Boy, girl. It don't matter! It's 2016, anything
goes!
Packed and ready to go. Back in three
weeks. Nicaragua for fun, then to BI for a freedive comp. Will be
sending in dispatches from the road. Frequency yet to be
determined. Maybe I’ll find inspirado. Maybe I’ll spend the entire
time out of my mind. Keeping my options open.
Got a goal this trip.
Gonna find a girl to go on a date with the wife and me. Like,
court her as a team. Probably a her. But who can say? It’s
2016, anything goes. I’m an open-minded man.
It’ll be weird. Super awkward. The wife isn’t really into it.
Still game nonetheless.
It’s not a sexual thing. Not totally. Won’t turn it down
should circumstances sway that way. But that ain’t the goal.
Looking to rekindle that sickly nervousness I haven’t felt in
forever. Does she like me? Am I making a good impression? Should I
hold her hand?
Dragging the ball and chain along helps. Could feel her anxiety
when I pitched the idea. It bleeds over. I feel it too. That’s what
I’m looking for. This might be a fetish.
Maybe I’ll strike it rich. Find myself a sexy young thing. Ship
her to Kauai. Install her in the guest room. Teach her learn about
bad decisions. Wait for the inevitable disaster. A very bad idea I
want to pursue.
More likely I’ll come off like some old drunken chicken hawk.
I’m okay with that.
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Want two days of getting sprayed by Slater in his pool?
Who doesn't!
Win: Two days at Kelly Slater’s Pool!
By Derek Rielly
Two days, two nights (and bonfires) at Slater's
Lemoore Surf Ranch!
Don’t this just get more and more Willy
Wonka-ish every day. As announced by the WSL half-an-hour or so
ago, Kelly Slater is going to throw open the door, for two surf
fans, to ride his pool.
“One winner and their guest will experience two days and two
nights of perfect waves, BBQ’s and bonfires with Kelly and his
closest friends at Kelly Slater Wave Company’s Surf Ranch in
Lemoore, California.”
How do you get a piece?
“Fans can enter for the chance to win their golden ticket to
surf Kelly’s exclusive wave for as little as $10 through
Omaze. Funds raised benefit WSL PURE, the
philanthropic initiative of the World Surf League, dedicated to
supporting ocean health through the key areas of research,
education and advocacy. Every donation gives you a chance to hang
with the greatest surfer of all time, while supporting critical
efforts to help heal the world’s oceans.”
“‘I’ve had more requests than any one person can field or
imagine about the Surf Ranch,” said 11-time World Champion Kelly
Slater. ‘I am excited to be giving away the chance of a lifetime to
whoever wins these tickets. I’m inviting a few pros to join us.
So the winner will get to come hang at Surf Ranch for a few
days and share waves and get tips from some of the best surfers in
the world.'”
WSL Pure, meanwhile, is the “the philanthropic arm of the World
Surf League, WSL PURE is a nonprofit that’s dedicated to improving
the health of the planet’s oceans — a cause relevant to all of
us.”
Still not convinced?
“And when the sun goes down, the party keeps going with
bonfires, jam sessions and more with Kelly and his friends. Flights
and lodging included.”
The shaka is, certainly, our gang sign. Our
identifying hand jive, and as a surfer you toss them whether
ironically or seriously more often than is maybe advisable. But do
you know its origin story? Let’s read from the Honolulu
Star-Bulletin!
We discovered different and fascinating accounts of how the
“shaka” sign — denoting everything from “right on” and “thank you”
to “howzit” and “hang loose” — originated, mainly variations of
someone losing the three fingers of one hand in an accident,
including trying to catch fish by throwing a stick of dynamite into
the ocean. A few also swear it originated with California
surfers.
What’s not in dispute is that former used car pitchman and
TV personality David “Lippy” Espinda popularized the words and
gesture, signing off his commercials with “shaka, brah!” Espinda,
who died in 1975, reportedly once explained that his signature
sign-off dated back to his marble-playing boyhood.
Meanwhile, Frank Fasi further ingrained the gesture into
local culture, using it to symbolize his political campaigns
beginning in 1976.
But as to its origins, the prevailing local lore is that it
originated with Hamana Kalili of Laie, who lost the middle three
fingers on his right hand during an accident at the old Kahuku
Sugar Mill.
Kalili’s grandnephew Vonn Logan, who works for Brigham Young
University-Hawaii’s Department of Continuing Education, explained
that Kalili’s job was to feed sugar cane into the rollers, which
would squeeze out the juice. He lost his fingers when his hand got
caught in the rollers, Logan said. Because he could no longer work
in the mill, he became a security guard on the sugar train that
used to travel between Sunset Beach and Kaaawa.
“One of his jobs was to keep all the kids off the train,”
Logan said. “All the kids would try to jump the train to ride from
town to town. So they started signaling each other. Since (Kalili)
lost his fingers, the perfect signal was what we have now as the
‘shaka sign.’ That’s how you signaled the way was clear.”
So much wonderful conjecture shrouded in vog. The shaka’s truth
will never be certain but all is well. We know what it means and
how to throw different ones.
But guess who just threw the world’s most awkward one?
That’s right! You got it! WSL CEO Paul Speaker!
What is happening? Why is his wrist bent at that angle? A
football injury maybe? Why is his pinkie pointing toward Gab
Medina’s shaka? Why is it tucked so tightly to his stomach when
there is plenty of room for him to stretch out? Do you think this
is the first shaka he has ever thrown? It has to be right?
Is he maybe pioneering a new, shriveled shaka style?
A visionary!
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Tell me: who gasses a lip like Jordy
Smith?
Movie: Jordy Smith’s Ancient Clips!
By Derek Rielly
Two years of footage shrunk into four minutes!
Do you remember, five days, ago when Jordy
Smith’s people dropped an advertorial clip at the same time as
John John’s new episode of
Twelve?
It was very cruel timing. Twelve is a beautifully shot
and masterfully edited seven-part series from Bill Ballard that
shows a surfer in rapier form. The Jordy Smith-Neff advertorial PLAY, while
serviceable, hardly demonstrated the full
range of the almost thirty year old South African’s
skills.
This short, called Collecting Dust, is a
collection of keepers from the past two years, and is edited
by What Youth’s Blake Myers. It is better than
PLAY, and serves as a reminder of Jordy’s gorilla skills,
a study of a giant who plays combos better, even, than John John
Florence.
There’s a little medium-wave play in here, and it’s here where
we see the difference between the two. But, then, who could ever
feel the same comfort as a boy who learned to surf at Pipe?
Collecting Dust concludes with the cabana-to-oop at
North Point, and filmed by Nick Green, that you’ve seen a million
times. It’s of such damn quality that even upon the million and
first viewing, it still gives pleasure. This time the colour’s been
removed and the clip extended to show Jordy’s ecstatic claim.
Watch here.
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Surf journalist Nick Carroll hopes this rumor is true!
Look at the longing in his eyes! | Photo: Steve
Sherman/@tsherms
Rumor: Firewire to buy Channel
Islands!
By Chas Smith
Could it be? Hope beyond hope? That Kelly Slater
will ride for his heart's true home again?
A fresh rumor in the morning is even better
than a piping hot cup of coffee. It is a glorious sunrise.
Yesterday, for cocktail hour, we had Quiksilver opening a wave park
in Las Vegas feat. both Kelly’s and Wavegarden’s technologies.
And today, alongside pancakes and bacon, we have Firewire, the
world’s favorite hollow surfboard, purchasing the grand daddy of
them all. Channel Islands!
This is a very happy whisper from a source who generally knows
about these sorts of things because do you recall who is the
majority stakeholder in Firewire? Who owns 70% of the company alongside a new
board venture?
Kelly Slater!
Robert Kelly Slater XI!
Does that not make you all misty eyed? It does me! Kelly had his
best years riding the tri-hex. He became an icon, a celebrity, a
champion XI times over with Channel Islands under his feet. It was
weird when he left. Weird like when he left Quiksilver. Some things
just go together, you know?
But now he’s maybe back and as majority owner! With the
legendary Travis Lee, who left with Kelly to begin the new board
company.
I have some questions about the alleged.
Like, did Burton, who purchased Channel Islands one decade ago
for many millions of dollars give Kelly a discount because
surfboards are a rough biz and not part of Burton’s core?
Because Burton’s creative director, Greg Dacyshyn, is such a
complete and utter disaster and has driven the brand so far,
so fast and so deep into the ground that they are also having to
sell office chairs and paperclips just to make rent?
Seriously, though, I wish surfing had a character like Dacyshyn.
Someone so extravagantly out of touch, so epically retarded, so
stupendously vain as to be completely comical. He is a towering
monument to the sugar rotted ego. The nexus where bad taste
meets bad style.
And if Kelly Slater has indeed ripped CI from those sausage
fingers? Oh how his legend will continue to grow!
Now I have a headache because I had a fresh rumor alongside my
pancakes and bacon instead of a cup of piping hot coffee.
