“Beating people is the craziest feeling!”

Chas Smith

By

Could Kanoa Igarashi win more titles than Kelly Slater?

What did you think about Kanoa Igarashi’s Snapper run? He beat Keanu Asing and Jeremy Flores before losing to John John and Disco Stu in round 4 and Ace Buchan in round 5. What did you think of his first heat at Bells? He beat Dusty Payne and Italo Ferraira and has not lost yet. Is he a future world champ? Do you feel the burn?

Rory Parker has, often and accurately, described this as the Dead Ball Era of surfing. A historical epoch where a very conservative approach combined with a fluency in safe airs/safe barrel equals a champion. Rory wrote of last year:

The top two surfers on the tour, De Souza and Fanning, figured out the rules, knew what it took to win. Unfortunately for us, the viewers, what it took to win was technically perfect, totally uninspired surfing. Outside of a heat I think it’s an easy statement to claim that Fanning is the superior wave slider, but once the horn sounds they step into the same role. Link the turns together, don’t fall, bonk it at the end. Tens may win heats, but consistent sevens win titles.

So true and, you know, Kanoa seems like a surfer built for 7s. He seems like the perfect creation for the time. Certainly on bigger wave’d stops he will be tested and found wanting but does it really matter anymore? If he can do well or very well at Bells, Rio, J-Bay, Trestles, France, Portugal does he even really need Tahiti, Fiji, Pipe which assumes that those waves all go big? I’ve seen Kanoa surf Teahupo’o with my own eyes. He maybe should skip if it does go big.

A question mark could potentially be young Igarashi’s competitive drive but, by all accounts, he seems very competitive, having chewed through the WQS quickly and hopping on tour right away. Safe plus competitive could really and truly lead to so many multiple crowns in the current climate.

Do you think the World Surf League is licking its parched lips at the prospect of a handsome Asian-American? He is a star in Japan because of a reality show and also Korea and parts of China, you know. Or do you think the powers that be will change the judging criteria and force tour surfers to really put on a show? Does it even matter? Like, let’s be honest, you and I are going to kind of watch no matter what and the Koreans and the Chinese won’t know good surfing if it bit them on their asses.

Will Kanoa Igarashi win more titles than Kelly Slater?

$250 mill resort at “world’s best wave”!

Derek Rielly

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And the developer is movie icon Robert De Niro!

Do you remember three years ago when it felt like everyone was poised to fly to the Caribbean to surf the “world’s best wave”?

A warm-water, sand-bottom, natural-footer’s version of Skeleton Bay that yielded, in one year, two covers from two trips for the former WCT pro Ben Bourgeois. (Editor’s note: below is a cover of Dylan Graves on another trip. Surfing magazine’s cover archives are poorly maintained unlike its more polished sister magazine across the hallway.)

 

Dylan Graves, June Surfer
Dylan Graves on the cover of Surfer magazine, June 2013, at the very same hunk of rock and sand, De Niro is going to build a quarter of a billion dollar resort.

Wait! This photo of Ben Bourgeois sums it up!

Ben Bourgeois, Caribbean.
Have you ever seen a wave quite so dazzling or photogenic? This is the North Carolina surfer Ben Bourgeois there in 2013, the year when he scooped two covers from two trips. Photo by the brilliant Chris Burkard.

I remember being so hot for the joint (a wave of zero consequence running down the flank of an empty beach) that I canvassed message boards, threw myself into Google Earth (clue: the island is famous for a pink beach) and, eventually, had my suspicions confirmed of its location when I asked the photographer Ryan Miller about his (insert name of island) surf shots with Dane Reynolds and co.

Only thing is, if you want to surf it requires a monster north swell, the waves only hang around for a day or two, and because the little planes that service the island don’t like carrying boards, it can be a helluva biz just getting there with your your sticks.

Anyway, it transpires that the movie icon Robert De Niro and the Australian billionaire James Packer  will soon be building a “a 391-acre mega-resort at Princess Diana’s favourite Caribbean hideaway,” reports the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

“A year ago, the Antigua and XXXX prime minister Gaston Browne hailed De Niro as “a visionary” for his work in hotel development, including a Macau casino project with fellow Hollywood big-hitters Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. He named the actor a “special economic envoy” in the hope of attracting more celebrity investment to the country.

“But progress has been slow since, and a referendum on the island in March that approved the project by a narrow majority is facing a legal challenge by the XXXXXXX People’s Movement (XPM), which claims the result was illegitimate because non-XXXXXXXXwere allowed to vote.”

Am I clown, or a naive idealist, for voiding all references to the island’s name?

Does it matter?

Would you still bother throwing the thousands of dollars necessary chasing the wave down?

Does anyone still think of the joint anymore now it’s out of vogue?

Here’s a little something to refresh your memory, from Chris Burkard.

Mirage of the Caribbean from SURFER Magazine on Vimeo.

John John Florence
Like JJF here, Rory Parker is "a Futures boy through and through. Strong as fuck, spider webbed many a box on shallow reef, never actually torn one out. I'm the first to say that brand loyalty is for idiots, but I'm gay for Futures. I'd happily suck their collective dick in a truck stop shitter." | Photo: Courtesy John John Florence

Dear Rory: Why are fins so expensive?

Rory Parker

By

And does swapping up the foil, flex, cant, base, rake make a difference?

Dear Rory,

You strike me as someone with good knowledge of the surf biz. One thing I find myself asking is why the hell are fins so expensive? Molded plastic going over $100 seems crazy. Are sponsorships eating away profits or are these guys just making money hand over fist? What kind of mark-up do retailers get? Why isn’t some cut rate outfit making a $20 knockoff? Are the plugs patented? What about proprietary foil, flex, or dimensions? How badly are we being raked over the coals? I need to know!

Fins Out and Fancy Free

Dear Rory says:

So many questions!

Fins HAVE gotten ridiculously expensive in the last few years, and there’s a very simple reason. People are willing to pay that much. Fins are rocking the keystone markup, and serve as an awesome up sell item.

Ever work in a surf shop? Then you’ve dealt with the type of moron who comes in to buy their first board, and insists on a sparkling white hiperf rip stick. They usually know how to ride a snowboard or a wakeboard, or something like that, and are convinced that they’ll be able to shred it up in no time.

No, they don’t want a longboard or even a big fishy plank. It’s gotta be small, thin, and expensive. So, great. You give them what they want. But they probably need a bag too. And multiple leashes. And a bunch of different sets of fins for various conditions. You can turn seven hundred bucks into a grand lickety-split. Nothing wrong with parting a chump from his money, it’s his own hubris ripping him off.

Of course, there are the unscrupulous dicks who use fins as a bait and switch. “Oh, fins aren’t included.”

Well, they were included in the wholesale cost and the board won’t work without them. It’s like selling a car but the price doesn’t include tires. You can always haggle your way into having them thrown in, but why bother? Go somewhere else, leave them to their kook swindling.

As far as sponsorships eating away profits, it’s hard to say. Easy to point out that FCStitch is tossing money at nearly everyone on tour, while the Futures team is pretty sparse, and runs a fraction of the advertising.

Which isn’t surprising, Futures makes an awesome product. I’m a Futures boy through and through. Strong as fuck, spider webbed many a box on shallow reef, never actually torn one out. I’m the first to say that brand loyalty is for idiots, but I’m gay for Futures. I’d happily suck their collective dick in a truck stop shitter.

FCS… sucks. I’ve broken fins, and plugs, doing turns. Totally unacceptable. They were on the right track with the Fusions, adding a layer of glass to keep the plugs from popping out (which Futures had been doing since the beginning), but then they ruined it with the FCS2 fuckery. Titanium rods? Upgrade kits to make them backward compatible? Total bullshit.

Did you know that Surf Hardware sued SurfCo Hawaii for patent infringement over the Pro Teck line? They did, they lost, and they opened the door for off brand competitors. You can find them online, check Alibaba Express. Super inexpensive, though they cut corners like mad and you run the risk of picking up a poorly foiled hummingbird.

Now, does fin shape really matter? Will swapping up your foil, flex, cant, base, rake, make a difference? Yes and no. If you’re in the top ten percent, ability wise, of people who consider themselves surfers, then yes. Once you know how to engage your fins, use them to drive through turns, off the bottom, whatever, they can make or break a section. My oafish ass is totally devoted to stiff carbon numbers. When you’re over two hundred pounds anything else just feels like mush, especially if the surf has some juice. But for everyone else, the huge unjazzed mass of barneys standing knock kneed, bent waist, trimming awkwardly toward the shoulder on a shortboard they don’t know how to ride? There’s no difference, beyond the well-documented fact that if you think you’re ripping you may as well be. And like a kick ass airbrush, neat looking fins will make you think you surf at least five percent better.

I’ve got, literally, a few dozen sets of fins I’ve accumulated over the years. But I’m always on my Techflex Merricks. I love ’em, so much so that I’ll swap in some second-tier jobs if it’s particularly shallow. I don’t know if I can still wrangle a deal on them, and I don’t relish the idea of peeling off that much dough for a replacement set. Small, low-tide Rocky Rights? I’m running plastics so I don’t break my heart, and my wallet.

In the end, whether we’re talking fins specs, or board design, there’s no right answer. Everything comes down to your personal preference, whatever suits your own particular approach to wave sliding. Some people will swear that glass-ons are the end-all-be-all, and even though they’re a nightmare to ship, and they take up too much space on the rack, if that’s what floats your boat, right on.

But, for me, it comes down to rugged durability. What’s gonna let me keep surfing without paying out the ass for a constant stream of replacement fins? The only correct answer is Futures.

Send your life questions to [email protected]

Due to the volume of mail, Dear Rory can’t answer letters personally etc…

The Devil Wears Mada!

Chas Smith

By

Martin Potter broke something inside of me yesterday…

For many years, Derek Rielly and I have discussed “The Great Unfinished Surf Novel.” It always makes me laugh so much in my heart because, maybe because hyperbole is the actual discourse of our fair game.

Yesterday, Rory Parker and Samuel Einstein did such a wonderful job of painting an accurate, non-hyperbolic picture of the Bog Rail Pro brought to you by Slavery. I didn’t get a chance to catch it live but, after reading THIS and THIS went over to the WSL website where they promised I could “binge watch” every heat. I clicked on Mason vs. Mick vs. Keanu and drug my curser to minute 16 or something. Mick was racing down the line as fast as he could, rail to rail, on a knee-high section. It looked absolutely terrible. It looked so so so so so so so so so bad and Pottz said, “This is where it gets good.”

Martin Potter snapped something in me with that neutered batshit bullshit and made me think what the world doesn’t need is a hyper honest surf novel but that was, all of a sudden, what I wanted to write. Here’s the prologue!

THE DEVIL WEARS MADA

“What the hell is a dog of winter?” Jezza asks while flicking the miniature Australian flag planted into his avocado toast and poached egg sandwich with roast tomato on the side. His ring fingernails are both painted black.

“What?”

“A dog of winter. Someone told me about this book called A Dog of Winter or some fucken shit. Said it was a novel about surfing by this valley kook and it made me wonder. Is ‘dog of winter’ some crusty old surf slang or something? Like, did those guys who went to G-Land back in the 70s call each other ‘dogs of winter? Was the book about them?’”

Charlo looks up from his Proteins & Potassiums smoothie. The miniature Australian flag that had been floating like a cocktail umbrella is lying off to the side. The two work together, across the street at FTBD (pronounced “foot bed”) socks in the marketing department. The tagline is Die on your Feet™. A remix of Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition floats through the unseasonably warm air.

“I don’t know. Never heard of the book but, if it is real I’m sure it’s totally gay. You can’t write a surf book. Nobody can. For starters, what we do is, like, dumb. Have you ever really thought about it? We put on black pantsuits and go sit in a puddle surrounded by other men in black pantsuits all sitting in the same puddle. Water bumps appear on the horizon and all the puddle people get super eggy and paddle and hoot. It’s a full retard-fest. Have you ever listed to us? I mean, I can tell you right now, ‘Bro, there’s a mysto break out past Turtles and it’s firing!’ and it sounds normal, right?

The communal table between them isn’t wide enough so their knees keep brushing gently. It could be assumed they are brushing knees in Bondi but they are not. They are in an Australian themed café in the middle of Costa Mesa, California. Around the corner from Volcom. Down the street from What Youth.

“Yeah. Is there one? I’ve always wondered.”

“Exactly. Try writing that shit down. It looks mongo. And no. There’s not. There’s just that giant fucken kelp bed.”

Jezza thinks about this for a few seconds while studying an old black and white photo of Tom Carroll hanging on the wall. Tom was surfing’s world champion in 1983 and again in1984. He was proper midget short and looked like a little caveman but in the photo he captivates standing there next to his brother, Nick, who is even shorter and more caveman-like. Even in a pantheon of troubles, though, his healthy, sun-kissed skin radiates. An impossibly white smile glimmers. He is the picture vitality. Of surfing as a lifestyle. Even Nick looks handsome.

“I don’t know. I think what we do is rad…” he finally says. “I think it’s what every kid in, like, Brea would do if they could figure it out.”

“Surf?”

“Or skateboard, or snowboard or whatever.”

“Austyn Gillette is from Brea, I think.” Charlo says. “And he skates professionally.”

“You know what I mean. Move to the beach and actually live the dream.” Jezza responds without thinking.

“Austyn’s not living the dream? The kid is on HUF, makes an easy couple hundred thou a year all in. Fucken BgrSgr is probably paying him 200k just for riding those damn earbuds in competition. And he is not even relevant anymore. At all.”

“What’s with his hair?” Jezza segues.

“Exactly. Balding circa three years ago. But doing it with money in the bank and kicking a skateboard for a job. I’d say that’s a dream.” Charlo answers while wondering if he should have ordered a breaky sandwich instead.

“How good was Bieber’s new skate vid though? Jezza segues again.

Charlo turns slightly incredulous while trying to pick a chia seed out of his teeth with his miniature Australian flag that he just rescued from a puddle of coconut water that someone else at the communal table had spilled. He was not prepared, even remotely, for the possibility that anyone in the industry actually liked Justin Bieber’s attempt at being core.

“The one feat. Ryan Sheckler? Where Shecks is powersliding with that lesbian through LA? What Do Ü Mean? Fucken hell, are you serious?”

“Yeah? I thought it was pretty good. And it got viewed over 100 million times.” Jezza says trying not to sound too enthusiastic. He had, in fact, watched it back to back to back and even contemplated downloading the song before he realized he would have no probable deniability if it ever accidentally came on in public.

“Well the other one with John Leguizamo got viewed over half a billion sooooooo….” Charlo says, unimpressed.

Jezza cuts him off. “There was another one? And it did? And you watched it?”

“Yes and yes and yes. While you were busy masturbating to shitty kickflips I was locking down a licensing deal with the chick who runs Leguizamo’s program. We’re doing a rad collab sock called Ghetto Klown. It’s going to be Tilly’s big Christmas push. Skullphone is doing a pop-out counter display…some weird jack-in-the-box shit or something. It’s going to be sick.”

Now it’s Jezza’s turn to be slightly incredulous while scratching one of his black nails with his miniature Australian flag that has turned half green from avocado because it had collapsed. “You were locking down a licensing deal, bro? Yeah? So you’ve been promoted to VP of new biz? Gonna move over to that desk underneath Andy Irons’ surfboard and ask everyone if they’re gonna ‘get wet’ this weekend?”

They both laugh at the very clear dig at Ricky Rogers, the brand manager, who just graduated from USC’s Marshall School of Business making him the only one who didn’t graduate from San Diego State. Generally he has ok ideas about experimenting with a variety of attitudinal statements from targeted Millennials but Jezza once went surfing with him and watched him put his fins in backwards.

“You’re right,” Charlo says. “I didn’t lock anything down but we really are doing that collab. You didn’t see it in our look book?”

Jezza is slightly frustrated. “No. Fuck. It’s already out? That’s why I was asking about that novel Dog of Winter or whatever. I thought if it really existed and was old surf slang it would make a rad sock. Like, a sick photo sublimated Rottweiler on the toe or something. Keep your Dogs of Winter warm. Or keep your dogs warm this winter. Or something.”

Charlo laughs. “Yeah but if it really existed it would be gay. Remember? You can’t write surf. Nobody can. We could do a pair of underwear called Tapping the Source and have a photo sublimated surfer being sucked into an asshole.”

“Was Tapping the Source a surf book?” Jezza asks.

“I wish I didn’t know but yes. Yes it was.” Charlo answers. “My parents got it for me for Christmas one year. The back said something about people coming to Huntington Beach ‘in search of the endless party, the ultimate high and the perfect wave’ or some shit. Huntington Beach. California. Motorcycles and speed and inland emperors in their calf length Fox boardshorts and tribal tattoos and wrap around sunglasses Huntington Beach. And I don’t think the bro who wrote it was even being ironic or anything. I threw it in the trash, literally, before I opened my next present.”

Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition transitions, without pause, to INXS’s Never Tear us Apart which, also, coincidentally, features skateboarding on its album cover though not in its music video.

“… but that’s surf novels or whatever…” he continues. “That’s what they all turn in to. The barns who write them think they’re living some grand fucken adventure because they surf. Chasing the stoke. Whatever the fucken shit they call it. When was the last grand fucken adventure you went on?”

“The Mentawis…” Jezza responds without having to think.

“You think that’s an adventure?” Charlo shoots back. “The Ments? Even though that place is as far away from us as you could possibly get every fucken surfer ever has surfed the there, like, this year. And done so while sitting on a boat drinking ice-cold Bintang and streaming episodes of Game of Thrones. There’s no more adventure. There’s no more unknown and that is fucken that.”

Dusty Payne Rip Curl Pro
Tell me: what kinda jams do you wanna see? Practised but safe turns on sets or a little risk on slightly smaller waves? | Photo: WSL

Revealed: WSL Judges “Size Queens!”

Samuel Einstein

By

Would you rather see someone surf a set wave safely or a medium wave insanely?

The fundamental question needs to be asked: would we rather see someone surf a set wave safely or a medium wave insanely?

Dusty must be scratching his head. What spectator would rather see Kanoa safety slap his way to the beach than Dusty looking he’s auditioning for (insert bearded film-maker)’s next flick?

The WSL needs to come out and say it.

Wave choice trumps all other aspects of the scoring criteria.

While this (to a degree) makes sense at spots like Chopes, Fiji, Pipe etc, shitty shoulder-high and onshore Bells is the wrong time and place for the WSL to drive this point home. As far as quality goes, the difference between the set waves and the medium waves on a day like this is irrelevant. Yet still, the wave-height scoring bias is on display.

But why?

My theory: this trivial shit makes sense to the WSL’s target mainstream audience. Wave height is tangible to non-surfers. For the last few years, Paul Speaker and his team have been promising mainstream viewership. However, surfing isn’t basketball. It’s not soccer. There’s no ball-in-the-basket moment that makes sense to a corn shucker from Iowa.

So many of these contests end up being wave-selection affairs where the guy lucky enough to be on the right side of the rotation wins by default. If I had a nickel for every time a heat was coming down to the wire, and I knew the guy was going to get the  score only because of the size of the wave he took off on, I’d have enough to buy the goddamn WSL.

My theory: this trivial shit makes sense to the WSL’s target mainstream audience. Wave height is tangible to non-surfers. For the last few years, Paul Speaker and his team have been promising mainstream viewership. However, surfing isn’t basketball. It’s not soccer. There’s no ball-in-the-basket moment that makes sense to a corn shucker from Iowa.

Let’s take another sport for example, figure skating. I don’t know shit about it. It all looks the same to me. Some twirls. Some awkward in between ‘dancing’. Some smiles. Then it’s over. I wouldn’t know how to judge that in a million years. Sure, I’ll see it on TV every four years come Olympic time, but that’s it.

That’s what surfing is to non-surfers.

Therefore, when you simply award the biggest wave with the best score, people have that moment of clarity. “I now understand surfing and want to buy Mick Fanning’s t-shirt!”

 

Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto
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