You’ve surfed The Ranch, no? The Hollister
Ranch just a few hours north of Santa Babs, an hour or so south of
San Luis Obispo? I have maybe three times thanks to my wonderful
brother-in-law Tom. We woke up very early in the morning and
launched his little skiff off of the Goleta pier and skittered for
many minutes then surfed Little Drakes or Rights or Razors or
whatever the hell those waves are called. I got out after a few
hours and ate peanut butter sandwiches because I was very
hungry.
If you are unfamiliar with The Ranch’s set up, the waves all
break in front of private lands. In California the rich are not
allowed to own the water though and so if you have a boat, you are
allowed to surf. Or if you have a key to the lands. Or if you are
very rich.
In any case, it is a well known series of breaks and
accessible etc. and I didn’t think the “locals” ever got mad
because there aren’t any and there is enough of a barrier to entry
for it not to pack out. You have to have a boat. Or a key. Or
riches. Maybe if a person pulled up a party boat the “locals” would
get mad. Or maybe if lots of pictures appeared in Surfer
Magazine.
This last one just happened at the “locals” are apparently
furious at the elderly publication, sending in burning hot letters.
“Way to expose our breaks, kooks!” and “Kooks!” and “Don’t publish
pictures of our waves anymore, fucking kooks!”
Ain’t it wonderful when geriatrics fight battles from twenty
years ago? I very much enjoyed Donald J. Trump vs. Ted Cruz and I
very much enjoy this.
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Long Read: Two Surfers Killed in Mex
By Derek Rielly
It ain't pretty reading, but maybe a lesson in
there somewhere…
It’s hardly a secret that the government v drug cartels civil
war makes parts of Mex places you don’t want to go near. Two
Australian surfers, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, had a swing
driving through the richly dysfunctional town of Navolato,
Sinaloa, however, and were killed, their
burnt-out bodies found in their surf van.
End of story? Yeah, kinda is. The Men’s Journal, however, just
dropped a long piece on the murders, documenting the doomed voyage
from Washington in North America, through Baja, and onto mainland
Mex.
Let’s study the piece.
In Baja the swell was epic. They ended up
scoring nearly perfect surf. They camped on remote beaches, cooked
meals on the sand, and woke at first light to paddle out. But after
a week of waves, it was time to move on.
The plan was to take a ferry across the Gulf of California,
the 140-mile-wide bay that separates the Baja California peninsula
from the Mexican mainland, then drive south. It was 560 miles from
the port of Topolobampo, Sinaloa, to Guadalajara. If they had any
hope of making Coleman’s meeting at noon with Gómez, they’d have to
drive through the night, taking turns at the wheel.
Then the ferry was delayed two hours. As they waited, Lucas
sent a message to a friend in Edmonton, where he lived with Cox.
“Can you do me a huge favor if you are seeing Josie?” he wrote. “We
have our three-year anniversary tomorrow and wanted to get some
things for her like flowers and red Lindt chocolate.”
When Lucas and Coleman finally arrived on the mainland, it
was just before midnight. The two, together and on their own, had
spent the last decade traveling the world racking up dozens of
countries — South Africa, Sri Lanka, Iceland, India — as well as
multiple surf odysseys to Mexico. They knew how to handle
themselves in foreign lands, but it’s almost certain they didn’t
know just how dangerous the stretch of road is that they were about
to set off on. In the last two years, at least half a dozen
travelers have been murdered on it, by bandits preying on
motorists. On maps it’s marked as the Benito Juárez Toll Road. But
locals have another name for it: the Highway of Death.
There is still a charcoal trace of burned
earth off to the side of the tractor path where someone
doused Adam Coleman’s van with gasoline and ignited it. When
investigators picked through the debris, they found two gas grills,
heat-swollen vegetable and soup cans, jars, dishes, and two sets of
human remains. At first, police figured the victims for tiangueros,
vendors who hawk their wares from street-market stalls in the city.
In Mexico, 95 percent of murders go unsolved, so the crime was
unlikely to warrant any special attention. It was largely a
coincidence that led the police to look more closely.
During the long drive south, Lucas and Cox had been texting
each other frequently. He’d tell her about the surf in Baja or
include her in a discussion he and Coleman were having. So after
receiving the flowers and chocolate, then not hearing from him for
24 hours, Cox had a feeling something had gone horribly
wrong.
“I knew he was dead,” she says. “But the families were
trying to keep positive.” Cox’s mother tried to assuage her fears,
telling her that Lucas probably just got caught up surfing. Gómez
was receiving the same sort of reassurances about Coleman. “I
reached out to one of his friends and told him I was upset, and he
tried to calm me down,” she says. “But more days went by, and we
had to begin the search.”
Seven days after last hearing from Lucas, Cox posted an
appeal on Facebook: “It breaks my heart to do this. . . . We are
appealing for any information regarding Dean Lucas and Adam
Coleman.” Gómez translated it into Spanish.
Pedro, the gas attendant who had given Lucas and Coleman
directions, had seen images of the burned van displayed on the
front page of a local paper. He recognized it immediately but had
no idea who the two gringos were. Then he happened to see Gómez’s
Facebook post, which had been shared widely.
“This is going to upset you,” he wrote to her shortly
afterward. “Please stay calm and try not to panic. The van in this
photo looks like your boyfriend’s.”
Suddenly the murders morphed from just another local tragedy
into an international incident, with headlines around the globe.
“Australian Surfers Missing in Notorious Sinaloa, Mexico,” ran a
headline on an Aussie news site. “Australian Surfers Feared
Murdered in Mexico During Quest for ‘Crazy Waves,’ ” ran another,
in the U.K.’s Telegraph.
The Sinaloa attorney general took the rare step of holding
press conferences to detail progress on the case. Within 48 hours
of discovering that the van had been registered to Coleman, he’d
announced, police had captured three suspects and had issued arrest
warrants for two others. State marshals from an elite investigative
unit had set a trap for the bandits, stopping them at 5 a.m. on a
dirt road leading from a breach in the fence along the Benito
Juárez. They recovered the getaway car, a Jeep Cherokee, and the
murder weapon, a .357 Magnum revolver. They’d also extracted signed
confessions from all three suspects in police custody.
At the wheel of the Cherokee was Julio César González Muñiz,
a round-faced 27-year-old with a wispy mustache. The marshals, the
arrest report notes, discovered the revolver in his waistband, and
a ballistics test quickly matched the gun to a bullet removed from
Coleman’s body. In the Cherokee’s passenger seat was the driver’s
first cousin, Martín Rogelio Muñiz Ponce.
The details of what happened that night come solely from the
confessions of the Muñiz cousins and Sergio Simón Benítez González,
their supposed lookout. On November 21, shortly after González
witnessed Lucas and Coleman passing through the toll booth, the
Cherokee pulled out behind them and flashed police strobes on the
dashboard. Lucas and Coleman continued to drive for another mile
before pulling over. One of the trio’s alleged accomplices that
night, José Luis Espinoza Bojórquez — who remains at large and has
at least two other murder charges against him — stepped out of the
Cherokee wearing the uniform of a highway patrol officer.
“They pulled two males out,” reads Julio César’s statement.
“One of them was shirtless and wearing shorts and had long
dreadlocks, the other was wearing dark pants and a black shirt.”
Bojórquez forced “the long-haired one” into the backseat of the
Cherokee and the other into the van and started driving to a nearby
field, so they’d be out of sight. But as they exited the highway,
Coleman tried to escape, forcing the Cherokee’s door open and
jumping onto the dirt road.
A desperate fistfight erupted. “This guy was getting in some
hard shots and beating the hell out of them,” the confession reads.
Muñiz pulled out the .357 and “put a bullet in the gringo, getting
him in the face.” Coleman was severely wounded, but not
fatally.
At that point, Bojórquez, “furious from the ass-whipping he
had gotten,” took charge. He jumped behind the wheel of the van
while the others loaded the wounded Coleman and Lucas into the
back. Soon they came to a stop at a tractor path dividing two
cornfields. Bojórquez took the gun, then went to the hinged side
doors of the van and fired four or five shots straight inside. The
assailants doused the van in gasoline and Bojórquez threw a lit
match inside.
I hear that blow was great back in the 80's, but I've
never really understood the modern day appeal. It's a great way to
trick yourself into thinking you're sober enough to drive, and you
can use it to lure a certain type of slag back to your house when
the bars are closing, but it's otherwise useless. It's a once or
twice a year drug, when you're drunk enough to think a bump is a
good idea, only to quickly realize that all it does it cancel out
all the good downers you've already taken.
Then we ended up extending the trip by two days. Flights were
cheaper that way, layovers minimal. Plenty of time to do what I
want. Which is four days partying in SJDS, followed by five
days chilling and surfing at Playa Gigante.
Decided to be magnanimous, let her have the extra days. So we’re
going to Granada. Yay. So many interesting doors and windows. Can’t
wait to walk around looking at old buildings.
In her mind she came up big. Got what she wants, still gets to
plan our next trip. It’ll be so fucking lame. Touring the covered
bridges of New England, or some such shit.
But that’s a problem for another day. Today it’s all about
planning for a trip I’ll actually enjoy. Which I do months in
advance. Missus prefers to wait until the last minute, then make me
pack for her. Then complain I forgot stuff. Real nice.
First and foremost, gotta get my old man medical kit together.
Can’t fly anywhere without it.
Benzodiazepines:Xanax is a real
problem for, like, millions of people. Insanely addictive,
withdrawal can actually kill you. Over-prescribed, ruins so many
lives.
But for those of us who don’t enjoy it enough to get hooked it’s
a travel wonder drug. Pop a few on the way to the airport, settle
into your seat. Blink your eyes and, hey look at that! You’ve
traveled halfway around the world in a matter of minutes.
They’ve got their drawbacks. Take them too early, toss in a
noggin full of hash oil, and you’re a confused mess. Been there,
done that. Staring at the self check-in kiosk, utterly befuddled,
until some kind soul asks if you need help. Take off your belt at
security and forget to hold up your pants. Give everyone a wink at
the goods.
And you’ve gotta stay away from the booze. Benzos plus alcohol
bring out the unrestrained id. Shit gets ugly.
They also turn me into a farting snoring mess, but that’s a
problem for those around me.
Stimulant Laxatives:Flying always
leaves me colossally constipated. Stomach full of clay, bloated and
sore and farty for days.
There are gentle solutions. Fiber and hydration and light meals
the day before departure. But none of those really solve the
problem, just reduce it.
Enter stimulant laxatives, an asshole emptying explosive fix.
Take a double dose your first night, wake up a few hours later and
spend some quality time moaning on the toilet as your stomach
clenches and evacuates your insides.
It’s not fun, but it works. Like tearing off a bandaid, gets
shit sorted fast rather than suffering slowly.
And you’ll be as light and free as a bird!
Alka-Seltzer:Heartburn, headaches,
hangovers, there’s nothing a little Alka-Seltzer won’t fix.
Add some low grade third world over the counter opiates and
you’ll go from shivering queasy mess to conquer the world superman
in ten minutes.
Nicotine lozenges: I can handle a long
stretch without a smoke, so long as I’m in my right mind. But
reduce my already lacking inhibitions and things get ugly. Cranky,
pissy, hair trigger temper. Mix in the aforementioned benzos and a
few ill advised cocktails (the no drinking thing is more of a
guideline than hard and fast rule) and there’s no telling what I’ll
do.
Addiction’s a hell of a thing. Turns us into monsters during
withdrawals. Thank god I’m only hooked on minor stuff. Like
nicotine and caffeine. And probably alcohol, if I’m being
honest.
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Just in: Kelly Slater wins Nobel
Prize!
By Chas Smith
A Pulitzer too! And the Oscar for best leading
man!
How many barrels can a man watch? How many
green drainers can he sit through without getting any clips of air
under the fins? Kelly Slater’s wave pool was starting to totally
bore. Yawn. Barrel. Longer barrel. Barrel. But then Josh Kerr
showed up and whoosh! Into the sky!
And I am not being truthful. Kelly Slater’s wave pool is not at
all starting to bore. Can you believe it still? Can you believe
that Zach Weisberg’s dream valentine man made something so
spectacularly better than anything we have ever seen?
And Josh Kerr didn’t really whoosh into the sky but he did dink
into the sky. A little punt. After a barrel. And Kelly? Look at him
bob and weave on the wave that will finally make him famous!
But are you older? Is your body filled with soul and do you like
to waste waves? Waste them just basically standing there and/or
hurting every person in your path? Then what about this?
There are so many smiles. Just so many and if the fine men and
women at the Nobel Institute know anything about world peace then
they will award Kelly Slater the award this year and allow him to
take his rightful place alongside Pope Francis and the Dalai
Lama.
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Get to know: Surfing’s first hipster!
By Chas Smith
Dion Agius is a wonderful man and he brought us a
wonderful gift.
Patient Zero, or the index case, is the name
given to the initial carrier of disease, or exemplifier of a
syndrome, in a population. Mabalo Lokela, a school teacher from
Zaire, was the first recorded victim of the Ebola virus. Liu
Jianlun, a doctor from China, was the first to transmit SARS. Edgar
Enrique Hernandez, a young boy from La Gloria, Mexico, was one of
the earliest recorded victims of Swine Flu and Dion Agius, a surfer
from Tasmania, brought Hipsterism from distant shores to the living
rooms of Newport Beach.
Dion, quite famously, started his public life as a Boogie star
but soon transitioned to surf and professional contest surf at
that. When he was young, Body Glove sticker on the nose, he didn’t
know anything but three to the beach. “I guess I have a jockey
contest stage for sure,” he says while drinking a small batch
Manhattan touched with house made vanilla bitters. “I definitely
wasn’t playing football on the side or anything like that but I was
definitely into contests, that’s for sure. My dad used to drive me
around to do a shit load of them. I have a really bad temper and I
used to loose all the time, I used to fucking hate it.” And maybe
the hate shook something loose because in his genes a powerful
force lay waiting. Hipsterism.
The Miriam-Webster dictionary defines “Hipster” as, “a person
unusually aware of and interested in new and unconventional
patterns.” And certainly “hip” surfers existed before Dion, Dave
Rastovich and Ozzie Wrong and Ozzie Wright and Miki Dora to name a
few, but nobody put the elements together quite like Dion. Nobody
became the essence of “Hipster.”
And the powerful force bubbled in his insides. He felt like he
wanted to do something different than chase points in contests. He
felt there was something out there but he didn’t know exactly what
because no one in his generation was really doing anything
different. And then he went to Vietnam with Taylor Steel.
“I was on the trip with him and I was telling him how much I
loved the drive through movies and how intriguing it was to see the
guys on the road and all the behind the scenes stuff…” He says
between bites of an artisanal grilled cheese sandwich featuring
aged Gouda. “You see the best of the best and even everything in
between was so interesting. I told him about this idea I had about
doing this website thing with a mini drive thru series. I thought
it would really show my style. I went home and I had a meeting with
Globe. The president of Australia at the time said, ‘You can ride
for us and we don’t want you doing another competition.’ That
sounded awesome. I didn’t want to do another competition. He said,
‘Yeah we’ve got this idea I want to start. This little website
thing I want to start with you. We could mix your interesting film
and start documenting your travels.’ It was the weirdest thing ever
because it was pretty much the idea I wanted to try. I told Steve
and I was just tripping, I couldn’t believe it. That’s where it as
born from. He told me, ‘I don’t want you to do any more contests.
We want to put you on. We want to market the shit out of you and
put all this money into it. We don’t want you competing against
guys and getting beaten and looking like an idiot. Why don’t we
just send you out on the road, have an amazing time, and we’ll
capture it all on video? That’s what we want you to do.’ To me,
that sounded like a dream. From that point on I actually went and
did a QS because it was still engrained in me and we hadn’t figured
out how it was all going to work. I remember getting called from
him the next day after I had lost. I got smoked by probably Hedgy
or someone. He called me and said, ‘Dude, what did I tell you?’ and
I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘What the fuck did I tell you?
I don’t want you doing another contest.’ I just said, ‘Yeah, ok I
get it.’ I never did another contest after that because he actually
got mad at me.”
The blog that grew on Globe.tv starring Dion Agius was
groundbreaking because it was the first of its kind. There was no
Marinelayer.com. There was no Instagram. There was no Dane
Reynold’s girlfriend on Instagram. There was nothing but a tabula
rasa and then there was Dion, traveling, filming, getting artsy
with skinny models, living in New York and setting it to a moody
soundtrack. It was “Hipsterism” par excellence. And it was
how Dion did it that made it par excellence. He took an
active roll in crafting all the elements. He surfed, sure, but he
also took the photos, filmed some, doodled lots and today is
filming more. He is starving for knowledge, starving for a hands-on
approach to his art. He says, while lighting an American Spirit
cigarette, “Yeah. I think for me I’ve just been so lucky throughout
my career. I’ve been able to travel and meet some of my idols like
Taylor and Dustin and guys like that. When I was a kid I was
looking up to them and absolutely mesmerized by their work. When I
got to do a trip with them I took it as an opportunity to hassle
the shit out of them. They were probably so annoyed, like, ‘who the
fuck is this little kid? Leave me alone.’ I just wanted to learn,
because I could. Joe G. is one of the most amazing dudes ever who
loves teaching you stuff, so I took advantage of that. I still do
to this day. I’m still learning from him every single trip we do.
He’s been a freaking amazing mentor for me. I’d say at one point or
another I was probably annoying the shit out of him with a million
questions.”
Love or hate hipsterism, in general, and surf hipsterism,
specifically, it cannot be denied that hipsters actually make
things. Hipsters like knowing things. Hipsters try. And Dion
Agius’s humble blog gave birth to hundreds of people who actually
make things, know things and try. Certainly it can seem empty or,
at the very least, redundant but even at its most contrived it is
still better than completely manufactured. Take the fascination
with motorcycles for instance. Yes, it is super “trendy” but still.
Those hipsters caught up in it get grease under their fingernails.
They get weird with gaskets and Bondo. They do something.
Take the fascination with old cameras. Those hipsters caught up in
it spend time in the darkroom. They get weird with printing tongs
and processing trays. They do something. Take the
fascination with alternative surf craft. Those hipsters caught up
in it are actively involved in what they ride and that is more
valuable and more important than simply buying a factory shaped
board from China and factory designed trunks from China.
The children who have grown walking down the trail Dion Agius
blazed take their many options for granted. They start sunglass
companies, write, dance, sing, play guitar, draw, doodle, paint and
Instagram everything. They get their hands dirty and all the crafty
business extends, even, to surfers it theoretically should not.
John John Florence, born and bred on the North Shore, is, on the
surface, the antithesis of the hipster surfer. Yet, look at what he
does. He has made and released very progressive unbranded movies on
his own dime. Certainly, he is currently working on a big budget
Brainfarm piece of awesome but he has brought along filmmaker Blake
Kueny and Blake Kueny is a hipster.
Yes, the trail Dion Agius blazed is smashed flat with many
canvas shoe soles. And, again, love or hate, the trail leads to
many more interesting places than three to the beach. What will
follow surf hipsterism? Who knows, but one of the canvas shoe
wearers is mutating Dion’s strain right now and that will be the
future. Whoever that is, Jack Robinson or Leo Fioravanti or an
unknown from Jacksonville, Florida, will be the new Patient
Zero.