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.
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!
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Blood Feud: Kelly Slater’s Mom vs WSL!
By Derek Rielly
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.
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?
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Fiji Pro: “This contest is a stubborn
mule!”
By Longtom
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)
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Chas: “I want to sink that piece of
shit!”
By Derek Rielly
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.”
“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.”
“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.
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Watch: A Chilling Surf Trailer!
By Michael Ciaramella
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!
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros