That dazzling Mayhem-Firewire might be toast but that's a helluva of a souvenir to throw up behind the bar.

Just in: Surfer Fights off Great White!

By Derek Rielly

8 years ago

"Big and aggressive" shark belted by surfer at Injidup in Western Australia…

If sharks give you night terrors, Western Australia ain’t the place for you. Two fatals in Perth this year, and beaches closed hither and yon.

One week ago, the school surfing titles in Perth had to be called off when a ten-footer cruised through the lineup.

But, the south-west, where most of the great white attacks happen, has been oddly quiet. I said as much in a phone call to the former pro turned real estate agent Mitch Thorson just two days ago. He said, yeah, it is, but told a story of surfing Bears the day before and having to wait until a great white had sailed out of the bay.

Yesterday, it was biz as usual in the south-west, specifically Injidup near Yallingup, when a surfer had to fight off what was, likely, a great white.

As reported by Fairfax newspapers:

Fraser Penman, from Perth, was knock off his board by the beast while out at popular surfing spot Injidup beach in Yallingup, the same stretch of coastline where 25-year-old Matthias Bache went missing after cliff diving in March.

And following his close encounter, he took to Facebook to confirm he was unharmed, thanks to his younger brother Logan Penman.

“Encountered my first and last Shark attack today down at Carparks Injis!” He wrote.

“Scariest moment of my life, yet walked away intact with nothing but a smashed board.

“The biggest thank you to my lil brother Logan for instantly paddling across yelling ‘punch it’ and throwing me his board – saving my life. That takes a hell of a lot of courage and so much love. I am truly lucky to have you.”

Vinnie Poller told WAtoday he was just minutes away from heading into the water himself when the shark attacked and he saw people scrambling back to the beach.

“I wasn’t in the water when it happened, I was just checking it [the surf] when I saw everyone paddling in and the guy’s board broken up on the beach as he came ashore,” he said.

“I don’t know the guy and it’s crazy that no one was hurt, but you just have to be thankful to walk away from things like that, and he seemed okay though.

“It all looked pretty scary in the moment. It does make you think twice about going back in the water, because his board showed the damage a white shark can do. But you have just got to accept that they are part of the ocean and we can’t really do much about that.”

A photo emerged shortly after the attack of Mr Penman’s surfboad – near ripped in half – while another photo showed a makeshift warning sign made to alert other surfers of the attack.

“No joke. Shark attack. Big and aggressive,” the homemade signpost read.

Read more here.

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Probable surfer getting fined.

Fascism: Cops ticket surfers in NYC!

By Chas Smith

8 years ago

It hurts to be a New York surfer!

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.

Parker’s wife: “Rory’s about to kill us!”

By Rory's Wife

8 years ago

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.

A spokeswoman for Christiania made the following statement: “We have asked the police not to come… [w]e will do this ourselves. This is about our honor.”

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.”

Seems like Rory’s early influence stuck.

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Parker: “It’s the most beautiful day ever!”

By Rory Parker

8 years ago

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.

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Just in: The Inertia pivots on drug abuse!

By Chas Smith

8 years ago

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!

I think!

You must recall the piece Why I Deeply Respect the Surf Industry for Glorifying Drugs and Alcohol. No? The sarcastic piece written by The Inertia‘s resident self-described “smartass” was very critical of drugs etc. Let’s read the end!

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…”

And if that’s not a pivot I don’t know what is.

Fiends! For that toot!

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Eat beach grit spam!