New York, of course you know, is the world’s
most magnificent city. It crackles with energy! With passion! With
progressive eateries! With unsurpassed shopping! And sometimes even
with waves!
I’ve surfed the bands of a hurricane there once with
ex-Surfing editor Taylor Paul and current (?)
Surfing web editor Brendan Buckley. It was wildly fun and
made me realize why New York surfers live for wild
weather.
And, of course you know, there is a hurricane spinning somewhere
in the Atlantic right this minute, or tropical storm maybe, sending
waves to the eastern seaboard. Glories be! Except do you know what
is happening? Bastards in blue are standing on the beach writing
tickets for the long-suffering. Fining them for dancing! Let’s read
about it in the New York Post:
So much for hanging loose.
NYPD cops hit the Rockaways on Sunday to slap surfers with
summonses for riding waves as Tropical Storm Hermine swirled in the
distance.
At least four surfers were ticketed for refusing to get out
of the ocean amid strong riptides and 5- to 10-foot waves (such as
the one above).
“We only get a couple of days a year for all the conditions
to come together. It’s really disappointing,” grumbled Jay
Harrison, 48, of New Zealand, who was nailed with a
summons.
The hang-10 set was hit with the $80 summonses for “failing
to comply.’’
“I’m going to fight it. There’s nothing dangerous about
these conditions,” said Harrison, who was given a summons by a
uniformed cop.
Another surfer, 67, fumed, “It’s just nonsense!”
Meanwhile, on Coney Island, two EMTs used a rope meant to
keep swimmers out of the water to rescue a man who had ignored
it.
Friends of the scofflaw, realizing he was in peril, flagged
down the medics.
One EMT, Monique Wilson, dived in; her colleague, Maxim
Furman, tossed her the rope and used it to pull them both back
in.
“The riptide felt like I had a 300-pound guy pulling me back
out to sea,” Wilson said.
The tropical storm warning was lifted for New York late
Sunday, but Mayor Bill de Blasio warned people to stay off beaches,
which remain closed to swimmers Monday.
And this would infuriate me beyond any measure. I would explode
in a ball of rage. How many good days are there to surf in New York
per year. Six? Ten? It can’t be more than fifteen and to have one
of those preciouses stolen?
Anger!
Next time the national anthem plays I’m taking a knee and I will
continue taking that knee until New York surfers get to enjoy their
hurricanes.
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Think twice, maybe thrice, before you strike! says
religious man.
And a lesson in Denmark's once-bristling drug
trade…
My baby brother has arrived in Kauai! I’m so
happy to see him. He’s my second favorite person in the world. My
favorite person in the world is not so thrilled.
Rory’s reaction when he learned we’d have a long-term house
guest was to throw the bottle of rubbing alcohol he was holding on
the ground and scream “Fuck” as loud as he could.
But I just don’t care. Not listening. Sometimes, and this is
very rarely, there is no negotiation. My little brother is one of
those times. Not sure why Rory is so bummed on the idea. He
loves him. They get along great. Rory was a terrible influence on
him when he was a little grom.
Rory used to play Creepy Dad with him and threaten him with
molestation in the middle of the grocery store as loud as he could.
Pretty sure all these games were simply meant to embarrass the hell
out of me. Which isn’t hard. I couldn’t go out in public with those
two. They’d chase me through stores screaming “Kill the Dragon
Lady” while hitting me with sticks.
They used to play Skate Dad. If my little brother didn’t land a
trick, Rory would pick him up and slam him up against the fence
while cursing and screaming in his face. My brother was eight at
the time.
Rory used to play Creepy Dad with him and threaten him with
molestation in the middle of the grocery store as loud as he could.
Pretty sure all these games were simply meant to embarrass the hell
out of me. Which isn’t hard. I couldn’t go out in public with those
two. They’d chase me through stores screaming “Kill the Dragon
Lady” while hitting me with sticks.
So why the fuck is Rory so bummed? No clue. I’ve tried for the
last sixteen years to make Rory happy. I mean, really tried.
Sometimes, it’s not possible. This is one of those times. So I’m
determined to enjoy myself, Rory be damned.
Anyway, my little brother’s here now and Rory is sitting next to
me, as I write this, bitching that all he does is smoke weed and
sleep. I try to tell Rory that he’s recovering from his recent
adventure, but he’s not having it.
My little brother had been living in Christiania, an anarchist
commune in Copenhagen, for the past six months.
Christiania has always fascinated me. It started when a bunch of
anarchists, weirdos, and degenerates took over an abandoned
military barrack in 1971. It’s consists of 84 acres of land and has
around 850 residents. An autonomous collective with a playhouse,
residences, community centers, and the skate parks which host the
Copenhagen Open. More famously, Christiania features Pusher Street,
the largest illegal drug market in Scandinavia. Hash and cannabis
openly sold from stalls.
My little brother was living at the skate park and may or may
not have been working on Pusher Street. The little fucktard also
may or may not have a warrant for his arrest in Denmark. I’ll deal
with that later.
The Danish government has never been happy with Christiania’s
flouting of their drug laws. They’ve gone from periodic détente, to
full out warfare with the residents. This spring, the Danish
government set up a special task force and began almost daily raids
of Pusher Street:
As an anonymous source described the situation, the police would
come at similar times everyday. It was like a stupid game. The
so-called pushers had look-outs stationed at strategic locations.
The look-outs would give the signal that the police were on their
way, and everyone would evacuate. No big deal. A daily nuisance.
Occasionally the slow or unaware would get caught, but that’s price
of doing business.
The police would also send in undercover cops to execute
controlled buys. Again, sometimes people would get popped, and this
may or may not include my little brother, but Denmark isn’t
Singapore. First offenders likely face a fine and nothing more.
Well, on August 31st the day after my brother left, one such buy
went wrong. A Pusher got busted and rather than do what every other
pusher did, he pulled out a gun and began shooting. Two cops and
one bystander were injured. The shooter was later killed.
First off, fuck that guy.
Yeah, the police should have left Christiania to itself. But
don’t get into a shooting war over a couple hundred Danish Krone
and some hash. Christiania has had some issues in the past with
violence and biker gangs trying to move in on the drug trade.
They’ve always managed to solve them internally.
In response to the current violence, the residents of
Christiania got together and decided to demolish Pusher Street. The
sale of cannabis is now forbidden in Christiania.
That dumb motherfucker ruined their freedom. Some asshole with a
gun managed to do what the Danish government failed to for over
four decades.
The shooting occurred the day after my little brother left
Christiania. His reaction to the recent tragedy: “He shouldn’t have
done that. There aren’t supposed to be guns in Chistiania. All the
rules they have are chill, but nobody follows them anymore. It was
anarchy in the anarchist commune. But fuck those cops anyway.”
So why does Rory want to "tear someone's fucking
head off?"
You know those days you wake up feeling nothing but
rage? Totally hate the world, everyone in it?
But it’s a gorgeous day and there’s the tail end of a hurricane
swell and the wind is great so you paddle out and try to shake off
the anger. But you can’t because some fat ass pig of a girl is
sitting wide on her wavestorm, yelling “party wave!” and shoulder
hopping literally every set that comes in. Then has loud
conversations during lulls about how she dropped the restraining
order against her baby daddy because even though he “has his
problems” and can’t stay out of jail he’s “a good dad.”
So you spend the entire session stewing over that bitch. Wishing
you could grab her by a fat fold and hammer her teeth through the
back of her head.
So even though it’s overhead, punchy enough to be a challenge,
soft enough to push your turns, you spend the entire session
stewing over that bitch. Wishing you could grab her by a fat fold
and hammer her teeth through the back of her head. But you don’t
want to go to jail and you know that life will take care of it for
you. Good thing she’s having fun today, because she’s a young
single mother with no education living on an island with no
opportunities, slave wages, and a cost of living on par with New
York City. This is as good as it’s ever gonna get.
Then you go home and want nothing more than to drink yourself
stupid but you can’t because your wife hasn’t figured out what’s
going on with her liver test results and because she can’t drink
you agreed you won’t either. But she’s gone grocery shopping while
you were in the water, which is really nice because you’re playing
host to a twenty four year old who’s done nothing in the last five
days but smoke all your weed, eat ten meals a day, sleep, and you
would have lost your mind if you’d come home to an empty fridge
after restocking the fridge twice in the last three days.
And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about anything so you
try to keep your mouth shut and calm down because all you really
want to do is find an excuse to tear someone’s fucking head
off.
Previously very anti-drug, it now appears the
world's third favorite mountain blog is turnt!
One of my most favorite things about political
seasons are the new words that enter our vocabulary. Oh it is pure
thrill for this linguist and the particular political season we are
currently in the middle of is almost too much!
Some of my most beloved words/phrases thus far have been:
Down-ballot
Down-ticket
Surrogate (an old favorite)
Trumpian
Lewandowskian
and pivot.
Pivot is being used over and over to denote a change in subtle
change in position as opposed to an outright flip-flop.
I think.
In any case, guess what? The Inertia just
pivoted on its draconian drug stance!
So go ahead. Keep making partying look super rad. It’s our
culture! Keep refusing to talk about the consequences of poor
decisions. Build more heroes. Watch them die alone, confused, in
shock – in a way you wouldn’t wish upon your greatest enemies.
Watch their friends and families struggle in plain view on social
media. Then work hard to inspire kids to walk the same plank.
Brilliant work! It’s art! It’s integrity. It’s surfing! Bravo,
surfing. Encore! Encore!
In the off-chance that the powerful point was missed
an editor tacked on a note reading:
Sarcasm! Sometimes more effective than earnestness!
But just yesterday the same “smartass” seems to have changed his
tune, writing:
Surfing helps me to understand what addicts (interesting,
passionate people) go through every day. Forsaking all other
opportunities for the thrill of a nice tight line. Giving up
everything for one singular focus and obsession. Being a fiend for
that toot, a frothing slave for that dopamine rush. And as long as
it doesn’t completely consume and destroy you, personal conflict is
how we get better at life.
Being a fiend for that toot!
A fiend for that toot!
Being a fiend for THAT toot!
A fiend for that TOOT!
If I did not know any better I would totally guess that the
above words were written by a lifelong drug abuser. An unrepentant
derelict living on the absolute fringes of society.
“Hey dealer…gimme some that toot and ummmm that dopamine rush
too, muthafucka…”
As a younger boy I’d get very flustered when
non-endemic venues took surf and ran it through their unsalted
prisms. “Kooks!” my heart would scream… “that’s not how it feels!
That’s not how it looks! Koooooks!”
I was a righteous zealot.
Now, as an older boy, I read these accounts and smile. Our
glorious pursuit is so well-loved! The tent is so big! Oh, not
The Inertia big, don’t get me wrong. What the hell is
going on over there anyhow? But definitely big enough for
Vogue.
Two cute friends decide to hop in a Jeep and take the great
American surf road trip. Should we read? Of course!
It’s nearly midnight in Topanga Canyon. A layer of sea mist
hangs over what would certainly be a starry night. In the amber
glow of strung lights, my belly full of wild salmon, grilled
vegetables, and strawberry rhubarb pie, I take my place on a pile
of pillows next to my travel partner, my college roommate, a former
T Magazine camping columnist, a broken-toed ballerina, a Shiba Inu,
and a Formosan Mountain dog. The air is thick with salt, bright
with sage and eucalyptus. A world champion longboarder—a woman
whose surf films I have pored over since high school in order to
teach myself the craft—has offered to give us a sound
bath. She shimmers bells above our heads,
then gentlybatsa
gong. Our chests begin to hum with a subtle vibration,
and we are pulled toward a unified energy. Soon there are singing
bowls. The Mountain dog curls up beside me and rests its head on my
stomach. We buzz together. This is a scene that, seven days prior
would have been unimaginable to me. But a lot has happened since
then.
Getting here was something of a schnapsidee—the word Germans
use to describe a plan hatched under the influence of alcohol.
Emilie Hawtin(my travel partner) and I hadn’t
really seen each other in years—we’re old colleagues from our
college days when we made pocket money as shop girls. We’ve kept
peripherally in touch: generous Instagram likes and the occasional
email. But over dinner one night and a few drinks, we discovered
just how parallel our lives had run: that we had both dedicated our
summers to surfing, that amid the perennially image-conscious
fashion world we were hungry for the experience of wind in our
hair, and, even more surprisingly, had also found ourselves with
the same week in August free.
Why not answer that London-ian call of the wild with the
most ad hoc of all vacations? The Great American Road Trip. Only
ours would have a twist—we’d head to the California coastline in
search of the best waves and surfers the Golden State had to offer,
a few beautiful scenic views, and more than anything, an excuse to
unplug from screens, desks, and good behavior.
And don’t you want to hop along, leaving your crust and jade
behind? Just do! Right here!
