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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Best Of… WSL CEO Paul Speaker!
By Chas Smith
Or when it was revealed that he demands two roses
waiting for him when he travels.
Have you heard of celebrity riders? They are
the lists of requirements the rich and famous demand from the
service class. Some are normal, like water bottles and Butterfinger
candy bars.
Others are honorable. Jack Johnston, surfing minstrel, insists
that his music venues change all their lightbulbs to the energy
saving sort and staff bike valets.
Still others are grandly bizarre. Iggy Pop stipulates that there
must be seven dwarves at each of his shows dressed up like the
famous Disney Snow White troupe. Katy Perry, a person to wash and
cut her vegetables. Eminem, a koi pond. Dustin Diamond, that no
person in his presence call him “Screech.”
What about World Surf League CEO Paul Speaker? Rumor has it that
he requires two roses to be sitting on his limo/Towncar seat and
two more in his hotel rooms.
What?
The hell?
Totally amazing!
It it wonderful that Mr. Speaker has a rider at all, don’t you
think? In his mind he must be a powerful lord overseeing a robust
and thriving business. Or maybe in his mind he is a precious pop
star whose every emotional whim must be catered to immediately?
Or maybe in his mind he is a renaissance painter and needs
reminders that life is both beautiful but fragile always by his
side?
Or maybe he is a li’l freak?
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Ozzie Wright, as WSL surfer, with Joel Fitzgerald
twin-fin, in Israel. What an enigma he is! | Photo: Derek
Rielly
The WSL Doubles-Down on Israel!
By Derek Rielly
The world qualifying series returns, with more cash
and even more laughs!
There ain’t much else in this world I hate than
saying no to a good time. And, saying no to a
trans-continental surf trip to the ground zero of outrageous fun
kills me.
Have I mentioned the joint before? It’s a bewitching sliver of
desert and singing blue sea just to the right of Cyprus, atop
Egypt, just left of Syria, and a day’s drive away from the bustling
markets of Baghdad.
Of course, you already know that it’s the only country in the
Middle East where democracy flourishes, where men and women are
equal, where the booze flows and everyone dances and where you
might meet a cute girl with a pistol strapped to her narrow
waist.
A caveat: the famed machine-gut toting IDF girls are
generally chubby, and only passably friendly.
Last year, I took Ozzie Wright and Otis Carey there for Israel’s
first-ever WSL event. Oz was so thrilled he wrote a song called
Jesus is the King of the
Jews.
This year, I’ve got an interview with a former Australian prime
minister for a book project right in the middle of the waiting
period.
Do I want to go to Israel? Yes!
Can I? No!
Anyway, the WSL event in 2016 was a 1500-point WQS. It was
won by Pedro Henrique, studs, and Maude Le Car, gals.
This year there is more cash, the gals side of things has
doubled in points, Reef has taken over from Billabong as the
co-sponsor with Seat motor cars, and the event organiser, Mr Yossi
Zamir, who rolls out the red carpet like no other, is asking all
pro surfers to come, come, come!
The contest runs from January 19 to 28, and, as the WSL
says,
The urban jungle of Tel Aviv, deserted South and the
mountains in the North are just a fraction of all the beauty this
country has to offer. And if you still need persuading, the locals
incredible welcome will definitely win your affection.
I'm not reproducing, what do I care about the future
health of our environment? Fuck it, let's burn shit to the ground.
Of course, the white bread faux-Christian mouth breathers who
farted out a vote for Trump yesterday breed like a rats. Pumping
out child after child, fruitlessly multiplying. They need a planet
to host the poisonous detritus that springs forth from their
wombs.
Rory’s Repeats: “Comedy comes from
pain!”
By Rory Parker
A buffoon-in-chief will be hilarious!
Motherfucker. I truly did not see that
coming.
Should’ve, probably. Just didn’t want to believe a campaign
built on hate could win. But it did. Wasn’t even close.
Bigotry and fear took the day, get to run with the ball for the
next four years. Probably eight, if we’re being honest.
But the world isn’t ending.
Nothing has really changed.
We’re the same group of assholes today that we were
yesterday.
Is it absurd that we elected a reality TV star to run our
country? Yep.
Is he going to use the Senate and House majority to roll back
every positive environmental and public health program we’ve got?
Probably.
Am I allowed to call people niggers and faggots and beaners
again? Looks like it.
To be fair, I’ll only be applying that license to the racial or
ethnic or sexual minorities who supported him. They signed up for
it.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Well, maybe mostly, but if you
want to read that type of stuff you can find it anywhere at the
moment. I’d prefer to focus on the bright side.
Comedy golden era
A buffoon-in-chief will be hilarious, there’s no
way around it. Whether he’s committing social gaffes among his
fellow heads of state, or engaging in late night Twitter wars with
detractors, the presence of a President without a filter will make
for endless opportunities for solid humor.
Sure, a lot of the laughing will be the kind you do in order to
avoid tears. But that’s fine. Comedy comes from pain. Saturday
Night Live will catch fire for a few years, South
Park has Mr Garrison in the White House.
He gave a voice to the voiceless
But not really. He exposed a lot of people for the close-minded
xenophobe bigots they truly are, and tricked them into thinking
they were represented. But, the truth of the matter is, that fairly
large subsection of our population has been largely ignored because
they are stupid. Easily led, receptive to demagoguery, willing to
believe anyone who spews venom that overlaps with their own. But
first and foremost, stupid.
They may think they’ll get what they want, but they don’t know
what they want. And no one cares anyway. The frustration as that
fact dawns on them will be delicious.
The Red State Blues
The jobs are gone, they ain’t coming back. All the Rust Belt
retards who think Heir Trump will somehow bring back all the
off-shored manufacturing jobs are gonna learn real quick that those
were just empty promises. The Trump presidency will be about
putting as much money as possible in the hands of the ruling class.
You don’t do that by paying a living wage. You definitely don’t do
that by supporting unions.
“BUT YOU PROMISED!” they’ll cry, while fighting for crusts of
bread in the gutter. “You said you’d make us great again. This
isn’t great at all.”
Goodbye Obamacare
Thank jeebus I can afford private insurance. Great coverage, the
best!
But guess what? Repealing the Affordable Care Act will mean
insurance companies can once again charge more, or deny coverage
outright, due to pre-existing conditions. Which is a serious
problem if you’re an obese redneck motherfucker with adult-onset
diabetes. Ditto if you’re an aging baby boomer about to experience
the litany of ailments that comes with senior status.
Global Warming isn’t real
I’m not reproducing, what do I care about the future health of
our environment? Fuck it, let’s burn shit to the ground.
Of course, the white bread faux-Christian mouth-breathers who
farted out a vote for Trump yesterday breed like a rats. Pumping
out child after child, fruitlessly multiplying. They need a planet
to host the poisonous detritus that springs forth from their
wombs.
Luckily for them, the type of half wit imbecile their tainted
bodies produce will be well suited to surviving the aftermath of
our planet’s destruction. Retreat to caves, return to their
troglodyte roots.
They set a precedent
Fuck unity. Fuck brotherhood. Fuck national identity.
It’s us versus them, ain’t no two ways about it. Hopefully the
more liberal-minded souls will finally realize that, if you want to
fight a pig, you’ve gotta get down in the mud. No more attempts at
discussion or ideological parity. Stop pretending there are rules,
start doing what it takes to win.
It’s time to throw our idealism in the garbage, where it
belongs. Face the cold hard truth that you’ve gotta employ violence
to get what you want. That’s it’s okay to trample another person in
your quest for a brighter tomorrow. That truth has no place in
reality, and that the ends always justify the means.
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The closest thing I have as a portrait of the two of us
together.
Chas: “Why I’ll miss Paul Speaker!”
By Chas Smith
He is gone now and I am poorer for it.
My phone lit up like a pachinko game early
this Japanese morning and of course you know why. The World Surf
League’s CEO Paul Speaker has resigned. He has left the building.
And many smiling faces and thumbs up and “whoas!” “yeses!” and
“wows!” filled my screen.
But my own heart sank like a stone. Like a boulder to the bottom
of the sea.
If you are a regular here you know that I have made it a
part-time job to kick at Herr WSL CEO and I have taken that part
time job very seriously. Why did I kick so often? So relentlessly?
So pointlessly? For so long? Oh my memory is a rotted husk but if I
sift through its soft bits I think I can find the root. And it is
this.
Paul Speaker would never kick back.
I don’t know what surfing meant to him since he didn’t do it
himself but the way he went about trying to sell it was, in my
estimation, ludicrous. I believe, truly, that professional surfing
is the most beautiful expression in the world. That old and young
can discover and appreciate. That the possibilities for growth are
endless. That it can be explained to the non-surfer and understood
by them.
But it all starts with the rabble. For those of us addicted
enough to wake up at 3 am to watch Jadson Andre vs. Wiggolly D. It
starts with the junkies. And BeachGrit is the home of the
junkie rabble. You and I and Nick Carroll and Matt Warshaw and
Longtom and Derek Rielly. We are not of the “pro surfing is lame”
set.
We love this game and love it more than any other.
And Paul Speaker should have recognized this. He should have
drank a cup of concrete, hardened the fuck up and come a’
callin.
His predecessor did.
I kicked at then ASP CEO Brodie Carr when I
first started covering the tour so many years ago. I poked at his
clothes, at his style, at his overall deal yet he did not run and
hide. He took my barbs with the most gregarious laugh and smashed
me on the arm wrestling table and we have been wonderful friends
ever since.
I wanted to be wonderful friends with WSL CEO Paul Speaker too.
I wanted him to call me up one day out of the blue and say, “Is
this Chas Smith? Oh you are a worthless cocksucker. Come up to
Santa Monica and let’s drink some whiskey.”
I wanted to help him help professional surfing get better. I
loved landing shots on his big cornfed jaw. I wanted to be his pal.
But none of this will now happen or ever happen again.
WSL CEO Paul Speaker is gone, and I am poorer for it.
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
