This interview, however, is too good to ignore. Recorded
immediately following Slater’s win at the Teahupoo Pro, it
concentrates, entirely, on his jiujitsu game, although
Slater’s digressions include talk of his optioning the Peter
Maguire book on seventies drug-trafficking Thai
Stick and the benefits of food combining.
Both interviewer and interviewee are seated, and it’s in this
position that we watch as Slater’s triceps stand out like brown
snakes, ready to strike. Readers of a rainbow stripe might feel
compelled to knead the smooth brown skin.
Watch here!
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In five short years you may have to fight to
surf!
“It’s their property; they can do what they want
with it!"
Did you know that southern California’s most
iconic wave and North America’s only World Surf League tour stop
might get disappeared? Might slip from the general public’s limp
grasp back into the iron fist of the United States Marine Corps?
The mighty hand of the United States Navy?
It’s true!
Potentially!
Today, the Orange County Register’s Laylan
Connelly has reported that the lease
between the Department of Defense and the state of California is
set to expire in five short years. The Department of Defense
actually owns the land but has leased it to California since
1971. The Nixon years!
Yikes?
Let’s read about it!
…the talks between the state and military are starting, and
it’s anyone’s guess where the discussions will lead.
“The only thing we got from them is that it probably won’t
be resolved until the end,” Long. “We won’t have an answer this
year. The Parks are stating our position – that (the beach)
continues to be accessible to the public as it is today,
hopefully.”
Carl B. Redding Jr., public affairs director for Camp
Pendleton, said lease agreements are usually determined about two
years before a deadline.
A letter from state parks officials was submitted and
received by the Marine Corps Installations West staff this month,
and the military is preparing a response. Redding said the
Department of the Navy will have final approval of any lease
deal.
Among the list of possible changes: Modifying the public
beach zone by changing the borders and/or the size of the
park.
Dave Ethington, a San Onofre Parks Foundation board member,
said there are other possibilities.
“It’s their property; they can do what they want with it,“
Ethington said, referring to the Department of Defense.
“They can take it back and administer it for themselves.
They can renew the lease,” he added. “I think those are the
options.”
Ethington believes it’s unlikely the land would be sold for
development.
“The fear is they would chop it up and change the park,” he
said. “That’s our concern, that they would take sections of the
park. … Maybe they would want a little more space.
“Not that any of those things are sitting there in a
plan.”
They have five years to sort out the details.
Can you imagine a world without Trestles? Where would young
Brazilians flock? Which stop could Jordy Smith win? What would
Kolohe and Dino do with their long afternoons together?
Let’s say the military did get it back though. Would you
enlist?
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Since surfing has bitten skating’s style since the
early air days of the 80’s, let’s peer through it’s lens and
examine 2015/16’s en vogue move: the tweaked slob straight air.
From Dane Reynolds to Noa Deane and every ‘aerialist’ in between,
this move has been making the rounds ensuring useable clips.
Through the lens of a skater, they are hideous. | Photo: Morgan
Maassen
(Editor’s note: This story, by the Lisbon-based writer
Sam Einstein, interests me because it demonstrates the perennial
war between surfers who can skate, and those who don’t. Sam skates.
Sam surfs. And while the tweaked slob straight airs of Noa Deane
and Dane Reynolds render me breathless, Sam thinks they’re hideous.
He reasons his case below.)
Airs. One day they are cool, the next they’re
not. One contest everyone’s jealously sandbagging
Brazilians for doing too many airs while getting a Pottz-sized hard
on for (insert lighter skinned surfer)’s rail game.
The next, everyone praises Slater for aerially emasculating Jack
Freestone.
“Too many reverses.”
“Not enough power surfing.”
“We need more progression.”
There was always something rather homoerotic about passionately
preferring a big, strong man’s powerful, yet beautiful, aggressive,
yet stylish, spray-sending rail game. I don’t know where I was
going with that.
But airs and style do mix. Growing up skating vert, doing airs
was the whole point. Rotations were easily distinguishable
(Slater’s air was a 720 dammit) and there were
clear style no-nos in regards to grabs. Things are not so simple in
surfing, to the bewilderment of any other board sport patron.
Since surfing has bitten skating’s style since the early air
days of the 80’s, let’s peer through its lens and examine 2015/16’s
en vogue move: the tweaked slob straight air. From Dane Reynolds to
Noa Deane and every ‘aerialist’ in between, this move has been
making the rounds ensuring useable clips. Through the lens of a
skater, they are hideous.
While I am relishing the fact that no-grab straight airs are
kinda cool again (it’s all I got), the fact that between the legs
stinkbug grabs are the shit in surfing is beyond me.
Call to action: grab over your front knee!
While I am undoubtedly coming across as a keyboard warrior, I am
writing this as a Public Service Announcement. A proper, tuck-knee
slob grab (or tuck-knee front side grab for that matter) will not
only look infinitely better, but will separate you from the
stinkbuggy herd.
Be the stylish slob you were born to be!
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And here we see the work of Florida mixed-media artist
Bruce Reynolds.
Illuminating four-minute short on Kelly Slater's
recent artshow, Apolitical Process.
Yeah, sure, we’ve been milking the hell
out of Kelly Slater’s art show in Venice last week. But what do you
do? Where I found the event, viewed from far, as smooth and as
licked as bathroom porcelain, BeachGrit‘s writer for the
night, the noted broadcaster David Lee Scales found it irrational
and unpersuasive.
The New York-based, born-in-Canada magazine,
Vice, just published a four-minute short
on the event, one that, to me, gives the best window into the show.
We see the anti-Sea World painted boards of Kevin Ancell (the
sharp-eyed reader will note Vice gets Ancell’s name wrong
– accuracy, or balance for that matter, aren’t Vice strong
points), the surreal and mutated sculptures of Florida’s Bruce
Reynolds and Todd Glaser’s monochrome photography.
If you, like most, recoil at the likelihood of a Trump
presidency, you’ll love Bruce Reynolds’ eloquent The Great
Wall of Trump.
“This is a cautionary tale… I sometimes feel that our leadership
is selected, not elected,” says Reynolds.
One more incident proving that we shouldn't be
allowed guns.
There’s not much real violence in
Hawaii. Plenty fights, but usually nothing too
serious. Just some guys scrapping over something dumb. Pretty easy
to find some fisticuffs outside a bar post-midnight, but that’s the
deal pretty much everywhere. Young men get drunk, don’t get laid,
get in a fight.
Almost no gun violence. Because there aren’t many guns. Too
hard, too expensive, to get your hands on them. And I’m cool with
that. I dig guns, in theory. But in reality I think the average
person is too stupid to handle the responsibility of owning a hunk
of metal that slings chunks of lead at a million miles hour.
I’m definitely too stupid.
Yeah, there are always lunatic criminal types, but they
mainly go after each other. Like the violence on Kauai. Tons of
violent crimes in Kapaa, just down the road from my house. But it’s
just chronics bashing each other over chronic drama. Garbage humans
hurting other garbage humans over the garbage bullshit they think
is important. Pretty much victimless crimes.
Damn tragic, as always. One more incident proving that we
shouldn’t be allowed guns. No matter how awesome they are, how fun
they are, how well they can supposedly “protect” us.
I wish we lived in a world where we all could own guns. But we
don’t.
