Global warming: Let’s surf volcanoes!

An adventure for our hot new earth!

Global warming is real and upon us. Islands are sinking, world temperatures soaring, etc. And does it scare you? Are you worried for your own future? The future of your children?

Well don’t be!

Let’s watch Alison Teal surf a volcano!

That is what the Daily Mirror headline screamed and to be very fair she didn’t actually “surf” but rather bobbed on her board near a volcano. Still, brave! And picturesque! An accurate vision of our shared future maybe even! Let’s read about it!

A daredevil adventurer has become the first person to surf the base of an erupting volcano and swim within feet of flowing lava – and she did it in a bikini.

Amazing shots of the extreme surf session show Alison Teal riding her pink surfboard up to Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii as it erupted into the ocean.

Underwater photographer Perrin James snapped the brave explorer during the volcano’s first eruption since 2011, on August 3 2016.

Alison, 30, said: “This was a lifelong dream. It was humbling and breathtaking and hot.

“I was hoping to catch a wave, however, when I got in close I was hit by a spatter of hardening rock spray and I quickly ducked under water.

“I looked back and noticed a wave was coming and I paddled for my life to get out of the danger zone.

“Afterwards I was exhilarated and exhausted at the same time.

“It was absolute endorphin high, but also terrifying.

“Anything could have happened.”


The Olympics unites us all! Or wait...does it?
The Olympics unites us all! Or wait...does it?

Olympics: “We’re too cool for you!”

The debate as to whether surfing belongs or not has reached the pages of our most cherished newspaper!

Oh the surfing x olympics debate is priceless! It is wonderful! And the debate gets to rage for another four full years before Kanoa Igarashi paddles out in Japanese beach suck to compete for …. Japan? The United States? Who knows! And Cork Carroll doesn’t care!

Let’s read from today’s Wall Street Journal (a newspaper I love)!

After failing to win admittance to the last five Summer Olympics, surfing on Wednesday could be anointed a new sport at the 2020 Tokyo Games.

But don’t expect surfers of the world to unite in celebration. “Surfing is too cool for the Olympics,” said former professional surfer Corky Carroll, arguing that surfers don’t belong in any club that includes the likes of synchronized swimmers.

Any time a new sport enters the Olympics there are naysayers. But as the International Olympic Committee prepares on Wednesday to approve five new sports to debut at the Tokyo Games, an extraordinary degree of ambivalence, even hostility, is brewing within two of them—surfing and skateboarding.

“Skateboarding is not a ‘sport’ and we do not want skateboarding exploited and transformed to fit into the Olympic program,” says an online petition addressed to Thomas Bach, president of the IOC. The petition has gained nearly 7,000 of 10,000 hoped-for signatures.

Etc.

Etc.

Etc.

Read the rest here! Unless this debate bores you. Does it bore you?

How adorable is Corky Carroll?

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RIP
RIP | Photo: Derek Dunfee

Yikes: Is this your greatest ever fear?

Derek Dunfee and a gorgeous cold water slam!

What is your greatest fear in surfing? Is it sharks? That you are sitting out there in the lineup and things go quiet…a swirl maybe, a brush. No, it is your imagination. There is nothing beneath you. Sharks don’t kill people, people do…and then you see his eyes and his gaping mouth! ARGH!

Or what about this… You are locked deep into a grand barrel, your last wave of the day in a far away 3rd world land. The tide has been dropping steadily and you should have taken one in 30 minutes ago but the ocean went completely flat. But now there is this gem and you are steezy and style and ARGH! A patch of dry reef ahead! Stitches for sure! In a far away 3rd world land!

Or what about this… You are out at Mavericks and you put your head down and paddle so hard, popping to your feet and ready to set your rail… But you can’t set your rail. The wind. That damned wind! And now you are falling, falling, falling, bouncing off the icy cement northern Californians call “water” and the wave is landing on top of you and ouch and tombstone tombstone not breathing.

Yeah?

Let’s watch the very handsome Derek Dunfee live your nightmare!

Tombstoning: A demonstration by Derek Dunfee from Derek Dunfee on Vimeo.

But what is my greatest fear in surfing? Oh. Easy. Walking out on some rocks during a mid-sized day, preparing to jump and accidentally slipping. Getting rolled around for a few minutes while those on the shore film. Having it posted to Instagram.

Worse than losing an arm to shark, a back to reef or a life to drown.


Just in: Barack Obama loves surf reads!

President Barack Obama can't get enough high shred!

Bill Finnegan’s book Barbarian Days has torn up the charts winning every imaginable award, including the Pulitzer Prize. It is a beautifully written memoir detailing a life spent wearing the surf yoke. Shall we read just one small section?

We rented a room in town from a crazy old man named Harry Kobatake. One hundred dollars a month for a roach-infested sweatbox with a toilet down the hall. We cooked our meals on a hot plate on the floor. The rent was high, but Lahaina had a housing shortage. Also, Kobatake’s rooming house was directly across Front Street from the harbour, where two of the best local waves broke. Bryan had been right — the good summer waves were all in or near town. One spot, called Breakwall, needed real swell to be rideable. Over four feet, it could produce sweet lefts and rights on a jagged reef straight off a rocky breakwater that ran parallel to shore. The other spot, known as Harbor Mouth, was a crisp, ultraconsistent peak on the west side of the harbour entrance channel. It was good even at one foot, crowded, and picked up every hint of south swell. The crowd was largely haole, not local. That became my bread-and-butter spot.

Delicious.

And you know who else thinks so? President of the United States of America Barack Obama! He just released his summer reading list and you know which book was number 1.

Barbarian Days!

Surf Spendor’s David Lee Scales sent this information along. Did you know he was named after David Lee Roth? His parents must have also been living barbarian days.

Listen here as David Lee and William chat! Your sixth favorite surf tabloid even gets a shout out! Barack may love Bill but Bill loves us!


The Duke
…Duke (left) and his bro Sam! | Photo: @NYTimes/Bettmaan/Corbis

Culture: The Duke in the NY Times!

And it's hot with racism and interracial sex!

Surfing got history? Yes it do.

And, it’s fitting, since I’m writing this in a hotel room overlooking Kaisers on Oahu’s South Shore, and with a meeting lined up with the man who invented pro surfing, Mr Fred Hemmings in one hour, that the New York Times just posted a story on the goddamned Duke.

It’s a easy read for anyone who recoils at history and, as is the want of The New York Times, is rich with hollers of racism, the essential wickedness of the white devil and shades of gossip.

Did you know Duke was screwing the hell out of white rich lady Doris Duke (interracial sex!) and they probs had a gorgeous little bebe together, who died after one day?

And that, years later, The Duke died while trying to unlock his Rolls Royce?

Let’s read!

White Devils!

With no outward hint of resentment toward those who had seized and subjugated his country, Duke sought and won a place on the American swimming team at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, the only Hawaiian present. The Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Edgar Forrest Wolfe (who used the pen name Jim Nasium) pronounced Kahanamoku in 1913 “a human fish” and “the greatest swimmer the world of sport has ever seen.”

White devils!

Reflecting the condescension with which Americans of the period viewed Hawaiian culture, Wolfe wrote that Duke had started his career as “one of the brown naked kids” of Honolulu who “swim through the shark infested waters of the harbor in search of silver coins thrown from the docks of the incoming steamer.”
Racism!
As a Hawaiian, he was not immune from racial prejudice. Arriving once with fellow swimmers at a restaurant in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., he was told, “We don’t serve Negroes.”
Movie star!

Moving to Southern California, Kahanamoku leveraged his fame to play in more than two dozen Hollywood films, as a pirate, bodyguard, soldier, Sioux Indian, Turk, Hindu, Persian, South Sea Islander and other minor characters. (His final on-screen performance was as a native chief in “Mr. Roberts” (1955), starring Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon.)

Called the “King of all Swimmers,” Duke used his réclame to help weave the ancient art of surfing — little known outside the islands, and fading even there at the time — into mainland United States popular culture. “You are rewarded with a feeling of complete freedom and independence while rocketing across the face of a wave,” Duke explained in his autobiography.

Screwing Doris! 

In the late 1930s, the sheriff fell under the spell of the tobacco heiress Doris Duke, who was building an estate called Shangri La (now a museum) near Diamond Head. In July 1940, she gave birth to a daughter named Arden, who died one day later. Several biographers have argued that the baby was almost certainly Kahanamoku’s.

Three weeks after the birth, his timing perhaps provoked by dread of a public scandal, Kahanamoku married Nadine Alexander, a Cleveland-born dance teacher at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Doris Duke reportedly lent or gave the newlyweds about $12,000 (now over $200,000), which they used to purchase a house not far from her own.
Dies next to his Rolls Royce!

Although never preoccupied by celebrity or fortune, Duke began lending his name for modest profit to surfing teams, competitions and equipment. One promoter gave him a Rolls-Royce with a surfboard rack on the roof. In January 1968, outside the Waikiki Yacht Club, he was looking for its keys when he was stricken by a fatal heart attack.

Read what’s left of the story here!