Jeremy Flores
Jeremy Flores is a ruthless machine at Bells. | Photo: WSL/Cestari

Parker: Bells, Drug Testing, Slavery!

The Bells contest starts in maybe two days! Let's discuss!

We’re two days, (maybe three, the dateline confuses me), out from Bells, that crusty cold water bitch that’s been around forever. Even though she really doesn’t look that hot anymore, and everyone is kind of sick of her shit, it’s all smiles and politeness and pretend relevancy. Hard to get excited.

In theory, it’s nice to think the competitors will dust off longer boards and use a little more rail. But that’s just the old man inside me talking. “Look! I can kind of surf like that because it’s easier on my joints!”

Whatever. Who cares? Great to see Mason getting a spot, we all love him. Too bad for Freestone, getting the Banting curse.

One wonders, with all these injuries, will the ‘CT ramp up drug testing? Because surfing ain’t exactly a sport that benefits from ‘roids, but when you’ve been out for a while and need to build atrophied muscle quickly there’s a solution in that needle. Or pill. I’m not really sure how one goes about taking steroids.

Will Kanoa learn to stop drawing out his reverses? Yeah, you can ride backwards, big deal. So can everyone on tour. This ain’t the ‘QS, can’t milk a score that way. Just slows you down, fucks up your approach to the next session. Hit it quick, flip around, save your effort for the end section bonk that the judges love.

Just kidding, we know they won’t. Testing is kept secret, which means they probably aren’t doing it. You only hide everything when you have something to hide. It’s the same reason police departments keep disciplinary records secret.

Will Kanoa learn to stop drawing out his reverses? Yeah, you can ride backwards, big deal. So can everyone on tour. This ain’t the ‘QS, can’t milk a score that way. Just slows you down, fucks up your approach to the next session. Hit it quick, flip around, save your effort for the end section bonk that the judges love.

Then there’s the elephant in the room, Rip Curl uses slave labor. Hefty profit in that, contracting out to people who quote real low. Don’t ask how, that’s a can of worms.

I love how they wrote it off. “Yeah, we knew. But the stuff already shipped, so what can you do?”

Could’ve recalled it. Which would have been the decent thing. Take a loss, rather than benefit from human misery. I understand that’s asking a lot, monitoring production, holding yourself accountable.

I love the irony of Chas’s Monster Energy drink articleBecause an energy drink company isn’t really run by Satan, though there is a moral gray area that comes with peddling any addictive substance. But partnering with a company that profits from slave labor? Pretty brutal, totally uncaring.

I’m gonna say it again: RIP CURL PROFITS FROM SLAVERY.

They knew about it, could have got out in front of the subject. Make an announcement, donate the profits. But they didn’t. They tried to ignore it. Sweep it under the rug, keep the money.

And try to remember the next time you need a new wetsuit, or snowboard jacket, or whatever.

Now watch last year’s final between Mick Fanning and Taj Burrow here!

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How to: Stuff a Bikini!

Noah Beschen runs over buoyant bikini gal!

Noah Beschen is the dazzling, almost 16 year old, son of one-time tour superstar Shane.

A few years ago, while talking biz with his daddy, I watched the tiny blond-haired, brown-skinned boy (a mix of Californian and Central American genes) skate the pool at Bondi, then terrorise the waves out front. Don’t you wish you had the same kinda childhood, hunting waves and skate parks, instead of kicking cans around y’crummy neighbourhood miles from the beach?

Anyway, this sequence, by the Hawaiian photographer Tony Heff, has always fascinated me. I saw it on Matt Biolos’ Instagram a lil while ago and figured it was some kinda advertising shoot. It looks set-up, yeah? It ain’t.

Turns out Noah and Heff were kicking around Ehukai’s little sandbar when Noah got a dreamy lil runner, Heff set up for the shot, and “suddenly he saw the lady right in his path,” says Heff, “but she couldn’t get out of the way in time. It seems like he did everything he could to get out of her way but she looked too buoyant to go underneath the water and he ran the back of her feet over. Noah wiped out and she came up holding her leg, wincing in pain. She couldn’t talk. Her husband, he sounded Brazilian, was yelling at her from the beach, ‘Are you ok? Are you ok?’ I was bummed because I thought she’d ruined my photo. Later, my friend was looking at the photos on my camera and couldn’t stop laughing.”

Let’s examine!

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Pure sunshine!
Pure sunshine! | Photo: Brian Bielmann/brianbielmann.com

Just in: Mason Ho to surf Bells!

The one and only Mason Ho and also Dusty Payne. But Mason Ho!

Do you love that Rip Curl has an event if only because Mason Ho gets to wildcard? Thank you Claw Warbrick for starting your wetsuit brand in an austere land and thank you Jack Freestone! It is due his injury, or maybe Filipe Toledo’s, that Mason gets to do post heat interviews on the bleak sands of Torquay, Australia. Have you ever been there? Have you ever scanned the depressing bluffs with your sad eyes and felt even more sadness actually seep deeper into your very soul? Mason Ho is exactly the sunshine Victoria needs!

Dusty Payne is surfing too. #shrug.

But Mason! Mason Ho! Read his hilarious 10 worst here and laugh and put him on your Fantasy Surf team straight away. How did you do after Snapper by the way? I did poorly. Does it mean I don’t know professional surfing? Probably.

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Just in: WSL partners with Satan?

Many questions about a very shady deal.

Remember one year ago when the World Surf League signed an exclusive deal with Monster Energy drink to be the Official Energy Sponsor™ of Professional Surfing™? It cost a rumored $2,500,000.00! Red Bull hats were banned, rage was internalized, etc.

And that was that. I don’t recall seeing the Claw™ much on WSL broadcasts though either this year or last and part of me wonders if the deal was fake, like the amount of viewers that watch WSL webcasts. Or if the deal was contingent upon delivering actual eyeballs. Or, maybe, if Monster doesn’t care because because they bought something much more valuable than piddly little Internet numbers.

They bought THE SOUL OF SURFING!

Did you know that Monster Energy might be Satanic? Watch and learn just like Kelly Slater watched and learned about chemtrails!

And oh, you’ve read the Legend of Robert Johnson. You know that the Devil pokes around making strange deals for strange things. Would it be so wrong for him to want to own surfing? And what do you think, exactly, he got for 2.5 million dollars? Did he get all the announcers and Taj Burrow or does Taj get to opt out because he is retiring? Did he get the Red Bull athletes too? Did he have to take CEO Paul Speaker and Graham Stapelberg and was he all bummed, telling anyone who would listen, “Yeah I don’t know who those guys are…look! There’s Kelly!” Does Joe Turpel have to follow him around in hell doing play-by-play when he is not at events? “Satan gets on his throne and resets…”

Many questions.

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BeachGrit surf trunks
If you want something a little different, a little shorter, something that'll turn a gal's head, these four-inch leg trunks might be for you. Note: must be worn with the most arrogant expression!

Buy: Sophisticated Surf Trunks!

Slim, short-leg surf trunks for… fifty dollars! Delivered anywhere in the world!

When BeachGrit started a little over a year ago, we figured it’d make sense to leverage our design contacts to make our own surf trunks. Chas and I had both fallen into the hole of buying Orlebar Browns and whatever else, just so we could wear something a little slimmer, a little shorter (yeah, I know, ripe for parody etc. Maybe slip a reference to gay saunas here.) The kind of surf trunks most surf brands miss.

But who wants to spend two or three c-notes on a pair of trunks? We all know they cost maybe twenty bucks to make.

So we got our pal Rama McCabe, who’d won back-to-back surf trunks of the year awards for TCSS, to design our first range. They came, they sold.

This year, we went slightly shorter, slightly slimmer and instead of cotton figured we’d swing with nylon.

Still with the four-button fly and the back pocket and the inner lining, but this time in the most spasmodic and convulsive colours.

Fifty bucks, delivered airmail anywhere in the world.

And only in 30s and 31s. (Ignore that little drop-down menu.)

Click here to buy. 

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