?
The majority of people in Hawaii don’t rely on the tourism industry for jobs. But we all bear the burden of supporting it.
We pay for the roads that get ripped to shreds by millions of visitors every year. We pay out the ass for rent while vast amounts of property sits empty, waiting for tourists to come fill it up. We get to have coastal access privatized so visitors can enjoy our beaches without dealing with locals.
Not replace, eliminate. I mean, not 100%, obviously people want to, can, should be able to, come visit.
But every time the conversation turns to the problems tourism cause people from the mainland start chiming in about how the economy would sink, we’d all be fucked. And that’s nonsense. You all talk about the supposed benefits, never stop to think that they’re offset by very real costs.
And yeah, the people making money would lose it. Big fucking deal, everyone else is broke as fuck already.
What’s all this “we” business? Go home transplant!
Ha! Nope, I’m here for good.
white man in hawaii complaining..arent you the alien invader there….as all whites are? or do you have hui tats rory?
I’ve got about ten pairs of Da Hui boardshorts. They sell ’em for $20 a pair at Costco. Super comfortable, and they come in all black. Which I like, not into super loud and colorful.
thats rad Rory……..guess you don’t need the hui tats……i heard Eddie passes out a pidgin for haoles dictionary with them….you know….so you can be a gangsta ns shre local like him….and hell…if a jew from philly can speak pidgin…surely a twink, hipster like you can….i mean de didn’t even go to school to earn a masters in journo like you….you should bring Zack Weisberg over now that you are part of the pack…….i bet he and Eddie would get a long great
The only way I see Hawaii not being a tourist destination if something big happens and the only thing I can think is if the USA enters another big war. That would instantly kill the tourism, but Hawaii would have a new problem. The Military moving in and taking the rest of oahu. The other islands would just suffer
Maybe a bigger military presence (and more military money coming into Hawaii) would be better than tourism money? Majority of Military stationed here are pretty nice, respectful and accountable.
Absolutely.
It’s funny, before I moved to Oahu I was super anti-military. Then I got to know some and they’re typically super awesome genuine people. Just, you know, from a culture that puts a premium on military service. Not my deal, don’t really get that.
So I ended up having more than a few friends who were military, officers and enlisted. Always a bummer when they got sent elsewhere.
Sure, some of their type suck Don’t assimilate, hate Hawaii. But they don’t leave base very often.
I’m still not into how our government employs violence, but in my experience neither were they. They’d just picked a path, were kind of stuck in it, and who can say they haven’t done the same?
I’ve done the same, can’t really throw stones from this glass house.
It’s just more civilized here, if you check out my fine body of work over at Stab you’ll know what I mean.
(Always satirical over there at Stab though I don’t actually want to get titty fucked by Richie Porta)
via the washington post: “Tourism is the largest single contributor to the state’s gross domestic product, representing about 21 percent of its entire economy. Visitors spent more than $14 billion in Hawaii in 2012, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s annual report.”
hawaii kinda needs tourism…
Numbers are great…..what percentage of that $14 Billion actually STAYS in Hawaii? Revenue from Hotel, rental car, airfare, corporate restaurants, corporate retail stores, Starbucks, on and on and on all leave the state as those corporations are owned out of state. Maybe 5% of that $14B stays in Hawaii. That’d be $700M in Tourism spending that stays, or about 1.5% of it’s entire economy. Maybe they’d be okay.
ok but what about the taxes those companies pay to be there? i assume that helps the local governments fund community projects and whatnot. plus, i also would assume that it’s locals working at these big name corporations, therefore putting money in their pockets that then circulates within the communities. I’m not saying this is the best thing for the hawaiian people, but would hawaii truly be self sufficient without tourism?
Agreed, taxes do go through the state government. Government supports a lot of programs and people. The majority of positions at these corporations are low level and lower management (ie. customer service, hospitality, etc) which is minimal wage with tips (wonder if tips are counted in that $14B). Also these corps do pay rent to some locally owned companies, so my 5% number is incorrect, probably higher than that.
Ancient Hawaii (pre-contact) used to support over 1 Million population (about the same as there is now) and that was with no outside contact and completely self sustainable. Completely different use of land, people, resources, government, etc though. Now way of going back to that now.
So overall consensus, would current day Hawaii be self sufficient without tourist dollars or no? I admittedly know next to nothing about this, but it seems like they lack the necessary infrastructure to support themselves without the income from year long tourism
Yes. Agriculture and fishing alone would have enabled it to be a thriving economy if the population remained close to turn of twentieth century numbers.
That’s a very large caveat.
Major flaws in the whole conversation: we haven’t defined what a “good” economy is, what sufficient means in this context, nor about the type and level of infrastructure that is favorable or not. My comment is more thinking in terms of sheer agricultural land available and fishing stock if those were to be the only two industries for a early-twentieth century population. All hypothetical. Of course tourism anywhere generates revenue. Question is where it’s distributed (hint: with the guy who builds/operates the big infrastructure, not the wage earners grinding inside).
Logistically, yes, but I don’t think people in Hawaii are ready to give up email to farm potatoes all day. So no.
Crotch fruit? Fuck, that’s almost as good as trash pandas…
This is a very exaggerated article, but I get the viewpoint, keep on writing ( In reality we all love negative shit).
From the Barton Lynch entry in the Encyclopedia of Surfing.
Surfing, he said in a 1989 interview, was nothing more than “another outlet for making yourself feel good,” and shouldn’t serve as “the be-all and end-all of your life.” Surfers, he continued, were on the whole the most “self-righteous, cocky and judgmental group of people you’ll find anywhere in the world.”
If it makes you feel any better, you can go fuck yourself and your bullshit writing Parker!