Revealed: YOU are a WSL judge!

Blind, confused, easily twisted, into strange genres of pornography!

Oh how I thought the surfboard logo-off was going to be simple, clean, true and unclouded by personal bias. Unsullied by poor choice. If you are new to BeachGrit or haven’t been around for a few days, catch up on the most innovative surf contest ever to be held here.

The Battle of the Brands was supposed to be the antithesis of a World Surf League contest. The WSL is the most wonderful league of all, we can now agree, but has been soiled by very poor judging this year. Don’t you think? Like, ludicrously poor. Like, you or I could smoke it if given the reins dropping near perfect scores every single time in every single heat.

But then look at what you went and did. You just voted Maurice Cole’s logo over Chilli’s logo in a total landslide!

Let us revisit the RULES.

We ain’t talking the performance of the board, the price, the selection etc. etc. No. This battle is purely about logos.

So you folk are telling me this.

totally and completely crushes this.

That’s what you’re telling me?

Our own Mullet voted, writing: “I like the chilli, but the paw print takes it for me. It looks like a really fat person cheering.” And I’ll except his as an outlier. Do you recall when Adriano de Souza’s floater was scored an 8 or 9 or something, beating Owen Wright? Let’s refresh our memories!

Now, in this particular instance I could see how two or three of the judges were inexplicably kinky for floaters. Floaters just getting them super hot and horny in the same way fat people cheering get Mullet super hot and horny. So Mullet’s vote stands.

But the rest of you. Look at the logos again and remember this has nothing to do with shaper nor board nor performance nor price nor nationality nor ethnicity. Only logo. Do you still give the landslide victory to Morris Cole?

Is judging really an impossible thing to do?

Should we all go way lighter on the WSL judges or should we all go way heavier on each other? And I’m not talking “heavier” as in fatty porn, Mullet. I’m talking more brutal. More aggressive.

Which one?


Pops: Why turn your kid into a pro surfer?

You want your kid to ride waves for money? Are you sure?

You got kids? If you do, you know what robust enjoyment they bring.

Mine are delicate-boned little things with guinea-pig faces and glossy hair and if I don’t see them I fall into a dreadful melancholia. Although I’m not one given to end-of-life feelings, any sort of separation sends me into an emotional paralysis.

(You think divorce is easy? Read this if you feel like you want to bust out of your gilded cage.)

One of my favourite things to do is to swim out with one of my kids when it’s a little bigger, hold his hand and, when a set comes, tell him we’ll dive to the bottom, open our eyes and dodge the pillars of foam together.

Anyway,

A few years back, I started dragging ’em out for surfs. Dads know the drill on this. You caddy ’em out onto a waist-deep bank on a foam board, find little corners and push ’em into runners. Because you are an expert your commands are endless and forceful: paddle like this, catch this, stand up now, turn your head, do this, do that.

And you think, what a gift I’m giving my kid. My dad never took me surfing. My dad never revealed the mysteries of the ocean to me. 

If the kid isn’t totally repulsed by the learning process and he starts to improve a little the dad moves to the sand with his video camera, snatching precious vision for post-session analysis. I vacationed in Hossegor a few years ago and was astonished by the dad’s squatting under umbrellas while their kids shimmied to to the beach on their JS’s and DHD’s.

It really is a thing. A dad used to want his kid to be President. Or an architect. A doctor. Education used to be everything. Work hard. Get ahead. Make the world a better place.

Now it’s a pro surfer or, and I see it more in the skate parks, a pro skater.

Is it the illusion of cool?

Is it the failed ambition of daddy manifesting itself in his kids?

I wonder,

Why would you want your kid to be a pro surfer?

Why would you take something that has given you so much and turn it into an insecure, stress-ridden occupation with very little reward?

Bottom line: unless the kid is a masterpiece, an Eli Hanneman or Bronson Meidy, the best he can hope for is a few orbits of the qualifiers and, maybe, best scenario, a year in a WCT jersey.

Toast the bliss of childhood.

Surf with your kid but button your lips, let him (her) make their mistakes, catch the wrong waves, paddle like dumb-asses.

Let ’em enjoy surfing in all its futility and beauty.


Is this what you want?

Just in: Surfing Needs Our Help!

I'm doing this for all of us!

John John Florence is surfing’s greatest talent.

An opinion, maybe, but it’s an opinion shared by most observers, and even ESPN — the American leader in sports broadcasting.

Sometimes a surfing maneuver will make its way onto SportCenter’s Top 10, but it’s usually some throwaway air from the U.S. Open. Point being, ESPN doesn’t generally show more than casual indifference toward our niche sport.

But have we made progress?

Every year, ESPN has an awards show called the ESPYS. This annual gathering celebrates the world’s top athletes across a myriad of disciplines, and this year, surfing is not excluded.

Where do we fit in? Well, there’s a Best Male Action Sports category and it looks like this:

As far as I can tell ESPY awards are decided on a fan-voting basis. Therefore we, as raging surf fanatics, can use our autonomy to sway the results in a direction that will affect us favorably. For the sake of surfers everywhere, I implore you to vote for anyone other than John John Florence.

Counter intuitive? Maybe not. Here’s why:

1. John Florence is good at many things but public speaking ain’t one of them. Can you imagine his acceptance speech to the greater athletic community?

“Woooow… can’t believe I won this award. Super stoked. Last year was really fun, waves were so fun, so I’m just really stoked. Can’t believe I beat these guys, they’re so sick haha. Thank you everyone!”

All of this in a two-sizes too big suit. Surfing don’t need that stigma.

2. ESPN is watched mostly by non-coastal, meat-and-potato Americans. They don’t care about surfing, and that’s a good thing. Unless you’re building a wave pool or own a company like Quiksilver, there’s no upside to drawing masses towards our already-oversaturated sport and culture. The less press we get, the smaller our bubble, the more waves we catch, the more harmonious our existence.

3. How goofy does John look in that photo? The bright colors, the fifth-grade-art-project trophy, the flower crown — surfers really are kinda lame when you think about it. At least skaters look cool.

A vote for John, while laden with noble intentions, is perhaps not in our own best interest. A vote for Nyjah, Mark, or Oyster Bra is a vote for surfing.

Click here to save our sport!


Fight Club: Battle of the Brands!

Surfboard logos face off again in day 2!

After three lay days of shifty winds and a crossed-up swell the Battle of the Brands is back in the water, ready to grab your attention and your vote. In case you missed, the Battle of the Brands is a professional surfing competition that pits surfboard brand logo against surfboard brand logo in sudden death heats.

We ain’t talking the performance of the board, the price, the selection etc. etc. No. This battle is purely about logos and the victor is decided in the comments.

The first three heats included JS vs. Mayhem, Channel Islands vs. Slater Designs, Pyzel vs. Rusty.

And you! You dear commentariat have never taken anything this seriously in BeachGrit’s entire history! You voted and you voted non-ironically for Mayhem, CI and Rusty. So they are all into Round 2!

Now let’s finish off Round 1.

Heat 4

Vs.

 

Heat 5

Vs.

 

Heat 6

Vs.

 

You know the drill. Vote in the comments and send your favorites into Round 2!


Gliding on the breakers!
Gliding on the breakers!

Best: Ever surf review by non-surfer!

A novice tells you everything you need to know about Austin's NLand wave park!

I was dubious when my very handsome instructor told me that I’d be gliding on the breakers by day’s end. I have trouble balancing on the treadmill at my local gym. How in the world was I going to stand on the crest of the sea’s tumblers like some neoprene-clad Venus? But somehow he was right! As that first swell propelled me toward the shore I knew that surfing the curl was in my blood…

On a July Saturday in Rockaway Beach, a surf instructor pushed me into my first wave. He had already shown me how to paddle, arch my back and pop up, but I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I’d stopped thinking about anything. I did what my body wanted to do and then I was up and moving, swept forward by the great hand of the sea. My body already knew how to soften into it and ride. I was amazed at the ocean and my own inborn connection to it.

Ok first a little pop quiz… which one of those paragraphs is pulled from our The Inertia?

And how many descriptions of surfing have you read by novices? Oh they always crackle with passion but the mechanics, verbiage, etc. generally churn into a fun but nonsensical stew. Imagine, say, that you only had a novice’s description of a wave you had never surfed or seen. It would be impossible to pull any useful information out right?

Wrong!

This morning I read a novice’s description of Austin, Texas’s NLand wave park on ESPNW and know everything I need to know about those breakers!

The writer, Alyssa Roenigk describes herself, and surfing experience, thusly:

Since my mid-20s when I first learned to surf, I’ve had a fickle relationship with surfing. I hold it in reverence as the hardest sport in the world to learn, respect the enormous number of hours it requires to become even passingly proficient and want more than anything to be good at it. Yet for many reasons — cold water, wetsuits, a distaste for surfing by myself, rarely being near the ocean when waves are breaking, wetsuits — I have never put in the time. “I should do this more often,” is the most common sentence I utter each time I suit up to go surfing with friends.

A perfect recipe for disaster. But then she paddles out…

I spent my session surfing the inside wave, which NLand’s website describes, quite accurately, as “knee- to waist-high waves” with “challenging, open-face sections.” My friends and I called it the Waikiki wave. The mechanism creating the wave moves north to south, and then south to north, creating a left-hand and right-hand wave every 2 minutes, 10 seconds. Watching from the beach, that felt like an endlessly long lull between waves. But in the water, they come fast, especially if you catch a wave and ride it to the end of the pool and have to paddle back into position before the next wave fires. That becomes tricky when the pool is packed, so my advice is to steer clear of midday weekend visits and start with a midweek session.

The reef wave was booked up, so I can’t say I’ve tried it myself, although several of my friends spent their hour figuring it out. The consensus: Once you master the unnatural drop-that’s-not-a-drop-but-more-of-a-super-fast-sideways-takeoff, which generally takes one to two sessions, the 35-second ride is worth the effort. Just like scoring one great wave after two hours of paddling in the ocean or launching a perfect tee shot on the 18th hole, that one wave is enough to make you come back for more.

NLand is perfect for new surfers or anyone with fears of learning in the ocean. It’s also great for experienced surfers who want to work on turns or maneuvers that require reps. In one one-hour session at NLand, I surfed about 20 waves, which allowed me to make mistakes, fix those mistakes, work on my technique, and challenge the heck out of my paddling muscles. The experience did not feel like ocean surfing, but it made me even more excited to get back into the Pacific with the belief that I’ll be a little better when I do. If you find yourself in Austin, catching endless party waves is a great way to spend an afternoon with friends — especially once the brewery opens.

It doesn’t get any more informative, any more helpful than this. With these three paragraphs I feel perfectly armed to tackle Austin and I must say thank you Alyssa Roenigk. Thank you for breaking through this surf journalist’s jaded crust and allowing him to face the world anew. Like some neoprene-clad Venus.