Come join me in this miniature tub!

Watch: I Dream of Greenie!

Michael Ciaramella

By

Wavepools crinkle their nose in disgust!

If you have social media, and the data suggests you do, then it should be no secret that the Goldcoast has had a damn good autumn.

Day after day my feed is clogged with images of two, maybe three-foot perfection peeling down the Superbank. The wind is light, the water is blue, and the barrels — well they’re plentiful.

But pictures lie. They sell beauty and prestige when oftentimes the reality is much more grim. The wave-of-the-day is made out to be the standard and every drooly-mouthed surf fiend is left feeling an innate sense of loss. This is, at least, what I told myself to avoid the pangs of surf anxiety.

Then this video comes out and ruins my little fantasy. It’s called Dreamount and affirms that the Superbank’s recent beauty wasn’t just an Instagram filter but in fact a warm, soft truth. Please see below for details.

Sure, the Slaters and Fannings and (Mitch) Parkinsons got their fill, but it’s the successes of the everyman that really gets my goat. It’s like, when you see John John get a good one at Backdoor you don’t really care, because that never could have been you. But when some random guy a beat-up stick and halfa skillset gets a proper screamer — that cuts deep.

Tube envy aside, I’m quite intrigued by the machinations of the Superbank. It seems to have changed drastically over the decades. When I was a kid, it was all about Snapper Rocks. As I got older, Kirra slowly started to return and had a few incredible moments. Nowadays, it seems that Greenmount is the hot ticket in town.

Aussie friends, what’s your favorite bank to get burned, frustrated, and occasionally tubed? Are you maybe in this dream clip?

France, number one! | Photo: ISA

Australians 12th best surfers in world!

Derek Rielly

By

But still better than Turkey and Greece (for now)!

Did you follow, with breath bated, nostrils distended etc, the travails of the ISA world titles in France?

I think it is on every year and, although it used to be an amateur sorta thing, now anyone can enter. Last week it was held in Biarritz, France, “the California of Surfing”, as the New York Times called it. The Mexican Jhony Corzo became the men’s world champion and France’s Pauline Ado the women’s.

France, according to the official arbiter of such things, is now the number one surf nation in the world, its winning total almost double the points totals of second place Portugal and third place Spain.

Australian, a country that forever boasts of its surfing prowess, meanwhile, finished twelfth, a handful of points ahead of England and Germany and well behind Japan, Peru and Costa Rica.

I also think the ISA is running, in conjunction with the WSL, the surfing part of the Olympic Games.

From The New York Times story.

The International Surfing Association’s president, Fernando Aguerre, lobbied the I.O.C. throughout his 23-year reign to get his sport into the Olympics.

“Our Olympic wave took me personally 22 years of paddling — a very long time paddling — but together, we’ve done it and now surfing is both an Olympic and a Pan-American Games sport,” Aguerre, 59, said, addressing surfers at the opening ceremony.

Leandro Usuna of Argentina, a two-time World Surfing Games champion, said surfers had earned their spot in the Olympics.

“We used to be seen like a rebel sport, but now people see how much we train, how much we sacrifice and how disciplined we are,” Usuna said. “Maybe back in the day, it was all rock ’n’ roll, but now if you want to be the best, you have to train like the best. That’s what the sport has come to.”

Olympic inclusion means potential new sponsors, public and private funding, support from national Olympic committees, greater demands and enhanced media exposure. Aguerre says he is not worried that surfing will become too mainstream, sacrificing its culture and its easygoing vibe.

“They say that size is the enemy of cool or that quantity and quality are inversely proportional, so I’m very aware of this,” he said. “My feet are on the sand, and when they’re not on the sand, they’re on the surfboard.”

Are you thrilled, like me, that surfing isn’t a rebel sport and how it used to be “rock n roll” but now requires all the tenacity of a Russian gymnast to succeed?

Here are the results.

Team Rankings
1 (Gold) – France
2 (Silver) – Portugal
3 (Bronze) – Spain
4 (Copper) – Mexico
5 – Japan
6 – Peru
7 – USA
8 – Brazil
9 – Costa Rica
10 – South Africa

View complete team rankings: http://isaworlds.com/wsg/2017/pdf/team-points-wsg-2017-finals.pdf

Open Men Medalists
Gold – Jhony Corzo (MEX)
Silver – Joan Duru (FRA)
Bronze – Pedro Henrique (POR)
Copper – Jonathan Gonzalez (ESP)

Open Women Gold Medalists (Women finished on May 22)
Gold – Pauline Ado (FRA)
Silver – Johanne Defay (FRA)
Bronze – Leilani McGonagle (CRC)
Copper – Bianca Buitendag (RSA)

ISA Aloha Cup
Gold – France
Silver – Portugal
Bronze – Peru
Copper – USA

Rip Curl wins Best Customer Service!

Chas Smith

By

Now this is a story I can sink my teeth into.

I am back on dry land after five days in Laird Hamilton’s blueish-red ocean and sad. What in this surf world could possibly captivate me like Laird on menstruation again? Will the sun ever shine or will I spend the rest of my days wandering in periodic darkness?

Depressed, I scrolled on to Coastalwatch and saw that the Australian surf and boardsports association had their awards last night.

I wasn’t invited.

But I got to see lots of pictures and everyone looked like they were having the greatest time without me. Coronas. Poorly fitted black button-ups. Tom Carroll.

And then, near the bottom of the piece, I saw it:

“No strangers to the awards, Rip Curl took out Wetsuit of the Year with the 4/3 Chest Zip Flashbomb and Mirage MF Focus 21 winning Boardshort of the Year. The Torquay company also walked away with Swimwear of the Year and Customer Service Office of the year to round out the evening.”

Customer Service Office of the Year! Phones ringing. Answering calls about duckdive induced brain injuries. Answering calls about Kim Jong Un’s real designs on the Korean Peninsula. Not answering calls about returned products because duh. Flasher and MF never get returned.

No duh on the 4/3 chest zit Flashdance and MFuckus 21. Those bangers are best in class (I assume. North Koreans demand quality) but Customer Service Office? Now that is the coup of the decade!

Customer Service Office of the Year! Phones ringing. Answering calls about duckdive induced brain injuries. Answering calls about Kim Jong Un’s real designs on the Korean Peninsula. Not answering calls about returned products because duh. Flasher and MF never get returned.

I wonder who won the best Customer Service Office last year? Now this is a story I can sink my teeth into.

So long, Laird!

Hello, Torquay!

Give me three chances to guess why you clicked on this post... | Photo: @bonniecee

Surfline Adopts Sexy Marketing Trick!

Michael Ciaramella

By

How could one scroll past such exquisite imagery?

This month is a special one in the history of surf media, and not just because Surfer Magazine founder, John Severson, died a couple days ago.

So what besides the death of an icon makes May, 2017 unique in the world of surf publication? It’s the half-year anniversary of Surfline’s sex-fueled marketing strategy for social media regurgitation platform, Social Absorption!

If you’re not familiar, Social Absorption is a weekly property where Surfline reposts ~20 Instagram moments with new(!) and improved(?) captions. Over the years it’s had numerous authors, the majority of which were unable to conjure meaning from the litany of surf-related imagery.

While it’s had moments of substance, Social Absorption is nothing more to Surfline than an easy way to increase content and web traffic. A weekly click-generator heaved upon the shoulders of some unlucky scribe.

But Surfline is smart.

During SA’s infancy, its creators toyed with different types of ‘Featured Images’, or the thumbnail you see before clicking an article. They tried surfers, sunsets, beautiful waves and… ass.

Go ahead and guess which one got the most traffic. There are five seconds on the clock.

5

4

3

2

1

Time!

If you chose: D. Ass, you are more than likely correct.

How do I know? Well, ever since December, 2016, Surfline has used exclusively, and I mean without a single outlier, a picture of a scantily-clad female as their featured image for Social Absorption. Take a look at the last three months, below.

There you have it, folks. Surfline is indisputably using sex to peddle mediocre content. And how does this make you feel?

If I’m a woman, especially if I’m a woman named Lena Dunham, this potentially makes me very very angry. But also maybe not, in the case that a Surfline employee once saved me from drowning in an overturned canoe on the Delaware River. Who really knows with women? So bloody (and) irrational.

If I’m me, and I am, it’s annoying. Not in a SJW must-save-all-women-from-the-patriarchy kind of way, but in a why am I not immune to this blatant click-baiting? kind of way.

You see, I’d almost never click on Social Absorption for the content. But throw a few glistening cheeks on the front and I’m overcome with evolutionary urges. I lose all control of logic and self-worth and boom. It hath been clicked.

So Surfline, you (and sex) win — for now.

Older readers, when does one’s dick stop controlling their every move? What can I do to offset this technical malfunction, outside of precursory auto-erotic acts?

Justin Cameron and Lex Pedersen, founders of SurfStitch, the online retailer that scooped up FCS, Stab, among other enterprises. Now this gorgeous coupling has split. Is good? Is bad?

SurfStitch: “Who knows if it’ll trade again!”

Derek Rielly

By

Founder Justin Cameron says company's future is "very unpredictable."

Do you long for glory days? I don’t.

If it ain’t around the corner, it means life is on a downward slope, ending in the grave etc? Hence the danger of nostalgia.

One exception to the nostalgia-is-death rule must be granted to the online surf retailer SurfStitch. Oh, it was on such a high eighteen months ago. Worth almost half-a-billion dollars. Tens of millions of dollars shovelled into acquisitions.

Life was a dream. But so fragile!

Last week, SurfStitch went into a voluntary trading halt in response to a $100 million lawsuit from shareholders who say the company was a little florid in its profit expectations. One old man paid $2.12 a share only to see ’em worth six cents. And even if he wanted to cash out he couldn’t. The shares are in a trading halt, one that might last until August.

And in today’s Australian Financial Review the company’s co-founder Justin Cameron, a tough, alert and fiercely intelligent biz-man who quit SurfStitch last year to organise a private equity takeover of the company, said its future is “very unpredictable, who knows if it will trade again… Significant time and money appears to be focused on litigation as opposed to managing the business.”

Read how Cameron “stranded” his Jesus hairdo’d co-founder Lex Pedersen on a ship that appears stricken here. 

As for SurfStitch, 

The company said it would explore a way to settle the legal claim “at a level that would permit the company’s continued financial viability.” 

A few moments ago the company and its assets had a market valuation of $18.9 million.