Jordy: “I just got a bit more nervous!”

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

Facebook x WSL - Samsung = Mick Fanning making a dumb face!

It was announced yesterday across the surf space that our World Surf League is partnering with Facebook in order to stream competition live. And what a wonderful day! For all of us!

Etc. etc.

It was unclear if Facebook is paying for the privilege or if the World Surf League is paying or if it is considered a mutually beneficial wash or who cares. It did seem that under the iron fist of Herr Speaker, the WSL severely overvalued itself and chased away potential partnerships. Is this a market correction? Or who cares?

What was not unclear, though, was Jordy Smith’s slammin’ quote in the press release. Shall we read? This wouldn’t be BeachGrit if we refused!

One of my favorite things about surfing is that it’s always evolving — the equipment, the approach, the progression. It’s great to know that this evolution isn’t limited to the water. Facebook is such a special place for different cultures to connect and now the evolution of surf will be shared beyond coastlines. Looking forward to a great year, although I just got a bit more nervous thinking about a few more million people watching my heats.

Brilliant! Word perfect! Informative, nuanced with a touch of cheeky wit. Like a splash of Spicer mixed with a dash of Kellyanne then seasoned with Hope Hicks.

Dave Prodan for Pulitzer! I mean Jordy Smith!

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I was redeemed in Panama part 1!

Michael Ciaramella

By Michael Ciaramella

The surprising end to a fabulous journey!

You can’t make this shit up!

After the whole housing debacle, I was afforded a safe place to sleep by the same three Aussies who had previously given me a ride home from the surf, erstwhile divulging the best job for the aspiring travel surfer.

We spent our last night bar-hopping around Bocas, the two of us with girlfriends dutifully wing-manning our single compadres into a bevy of belligerent broads. After we had drank and danced and successfully paired off our pals with a couple of bar-light sixes, Matt and myself decided to call it a night. This was around three AM.

It was pouring outside, so all the bar patrons who’d decided to pack it up for the night were waiting for cabs under the same small overhang. With about 20 people in queue and no cabs in sight, we realized the odds were not favorable to catch a ride in the next hour. We scurried down the sidewalk in search of a new spot from which to hail a taxi.

That’s when I heard, “Hey Mike!” in heavily accented English.

I turned around and much to my disbelief, I’d just walked past that god damn C-tier hooker! Belly shirt, paint-a-brows, cigarette and all!

“Uhhhh hey…” I replied, still irked at her general existence.

“Timmy go kaled,” she told me, while crossing her wrists in an X formation.

“Timmy got killed?” I asked, bewildered.

“No, no. Timmy go kale… gail, gail!” she screamed, waving her crossed wrists in my face. The gesture was supposed to symbolize handcuffs.

“Timmy went to jail?”

“Sí! Four years! He get cot steal sumting.”

Hahahaahahahasuckitbitch

“En serio? He robbed me too!”

“Yes I am happy he go jail. Fuck dat guy.”

“Me too” I said, as I motioned toward the street. Our cab had finally arrived.

And this was maybe the perfect ending to my less-than-ideal, if highly enlightening trip to Panama. It took ’til three AM on my last drunken evening in Bocas Town, but I finally got the closure I was looking for. I would never see my pilfered cash or possessions again, but knowing that karma or justice or a statistical likelihood had ultimately prevailed was good enough for me.

Have fun in jail, puto! Y viva Panama!

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Hayden x Wang
Hayden x Wang

Just in: We are fucking back!

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

Vogue magazine declares that surfing is at its apotheosis!

Oh oh OH how we’ve been wandering the desert for the last, like, fifteen years. “Surf is dead!” they say before shutting down our Pac Suns and our Tilly’s and our Depactuses and our ummm Surfing magazines. “The kids don’t want the surf.” they say while tears bubble in our eyes, waiting to pour down our cheeks. “The kids want lifestyle and Bubble Guppies.”

Well you know what? Fuck they! Because today TODAY the bible of fashion said that we WE are cool once again!

Yes, Vogue magazine, fronted by Anna Wintour and never ever to get folded like that lily-livered Surfer just published a story that recognizes our second coming. And let us read:

That surfing has reached its pop culture apotheosis is no secret. Alexander Wang based his entire spring collection off romanticizing the look and feel of sun-bleached surfers; February’s most Instagrammed museum show, “Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work” at the New Museum, featured small, willowy figures bracing themselves in downward diagonals across the face of canvas-sized waves, and this season’s premiere of Girls pivoted around Hannah’s flirtation with the sport, when her editor sends her on assignment to a surf camp in Montauk. Which is to say: Surfing is everywhere and everyone is doing it.

The sport’s sudden surge in popularity means that even far-flung, warm destinations like Sri Lanka, Bali, and the Maldives are becoming nearly shoulder-to-shoulder in daily lineups, pushing the most devoted athletes into inhospitable, chilly territory to avoid bumping their boards against clumsy newcomers. What’s more: Winter is storm season, stirring up activity in the ocean resulting in the most consistent and biggest waves. Serious surfers are after an endless winter, and thanks to leaps and bounds in wet-suit technology—which provides the kind of comfort and mobility in frigid temperatures that was unfathomable even five years ago—they can chase it into colder waters than ever.

And FUCK YOU SURFER!

Wait. What was I writing about? Did Surfer have anything to do with it?

Fuck they!

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Girls can't do airs? Girls can't get no pop? Jason Kenworthy

BeachGrit TV: Girl Goes Into Orbit!

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Episode one: how to build a surfboard that flies!

One month ago, BeachGrit stole away to Mexico, near enough to Guadalajara in Jalisco on the mainland there, with a very specific idea. To determine if it was possible to teach a girl to ride out of a full-roter air (a 540 to the skate and snow jocks), if you had the best air surfer in the world, which is Filipe Toledo, doin’ the tutoring.

As I wrote in Mex, 

“Women’s surfing fascinates me. When it’s good it draws blood. Carissa Moore’s slices, Lakey Peterson’s grab-rail tail throws, the impeccable style of Stephanie Gilmore. It’s damn rich.

But does it strike you as odd, as it does me, that there ain’t a gal on tour who has an air-reverse on tap? Silvana Lima showed promise and disappeared (back this year on tour). Even half-way good twelve-year-old boys can throw ‘em as an afterthought on a weak end section.

“So why not the girls?”

Along with another coach, Huntington Beach’s Brett Simpson, and iPads with the Hurley Surf Coach app, and GoPros affixed hither and yon, and patrolling the sky, we had four days to coach, and coax, Santa Babs’ Lakey Peterson into the biggest huck ever by a girl.

Did it work? Did she orbit the Pacific?

How about we take you on what is referred to as a… journey.

We made a four-part series on the process. Part one, below, is the construction of a board that goes pop.

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Owen Wright
"To realise how much love is out there… it pushed me through that time. I’m stoked to realise how much love there is.” | Photo: WSL/Robertson

Now: Owen Wright Gets Injury Wildcard!

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Not unexpected, but still… 

Two weeks ago, the surfer Owen Wright competed in his first contest in a year and a half.

Owen, who is twenty seven years old, suffered a brain injury in Hawaii shortly before the 2015 Pipeline Masters, where he was an outside shot for the world title, and hadn’t surfed a contest until this year’s Newcastle QS6000.

Owen waltzed through his first heat with high sevens, but lost in round three.

And, now, Owen will carry the injury wildcard through the 2017 season.

“Owen Wright is one of the most electric and powerful surfers to ever grace the tour,” Kieren Perrow, WSL Commissioner, said. “Following his injury in December of 2015, the WSL’s priority was Owen’s well-being and, if he were to return to competition, a healthy return to the sport. After assessing his performance and health after a QS event earlier in the season, Owen has accepted the WSL Wildcard for the 2017 season. We’re happy to have him back.”

Owen Wright Tyler Wright
Owen and Tyler after his lil sis won Snapper last year.

His little sister Tyler, who is the women’s world champion, and his littler bro Mikey, who is the Quiksilver wildcard, will make it a Wright three-way at Snapper, which begins, waves willing, on March 14.

 

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Photo: Jack English
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