Get ready for Kelly Slater, John John Florence, Mick Fanning etc. to rock some hot beach break!
Remember when surfing was officially included in Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic Games? I do like it was yesterday! Tears of joy streamed down my cheeks as I furiously dialed World Surf League CEO Paul Speaker so we could share the moment together.
He didn’t answer and I’ve been so hurt ever since.
I mean, not hurt. I’m totally over him now. Like, whatever right? There are plenty of CEOs in the sea. Yeah?
Whatever. And today the International Olympic Committee officially announced the surfing venue!
Kujukuri Beach in Chiba prefecture some 100 km east of Tokyo!
And not Kelly Slater’s Ranch 10000 km east of Tokyo!
Have you been there? Have you surfed?
Here’s a video posted by Olympic hopefuls so you can start training.
If you have ever visited li’l old BeachGrit on consecutive days then you’ll know how much I love to kick against The Inertia’s goads! I feel the crew operating out of a second story Venice-adjacent office mostly deserves. The Huffington-esque brand of socially aware identitarianism they peddled is worthy of ridicule.
But this morning writer J.P. Currie stepped up to the tofu-scented mic and got very angry whilst calling out Dane Reynolds!
Very pointed!
Very personal!
Shall we read an abridged version? Well it wouldn’t be BeachGrit if we refused!
Firstly, and screamingly obviously, is that everything Dane says in Chapter Eleven – especially with regard to his disillusionment with tying capitalism to surfing and benefiting immensely from that arrangement – is totally undermined by advertising his new brand “Former” at the end of the piece. Did nobody really realize that Chapter 11 is actually just a commercial? Ironic, huh. It’s akin to having an AA meeting then all going out afterward to smash some shots in celebration of the meeting. It’s short-sighted at best and hypocritical as fuck at worst.
I also take issue with his little dismissive diatribe about who to thank. As he says: “I feel like I should thank Quiksilver…but who is Quiksilver? Who do I thank? Everyone I knew that worked there is gone.”
Well, Dane, unless you mean “gone” as in dead, then presumably there are human beings who helped you that you could still namecheck, whether they work for Quik or not anymore. And failing that, how about you just give a nod to the fans? An acknowledgement to the surf fans of the world who gobble up every meager scrap of surf meal that you deign to throw them like desperate, pathetic little chickens. These people have made you a millionaire because they like watching you ride a surfboard. They deserve a little credit.
Surely the noble thing to do (if Dane truly has a deep personal conflict with the idea of attaching surfing and his likeness to a commercial enterprise) would be to disappear altogether. To walk away. Get rid of that corporate monster called Vans and the other patrons who supply that sweet surfin’ cash. Ditch it all, look after your family, surf. Be grateful that you made millions of dollars from surfing when you felt like it. Be grateful that you are a rich, white man living in an affluent coastal suburb. Be grateful that you traveled the world to surf and have had incredible experiences. But most of all, stop pimping yourself out in order to try to sell us stuff. If it’s truly so conflicting, then it’s disingenuous. Better yet, why not do your part to fundamentally change the tie between your profession and your artistic integrity and hold your head high?
Yikes!
But refreshing? And I must tip my pretend fedora Venice-adjacent’s way! Oh it’s not that I agree with Mr. J.P. Currie. The issue of “selling out” in the arts has been debated for so many ages. I harken back to Nirvana, who I loved so dearly as a weird Oregon youth. The band’s juice came from being weird, from being outcasts, but then fame and fortune and the outcasts who felt kindred all of a sudden felt burned. And Nirvana wrote Rape Me.
I think Dane is also a particular sort of outcast artist and his seemingly genuine struggle with how to marry beauty and commerce is real. He is part of a noble history stretching from Leonardo Da Vinci to Bobby Dylan to Zach Weisberg to Basquiat to Albert Camus. He was lucky enough to make money and unlucky enough to not really want it so crazy bad.
So no, I don’t think Dane is any more hypocritical than you or me. But The Inertia throwing a grenade up toward Ventura for no real reason is almost fun.
Oh how I have come to love the internet or rather internet writing. I used to pen bits trying only to think down the road. Would it be relevant in three weeks? A month? Six months? Such a headache because we exist in surf.
Surf!
Now I only think, “Will this be funny for 15 minutes?”
Relevancy has been tossed out the window and good riddance!
Which brings us to Rory’s Wife.
Do you recall yesterday when she wrote a piece in defense of Rory’s podcast interview with surfer cum politician Cori Schumacher?
I don’t but let’s go over the details here!
Derek Rielly refused to post Rory’s recording because he found it:
soft, predictable, conformist, complainist, her life story dull and her stories anything but spectacular enough to warrant asking our readers to give it an hour of their lives. I know you dig her stuff, and that’s cool, but I couldn’t find one moment that might lift the interview from complaint-fest to…
how to change the world.
If that’s what she’s trying to.
I felt like I was stuck at a party in Portland listening to the same old tired tropes, getting drunker and drunker trying to drown out this grim women burning my ears.
But, above all, it has zero relevance to our readers.
And did that ever rankle Rory’s Wife! She wrote, in response:
I could not disagree with Derek more. I found Cori to be intelligent, articulate, and downright inspiring. We all bitch and moan about shit that goes down in our respective communities. Cori not only successfully defeated a giant shoreline development, she one up’d herself and ran for local office.
She proceeded to berate him in the most passive aggressive way and continued to gloat today apparently buoyed by the comments underneath the story. Except comments are wonderful but science is science and would you like to know how much Rory’s Cori Schumacher interview was viewed/listened to?
Yeah that’s 500+ next to 10k-ish for pedestrian stories about Gabi’s daddy. A lead balloon even by BeachGrit‘s lowly standards.
Which says nothing about Rory and Rory’s wife. Their attempted bedding of an unwilling participant has been our artistic high water mark.
It just proves Derek was right. And God bless him. And God bless Rory and Rory’s Wife for continuing the happy tradition of allowing me to squeeze tons of juice off one fruit!
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Mason know this truism better than anyone: "You have a little fun. You live a little better."
Did you watch the Surfer Poll last night? I did. I didn’t intend to watch the whole thing, only tuned in because the lovely Ashton Goggins over at Surfer invited me as his +1. Very kind of him. I’m on Kauai at the moment, so I couldn’t actually go. But I appreciate the thought and figured I’d watch a minute or two. Then I saw The Inertia was live streaming and asking for fan questions, so I proceeded to get very drunk and send Alex Haro rude suggestions. They did not use any of them.
I’d begun drinking earlier in the day, so the whole thing is a bit of a blur. But a few solid moments really stood out.
I think Eddie Ifft is funny. The crowd did not. Or everyone was just too caught up in their own shit to let loose and laugh. I don’t know exactly what the deal was, but I know it was fucking savage. Dave Wassel! Who doesn’t love Dave Wassel? His speech patterns, his expressions. The guy’s a naturally hilarious hunk of marble. Big Wave Dave’s Surf Academy had me snorting drunken guffaws.
But the highlight of the night was none other than Mason Ho. Big surprise, right?
His red carpet interview with Kaipo Guerrero and Cheeseburger made the world better. Poor Kaipo, so uncomfortable. So bummed. Thank jeebus it was recorded for posterity. (At 1:17:30)
Hard to top that, but the Mason/Cheeseburger combo managed to after winning Best Series for License to Chill. Good natured wasted tirade. So pure, so true, so funny. Enough to make me wish I’d popped on a last minute flight and made the scene.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Too much Mason Ho is never enough.
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