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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Vogue and the cutest surf trip ever!

By Chas Smith

8 years ago

Leave your crust behind!

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 gently bats a 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!

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"Hamilton, who is fifty-two and bearish, with a freckly tan, grew up on Kauai in a house with no indoor bathroom. At the local pool, he liked to squat down in the shallow end," writes the New Yorker's Dana Goodyear. | Photo: @lairdhamilton.com

Laird: “Bearish with a freckly tan!”

By Derek Rielly

8 years ago

The New Yorker goes extreme underwater training with Laird Hamilton!

There is no other magazine that has the ability to spellbound a reader with even the world’s dullest subjects as The New Yorker.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve started a story about, I don’t know, a hospice nurse, or a mine in Peru or an obscure mathematician, and the 10,000 or so words have flown past.

A house style that allows only small variation means writers pour all their skills into the description of their subject, and to the build-up and release of tension. To compound the magazine’s superiority, there is little in the way of obvious political bias.

So what happens when a staff writer engages an already dazzling subject like Laird Hamilton and his wife Gabrielle Reece? Oh the sparks fly!

Her student complied, lugging the weights toward an underwater staircase, up which a man was sprinting with a huge dumbbell in each hand. The student, jumping, had the sensation of being a deranged pogo-stick rider, likely to drown.

In the September 5, 2016 issue, the writer examines Laird and Gabrielle’s XPT (Extreme Physical Training) that has lured celebrities to their pool for ice-baths, running with weights and soulful saunas.

Read? Yes!

“Hamilton, who is fifty-two and bearish, with a freckly tan, grew up on Kauai in a house with no indoor bathroom. At the local pool, he liked to squat down in the shallow end and then burst up through the water: the active boy’s version of an underwater tea party. To expand his lung capacity, he’d grab a rock and run along the ocean floor, holding his breath for as long as he could. Then he started exercising underwater, wearing a weight vest. One night a decade ago, he had a dream about jumping up and down in the water, breathing rhythmically, as he’d done in childhood. In the morning, he and Reece began to develop the routine, which they call X.P.T.—extreme physical training—and which, after years of testing on friends, they have begun to promote through retreats in Malibu and on Kauai, where they live during the big-wave season. Videos, apps, and books are in the works.”

“Gabrielle Reece snapped on a swim cap and held out a mask to an appropriately trepidatious visitor. “Take two twenty-pound weights and do some jumps,” she said, indicating a section of the pool floor that sloped downward. Her student complied, lugging the weights toward an underwater staircase, up which a man was sprinting with a huge dumbbell in each hand. The student, jumping, had the sensation of being a deranged pogo-stick rider, likely to drown. Piano music flowed through underwater speakers. A mermaid appeared out of the blue-green: Gabrielle Reece, with pointers. (“Try to go straight up and down.”)

In the sauna, which was heated to two hundred and twenty degrees, Randall Wallace (“Braveheart,” “Pearl Harbor”) chatted with Frankie Harrer, an eighteen-year-old professional surfer, about the state of her soul. (Solid.) Neil Strauss, the former rock critic and author of “The Game,” came in. He calls the sauna the “truth barrel”; he and Reece have used it as the location for a podcast about “life optimization.” More friends stopped by. John McEnroe, who had been cycling up the canyon, peeled off his shirt and made a beeline for the ice tub, where he lay palely for several minutes before bolting upright, re-dressing, and calling over his shoulder to Hamilton, “I want to talk to you about the breathing. I have a match next week.”

Read the complete story here!

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Eat beach grit spam!