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.
Until the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast! The world’s greatest surf company is very specifically using it to sell boardshorts!
What may seem simple is a revolution. Screw the sexist male pigs! Screw the damn bastards! Sexualize equally!
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?
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Do you really believe it's possible for Filipe to be stopped in three-foot runners? Have you ever seen anything so complete as his ten? Did bubbles of skin form on your arms too? | Photo: WSL
And Filipe soars like condor, day three, Quiksilver Pro…
I left the Farm in the dark, before the first cock crow. I wanted a park, a full day of coverage, an honest day’s work etc etc. Surf writers can work harder than pro surfers any day of the week, despite the fact our jobs are destined to disappear to programmed robots before theirs do. That’s a fact of creative destruction.
The morning was blessedly cool, the surf wearing prettier clothes but still mal-nourished and weak underneath.
The opening heats were bizarrely anodyne, like that person you know who’s just upped the dose of Prozac. They’re talking to you but there’s a blank deadness in their eyes. They’re there, but they’re not there, if you know what I mean.
Banting apparently had some strategic ace in his corner, telling him, what, go out and surf like a cross between Sally Fitzgibbon and an anorexic Jordy Smith? I’ve surfed with Banting, he’s thin and quick. He should be bringing spice to every turn and beating opponents with turn speed. Slow motion carves are not his strategic forte.
Freestone continued the theme. Was the Xanax being double dipped in the acai bowls? I was happy to see Brother progress because I picked him for a QF finish.
Without warning the conversation in the booth had taken a turn to the metaphysical. Energy is the new buzzword and judges are seen as emotional beings. Concepts I introduced into the mix months ago, if you want to give attribution Ross. It is an advancement on the fiction that there is some kind of objective reality behind throwing a number at a ridden wave based on some criteria. Now the vibe was judges as psychics: I’m sensing a weak aura behind that turn of Freestones. The whole morning had that fuzzy out of focus low vibe feeling.
Truth is, judges make a decision, not consciously, about what is “perfect” surfing. The same way predators pick out prey from the background, using a “search image”. They picked out Dane Reynolds as perfect surfing for a couple of glorious years before they went back to more conservative surfing. By the end of the day judges have banked this years search image. His name is Filipe Toledo and he makes my sadness at no more Dane Reynolds go away better than drink and drugs.
With the conny put on hold I fled south, away from the highrises and merchant capitalism of the surf industrial complex and turned left at the Tweed river. I grabbed a mask and hand spear and followed the tidal push of blue water up a mangrove lined creek. In the cool water, amidst the graceful tumult of underwater life the day snapped back into psychic focus, I bagged a couple small trevally and a flathead and chucked them in the esky. My hedge against artificial intelligence. The surf writer who can’t marry well or engage in opportunistic hunter-gathering has a name. An intern.
By the time I got back to the Bay we were on again. The judging had been comprehensible, the talent gap was obvious but a new gap seemed to be opening up.
A power gap.
While Slater is experimenting with equipment, the Brazilians are experimenting with the body. Making it stronger and faster, more powerful, more weapon-like. Italo looked easily better than Connor Coffin: faster, more assured. Like a cat playing with a live mouse. That was the only decision of the day that went against the strength of the aura.
I was thinking this might be one of those rare days when round three might be weaker than round two until the De Souza teed off on Mikey Wrights’ nuts.
Then Kolohe put it together. John John was set free by extra volume. Thank Allah he worked that out. It took Jordy Smith years.
Which bought us to the last heat of round three. Stuey Kennedy vs Medina.
I had my Team Stuey t-shirt on. It still had baby sick on it from Stu’s bub. True. No time to leave the pub and race over to James “Taipan” Woods place to watch it there. The pub was packed. The first ride from Stu stunned the crowd of hippies, Euro-trash backpackers, yoga mums in Audis and workadaddies on holiday. A Bondi crowd but better looking.
Holy fucking shiite militia.He’s gunna smash him.
Medina was pole-axed by the aggression, the first turn dominance. Stu was beating him with a baseball bat and there wasn’t a damm thing he could do about it. What to do? Should I try and play objective, like Nick Carroll, or run screaming down the street. I rang Taipan. There were shouts and screams. Unintelligible gibberish.
So I drove back to the Ox to get a read on the local vibe. Darkness was falling, there was a screeching of lorikeets in the Norfolk pines. People were naked in the streets, dancing, falling over drunk, fornicating with their neighbours’ wives behind bushes. A bull-chested man was riding a horse bareback up and down the main street blowing a whistle and chugging tequila from a bottle. It was a carnival atmosphere par excellence. I joined in the celebration for a couple hours and then headed for home.
“Honey, I’m home,” I said quietly to my beloved as I opened the door.
I put the fish in the fridge and turned the computer on while the sound of firecrackers exploded in the distance like civil war.
PS: The very first wave I saw ridden in a freesurf before the event started was Filipe T. He went bottom to top faster than I’ve ever seen any surfer go. Obvs no sexual drag on his performance. All event he’s cruised, no need for air, a vulgar display of power sufficient. That ten was one gear shift up, you get the feeling there are two or three more. Very bad juju for anyone he comes across. Only Stu Kennedy or Florence look like they could be in a heat with him and not be on the wrong side of a combo.
It is World Surf League CEO Paul Speaker's best day ever! NFL + WSL = Yay!
What do you think World Surf League CEO Paul Speaker dreams about? Do you think visions of perfectly executed layback snaps dance across his cortex? Do you think his inner expanse is filled crisp 10.00 barrel to air combos?
I will say no! CEO Speaker does not know a layback from a daybed. The man doesn’t surf! What he really dreams of is a time when his beloved National Football League combines with surfing to form a Great Jock Majority.
And guess what? CEO Speaker’s dream is about to come true! The Washington Redskins, an NFL team known as much for quarterback missteps as a racist name, is building a new stadium and that stadium is going to have surfing as part of it. Let’s read:
Bjarke Ingels has unveiled his firm’s new stadium design for American football team the Washington Redskins, set to feature a moat offering an assortment of sporting activities.
A scale model of the proposal shows a bowl-shaped stadium with a wavy outer wall, surrounded by a moat crossed by angular bridges. BIG has also revealed a rendering showing surfers, rollerbladers, kayakers and abseilers.
According to Ingels, the “very practical” design is intended to cater to a wide spectrum of activities before and after football games.
What the hell is an abseiler? But also how thrilled will CEO Speaker be? He can rollerblade next to the wave pool while his favorite sport is being played indoors. Dreams come true. Dreams come true. Yes they do. Dreams come true.
Have you always wanted to be rich? Stay away from surf co shares says Australian newspaper.
It was in the middle of last year, and I might’ve been under the spell of share traders and even a little high when I wrote it, that I advised BeachGrit readers to buy Billabong shares, now.
What was once a $A16 stock was selling for around sixty-cents. My rationale was this:
“Billabong have halved the number of retail stores and sold off a few of their biz’s, reducing debt, but, tellingly, a couple of hard-nosed US private-equity companies have bought hard into Billabong. And the CEO is Neil Fiske, who was instrumental in driving the fortunes of the king of US retail Les Wexner, turning Victoria’s Secret and A & F into the dirtiest of money spinners. On the creative side, Billabong has hired Roxy’s head designer to help drive Billabong gals, RVCA is starting to soar and Tiger Lily is still an unfulfilled buy.”
Did you buy?
If you were to type “Billabong Share Price” into your browser today you might be astonished to learn they’re now a bullish buck-fifty. It ain’t quite so simple. A shareholder vote last November approved the consolidation of shares at the rate of one for every five owned.
Which means they should be worth three bucks, yeah? Ah, a little under a buck and and half.
Oowee, sure do hope you didn’t listen to your financially illiterate pal DR.
Anyway, The Sydney Morning Herald isn’t quite so taken by surf company stocks. In his piece, SurfStitch and the less than swell history of surfing stocks(don’t you love how a newspaper is incapable of running a story about surfing without a flotilla of puns?), John McDuling writes:
“Australians love their surfing. But Australian investors have an uneasy relationship with surf-related stocks. Sure, shares in ASX-listed SurfStitch were up sharply on Thursday after its chief executive resigned and said he was in discussions with buyout firms to take the firm private. But there is quite a bit more to this story.
“SurfStitch, ostensibly an online retailer of surf products, floated less than two years ago at $1. The company was a bit of a market darling, with investors drawn to its content-driven business model, which made it more than just an online retailer of surf products.
“In November, with its shares up strongly since the float, the company raised $50 million for growth by selling shares to institutions at $2. The stock has traded lower ever since, but took a huge hit in the past month after the company backed away from its earnings guidance, saying it wanted flexibility to invest more in content. At the time, Morgan Stanley, which is positive on the stock, said ‘dropping guidance is rarely a good sign, particularly when it occurs three months after raising equity.
“If dropping guidance is not a good sign, then a subsequent resignation and looming bid by the CEO, when the stock is well below the level at which it recently raised equity is . . . interesting.”
Let’s read about Billabong and Quiksilver.
“In 2007, its (Billabong’s) market value was about $4 billion. Today it is worth $327 million.Or how about Quiksilver?
“By the early 2000s it was generating $US1 billion in annual revenue, but a string of disastrous acquisitions brought it crashing back to earth, and last year it filed for bankruptcy, after losing $US309 million. Is there something about the mentality of Australian surfing entrepreneurs that makes them poorly suited to the stockmarket? I don’t have a good answer to that, but it does seem that it’s a good idea to steer clear of surf stocks if you want to avoid a wipeout.”
Who needs a financial wipeout? Or a portfolio nose-dive? Or a choppy financial outlook?
Or…etc… etc…
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Burch on his technicolour twin-fin, ridden to great effect in Chile. | Photo: Brian Bielmann
Buy one of Ryan Burch's dazzling hand-shapes… for fifteen hundred dollars!
Do you recall feeling mystified upon viewing Ryan Burch’s section in Psychic Migrations? The one where he surfs in cursive on a self shaped fish at a Chilean Point break?
Did you, like me, vow to owe one of his fiberglass masterpieces? Wellnow you can!
Until just recently, Ryan Burch, the shaper, has been reclusive to average surfers. Despite the constant begging of those who frequent Cardiff, Swamis and other San Diego reefs, the freesurfing professional would graciously reply that he only shapes for himself and for friends – who just so happen to be some of the smoothest cats on two keels. Lucas Dirkse, Bryce Young and Derek Disney are some of the blessed few who, until now, have been able to get Ryan Burch out of the water and into the shaping room.
Now he hasn’t opened the floodgates for board orders out of being snobby or lazy, because he is neither.Ryan is business savvy and knows that limiting his output drives the hunger for one of his boards. “
When I went into the business of making surfboards, I realized that the demand drives the price up,” says Burch. “But I want to be able to make boards for people and do them myself and make sure that I’m making something that I can be proud of rather than giving the designs to someone else to produce them for me. My favorite part about shaping is using my hands to build them myself and I don’t want to sacrifice that. The bummer is because I’m doing it that way, I have to turn people down. I just really want to be able to shape and get some boards out there slowly but surely.”
But if you want an asymmetrical, a glider or one of his now-famous fishes, they are going to set your melt your plastic. The last time Ryan did a run of boards for Hansen Surf shop, the small window of opportunity to own a Burch original was reflected in the price tag- $1,500 a piece.
Steep, yes, but worth it? Probably. That is, if you value being unique.
Oh and now you can bypass the rack altogether and order a custom, but not in person, Ryan is far too shy for that. Hit his website.
I’ll bid ado with a question.
Do you want to be the guy paddling out to your local point on the CI Flyer that everyone has, or do you want to be the straddling the board that has every hipster in the lineup feeling envy? Do you want to fumble through a foam climb on a generic pop-out or express your panache with every cutback on a hand-shaped masterpiece?
Would you shell out 1,500 bucks to know the difference?