Tanner Gudauskas surfing the wave of your dreams!
Tanner Gudauskas surfing the wave of your dreams!

Incredible: You can surf Jaws too!

Chas Smith

By

Video proof shows that Maui's most famous big wave is actually super manageable!

Jaws, or Pe’ahi, has been the clear star of this year’s El Niño winter. It has been so very big, like jaw-droppingly so, and remember that contest? It is especially impressive in light of the canceled Eddie and the just completed Titans of Mavericks.

Could you surf it? Of course not (unless this is Albee Layer reading, resting on his couch, being fed from the hand of a Michelin star’d nymph). But what if you had only ever seen the GoPro angle? What if you had only ever looked up the nostrils of your favorite surfer and watched a playful head high wave dance behind him?

If that was the only angle available, I reckon I’d fly straight to Maui and take it on. I just got out of the water here in Cardiff-by-the-Sea and this clip below is how it felt to me. It was 2-3 max and I sat on the inside and caught the ones that sort of ran along the reef. Exactly how you see it in this clip below.

SayNoToGoPro commented on a recent story, writing, “I miss the days before GoPro made everyone think their surfing was worth viewing from horrible, unflattering photographic angles.”

I know there is some technical reason why the POV angle shrinks the background but maybe people should stop using it, entirely, on big waves? Yeah? I think so too!

Miracle: VonZipper rises from dead!

Chas Smith

By

The iconic sunglass company is back/never left! What other bits of 2000s nostalgia do you long for?

Last week was a stunner, no? First the Eddie was on and then the Eddie was off but it was OK because Jaws. Then the Titans of Mavericks was on and Nic Lamb won and the Committee of Five nodded solemnly. And then Red Bull found it in the goodness of their hearts to point cameras at Pipeline and let us gorge off the teat all day long.

What else happened? Justice Scalia died in his sleep sending Rory Parker into a fit of ecstatic paroxysms, Nazarè put on a wonderful show, Kelly Slater turned 44 and iconic sunglass brand VonZipper was announced dead also in its sleep. The reporting entity stated the reasoning was that VZ made sunglasses that, “swallowed the entire face.”

And so sad. Parko, Taj, the late, great Andy Irons each made VonZipper mainstays of the 2000s. Bold, colorful, sassy and fun. Sure maybe a little large but everything was oversized at that heady turn of the century from pant legs to paychecks. The times, they were as big as our dreams.

Yes, the passing saddened me and partially because it feels, stylistically, that 2000-2005 is ripe for a nostalgic comeback. We could all use a dash of bold, colorful, sassy and fun in our ready-to-wear. It would show ISIS that we are unbowed. It would let Putin know to leave the West alone or else. Without VZ shielding our eyes from the horrors of a refugee crisis, stalled Chinese economy, racial tensions in Europe and the US, a raging Zika epidemic, stagnating global wages, though, things would not feel quite right.

But how our emotions can turn on a dime! This morning I woke up to find a retraction of the VonZipper obituary buried at the tail end of a different story! It read:

Oh, and please consider this is an official retraction from the Stab Department of WordPress CMS Login Details. Stab reported in Gossip Girl a few days ago that we’d heard a rumour that VonZipper was closing its doors. Well, we got it wrong. Very wrong. VonZipper is alive and well, and any surf industry whispers are false. We for one, are glad that one of the most beloved eyewear brands in the game will be continuing. We sincerely apologise to all that were affected by our inaccuracy.

And this has made my day! I know how fickle rumors can be. How, in trying to artfully recreate a style of reportage, in trying to rush first to market, important details can slip away. I mean, I don’t know but I’ve heard. In any case, welcome back to the land of the living VonZipper! May your future be as bright as your past!

And while we are discussing 2000-2005 nostalgia…which bit would you most like to reconstitute? Kelly already has a lock on the potato chip surfboard but what else? What would you like to see? What do you miss?

Watch: Sirens of Kauai!

Rory Parker

By

Watch girls in bikinis be shore pounded! Story includes dubious link to Greek classics.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve read any Greek mythology. At least since I was forced to in a scholarly setting, which was, again, a long time ago.

I remember the sirens, though.

Super hot ladies, singing beautiful songs and luring dumb-dumb sailors to their deaths. I think they were inspired by seals. Addled horn-dog sailors saw a bunch of ocean dogs flopping around yelling, “Arf! Arf! Arf!” and all they could think was, “Man, I can’t wait to dip my dick in that.”

I may be confusing sirens with mermaids.

Instead of pinnipeds we’ve got lithe tanned young ladies in teensy weensy bikinis flopping around in huge surging shorepound, some obnoxious safety minded filmer fills in for Orpheus’s lute, and the sailors are replaced by pasty skin tourists who lack the sense to stay far far far away from the shoreline.

 

Hows about an updated version?

Instead of pinnipeds we’ve got lithe tanned young ladies in teensy weensy bikinis flopping around in huge surging shorepound, some obnoxious safety minded filmer fills in for Orpheus’s lute, and the sailors are replaced by pasty skin tourists who lack the sense to stay far far far away from the shoreline.

Maybe not quite as dumb as wanting to fuck a seal, but close enough for government work.

 

Black Nazare
"It was a nasty and ugly session, unridable," says the filmmaker Pedro Miranda. "We call it 'Black Naza' when it's like that. The conditions were extreme, not because of the size, it was huge, although we’ve seen bigger, but because things were a bit more out of control than usual: strong onshore winds, biggest waves closing out and the inside was impossible for the security team. " | Photo: Pedro Miranda

Watch: Dirty, ugly Black Nazaré!

Derek Rielly

By

And the Australian Mick Corbett gets tossed like a salad!

Whatever your feelings about the “biggest wave in the world”, Portugal’s Nazaré, y’gotta admit it’s a photogenic sonofabitch.

Like most of us, I figured it was a giant burger operated, mostly, by semi-kooks dazzled by the idea of big-wave surfing, but then Shane Dorian, who was surprised by the ferocity of Nazaré, set me straight.

“The place is a logistical nightmare,” said Shane. “We lost a couple of skis. And, it’s really hard to do rescues there, really really hard. Each surfer needs his own water rescue guy on a ski. At all times. It’s really super dangerous. There’s a cliff there. All that shit. Once, I caught a wave and we lost one of the skis in the shore break. I finally got back out there an hour later. I got a couple more waves and then we had to ditch another ski on the sand. It is just chaotic. I had one of those feelings that I should be happy with the two waves I caught. It’s a full on beach break. It’s like these big wedges down the beach so every time you catch a wave there’s no way to paddle back out. You need a jet ski to come and get you right away and there’s a rip sucking you straight into a big cliff. It’s a lot like the north shore when the waves are big. The water’s really angry.”

The video, below, is from the Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Miranda.

“It was a nasty and ugly session, unridable,” says Pedro. “We call it ‘Black Naza’ when it’s like that… the conditions were extreme, not because of the size, but because things were more out of control than usual: strong onshore winds, biggest waves closing out and the inside was impossible for the security team.”

In the water there was the Australian Mick Corbett, another Australian,  Jarryd Foster, Portugal’s Nuno Santos and the Italian stud Alessandro Marciano.

“But only Mick got waves,” says Pedro. “That was that kind of day where you’re not expecting them to go in, but these guys are from Australia… man… it was a sick show to watch. Big respect to the Aussies! Overall, Mick charged into three waves which are all in the video. One was a WSL Big Wave entry few days ago, two of them he couldn’t make. The bigger ones were killers so the waves he got were like the mid-size from the session…”

 

Volcom House
Say, you ever dreamed of sitting…here…at the Volcom House watching in real-time a pumping winter swell at Pipe? Today you can! Open a can of tuna, maybe a blister pack of smoked ham, mix a cocktail and…w atch!

Live: Epic Pipe from the Volcom House!

Derek Rielly

By

Pipeline is pumping… now. Watch here!

This is novel idea. The Austrian energy drink company Red Bull is broadcasting today’s epic Pipe swell from the Volcom House at Pipe.

No panelists, no commentators, no judges. Just pure vision of a building four-to-six-foot swell operated by the best surfers on the North Shore.

From Red Bull’s PR division:

“THIS IS LIVE is a simple concept: Livestream a day of freesurfing at Pipeline and Backdoor using the famed Volcom Houses and their unobstructed beachfront view of the waves as our vantage point.  Intentionally a low fi project, this livestream won’t have commentators and heat analyzers. No panelists and pundits. And no VOD. When the cameras turn off, that’s it. This is live sums up what the experience is all about in three little words. Tune in, and it should feel like your’re sitting on the back porch of the Volcom House, watching Pipeline go off right there in front of you.”

The broadcast is coming from the three-storey, four-bedroom Gerry Lopez house Volcom bought in 2007 for $US4.2 million (see the setup below) and not the little house where a BeachGrit correspondent once took a gal and never saw her again.

image1

 

Watch here!

Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto
EAT BEACHGRIT SPAM!
It's Daily!