Exclusive: Leaked Hurley commercial!

Chas Smith

By

We are the new WikiLeakes! Only not chicken!

Tomorrow is election day in the United States of America. And while the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency has driven even the stoutest among us to the hills, I must admit, this whole cycle has left me nothing less than thrilled.

Part of my joy comes from the daily leaks. Oh not the ones from Julian Assange. His lily-livered faux power-mongering from behind the canary yellow walls of the Ecuadorian embassy is so weak! So gauche!

No. My favorite leaks are the anonymous nuggets from inside the campaigns themselves. Did you read Inside Donald Trump’s Last Stand in The New York Times? It positively crackles with anon gossip. A true work of art that will undoubtedly go down as a journalistic high water mark.

Also the works of cold-blooded Russians deep in Siberia who are not in it for fame or glory but for integrity. For truth.

And in that same very same vein, a brave Russian deep in Siberia just today emailed me this Rob Machado commercial from 2011 that never saw the light of day. The hacker, WilderBEAST420, said he/she found it while combing through the dark net. Or darknet.

What’s that?

But I don’t care! It sounds wonderful. And he/she leaked it to me because even in Siberia there are people who recognize the soul crushing seriousness of the surf industry.

You might recall my rant against Volcom last week that shouted at them forgetting that what we do, this surfing, is at the end just plain fun.

The hacker, whoever she or he is, knows this, read the piece and got to work digging around in the inner sanctums. And this little peek behind the ivory walls makes me smile, yes, but it also fills me with great hope.

There are people out there trying to make surfing fun again!

Revel then in this bit that you aren’t supposed to be seeing and smile along.

Ouch: Ski runs over surfer at Uluwatu!

Chas Smith

By

A forgotten menace!

What is your worst biggest fear? Rogue set wave and a super low reefy tide? Shark? Hydrofoil SUP? Regular SUP? Beginner on a longboard? Beginner on a SUP? A really good surfer embarrassing you whilst your girlfriends is on the beach taking pictures? Shark riding a hydrofoil SUP?

Jetski?

After the strapped thing went away I sort of lost track of jetskis in normal waves. Like, who does that? Apparently some man at Uluwatu who mowed down another man on a fun-sized day. You must go to Indo Surf Life to catch all the carnage but I’ll give you a taste here!

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Sainthood: Mason Ho performs a miracle!

Chas Smith

By

Our favorite surfer saves The Inertia! And they said it couldn't be done!

You and I both know that The Inertia is like acid to the eyes. It is the worst thing to ever happen to the earth. Worse than anything. It is worse than if…

You are diagnosed with a chronic, painful illness.
Your business fails and you lose everything.
Your home is destroyed by fire.
Your mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Your best friend gets divorced and has to move in with you.
Your infant is diagnosed with an incurable disease and will need a transplant or he will die.
Your wife leaves you for another man.
Your husband loses his job and stays home every day drinking.
Your spouse leaves and takes everything and you are forced to file bankruptcy.
You get into a car accident and kill someone.
You are sent to prison for a crime you did not commit.
Your car is stolen.
Your home is broken into and you are raped.
Your are exiled from your country
You are exposed as a fraud on national TV
Your child is abducted
Your sister is injured in a car accident and is paralyzed on one side of her body.
Your son goes to war and is a prisoner of war.
Your wife gets breast cancer.
You lose all confidence in yourself and become a hermit.
You are fired from your job.
Your boyfriend sexually abused your children.
You are in the witness protection program and are forced to leave everyone and everything you know.
Your boyfriend/girlfriend leaves you after 10 years together.
You have to have a hysterectomy and won’t be able to have children.
You have an illness that puts you on long-term disability.
You have prostate cancer and will no longer be able to perform sexually.
Your husband leaves you alone when you are 8 ½ months pregnant.
Your home and neighborhood is destroyed in a hurricane.
You flunk out of college.
You get arrested and are sentenced to 10-20 years in prison.
You have to pay child support for a child you didn’t want.
You are 15 and pregnant.
You lost all your money and savings.
Your child runs away from home and lives on the street doing drugs and working as a prostitute.
You think of suicide all the time.
You know other people’s problems may be worse than yours, but you are still devastated.
You are forced to live on the street.
Your son is arrested for rape.

But guess what makes The Inertia ok?

Mason Ho! Watch this clip, which I think was made/produced by the big tent website, and dance in his miracle. Hallelujah! The Inertia swings!

Sorry. The video is little like the penises of “contributors” and “writers” and “editors” and “owners” at The Inertia. You can enlarge it or something. Like a miraculous surgery! And now that you are finished watching, The Inertia returns to being worst than if…

You were born without the ability to see.
Your daughter is convicted of murdering her children.
You are paralyzed from an accident.
You lose your entire family in a tornado.
You have a different, serious crisis every year.
You have to have your arms amputated.
You witness a gruesome murder.
You are drafted to fight in a war you don’t support.
Someone is trying to kill you.
You hate the way you look.
You fail at everything you do.
Your family thinks your beliefs are crazy.
Your boat capsizes and you are lost at sea.
All your friends abandon you.
Your mother won’t talk with you.
You lose everything and have to move in with someone who is abusive.
Your father beat you as a child.
Your dog is killed.
Your country is the victim of a terrorist attack.
You are stranded on a deserted island.
You were falsely accused of abuse and lost custody of your children.
Your business manager steals all your money.
Your spouse/partner cheats on you.
You are diagnosed with an illness that makes you lose your ability to think clearly.

Jack Freestone
Jack Freestone loses hundreds of thousands of hypothetical dollars in two hours!

Wait! Billabong shares dive 300ish%!

Derek Rielly

By

How does it feel to be poor again?

Don’t the stock market work fast! Earlier today, maybe even two hours ago, or less, it was reported on this website that surf clothing icon Billabong was riding a wave of unprecedented share price growth. From forty-ish cents to well over one dollar apiece.

Millions made etc. Obviously, the website was very quick to point out that it’d advised readers to spend everything they had on Billabong shares in the middle of 2015, when shares cost sixty cents. 

It was like the glory days of the IPO when, soon after, shares hit sixteen-dollars and millionaires in Burleigh Heads were a dime a dozen. Well, as revealed in our comment pane minutes ago by BeachGrit reader Nick Carroll, who might be related to the two-time world surfing champion Tom Carroll and who is infinitely cleverer than the imbeciles who own this website, shares have actually swung hard the other way.

Down, down, down.

“Umm in case you didn’t notice, Bong did a stock merge in the interim. Your 5000 60c shares should now be 1000 $3 shares,” wrote Nick, “Except they’re not are they. No.”

To which I replied, quoting broadsheet newspaper The Australian. 

“The firm has since made great strides in its rebuilding process, with its share price more than tripling from 45c at the time of the GE Capital agreement.”

To which Nick revealed the true tragedy behind the story, and behind the average man trying to play the market.

“The Australian has fucked up,” writes Nick. “In May 2015, being an idiot, I bought six thousand Billabong shares at 71c apiece, i.e. about $4300 worth. Some time later they conducted their stock consolidation and briefly I had twelve hundred shares worth around $3.60 each. I now have twelve hundred Billabong shares worth $1.23 each, about $1480 worth. This is not a threefold increase I am sad to say. Indeed it is almost the fucken opposite. Now there are analysts’ projections out there suggesting that in the next two years or so, Billabong will turn its current quite negative balance sheet into an impressive positive. Perhaps one day those shares will eventually regain their lost ground. But in the deathless words of Aragorn in The Two Towers’: “It is not this day!””

Were you, like me, briefly rich? Did you examine the price of prestige cars? Maybe a little house by the sea?

How do you feel now that the cold wind of poverty whistles through your threadbare t-shirt, now that the long and gloomy night gathers around you, the ghosts of hope haunting you?

Jack Freestone
Jack Freestone loses hundreds of thousands of hypothetical dollars in two hours! | Photo: Billabong

Rich: Billabong’s Shares Up 300%!

Derek Rielly

By

Did you buy Billabong shares at our behest last year? You're rich!

Most stock-market advice is shaky as hell. Ask the real money and they’ll tell you not to jump in unless you have some kind of insider trading, illegal as that theoretically might be. ‘Cause if you don’t get in, or out, early, you can’t even get close to licking the spoon.

On behalf of our readers, last year BeachGrit sought advice on the likely trajectory of Billabong shares, then trading at what seemed a cheap sixty-ish Australian cents apiece.

As we wrote at the time: 

So why buy ’em now at sixty cents?

Billabong have halved the number of retail stores and sold off a few of their biz’s, reducing debt, but, tellingly, a couple of hard-nosed US private-equity companies have bought hard into Billabong.

And the CEO is Neil Fiske, who was instrumental in driving the fortunes of the king of US retail Les Wexner, turning Victoria’s Secret and A & F into the dirtiest of money spinners.

On the creative side, Billabong has hired Roxy’s head designer to help drive Billabong gals, RVCA is starting to soar and Tiger Lily is still an unfulfilled buy.

Most interestingly, Billabong’s founder Gordon Merchant recently dropped $2 million upping his share parcel from 8 to 10 per cent. It’s a move that hints that he is finding the price too good to refuse.

As soon as the market works out the new management with their PE Backers have a plan to restore their old margins and and with Billabong still turning over one billion a year hit makes a share price of little over a dollar likely.

Is it worth a punt? Yeah, if you’re going to stick around for a few years. It’ll jump around, as shares do, but don’t torture yourself by watching the share price on your phone every few hours. Take a long-term view.

Set, forget, and come back when it’s around a buck. Then sell.

Bullish? We weren’t bullish enough.

Today shares sell for $1.23.

You could’t turned that ten k into twenty, fifty-k into a hundred, five hundred into a mill.

And, if you’d got in a little earlier, say, late 2014, you would’ve made a 300 per cent profit.

Did you buy? Are you rich?

Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
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