Two guys look like Finalists. One is the defending champion and one is a part-timer from Lennox who racked up a hell of a credit card debt chasing the QS after Rip Curl dumped him in his prime. Is he aggressive in the surf, does he take his and yours as well, ala Fanning at the Superbank? Not at all. He's the most mellow cat out there. No interview today but tomorrow we'll get down with the Stu and see where the declarations of war come from. Throw a question in the comments and I'll get it to him. | Photo: WSL

Quiksilver Pro: “Stu K v Toledo final!”

Prediction: defending champ vs lawnmower man from Lennox Head… 

Human all too Human. 

The dream continues. Great day for the race. Putin pulls out of Syria, Ohio and Florida primaries tomorrow, Stu Kennedy continues his run in the biggest pro surfing cinderella story since…since… the last time a highly fancied sponnoed surfer was parachuted into a comp as wildcard and failed miserably. So, ever.

Not a single military analyst saw Putin’s exit from Syria, same with Kennedy’s wrecking ball run through the draw. Not one commenter picked it, least of all me, and he lives around the corner. Couple of weeks ago I saw him out the front mowing the lawn, thought the dream was over and he was a phone call away from picking up a Jim’s Mowing franchise.

Just by way of preamble, I parked down in the Cooly-gatta by the old ASP headquarters. To get a panorama of the Superbank. If you’re reading in America, or England, or Hawaii, or Israel or South Africa and you haven’t seen this thing, you’re really missing something. It’s phenomenal. A mile of ruler-edged sand, waves of amazing perfection whipcracking at maximum surfboard speed. Not dirty green or brown like Sandspit. They slither like phantasmic eels in electric blue, Tahitian Pacific warm blue. You’ve got to see it, surf it. You only need one. Just one.

From the vantage of the rocks at Little Marley, Stu K out surfed JJF in the morning round four heat in the best looking surf of the event. Rielly asked me to get technical today in the wrap. By that analysis Stu beat with him superior repertoire, turn speed, drive off the bottom and rotational arc.

He failed the first critical finishing move to avoid running over a freesurfer. He fell on the second to open the door for Florence. Those flat spin air reverses from Florence where he hucks off the lip and lands in the flats aren’t pretty and scream busted ankle. But it was enough to get the job done. Kanoa was not in the hunt. He’s had a dream run with low-scoring heats but if real talk rules he would have not made a womens heat today.

Two guys look like Finalists. One is the defending champion and one is a part-timer from Lennox who racked up a hell of a credit card debt chasing the QS after Rip Curl dumped him in his prime. Is he aggressive in the surf, does he take his and yours as well, ala Fanning at the Superbank? Not at all. He’s the most mellow cat out there. No interview today but tomorrow we’ll get down with the Stu and see where the declarations of war come from

By forecasting a Brother revival in 2016 and a QF finish at least I was ridiculed: Brother drops off Tour, Brother has a busted hoof etc etc. To double down on the call, I predict Kolohe Andino to take out the Aussie Leg and vy for the Republican nomination in 2020 as a dual world champion with Snips as VP and Speaker verballing the empty chair.

Two guys look like finalists. One is the defending champion and one is a part-timer from Lennox who racked up a hell of a credit card debt chasing the QS after Rip Curl dumped him in his prime. Is he aggressive in the surf, does he take his and yours as well, ala Fanning at the Superbank? Not at all. He’s the most mellow cat out there. No interview today but tomorrow we’ll get down with the Stu and see where the declarations of war come from. Throw a question in the comments and I’ll get it to him.

Without a media pass I had to hustle with the rest of the cattle and all the dewey eyed groupies looking for a piece of Florence. I wanted to know if had a strategy to rein in Toledo.

“Looks pretty obvious to me,” I said, “that Filipe is surfing at a level well above everyone else. What are you going to do to beat him?”

“Ummm, I don’t know, he’s human too, he’ll make his mistakes. I’m just going to surf my best and not worry about him”.

Right.

As a strategy, the human, all-too-human strategy, has worked out badly for JJF in the past. Remember the Final at Margies with De Souza? Waiting for De Souza to make a mistake worked out, how? He just calmly slotted two eights and put Florence to sleep.

Can anyone see Filipe crumbling? Seeing as how every Final he’s been in he’s absolutely crushed his opponent. You’ll have to throw him off the balcony of the fifth floor to cripple him first or give him the pre-heat drug of choice of Wilson and Freestone. He’s going to have to be outsurfed. Or out muscled and harassed by a no name lawn-mower from the Ox.

Can anyone see Filipe crumbling? Seeing as how every Final he’s been in he’s absolutely crushed his opponent. Put the fish and the chicken on the combo plate as Ross Williams would say. Nup. You’ll have to throw him off the balcony of the fifth floor to cripple him first or give him the pre-heat drug of choice of Wilson and Freestone. He’s going to have to be outsurfed. Or out muscled and harassed by a no name lawn-mower from the Ox.

Didn’t the afternoon get weird. The vibe on the beach was low key, kind of non-existent really, the surf faded out so I went looking for expert commentary to watch the final heats unfold. I found it in the form of BeachGrit commenter DeathStar who was manning one of the core surfboard shops on the outskirts of Byron Bay. Deathstar speaks from the perspective of thirty years in the surfboard biz. I asked Deathstar to walk us through the mechanics of the Parkinson/Ibelli restart.

Longtom: What the fuck just happened then Deathstar?

Deathstar: They’ve had a talk and Parko’s said to the young guy “We’re going in” and the young guy’s gone “Yes Mr Parkinson, lets do that”. And an official has told them to get back out there because this is surfing time.

Longtom: So Parko’s verballed him?

Deathstar: I think so. They didn’t stop the clock. The surfers don’t have a right. It’s a professional event and it’s on.

Longtom: Any other sport in the world where that could happen. Where they’d just stop and say “nah we’re done”.

Deathstar: “Maybe golf? If there was an electrical storm. But no, can’t think of another sport where they could just go nah, we’re not doing it. I just think that was massive mind games from Joel Parkinson, the master. I’m flabbergasted by that, we just saw a bit of history.

Longtom: What’s your overall assessment of this event?

Deathstar: It’s been fascinating, I reckon. For a lot of reasons. Definite generational change, it’s actually really coming into effect now. Dunno, I just think it’s a cleaner, better produced product.

Longtom: But is anyone watching, does anyone care?

Deathstar: I think a lot of people are watching but beyond the people who are watching no one gives a shit. Unless something major happens like an 11-time world champ getting taken down by an unknown from Lennox Head.

Longtom: Or a shark attack.

Deathstar: Or a shark attack.

I’m not a betting man, but you’d put Toledo in an unbackable favourite. But if the most famous Kennedy from Lennox Head does get up it’ll be the best time to surf the Point uncrowded: the party will last for weeks and every surfer in the district will be keeping European hours.


Lily-livered: “The WSL a den of sissies!”

The World Surf League tattles on BeachGrit!

We have just started the second day of a three day sentence for posting World Surf League videos on our BeachGrit Facebook (follow here!) and what a big bummer. What a sad punishment. We can’t touch our social media, per Facebook police rules. They lock it tight as a drum, meaning all of our wonderful stories go unshared for three whole days. Oh they ding you good for “copyright infringement.”

The unfortunate part is, we were following the very unclear WSL rules as they related to posting content but they changed them, quietly in the middle of the night, and sent Herr Zuckerberg’s henchmen to our doorstep without warning and hauled us into the concentration camp for three whole days.

I am bouncing a pebble off the wall right now and Derek is doing push-ups.

And this ain’t the way we handle our business in the surfs, is it? What happened to a good curse-filled yell? A punch to the teeth? I get that WSL CEO Paul Speaker has never surfed a day in his life but come now. Can’t we at least pretend to understand each other?

My pebble has rolled underneath Derek’s metal cot and I am playing Jailhouse Rock on a homemade harmonica. Derek has stopped doing push-ups and is fashioning a shiv out of a toilet paper roll.

I find litigiousness ugly in almost every circumstance. I find tattling uglier. My first job after university was an ill-begotten turn teaching 5th grade. I was a bad teacher but one thing I am proud of was instilling the ideal “snitches get stitches” into each and every young heart. If a child tattled about anything, the tattler got the punishment. By the end of the year nobody tattled. I either caught the kids being naughty myself or they found solutions that didn’t involve the damned authorities.

Herr Zuckerberg’s henchmen are telling me that Jailhouse Rock is copyrighted and have taken my harmonica away. Derek is doing push-ups again.

It’s not like there are thousands or even hundreds or even tens of surf websites. There are, like, seven so the pansy WSL image folk could have very easily sent out an email saying, “Take the shit down you fuckers…” and we would have complied. They also could have waited for me to wander by and knocked my teeth in. Either would have been preferable to their whiny crybaby tattle.

I have picked up Derek’s shiv and making small improvements. Derek is whistling Happy Birthday because he says the courts just turned over copyright protection on it and it now belongs to the public.

Next time I see the WSL I am going give it stitches.

 


Boycott: The Hideous Round 5!

Boycott I say! Show the World Surf League who's boss (besides CEO Paul Speaker)!

It has been splashed across this website for almost two years and other websites too. And probably magazines. Etc. The losers’ Round 5 is for total losers and I don’t mean the surfers in Round 5. I mean,  I do. They lost in Round 4. But I really mean the people who watch it.

Round 5 stretches World Surf League Championship Tour events a whole 2 hrs. 2 hrs of maybe pristine swell. 2 hrs of life to watch men who should have skunked off to drink in a lonely corner. What pressure is there in Round 4? I’ll answer for you. None. Which, in turn, makes Round 4 lame too because a “no losers round” is the ultimate losers round!

And it is time to be done with it, with Round 5, or whichever round is gumming up the works. This has been splashed across this website for almost two years and other websites too. But the World Surf League is not listening. CEO Paul Speaker has ABBA playing full volume in his Walkman while he rollerblades around Santa Monica in preparation for rollerblading around the Washington Redskins new stadium.

So let us show them with our numbers! Forward this to all your friends and tell them not to show up for Round 5. No logging in, no favoriting WSL Tweets, no nothing. Being anti-stuff is working for both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. It can work for us too!

Boycott Round 5!

P.S. Do you think CEO Paul Speaker subscribes to Google Alerts and has to read every one of these stories because they are the only ones that pop up featuring his name?


dane reynolds sues Quiksilver

Reynolds: “Despair in final moments!”

Is Dane Reynolds thinking about kicking his board at the surfer dropping in? I would be…

Cameras everywhere! All the time. Once we worried, “Big Brother is Watching!” who’d’ve thought the notion would become obsolete?

Now it’s all about little brother, everyone’s taking pictures, posting them online. Not a moment goes undocumented, everything’s a matter of public record.

Which suits me fine, usually.

A few months back I beat up a homeless girl in the dead center of the hustle and bustle of Waikiki, right on Ala Moana Bvd on a gorgeous day jam packed with tourists. She had it coming, but for a minute there I lived in terror of the thought that the scene would end up on youtube, minus the lead in wherein she demanded money, then slapped me in the ear I’d had operated on less than twenty four hours previously.

If you’ve ever been cuffed in an ear that was recently cut off and sewn back on you’ll know, that shit hurts really bad. And I just saw red and went bananas, no conscious thought involved. Still, I was, literally, about three times her size. I know it wouldn’t have looked good.

Potential negative effects for myself aside, I adore the ubiquity of the visual record. Especially when the camera is in the hands of someone with talent.

A few months back I beat up a homeless girl in the dead center of the hustle and bustle of Waikiki, right on Ala Moana Bvd on a gorgeous day jam packed with tourists. She had it coming, but for a minute there I lived in terror of the thought that the scene would end up on youtube, minus the lead in wherein she demanded money, then slapped me in the ear I’d had operated on less than twenty four hours previously.

Such as Les Morales.

Les Morales is a skimboard killer, photographer extraordinaire, owner of the world’s finest head of hair. Currently in Italy chasing cyclists with camera in hand, he’s an honest to god photo pro, in an era when every prosumer stooge is trying to lay claim to the title. He also took the only good picture I have of myself surfing, which earns him a special place in my heart.

Remember when Dane got stuffed at Sandspit a while back? The internet lit up, Derek snagged an interview with the snake himself?

If you look real close you’ll see Les for a split second. That’s his yellow camera, glimpsed for a moment while Mr Reynolds gets stuffed. Les got the shot, and it’s a beaut! And he let us have it! What a mensch!

The look of anguish on Dane’s face, so humanizing. Utter despair in his final moments. Staring straight up at the offender, full knowledge of what’s in store.

Is he thinking about kicking his board at the offender? I would be.

Follow the links below for more Morales brilliance. Hire him, give him money.

Website: http://www.lesmophoto.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesmophoto/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lesmoralesphotography

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesmorales


Revolution: Quiksilver proudly feminist!

Quiksilver unveils an advertising campaign that champions women's rights!

Advertising has long belonged almost solely to the phallus. The male member. The cock, dick, pecker, prick. Automobiles, lipstick, liquor, fruit, etc. Anything with a long, cylindrical shape. Even things without. And why? Psychologists point to virility, envy, lust, etc. Fine enough, but what about the far more stunning female anatomy? The mons pubis? It has been neglected.

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Until the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast! The world’s greatest surf company is very specifically using it to sell boardshorts!

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What may seem simple is a revolution. Screw the sexist male pigs! Screw the damn bastards! Sexualize equally!

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My only advice would be maybe to shift the articles around. “the” vee should probably be the actual v. Quiksilver’s boardies are “a” vee. Don’t you think?