Brad Flora: The New Noa Deane?

Portugal bares its teeth but Brad bites back!

2017 arrives and the world continues its erratic but altogether downward spiral. Noa Deane inks a reported 500k per annum deal with Volcom, meanwhile Rip Curl cuts off Brad Flora’s supply of wetsuits, T-shirts, and food stamps. This seems unjust condsidering they are, basically, the same person.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the data:

Well, well, well. Nepotism rears its dreadful head once again. I’m not saying that Noa is only rich and famous because his parents were great surfers from a historically prevalent surfing region, but this Excel spreadsheet is.

After all Brad is from Maryland. The Old-Line State. Known mostly for an aquarium and the fact that our nation’s capital has sieged its western border. Maryland also has a small coastal community called Ocean City (how clever!), and like the majority of the east coast it sometimes gets a decent wave. This is where Brad honed his craft.

But Brad was always bigger than Ocean City, so by way of a Rip Curl contract he moved to California to pursue his passion of rinsing chicks and puffing darts. He also found the Pacific shores a suitable place to surf, so in his free time he took to the sea.

Brad’s surfing commands attention. When he takes off, the collective lineup peers over its shoulder, anxiously awaiting whatever spin/flip/tweak variation may be in store. He’ll hit any section, regardless of pier or rock or human in his direct field of vision. Sounds trite, but he truly doesn’t seem to give a fuck, and it’s fabulous.

Only his knees and ankles and Rip Curl may feel differently.

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Sabre Norris Derek Rielly
Sabre and DR interview for an upcoming documentary at the kid's house west of Newcastle, Australia. | Photo: Luke Farquhar

Sabre: “A Day in the Life of Derek Rielly!”

Talk-show superstar Sabre Norris analyses the behaviour of BeachGrit reporter… 

(Editor’s note: Recently, BeachGrit spent a day shooting a documentary on the surf-talkshow superstar Sabre Norris. The next day we published a story, One Day in the Life of Sabre Norris. Yesterday, Sabre, who is eleven years old, sent the following story.)

Who is Derek Rielly? Yes, yes, I know he writes for BeachGrit, maybe every third or fifth article and you get to see a little picture of his face at the top of the articles he writes.

But what is he really like? Well, I got to meet him in real life, we went surfing and I’m gonna tell you what I learnt.

Top three bangers.

1. He actually doesn’t swear as much in real life as he does when he writes. He did say “shit” one time though, which was pretty cool.

2. His worst person to interview is Jack Freestone. (I’m worried this will hurt Jack’s feelings if I say this.)

3. It was love at first sight when he met his wife Annmarie. He married her because she had red lips and big gorgeous eyes mixed in with a good brain and ambition.

I actually nearly didn’t get to meet Derek in real life because a couple of days earlier my Mum wanted to ban Derek from coming to our house. She thought he was going to cook me in his writing. You see, I had just been cooked by another mag. They didn’t like me on the Ellen show. They wrote an article (they changed it now but) and they talked about some of the things that were wrong with me. It made me feel embarrassed and I wished I’d said different things.

But Derek wrote an article too. He didn’t write bad things even though BeachGrit is hardcore candy and I wear a Gath helmet in one-foot beachbreaks.

So how bad I was feeling about other mag not liking me was overtaken by the nice things Derek wrote. So when Mum said he couldn’t come I had to fight for him.

“Come on Mum, this guy is the inventor of Stab and now he’s inventing BeachGrit! That’s the equivalent of winning two world titles, maybe even equally Kelly Slater’s eleven. Please don’t blow this chance for me.” With a lot of begging and pleading, mum reluctantly said yes.

So. The plan was to meet at the Cowrie Hole for a surf.

Our black van, which was stuffed like an over-filled sausage of stoke and froth, rolled up into the carpark. Dead ahead was my local break the Cowrie Hole. I popped my wetty on and jumped outside. Instantly, a white, and moderately ruined Audi A3, appeared behind me.

A man’s head poked out the door and out came his muscle body. He looked like a hipster wood-cutter from Canada, like the guy smoking ciggies down the street. He trudged his sandals (not Reef) towards me.

I was alarmed. Was he going to hit me?

“Hey Sabre!” the man said, “It’s me, Derek.”

Phew, what a relief!

Derek wasn’t what I thought he’d be. For sure, I thought Derek would be Mr Surf, fully decked out from top-to-toe in surf gear, but I couldn’t see a Billabong or Rip Curl logo anywhere. He had his own style.

We proceed to the beach, surfboards under our arms.

I asked, “Who’s your favourite surfer?” He said, Noa Deane. I wondered why it was Noa Deane but as soon as Derek stood up on his surfboard, the answer was right in front of me. You know how Noa Deane has an admirable style? Well, Derek also has a cool, first-rate style, a little olden-day mixed in too. And I couldn’t believe he was wearing boardshorts. Any normal person would get hypothermia!

We carried our dripping surfboards back to the car. Derek said I could ride in his Audi. I wasn’t going to let a chance like that go to waste so I hopped in. I’ve been in some friends’ parents’ cars and they want you to act like a statue. The parents barely want you to breathe let alone eat, say, an apple.

Derek wasn’t like that. I could tell because there was popcorn and sand smashed into the leather seats. He said he would rather have happy kids than a clean car. I was starting to like this guy.

First question I asked: “What’s your dream car?”

Answer: Porsche Macan.

Second question: “How much did you sell your half of Stab for?”

Answer: Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars although the other partner sold his a few years later for five million.

According to my calculations, Derek lost 23 Porsches and 30,000 doughnuts.

“Did that hurt you?” I asked.

“Well, not really,” said Derek. He told me that as long as his boys and fashion designer wife were healthy, that’s what is truly important. Not money. And, also, his partner had worked very hard for the money, he had a beautiful family too, and that he deserved every cent.

I stopped talking and thought in my head for a bit. You know who Derek reminds me of? Carissa Moore. She told me once that she would rather a house full of love than expensive furniture. Derek’s brain thinks like Carissa. I think they would be great friends.

In the car, I explained to Derek that writing is one of my deepest and greatest passions. I was so excited to show Derek, a professional author who is writing a book about Bob Hawke right this instant, my journal.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that grownups pretend to care and they can’t really be bothered to read it. I didn’t get this feeling from Derek. And instead of telling me, “That’s great just keep trying”, he gave me proper advice about how I can get to the next level. Then he even read my sister’s and brother’s books all the way to the end so they didn’t feel left out.

My Dad refused to blow up an inflatable pool toy so my brother asked Derek to. I marvelled as I watched him blow this doughnut with a two-metre radius up in three minutes flat. His lungs were the stuff of a big-wave surfer. I guess Bondi where Derek lives is pretty close to Mark Mathews at Maroubra. Maybe he does breath-control training with Mark and Nam Baldwin? Now his answer that the biggest wave he ever caught was twelve foot made sense to me.

After Derek scoffed down some Mars Bar slice he worked out the secret to make my Mum happy, which is to say how great her cooking is. It actually isn’t hard because it’s really nice.

Then Derek set a record. He was the first person who actually took my Dad up on his offer to do a swim lesson. I think I’m going to make him a medal for his achievement. Dad is always trying to make someone swim better but no one is normally interested. Derek has a swim race coming against all the French daddies at his sons’ French school. I hope he smokes them and he defends his title in March for the fourth year straight.

But after that he missed his family so he decided to leave.

I gave him the rest of the Mar’s Bar slice to take home to his kids Jones and Gard. I was frothing over their unusual names because I have a weird name too. Jones was named after the director Spike Jonze, who Derek met for the first time at Mark Mathews’ Cape Fear event. Gard because Gard Chapin was the cool dad of Miki Dora. Both his kids can speak French and love basketball. Derek said if I ever meet them they will help me to learn to catch a ball.

“Bye Derek!” my siblings and I called out as his slightly trashed Audi drove away.

Yeah, it wasn’t a Porsche Macan but maybe if he was driving a Porsche he would’ve been too rich to come to my house.

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If you were CEO of the WSL you'd be smirking too!
If you were CEO of the WSL you'd be smirking too!

Analysis: The Legacy of Paul Speaker!

What worked. What didn't.

Tough, tumultuous end to the year, rocky start to the new. Losing Rory Parker and then Paul Speaker, hard break for the Grit.

No doubt Chas will make vodka lemonades out of it. Maybe a year of wearing black. Friday the 13th is 13 days sober for me, not even a little crushed up Ritalin in an orange juice to push through a dog day afternoon.

It’s appropriate then to take a sober look at the legacy of Paul Speaker, former head of the NFL and what he leaves for the next sucker/CEO.

Just a little historical clarification first to clear up what is becoming a common error. When Speaker  and Terry Hardy as Principals of ZoSea acquired the ASP it was a more or less hostile takeover according to someone very senior on the ASP board at the time.

They didn’t buy the ASP; they threw it a lifeline. Thirty years of professional surfing under the banner of the ASP had a market value of exactly zero dollars. Therefore calculations about Speaker’s motivations in stepping down based on his continuing part ownership of the WSL are a moot point.

Of course he still owns it, unless he finds a buyer to divest him of his share he continues on being an owner. What the current market value of the WSL is to a buyer is a separate issue. Someone gives you a car for free, whether that’s an asset or a liability depends on if you can sell it or it breaks down and you need to pay someone to tow it to the wreckers.

Lets begin the analysis. No purple prose, no semi-colons, no torrid mangled metaphors. Just real talk.

  1. Vision. Speaker had a crystal-clear vision. He wanted to turn every surf spot where a contest was held into a stadium, control access ruthlessly and have total control over every aspect of branding and content. To that end he fenced off contests, made a (legally dubious) ambit claim on public property as to what could be done and claimed total ownership of everything happening within, on pain of being ejected by hired security. This strongman tactic put the surf media off-side immediately and he subsequently avoided all contact with the surf media. God knows why, he would’ve been softballed by compliant hacks within minutes if he had the balls to show up with the plebs. Was this vision the correct one for the sport? I say no. Surfing and fascism don’t mix. His parting lament for a surf league in Kelly Slater’s wave tubs shows he hangs on to the stadium dream.
  2. Business Model. The ASP functioned as a tax write-off and marketing arm for the surf brands and thus as a sporting league was worth nothing. It has value to coastal communities as a driver of economic activity via tourism and this has been most fully recognised in Australia where taxpayers via government agencies underwrite all three CT events. This is the only recognised and functioning business model for pro surfing: big-top surfing at high-traffic locations financed by governments. The dream of big dollar broadcast rights remains just that. Journalism by Stu Nettle at Swellnet showed the WSL was inflating viewer figures, the reason a broadcast rights deal has not eventuated. Merchandising looks like a cheesy add-on at this stage.
  3. Centre of Gravity. One of Speaker’s first moves was to move the WSL headquarters from Coolangatta to Santa Monica, ostensibly to crack the much bigger US market. This has been an abject failure. America with roughly 325 million people has one CT event, despite a highly successful attempt to colonise the massive east coast market in 2011 with a second event. Australia with 24 million people has three CT events. Pro surfing remains a primarily Australian phenomena, accepted as a mainstream activity and bankrolled by governments at all levels. Sans the wavepool expansion into buttefuck middle America the dream of US acceptance of pro surfing remains a money pit. What business folks call a sunk cost.
  4. Expansion into new markets. It was Brodie Carr who made the initial push into China and Taiwan. Speaker has not lost ground there. A little league QS in Israel counts as a minor accomplishment. Japan remains a glaring omission. Indonesia, even moreso. Oakley, following their CT event at Keramas, were ready to ink a much longer term deal for a continuing event there. They could not come to terms with the WSL over branding issues and the deal lapsed. A major opportunity squandered.
  5. Stabilisation of the Tour. Speaker stabilised a Tour that was looking increasingly shaky when he took over. He added J-Bay, an event that finally gets a naming sponsor, and has retained the Fiji Pro, the best event on Tour which remains without a sponsor. This has drained capital but provided credibility to the WSL. He has to get a pass mark for keeping the schedule on an even keel. Throwing the hail mary pass now to Ziff is a move that smacks of weirdness. Ziff knows less than Speaker about surfing. He’s an angel investor. A guy who inherited a pile and turned it into a bigger pile.
  6. Women’s Surfing. This has to be the great golden achievement of Speaker’s reign. Turning what was really an expensive hobby for a few gals into a bona-fide sporting powerhouse with pay parity (sort of) and massive media exposure. He was lucky in having a generational harvest of talent to showcase but nonetheless the decision to back and bankroll women’s pro surfing is a mighty achievement.
  7. Performance. The greatest let down of Speaker’s reign is the maintenance of the status quo as far as the actual product of pro surfing is concerned. There was the golden opportunity for renewal and reinvention when ZoSEa took over. The same product had been rejected by the market for thirty years. No point repackaging it and trying to sell it again. It had been tested and tasted and passed on. The problem: too much low consequence dross taking up too much time, a format that rewarded conservatism and safe surfing. The solution: not even attempted by Speaker. A monumental failure of leadership. The last performance world title, where a surfer blitzed his opponents was Slater in 2011. Following that we got Parkinson and the consistency formula, perfected by Fanning and then adopted by Medina, De Souza and now JJF. JJF’s freesurfing clips should be the greatest wake-up call for the WSL’s moribund format and claims to be showcasing the best surfing from the best surfers. They’re getting 70% of the JJF performance envelope, if they’re lucky.Did we miss anything? Fan engagement? Lets thrash it in the comments.
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Kalani David Faces Open-Heart Surgery!

Young Hawaiian falls victim to rare genetic disorder!

Kalani David almost died — again. His first dance with the devil happened this August, when he suffered a heart-stopping seizure at an Oceanside, CA skatepark. You can read about that here, but the gist is that Kalani suffers from a rare genetic disorder called Wolff Parkinson-White Syndrome, which messes with the heart’s electrical functions and can be fatal if left untreated. He is nineteen.

Three weeks ago Kalani suffered a similar seizure on Oahu, only this time it happened in the middle of the night. After seizing for up to six hours, Kalani was found by a friend and brought to a local hospital. He was then put into a medically-induced coma that lasted two days.

Since waking up, Kalani has spent the majority of his time in the hospital undergoing tests and procedures. Today he was put under the knife for an open-heart surgery. Moments before anesthetization, he posted this message to Instagram:

Getting my surgery done today, but I have one thing to say before his happens. There’s a lot going on right now personally with family and I have this to say. Keoni, Just know that the things that have been said about me are false. I love you till the death of me. You’re my baby brother and always have been my baby brother since you were born, I’d do anything for you. I held you right when you came out the womb. I’ve been born with this heart disease and now with all the stress and emotions it’s been triggered. The doctor said I’m lucky to even be alive after seizing for more than 6 hours. Which I was dead for 2 days. I’m going into heart surgery right now to get this extra piece of muscle burned. I gotta move on with my life and focus on my career. I love you Keoni just know that, I’m always here for you, love you boo boo your big brother Kalani.

This post is strange and ambiguous in and of itself, but when paired with his recent string of Instagram installments (read through the last ~20 photo captions), well the story just gets even more murky.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but it doesn’t seem… good.

We wish Kalani the best in his surgery (he went under at 10 AM Hawaii time) and hope to hear from him soon.

**UPDATE: Kalani is out of surgery and appears to be doing well!

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Noa Deane: The New Bruce Irons?

The similarities are indisputable!

This isn’t news, but it’s still worth talking about. Noa Deane’s move from Rusty to Volcom is the biggest of his career. It’s also quite fitting. The young man seems genuinely passionate about not giving a fuck, and isn’t that what Volcom’s all about?

At least they used to be. When I was maybe 10, my friend Tommy Salvesen had the coolest rashguard. Black, long sleeve, with the digital representaion of a human skeleton across the entire front. I wanted it more than anything.

Somewhere along the sleeve were embroidered these three words: Youth Against Establishment.


In all its glory.

“What does that mean?” I asked Tommy, a knowledgable 14-year-old.

“It’s kinda like us kids saying F-U to The Man, and doing what we want.”

The coolest! But then in 2014 Volcom changed it’s slogan to True to This and it’s like… True to WHAT?

Watching this clip of Noa, I’m reminded of a man who was once very young and very against establishment. His name was Bruce and he was just as belligerently raucous as Wayne’s towheaded progeny. While Noa’s stylish approach, creepy fingers, and general disregard for life or limb are fair points of comparison to our beloved BI, those giant lien grabs are downright uncanny.

It will be interesting to what comes of Noa, who is dripping with talent but has an apparent proclivity for substance abuse. We’ve seen what happened to Andy, to Bruce, and to tens of other world-class surfers who were all but destroyed by their taste for the hooch or the crack or the smack

Stab reportedly offered Noa a profile concept in which he would get sober and fit for a month to see how a change of lifestyle would affect his surfing. Noa declined because he felt that it “wasn’t him”, and that it would hurt his personal brand in the eyes of his fans, most of whom are probably sixteen. That seems troubling on multiple levels.

But hey, welcome to Volcom!

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