Buy! Cheap!

Rumour: Buy Surfer (and co) for $40 mill!

The Enthusiast Network, owner of Surfer, maybe on the block for low low price!

This rumor is breaking fast and if you want to be a playa you’d best get liquid because a once in a lifetime opportunity might be here but it won’t be here forever.

The Enthusiast Network, owner of Surfer, Grind TV, Transworld.com, Hot Rod, Auto Trend, and others is allegedly on the block for the low low price of 40 million dollars!

And just think the fun you could have as captain of Surfer’s ship!

You could…… put yourself on the cover!

Grind TV? You could…… wait. Grind TV is still a thing? Well I suppose you could make it an even BIGGER thing by….. putting yourself on it? I’m sorry. I’m at a total loss as to what Grind TV actually is.

And then….. put your best friend on the next cover!

Grind TV? You could…… wait. Grind TV is still a thing? Well I suppose you could make it an even BIGGER thing by….. putting yourself on it? I’m sorry. I’m at a total loss as to what Grind TV actually is.

But Surfing! Shit. Never mind.

Transworldsurf.com? Son of a bitch. Is this some kind of joke here?

Wait… this just in!

BeachGrit is allegedly on the block for the even lower price of 35 million dollars. Act fast! It is basically as robust as all of TEN’s surf titles and just think of the fun you could have as captain of THIS ship. You could…. have me n Derek over for dinner! We’ll bring the finest bottle of wine your local bottle shop sells!


Kelly Slater Judy Slater
Kelly and his mom Judy. | Photo: ASP/Cestari

Blood Feud: Kelly Slater’s Mom vs WSL!

Judy Slater infuriated by Fiji's poor conditions… 

The WSL tour is a bittersweet romance. Sometimes fertile, compelling, oftentimes the surfers, the best in the world, exert themselves in a void.

Yesterday at Cloudbreak, in rip-strewn three-footers, every surfer of note including the surfer whose company paid for naming rights, was thrown out of the event.

Read about it here.

Here, too. 

Were you furious? Or just bored by it all?

Judy Slater, Kelly’s mom, was the former. On Facebook Judy lit up on the WSL.

“You’re a bunch of yahoos! Even I, who have never surfed but know more than you, would have known better than to hold that contest in those shitty waves I think your judges are idiots. What, for example, constituted a score of nine in those waves? All of you should be replaced and the idiots that said hold the contest should be hung by the big toe. You could have done better to hold that contest at Kelly’s wave pool. Your score for your performance is -10.”

Judy’s pals concurred.

“Judy, I have felt this way for the past two years!!! When Kelly retires so will the WSL! I will certainly not be watching this lame ass crap!!!”

Etc.

Whatever the merits of Kelly’s mom’s arguments, isn’t a fine thing for a mother to put her paws, protectively, around her cub?

Do you think when Kelly was roaming Facebook and he saw his mammy light up, he was thrilled? Or not thrilled?

 


Wilko don't look real thrilled but he gonna win. | Photo: WSL/Ed Sloane

Fiji Pro: “This contest is a stubborn mule!”

Pushing this stubborn mule of a contest over the hump into a manageable finals day… 

Four heats of round four completed in a somnolent South Pacific. Pushing this stubborn mule of a contest over the hump into a manageable Finals Day.

Anything to learn? Maybe an upgrade of the finals call from Kennedy/Wilkinson to Bourez/Wilkinson. Wilko looks sharp, looks tight. If it’s barrelling he can go in low and slow, like he did against JJF last year and come out with drama. I’s a Tommy Carroll line.

Horrible day here, flood rain and a howling wind from the south-east courtesy of an ill-tempered storm just to seaward, but I had to wash the computer grime off me so I went for a surf at the Pass. Someone I knew (a BeachGrit commenter?) yelled at me:,“Oi Longbong, no more fucking littry talk, stick to the facts”.

Nick Dee was that you? Memories of the time one of the honchos from the (then) ASP, accompanied by security (the now departed Woody, bless his soul), pulled me out of the press room at Bells to inform me that people in high places had taken exception to the tone of my coverage.

I gave him the Rosie Hodge defence.

“I was just trying to offer a ‘point of difference’, your honour.”

Aren’t her and Ronnie are making a beautiful team, even if her Californian inspired high self-esteem therapy speak becomes a little cloying at times. I pine for her to take the advice Kevin Spacey’s character President Frank offered his wife in House of Cards: “Put some steel back into your game.”

Yesterday’s comments led me to my daily focus of five minutes on insider/access journalism, usually performed by the good soldiers and true believers of pro surfing whose instincts, inasmuch as we can divine them, are to protect rather than reveal to hinder our understanding if it contrasts too  sharply from the official narrative.

As Nick Carroll constantly reminded us in his biography of Tom Carroll when referencing the drug culture on Tour, “ I didn’t write about the drugs.”

Who can blame him? Who would? Who would destroy relationships and the cosy, clubby atmosphere of being amongst friends and equals – of being accepted – by lifting the carpet and counting the scuttling cockroaches that fled from the light? Better to look away and be a myth-maker.

It’s why the best writing about surfing always comes from outside the inner circle. Our beloved Fred Pawle got a Pulitzer for his expose on Sarge or was it a Walkley for his story about gay tour surfer Matt Branson? Same difference.

Goddamm it, I just wasted a half hour on this tight deadline thumbing my paperback copy of Hunter Thompson’s greatest book, The Great Shark Hunt, looking for the quote where Hunter describes just this clubby band of insider journalists and how they end up becoming good Germans and useful idiots.

Ah, here it is! Take it away Hunter.

“The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of surf* journalism in America has it’s roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists… When professional antagonists become after hours drinking buddies they are not likely to turn each other in… especially not for minor infractions of rules that neither side takes seriously; and on the rare occasions when minor infractions suddenly become major there is panic at both ends”.

Surf journalists as PR agents for pro surfers. Coaches as commentators. A sport that was handed over without a cent to an opaque organisation financed by a reclusive billionaire to be bleached and whitewashed to within an inch of its life, a blind eye turned to human catastrophes like Sarge’s sexual predation and AI. This is a sport that has had conflict of interest baked into it for so long it’s forgotten it’s there.

Thing is though, as Chas Smith showed in Welcome to Paradise now Go to Hell (shamefully, I’ve only read the free excerpts), we can all stomach the truth better than a handful of lies.

Enough? No Nick Dee, the joos aren’t to blame. Great times, the greatest to be a surf journalist!

We can write the truth and we only have libel laws to fear.

And being unable to visit Hawaii. And being coward punched by someone we pissed off.

And, ah, our own cowardice. And stuff.  Miaow.

Tune in tomorrow for the Finals Wrap sports fans.

*He said political.

Round 4 Results:
Heat 1: Matt Wilkinson (AUS) 14.27, Julian Wilson (AUS) 13.93, Ian Gouveia (BRA) 10.40
Heat 2: Michel Bourez (PYF) 15.73, Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) 10.77, Italo Ferreira (BRA) 8.50
Heat 3: Connor O’Leary (AUS) 13.66, Joan Duru (FRA) 13.50, Joel Parkinson (AUS) 10.83
Heat 4: Bede Durbidge (AUS) 11.10, Stuart Kennedy (AUS) 5.54, Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 4.67

Round 5 Match-Ups:
Heat 1: Julian Wilson (AUS) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
Heat 2: Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) vs. Ian Gouveia (BRA)
Heat 3: Joan Duru (FRA) vs. Sebastian Zietz (HAW)
Heat 4: Stuart Kennedy (AUS) vs. Joel Parkinson (AUS)


Chas: “I want to sink that piece of shit!”

BeachGrit principal in podcast interview. Find out who Chas wants to sink!

On a recent Thursday afternoon, the writer and BeachGrit principal Chas Smith was invited to participate on the Surf Splendor podcast. 

Smith, of course, upholds the standard for candour and in this almost hour-long interview chisels dangerous topics with an assured and passioned improvisation.

Highlights

On slinging mud: 

“I would invite people to write whatver they wanted about me. For fun! I could lob grenades all day into peoples’ houses, drive home and there wouldn’t be one grenade at my house. I’m confused. Why not have fun? Nobody, ever, ever. I try, I really try to get some kind of response from other surf media. But they’re lifeless.”

The host responds that The Inertia gets half-a-million clicks a month so why should they care about Chas’ grenades.

“I completely understand that reasoning. What I don’t understand is that we’re still surfers at the end. We can still have fun.”

On The Inertia

“I would love to sink that piece of shit! It’s terrible. I would love to bring it all down. I think I can say it’s the worst website on the internet. It’s worse than Brietbart, it’s worse than the lefty version, it’s worse than anything. Why? Because it has no point of view. There’s this weird ‘We celebrate all points of views’ but they really don’t. It’s curated toward a specific goal. And not to admit it, to pretend that you don’t and you’re the definitive voice of thinking surfers, is absolutely ludicrous.”

Ummmmm which side do we take?
Ummmmm which side do we take?

When I encountered him (The Inertia creator Zach Weisberg) at a party, he was throwing his own writers under the bus saying, we don’t support everything our writers say. If I wrote for you, and you were at a party and saying you didn’t support your writers, what kind of crappy thing is that? That’s awful! Whether you agree or disagree is one thing, but to distance yourself? If it goes up, you should totally stand behind it.”

At this point, the interviewer, the very good David Scales, says, “They’re catering to a guy who rides a soft top, who bought it at Costco, who lives away from the coast, Arizona maybe, but he comes out every summer and surfs.”

Chas responds,

“Do you think he does? I would be shocked if even the soft-top riding surfer from Arizona is typing in, www.theinertia.com. I’ve never met one surfer who went to The Inertia or liked it.”

More, oh much more, if you press the little yellow button. Chas Smith might be a genuine asshole, but he is a stupefyingly gifted one.


To saddle up or straighten out? Only Balaram has the answer. | Photo: Ben Gulliver

Watch: A Chilling Surf Trailer!

Hold your nose, the sea is icicles!

It’s about time for another legit surf film, don’t ya think? The last I can recall is Julian Wilson’s Wayward and that arrived in March. Like a fetus conceived in August 2016, we are long overdue.

Now, I can’t say I’ve never been fooled by a catchy trailer (damn you, Faster and Furiouser 12), but doesn’t this particular piece of cinema, captured and presented by Benjamin Gulliver, engorge your furry chest bumps? If not with its beauty then with its distinct chill? Please watch!

And… wow! Even the second time around I am enthralled. Maybe it’s because, coming from New Jersey, I hold cold water surfing close to my heart (Chas? Can you agree from Mexico?), or maybe it’s the artistry with which Mr. Gulliver filmed and edited this masterpiece.

Either way, it made me care — and not just in a wooooo look a big air! kind of way. This is rare in surf cinematography.

The film is called ‘The Seawolf’ and it will feature surfers Pete DeVries, Balaram Stack, Chippa Wilson, Noah Waggy and more. The entire movie, it appears, will take place in cold water and be wolf-themed. I’m not sure how that’s gonna work but we’ll see come July!