Religion: Kelly Slater wants cult of Spock!

Gets busted for superimposing face over departed legend (again)!

We’ve said it before, so many times, and I’ll say it again right now. Kelly Slater is so much fun on social media! He has no handler, for one, no person moonlighting as “Kelly Slater” doing his Instagrams etc.

He is opinionated, for two, spouting his genuinely held ideas into the most shallow of pools.

He loves to engage all manner of hater and troll and fanboy, for third, penning serious responses to half baked splatter.

He’s weird, for last.

Like, way weird!

Today, or maybe yesterday, he wondered out loud which two people you would base a belief system upon. Let’s read his exact phrasing.

Amen, #Spock… Ahead of our time. If you were to create a belief system for people to follow, which two people would it be based on? Mine would be Spock and #BruceLee. I think that’s a good blend of philosophy between pacifism and martial arts. #VulcanDeathGrip

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It struck me, initially, because why two? Why not just one? All belief systems are, of course, a melange but why did Kelly want a combo of specifically two people?

Then it struck me because Spock was a fictional character and Bruce Lee was real. Strange? Like basing a belief system on the living ideals Superman and Ralph Nader? Or Wolverine and Don Johnston? Or Casper the Friendly Ghost and RuPaul? Or Scooby-Doo and F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Or L. Ron Hubbard and ummm L. Ron Hubbard?

Odd.

And finally he super-imposed his own face on that of Spock’s, covering Leonard Nimoy’s mug. This is the second time in as many months that Kelly Slater has placed his face over a dead man’s.

What is he telling us?

Also, If you were to create a belief system for people to follow, which two people would it be based on?


Watch: These kids’ dad invented Wavegarden!

Think they're getting some on-court practice?

What a dramatic situation surfing finds itself in now that wavepools are better than most of our realities. And if there was proof still needed that the duplication of waves will result in technically perfect surfers, well, here it is.

Kai and Hans Odriozola are two tweens from San Sebastian in the heart of Basque country just across the border from France, and close to Europe’s best wave Mundaka. Kai and Hans’ daily surf reality is radically different to yours and mine, howevs. Their pops, the engineer Josema Odriozola, and their mammy the economist Karin Frisch invented… Wavegarden, the first of the new generation of commercially available wavepools.

Every day, Kai and Hans get to surf the Wavegarden prototype.

Accelerated learning? Yeah, it is. One hundred and twenty waves an hour, each wave between eighteen and twenty five seconds long. Think you’re going to refine your game with those stats?

So how good do these two sub-ten year old’s surf? Watch ’em ride the NL Surf Park, a Texas Wavegarden that’s ready to open but is still chasing permits from Travis County who say the tank has to be filled with chlorine like a swimming pool for health reasons.

(Read that particularly bloody feud here.)

And here’s how the sometimes dazzling, sometimes not, but always good for an interview, former WCT-er Mitch Crews approaches the same pool.


What Your Wetsuit Says About You!

Are you Rip Curl, Patagonia or Billabong? Bear, otter or twink?

My first wetsuit was a long-sleeved spring-suit of dark brown with lighter tan panels. The suit created the optical illusion that I was a five-foot-three turd, moist though the middle and dry on the flanks. It cost seventy-seven dollars and was chosen, not because of the fit or the price, but because a soon-to-be world champion had modelled the item in a magazine advertisement.

But that’s what do when you’re twelve. Life is pure affectation.

Now that you’re all grown up, do you buy your wetsuits based on a rational examination of the facts or are are you still cuckolded by marketing?

Let’s analyse surfers and their choice of wetsuits.

Billabong: Years ago, a very generous pal was shocked to learn that the the four-thousand-dollar Dior dive watch he’d bought his father had fallen apart. It was a lesson in the essential nature of a company’s expertise, or if you prefer marketing-speak, its DNA. If you want the best of something you go to a specialist. In the case of watches, you don’t go to a fashion brand, you go to Rolex, Omega. This is a lesson you haven’t learned.

Quiksilver: If that suit is older than one year, you were, quite correctly, hypnotised by the voodoo of Craig Anderson and Dane Reynolds. If it’s a recent buy, the voodoo has metastasized into something far more powerful, something to make behave even more irrationally, given that you now wish to emulate Quiksilver’s number one teamer, Matt Banting.

Hurley: What price those two stripes on the right quadricep? When you’re not uploading footage of yourself surfing to the Hurley surf club you’re googling “John John’s Mom” or “Brett Simpson wildcard” and exciting your own nipples with thumb and forefinger.

Rip Curl/O’Neill: You’re a traditionalist who would buy one of their suits even if Mick Fanning and Jordy Smith weren’t being paid millions to inflate ’em. All you want is a suit that keeps you warm,  that ain’t a straitjacket (it grips the parabola of your stomach beautifully) and won’t peel apart after one good season. You’re immune to marketing. Inoculated from the whims of fashion. Which is also why you wear Birkenstocks and cargo pants.

Patagonia: You like your studs big, hairy, to take charge, and who like to maul otters like you, your skin raked by dirty fingernails. You like to camp. You like beer breath. You like to feel fur against your body. Brown is your favourite colour.

What does your surfboard say about you? Click here! 


As seen in 1/4 page color in today's Los Angeles Times!
As seen in 1/4 page color in today's Los Angeles Times!

The poo-stance seen ’round the world!

Today's Los Angeles Times celebrates an awkward pose. A suable offense? Let's discuss!

Do you think you look tres amazing when you surf? Knees bent just so? Torso in the ideal state between rigid and flexible? Eyes laser focused on the section you are about to decimate?

But have you ever seen how you really look?

Oh the initial shock can be disastrous! Rear end flying like a flag! Back rounded like a hillock!

Over ten years ago I went on a surf adventure to Yemen with two marvelous friends. It was grand in every single way until I returned home, the slides were developed and I saw myself drunkenly groping the waves.

The horror almost put me off surfing forever.

So let us take this unnamed surfer seen in today’s Los Angeles Times (pictured above). The story is about a surf resort in Nicaragua selling a surf package in honor of Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer. Let’s read a touch?

If you’re of a certain age, it seems like only yesterday that the iconic surf film “The Endless Summer” was released to rave reviews. But it’s been half a century since filmmaker Bruce Brown followed Robert August and Mike Hynson on their wave-chasing surfing trip around the globe. 

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the documentary’s nationwide release, Nicaragua’s Mukul Beach, Golf & Spa is working with travel outfitter Tropicsurfto offer special surf safaris in 4x4s, with each surfing tour tailored to fit the skill level and physical conditions of participants so they can catch that perfect wave. 

It all seems very fine but what if you were this unnamed surfer caught in an embarrassing pose used to illustrate?

He may be very skilled and the photographer snapped at just the wrong moment and did not have the wherewithal to know good from awkward surfing. Or the photographer may have had a vendetta against and wanted to shame him in 1/4 page color. Or the surfer might not have been as good as he thought he was.

Whatever the case, would you sue a publication for printing a poo-stance photo of you or would you celebrate your everyman appeal, shouting “Free Adriano de Souza!” to the heavens?


I cut your board kook!
I cut your board kook!

Just in: Chinese cops hate kooks!

We rage about Chinese-made boards but maybe, just maybe, the People's Republic really is an earthly paradise!

Chinese cops taking chops out of boards in wind slop? What the fuck is going on here?

Earlier today Alex Greenberg posted a video to his youtube channel of what appears to be a group of some sort of Chinese official, maybe cops (?), at Xi Chong Beach, in Shenzhen, China, hacking a vicious chunk out of a local surfer’s board.

Quality handsaw, right there. Cuts through the poor fucker’s ride like a hot knife through butter. Most effective surf deterrent I’ve ever seen.

There’s a running commentary from the cameraman, but I can’t understand a word of it. What language is he speaking? Is it Italian? Whatever it is, I don’t know what the fuck he’s saying.

I think I hear the word police in there toward the end.

I reached out to Alex to see if he could shed some light. Nice guy, he got right back to me.

As for back story: I did not take the video. I’m in a chat group with surfers from all over China, (I live in Shanghai) Someone posted this video among others of officers destroying boards. Over 100 people in the group chat writing in Chinese. my Chinese isn’t that great. Anyways what I can gather is that the local officials are sawing people’s boards they deem not experienced enough to surf. Or the officials are sawing anyone’s boards at this one beach break.

Another theory is that since there are some heavy typhoons approaching the China coast the police don’t want people in the water.

China is a strange place when it comes to enforcing laws. it’s hard to explain unless you have experienced it.

I am trying to get an answer about what legit happened. Then I can share that info.

More videos? Hacking up kooks’ sticks when they’re a problem? Delicious! Gimme more!

I’ve asked Alex for the other videos mentioned in his email. If I can get my grubby little mitts on them ya’ll will be the first to know.