Two titans of surf journalism elevate the blood
feud!
Is there anything better than a true duel
between equals at the height of their powers? Iron sharpening iron
so that each side positively glimmers? Oh we are the lucky ones who
have witnessed Magic vs. Bird, Manet vs. Duranty, Hamilton vs.
Burr. These clashes are bigger than mere blood feuds. They are art
and exceedingly rare though I do believe we stumbled upon one in
Fiji and no I am not referring to Wilko vs. Connor Leary or
whatever the hell that person’s name was.
I am referring to the great Sean Doherty vs. our very own Steve
“longtom” Shearer!
The two traded blow with their contest coverage and not in the
way that I pound The Inertia’s Zach Weisberg with a brick
whilst he turns to vanilla pudding in the corner.
No.
They danced around each other, each holding noble swords,
parrying, retreating, testing defense, noting offense.
And it was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant to behold.
Let me submit two examples from the week.
From Sean Doherty on Coastalwatch:
Out fishing the other day here in Fiji, I’d heard a story
about a mutual friend pulling in a yellowfin, slicing it open as it
fluttered on the deck, cutting out its beating heart, eating it,
then discovering – if only in his own mind – that he now possessed
some kind of primal animistic power, which manifested most potently
out in the surf. He was suddenly the tuna god. I thought at the
time as a winning strategy here in Fiji it would be without peer.
The story alone would ensure you’d have the peak to yourself.
Whatever supernatural powers you assumed would simply be a
bonus.
The fish to their credit have been on the chew. We filled
The Duck – Namotu’s fishing tender –with wahoo and mahi yesterday,
a couple of rainbow runners and one sad, scaly, foul-hooked
longtom.
Totally a dig at longtom! And then Sean went on to detail his
surfs, chats, coffees etc. with industry notables (Renato Hickel,
Borg Garcia, etc.) and then poetic contest coverage.
Never to be outdone and especially after being called sad, scaly
and foul-hooked, Steve Shearer performed an arrêt à bon
temps on BeachGrit:
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”.
And if I may boil the nut of this feud down to this root.
Doherty is from the school that you must be friendly with subjects,
in order to glean any insight. Shearer argues that chumminess
equals failure.
I believe both to be equally true. In this cloistered surf you
must know people in order to get anything. But if you write about
what you know you soon lose access and then lose anything to say.
It is easy to drink beer with the brands, write cloying phrases
about the surfers and stick around. It is just as easy to
flamethrow then sit at home and snipe without ever coming face to
face with those you demean.
The best surf writing somehow, in some way, dances between these
two poles. I submit Fred Pawle’s King of
Queens as one example and Matt Warshaw’s
response to Reno as another. But these flashes are
rarer than they should be. Maybe because we’re all a little lazy
right now, occupying our lanes, observing but not engaging.
Sean vs. Steve over Fiji made me realize that we could have a
potential Ali vs. Frasier, McEnroe vs. Borg, Michel Jackson vs.
M.C. Hammer. We would all have the honor of witnessing. The game
could be forever raised.
And I need them to cross swords again.
So Sean Doherty, I slap thee with a lambskin riding glove
(made by Hermes and on
behalf of Steve “longtom” Shearer who can only afford pleather work
gloves because BeachGrit didn’t sell for 35
million yesterday). Do you accept?
Respond on your Coastalwatch before sun down (J-Bay) and if you
don’t accept I’m coming after you with my brick.
