Video: Malia Ward’s cute face dance!

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

It's better than Kelly's wave pool!

I regularly tell anyone who’ll listen, “If we could send but 10 BeachGrit commentators to Washington D.C. this damned country would be fixed up in no time!”  I sometimes tell anyone who’ll listen, “If we could send but 100 BeachGrit commentators to Jerusalem there’d certainly be peace in the Middle East!” I never tell anyone who’ll listen, “If we could send, like, 1000 BeachGrit commentators to Colombia, cocaine production would soon be eradicated and drug abuse would disappear as a societal blight.”

In any case, one BeachGrit commentator, Cmon Now, posted the below video of Malia Ward underneath an admittedly pedestrian story about Kelly’s wave pool with this helpful addition: “(Nothing to do with this story, but I’m bored with Kellyburg.)”

You may remember Malia Ward from pushing Gabi off a wave.

Or from starring in a strange Stab production alongside her mother.

Cmon Now’s video is a happy addition to her work. Watch and enjoy! It is much better than the Kelly story!

Comments
0
Load Comments
0

Rumor: Slater wave pool disappointing?

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

Is Kelly Slater's magnificent creation maybe not so magnificent?

Maxim magazine (do you recall the lad craze?) just published a wide ranging profile on our cherished treasure, Kelly Slater, and it might be worth your reading! Oh you’ll know most of the information already. Like:

At 18, Slater turned professional and quickly won his first pro contest, the Body Glove Surf Bout, at Lower Trestles in California. He signed a six-figure deal with Quiksilver. Two years later, he claimed his first World Championship, the youngest surfer in history to do so. Slater mania was born. He was a regular on Baywatch and dated celebrities like Pamela Anderson and Gisele Bündchen. He modeled underwear for Versace and opened for Pearl Jam with his own band, the Surfers.

And

For the past few years, however, the greatest surfer of all time has sought more than great waves. “He’s trying to do some good in the world,” says Pete Johnson, an Oahu, Hawaii, native who’s been friends with Slater for 30 years. “He’s passionate about other things and aspires to be a better man.” Slater is a voracious reader, whether the subject is business, nutrition, or cancer, the disease that took his father in 2002. He’s hands-on with the Kelly Slater Foundation, which has supported the fight against cystic fibrosis and melanoma. He’s become more conscientious, making sure to take time to call friends going through hard times. He’s expanding his horizons. Evolving. “I strive to be better and better in all aspects of my life and to learn as much as I can about the things that interest me,” Slater tells Maxim.

But worth your reading because there might be some hidden nugget, some clue as to the actual quality of Kelly Slater’s wonderful wave. You remember him releasing that video of it 20 minutes after Adriano de Souza accomplished his life goal and hoisted the WSL cup as high as those tiny arms could?

It seemed a fantasy! Too good to be true! Wait. Was it too good to be true? Theories rumbled around about how it would take 4 hours between waves for the water to clean up. Or was it 30 minutes? About how there was no actual trough on the wave. About how the barrel was only an illusion when shot from certain angles.

Since the video’s release a good number of people have surfed it though the fog of misinformation still hovers, leaving the rest of us to parse reactions. And there is an interesting one in the Maxim story!

Pete Johnson, Slater’s friend for 30 years, recently surfed it and said:

“It didn’t disappoint but Kelly’s always seeking to improve it.”

Whoa! Does that mean it kind of did disappoint? What do you think?

Comments
0
Load Comments
0
Kelly Slater with hair
To avoid ruination, experts say the surf industry should "hitch their brands to the wellness trend." An atrocity, yes? Like Kelly Slater with hair! | Photo: @kelly_slater_with_hair

How yoga pants can save surf!

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Why the surf industry should forget surf and get into wellness, say experts.

The surf industry, like skate and snow, rides the boom-bust cycle with precise timing. One year it’s up, the next it’s down. Up, down, up down. It’s a roller-coaster. Always has been, always will.

Wanna know why? Because it’s a sport.

And some years the kids are riding scooters, sometimes it’s skateboards, sometimes it’s a surfboard. But there’s a base level of surfers, millions of us, enough to keep the meters ticking, the tills buzzing, the websites clicking. It’s only when companies go public, and they become beholden to the mantra of perpetual profitability, and they suck and suck onto a rapidly withering teat, that panic buttons are pushed. Non-surf CEOs hired; entire boards sacked.

You know the stories:

Quiksilver, six hundred mill and debt and thrown into Chapter 11. 

Billabong, saved from the brink. 

Surf Stitch, worst performing company on the Australian Stock Exchange. Sued by the very people trying to buy it. 

The need to feed shareholders’ expectations and dumb acquisitions brought ’em all to the point of ruin.

Anyway,  retail analysts interviewed by The Sydney Morning Herald in a story called How the Surf Brands Missed the Wellness Wave say all the misery of sackings and restructuring could’ve been avoided if they’d just started punching out yoga pants. One point five bill a year in “wellness” biz in Australia alone.

Let’s examine etc.

Retail analyst Steve Kulmar said the proliferation of the major surf brands ultimately undermined the integrity of the labels and robbed them of their unique value but he said they also missed the chance to hitch their brands to the wellness trend.

This created a chance for the active wear sector and he said this slice of the apparel market was growing exponentially.

“All the growth in apparel is in active wear; it’s trans-seasonal and people are prepared to pay for it” Mr Kulmar said.

He said wellness had been identified as one of the key growth areas in retail and this was in stark contrast to the “macho, extreme sports profiles” of the big surf brands.

“It’s just another chapter in the pretty sad state that the surf industry is in at the moment,” one analyst said.

Meanwhile, the wellness titan and bullishly expansionist Lululemon has moved into surf. 

What’s the greater atrocity? Lululemon Surf or Billabong/Quik Yoga?

Comments
0
Load Comments
0

Olympics: Surfing site just announced!

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

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.

Comments
0
Load Comments
0

The Inertia: “Dane hypocritical as fuck!”

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

Venice-adjacent sometime surf website gets mad!

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.

Throw one down to Cardiff-by-the-Sea next!

Comments
0
Load Comments
0
Photo: Jack English
EAT BEACHGRIT SPAM!
It's Daily!