A secret and nefarious plot to save the environment!
Don’t you love your freedom? The feeling that you can do whatever it is that you want to do each and every morning? Like, maybe you’ll go get a donut and some coffee. Or maybe you’ll drive down to the beach and check the surf. Maybe the waves are small but the sky is warm and you’ll go for a swim. Or maybe you’ll pull your trusty 5’9 Matt Biolos Short Round out and go for a surf.
Maybe you’re a pro and proud member of the World Surf League and maybe you’re in Portugal and are ready to go for your very first major win and you pull out your Matt Biolos Sub Driver and…
STOP RIGHT THERE KOLOHE ANDINO! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR VIOLATING ARTICLE 4 OF THE SANTA MONICA SURFBOARD PURITY LAWS!
Whoa!
Does this far-fetched ridiculousness seem straight out of the terrifying fiction The Man in the High Castle which depicts a world where Nazi Germany won World War II?
Well guess what? It also depicts this world where World Surf League CEO Paul Speaker rules like a pugnacious dictator!
It’s true! Our own (he’s not really our own but a gal can dream) Nick Carroll has just reported on a top-ish secret meeting where the WSL and various shapers kicked around banning toxic surfboards from competition! Let’s read a little!
Early in September, around the time of the Hurley Trestles Pro in San Clemente, California, the WSL management convened a very hush-hush meeting.
Invited was a range of surfboard makers, surfboard materials manufacturers, and green-thinking consultants. The meeting was designed to sound out a notion of quietly radical proportions — so radical nobody’s ever dared bust it out before.
Pro surfing’s owner and governing body may soon begin to regulate the equipment ridden by its elite competitors. In other words: tell ‘em what sort of boards they can ride.
This notion is being driven by a seemingly laudable goal: sustainability. It’s been widely known for decades that the classic PU/PE board is an environmental peril of sorts. Blanks and resins involve toxic chemicals, including known human carcinogens. Exposure to these chemicals and others has taken a small but steady toll on surfboard workers worldwide over the generations.
On top of that, the things are effectively inert, taking centuries to break down in surface landfill. And speaking of breaking — they break. Especially if you’re a pro. The CT’s surfboard disposal count is off the charts.
Not exactly sustainable.
On and on Nick goes, as he is wont to do, cracking the most important/radically fascist plot in surfing’s storied history! You must read in its entirety here…
But let’s do what we do best and quickly opine without full comprehension! Do you think the World Surf League should become a nanny or do you think the surfers should decide for themselves how best to protect/destroy the environment?
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so yeah the break throughs in design and what they are made of , has been incredible for the last 15-50 years , really amazing designs , unbreakable boards , state of the Art!
Most shops I know haven’t sold true “local shaper” boards for decades. (Unless the owner or an employee of the shop is a shaper). Most local shapers you can just call up and order a board.
Plus any “local shaper” with any teeth is likley scrubbing blanks for Lost or CI anyways.
With these new rules the entire tour will only be allowed to be on greewashed boards from Asia.
fuck yeah , imagine if everyone had one magic board a year , that didn’t break , but we love the fact it killed all the workers making it , and Joe and the meery WSL band wouldn’t have to pretend that there was wnything new in surfboard design and they could merrily talk about , ah , well , ah haircuts , fuck sustainable surfboards , and fuck the planet!!!
Because it’s much more sustainable and green to make “eco-friendly” boards in Thailand and then use boats and planes ship them all over the world, right?
It’s the WSL’s tour, let them do what they want would be the anti-fascist way to look at it. When all of the sheeple see that the pros still rip on environmentally friendly boards, hopefully they will follow suit by continuing the tradition of riding whatever the pros are riding (to their detriment or not).
lame fucken nazi’s. all boards break (except for ci’s new board tech apparently) yeah pu isnt the greatest for the environment, epoxy is pretty toxic to the humans making the pro’s boards as well. but why stop with boards? flying pro surfers and judges,commentators an all the other plebs around the world to each event is definitely not environmentally friendly either not to mention all the promo/advertising shit for each event. mayb they should stay in southern california to stop their carbon footprint impacting on us all an make the world a better place by just surfing kelly’s wave pool.
Ze planes. Vat vill zey do about ze many plane rides? Vill zey ground the Luftwaffe?
As long as it’s good for Mother Nature and doesn’t give cancer to our beloved shapers, I say to PS go all the way be a dictator and stop this madness we’ve been living in ffs.
This would explain why Tom Curren was invited to Kelly’s ..errr, I mean WSL’s wave pool recently. Tom’s as of late choices of artistic wave riding craft would surely twist Speaker’s panties in a knot, an unsustainable knot of “not on that board”.
Good on you Tom. “Still perfect……still perfect”. Perhaps not for long.
Those fucking Zionist Anglo-Saxon Jew Colonialist pigs from Firewire are conspiring with the White Power elements from the WSL to force everyone onto Slater Devil Designs Scifi surfboards. JJF is somehow involved too. White man gotta rule the world dog
Gotta love how much air time they’ve given Kelly’s boards during heats as compared to everyone else on tour
WSL and Kelly and Wave Pool are all the same people. That’s why it’s like all one gushing advertisment for his Thai boards and Willy Wonka deal.
Noble intentions or public relations stunt? And that photo… looks like he needs to lay off the Chateauneuf- du- Pape and goat cheese.
Well I think it could work out well! But then again I have fascist tendencies.
I was chatting to friends at the beach the other day, we all surf decent waves around Victoria and we all agreed that no of us has snapped a board in a real long time. Is quality on the up?
Volume is on the up, thats for sure…
Hmmm, just like the Formula 1. Limited boards/tyre types, and I love F1, this could be awesome.
To truely mimick current formula 1 they would have to have wax that lasts only half a heat and 2 mandatory hardenesses that has to be applied.
Penalties for fin changes…the possibilities are endless!
Maybe, maybe, that could be because you and your friends are chickens and don’t go out under 8 feet?
Maybe, maybe not, when and where was your last snap?
Snapped a surftech in 2 pieces september of last year but not really relevant as it was in Guéthary, which I suspect you have never heard of. A wave similar to Sunset, where it happens every day . Plus I don’t surf a lot anymore so my case doesn’t apply. I was only winding you up no offense mate
Oh none taken, you just don’t who is who around these parts haha.
You know the last few good floggings I’ve had I found myself thinking about how much I loved whatever board I was on at the time, only to pop up with it intact. Real crusty favourites that I have ridden into ground too.
And a toast to our beloved crumbled gems