For music and fun!

Kelly Slater Surf Ranch Opens to Public!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

Six am to 11 pm every day! Fifty jobs!

Bored with normal vacations? Tired of the same old same old? Sick of going along with the crowd? Well has Kelly Slater ever got an idea for you! His Lemoore, California Surf Ranch is set to open to the public and, trust me, it won’t disappoint. I know because my ex-wife lived near Lemoore, a hot, middle-of-California cow town some 120 miles from the beach.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s read the local paper!

With some major upgrades and tweeks to the wave generation options, Slater and his investors now plan to expand the operation year-round and open 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. according to a new conditional use permit application filed with the county this summer.

The application says the ranch will be staffed with 50 employees, who will continue to do development of prototype wave generation systems.

It also says the facility will have a recreational use as well, offering competitive surfing events with outdoor music and camping for visitors. They are asking for a permit to hold large events – attracting as many as 8,000 visitors, six times a year.

Called Surf Ranch, the application says:

“Operations under this SRCUP will permit up to six events per calendar year, including recreational and competitive surfing events, and ancillary music performances during a two-to-four day period (i.e. Thursday through Sunday evening). Event operation time will be from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Attendance is estimated to be up to 8,000 guests per day, over a two-to-four day period. Temporary bleachers, sound equipment, and lighting equipment may be setup for events and live music performances. Parking will be provided on site during the events. Contracted services will include traffic control, security, temporary lighting, potable water, portable toilets, wash stations, and trash services for each event. “

The project would also use the abandoned golf course to the east of the ranch located north of Jackson Avenue and west of 18th Avenue.

8000 guests per day over a two-to-four day period? It sounds like Kelly Slater is going to create a new Coachella/Splendor in the Grass/Guantanamo Bay Super All-Star Jam!

Of course I basically reported this one month ago but then it was just whispers on a warm wind. Now it is fact!

Will you go to his music festival? Who do you think will headline?

Also, it probably won’t be called “Kelly Slater Music Fest” but what do you think it should be called?

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Sketch of what might appear on The Inertia over the weekend.

Rumor: Inertia to criminalize US Open!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

Mountain blog allegedly thinks those who attend event should be locked up!

Venice-adjacent’s favorite safe space is taking its team to Huntington Beach this weekend for the grand finale of the U.S. Open of Surfing. Of course The Inertia’s gluten free bread n coconut butter is yoga n exposing those who harm animals but the alt-left website also allegedly covers surfing. And they are allegedly set to cover the biggest surf event in the whole world by sending a police sketch artist instead of a photographer.

That’s right. A deeply entrenched source told me of Zach Weisberg and co’s plan. The overarching theme will apparently be that those who both attend and participate in the U.S. Open of Surfing, most from California’s inland towns, hard-working, blue collar, salt of the earth, Trump Country folk are criminals. Bad, dirty, criminals. This sort of broad categorization and shaming, race-baiting even, is in line with the mountain climbing blog’s ethos but still shocking to see in such bald form.

Or wait. Maybe the deeply entrenched source told me that The Inertia was going to bring a caricature artist instead of a photographer. That the overarching theme will apparently be those who both attend and participate in the U.S. Open of Surfing, men and women who work with their hands and attend community colleges are clowns. Amusement park clowns there for coastal-adjacent liberal elites to openly mock.

Sad.

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Debate: Is Loving Sharks So Wrong?

By Steve Rees

7 years ago

Man who loves sharks rides on back of the biggest of them all!

“Can’t we all just get along?”

Rodney King’s clarion call (well, almost clarion: his jaw was wired shut) has finally reached the Middle East. While King was referring to us, the dictum rings true for another pairing:

Shark and man together.

Kelly wants them culled (on Reunion), but maybe he should consider the approach of Iranian fisherman Rahmat Hosseini. Last week Hosseini might have just changed the dynamic between people and sharks.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWK0DPMlIvo/?taken-by=rahmat.hosseini.71

Of course, Instagram people became very mad.

Erin.michele1: What the hell is wrong with you?! This is disgusting and horrific. I’m surprised you are even still alive with your level of stupidity you have.

sandraphalicia: This is ANIMAL ABUSE!!! You think that it liked the whale shark to have taken it
for a surfboard?

pj.jabines: What IDIOTS would do just to gain popularity.

golddustkitten: You belong in jail!

luvislandsbb: dirty arabs abusing animals classic durka durka jihad.

VanRees: I haven’t been this sick since listening to The Surfers “Alone by a Tree” (OK. I wrote this.)

There were countless other insensitive posts, far too funny to include, but you get the idea.

Maybe these angry humanists are right. Hosseini’s act is not courageous, but rather a barbaric expression of our contempt for nature.

But let’s not be depressive.

What say you? New sport or arrestable offense?

Is petting animals with your feet wrong?

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Is this you, a two-bed villa with gorgeous infinity pool and an interior that will make you swoon every single damn time your ten dollar a day butler opens the door? | Photo: selongselo.com

Wow: Lombok Goes Hollywood!

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

Come live in colonial splendour on Indonesia's "Island of 1,000 mosques"!

First the surfers came to Indonesia, then the tourists, and now the bankers.

(Of course, erudite readers will complain that this is not completely true. The Portuguese and then the Dutch came, plundered, enslaved and so on before Sukarno showed ’em the door in 1949.)

But for the sake of modern Indonesia, that’s the lineage.

Let me ask. Are you a habitué of Bali and beyond?

Do you enjoy the terrific deals you can get on a hunk of land and a modernist villa right there on the beach? It ain’t what it used to be in Bali, half-a-million bucks used to buy you a palance, now it’s a villa way off the sand.

The smart money is headed to Lombok, home to Desert Point and only forty clicks across the Lombok Strait from Bali.

And, today, in the newspaper, The Australian Financial Review, there is an excellent story that confirms the rise of the Australian banker in the gentrification, no wait, that came with the tourists, the wolficiation, of Indonesia’s pretty islands.

Let’s wet our toes momentarily into the piece entitled The Australian bankers who built their own luxury resort in South Lombok.

Australians Andrew Corkery and James Nash were typical young gun investment bankers who liked to work and play hard. They met as traders in Hong Kong in 2006 and, like so many others their age, were soon making an annual Bali pilgrimage to surf, relax and drink Japanese beer far from the madding stock exchange.

“We wanted to invest in Bali but couldn’t make the numbers work,” Corkery reflects. “Then we went to South Lombok in 2010 for a surfing trip and it just made sense.”

“But there’s reason to clink beer necks: four of the villas have been completed, with many more sold off the plan. Investors pay $US500,000 ($632,000) on average for a two-bedroom villa spanning 250 square metres, although they are building villas of up to seven bedrooms, the largest home being 910 square metres.”

Can you imagine living out your days in splendour, the lord of the manor, while little brown men and women scuttle back and forth with your citrus-y cocktails, you admiring how they keep those uniforms so white?

Oh I could!

And do you think the people of this island of four million muslims, promoted by the Indonesian government as a sharia paradise and where hotels have signs pointing to Mecca, korans in the rooms, MTV is banned, unmarried couples are turned away etc, are thrilled when hunks of their ancestral land is cut off to be filled with “exclusive communities”?

I think, yes!

The Balinese are still smiling and they sold everything!

Buy here.

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Lakey Peterson (pictured) not hitting a pier piling.

Ouch II: Lakey Peterson slams pier!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

BeachGrit favorite says, "Yikes!"

The U.S. Open at Huntington Beach must be one of God’s favorite professional surf events on His earth. It seems that better than usual surf has pulsed in right before the beginning of the contest window for the last few years creating a buzz of excitement amongst the rebellious pre-teens with their Sharpie’d “Insert Here” and “Do Me In The Butt” skin slogans.

And yesterday Hurricane Methuselah filled in around the pier while some of the best surfers in the world slashed and soared.

Stand-outs included French surfers Marine Le Pen, Maud Le Car and Pauline Ado. A new super rivalry also seems to be forming between Ventura’s Sage Erickson and Santa Barbara’s Courtney Conologue. The two faced each other in the finals of just concluded Oceanside Pro with Conologue taking the win. Sage bashed her to the losers round at Huntington, though, and I like this rivalry because I would like to see Ventura and Santa Barbara go to war.

Speaking of bashing, BeachGrit favorite Lakey Peterson bashed the pier. And let us turn to Laylan Connelly at the Orange County Register for the play by play.

Lakey Peterson knew how close she was to the Huntington Beach Pier and hoped to make her way through the concrete pier pilings after giving a big hack on a wave.

But the strong waves and current pushed her into the barnacle-covered piling, and her leash wrapped around it. The delicate dance surfers have been doing with the pier the past few days went the wrong way for Peterson, who found herself held underwater by the ocean’s strength.

“Within two seconds, my back hit the piling, my leash wrapped around it,” the Santa Barbara surfer said. “I couldn’t get to the surface, (because) right around the pylons there’s a lot of water pushing around.”

Peterson was able to untangle her leash and was unharmed, but the moment added drama Tuesday as the women’s heats began at the U.S. Open of Surfing, a World Tour stop for the top 17 women battling for a world title in 4- to 5-foot surf. She wasn’t the only one who had to see medics after a pier encounter. Brazil’s Bino Lopes exited the water with blood on his face and arm and the nose of his board smashed during the middle of his heat after hitting a pylon.

It is a wonder this, too, doesn’t happen more often. Not in professional surfing events, of course, very few are held near piers, but just in general. I marvel when surfers shoot the pier. I’ve attempted a few times and made once but so scary while it is happening. So many variables for which to account. Like, wave speed, piling distance, piling spacing, Laird Hamilton, Laird Hamilton’s paddle.

Do you remember when he rode a bomb through the Malibu pier on a SUP? The Malibu pier is much less intimidating than the Huntington Beach pier partially because there are far fewer pilings and partially because they are wood.

Still impressive.

But have you ever smashed a pier piling or are you adept at shooting?

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