Can you believe that Teahupoo (Better Mr.
Longtom? Proper enough?) is over? Can you believe that
nothing but nothing stopped its march straight to the final? Not
the many sides of white supremacy, not lower quality surf, not
temper tantrum surf board shooting, not Gabriel Medina’s apparent
demon possession.
Nothing!
Longtom will, of course, bring the most scintillating full
coverage in just a few moments but until then let’s just celebrate
Australia’s Julian Wilson.
And let’s also talk about Joe Turpel!
Most men, as they age, turn crackly and haggard. Too much time
in the sun. Too much hard livin. Too much vodka and it all goes
straight to the face. And the face turns crackly and haggard. Skin
that leathers. Red patches mix in with white patches. Eyes that
lose spark and stare dull-like, angry even, into the distance.
But look at Joe Turpel!
His face looks softer than a baby’s bottom. Fuller too. Skin
such an even shade of tan without one blemish. Eyes that gaze,
innocent and naive, into the distance. He looks like a doll. Like a
Russian Matryoshka doll and, speaking of, how much would you pay
for a set of WSL Matryoshka dolls? Waz inside Pete inside Pottz
inside Ron inside Joe.
$50.00?
$100.00?
Joe Turpel is surfing’s Benjamin Button. He is our fountain of
youth.
And congrats again to Julian Wilson coming back from a combo
situation in one of the greatest ever heats in professional surfing
history. Have you ever read a worse analysis of one of the greatest
ever heats in professional surfing history?
Stay tuned for real coverage coming soon!
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Linguistics: “Cho-po” or “Cho-poo?”
By Chas Smith
A guide for the rest of us!
Ain’t it the most wonderful thing in the entire
world to have our boys back in the water? Professional surfing!
Days that were, just last week, filled with dark depression now
shine. My best friends Ron, Joe, Marty, Pete, the Waz and
Kaipo!
Oh how their voices fill me with joy. How their voices chase my
demons back to the recesses of my mind.
They are all at “The End of the Road” in “Tahiti” which is
pronounced “taHIti” by Americans and TAhiti by Kaipo and
Australians. They are at Teahupo’o.
But what does Teahupo’o mean? Either “heap pile” or “place of
crushed skulls” or “pile of heads” I think.
But how is it supposed to be pronounced?
Cho-po.
Why then do Ron, Joe, Marty, Pete and the Waz say, “Cho-poo?”
Why then does only Kaipo get it right?
Linguists, the scientific study of language and my graduate
degree, tells us that Kaipo is Hawaiian and does everything
right.
Cho-po.
Cho-po.
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Science: “Better to kill than protect
sharks!”
By Derek Rielly
Oowee, who saw that coming? But dry your tears!
They're fish!
A new survey of shark scientists has revealed ninety
percent of ’em believe sustainable shark fishing is
preferable to sanctuaries and bans, and that hysterical voices in
the conversation movement are overriding an evidence-based
approach.
The result may seem counterintuitive, acknowledges lead
author David Shiffman, but the finding points to the fact that
wildlife conservation is more nuanced than the general public tends
to appreciate. While people may believe that all shark species are
endangered, and that any form of shark fishing threatens to push
populations to collapse, Shiffman says the best available science
evidence does not support those ideas.
The survey also reflects a concern among scientists that
more extreme voices in the conservation community may be
overshadowing a more evidence-based approach to
protection.
“One of our conclusions from this is that those in the
research community and those in the advocacy community should talk
to one another more,” Shiffman says.
In general, the scientists favor policies that protect
specific species, rather than those that set regional limits on
shark fishing. Out of 12 conservation policies considered, shark
sanctuaries and bans on shark finning received the least support
from the researchers.
Does this sort of intellectual rigour excite you as much as it
excites me?
That, and let’s use the example of Reunion Island here, it ain’t
doing anyone any favours by protecting bull sharks inside the
marine reserve there. All it’s done is create a length of
coastline that has become unusable for humans.
Where, says Jeremy Flores, who ain’t a scientist but who grew up
living in the ocean on Reunion, he won’t even surf anymore.
“Getting attacked is a fifty-fifty proposition,” he
says. “I would say, stay out of the water. Stay…
out… of… the… water.”
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Day Two, Tahiti: “Can you live with a Jordy
World Title?”
By Longtom
And what will Kelly Slater do to subtly
delegitimise it?
Night sleeping is a bogey-man at Teahupoo.
According to poet Morgan Williamson*, of all the elemental sounds
of nature the sound of the ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and
varied.
Subconscious dreams at Teahupoo are invaded by sharp rifle
cracks, hollow boomings, vague roarings, splashing, whisperings,
grave and solemn groaning and moanings.
Sleep is fitful. I slept fitfully, woken by sober, racing
thoughts: why does the world title race suddenly feel so flat? The
schizophrenic performances of Toledo? By turns bloodless and
blazing.
Surfing has never been more omnipresent and felt more
professionally impotent. It’s everywhere and it’s nowhere.
Or the absence, finally, of Slater who may come back but will
never again challenge for a title. Fanning is making noises of
retirement an Parko can’t be far behind. Bede is doing a
testimonial lap.
Combined, that represents the loss of 15 world titles worth of
experience. Not replaceable by the current rookie crop or anyone
else on the QS radar. Surfing has never been more omnipresent and
felt more professionally impotent. It’s everywhere and it’s
nowhere.
Medina sat lifeless against Bede for an age, looking vague and
uninterested before spiking a clutch bomb with a minute to go,
making a mockery of my premise.
Who could replace the retiring veterans? Medina, JJF, Wilko?
Yes.
Julian, Owen: Maybe.
Kolohe, Connor Coffin: Yeah, but nah.
Italo F: Definitely.
Did anyone else get the ad on the website for vaginal leaking
pads? Market research from big data or a wild guess? As much of a
mystery as the phenomenon of the boardshort riding up on the thigh
of the backside tuberider.
No more off-message impressionistic wanderings – Derek hates it
– and seeing as a new Pyzel Ghost is still in negotiation as part
of the coverage fee, let’s go back to sportswriting, and nothing
but.
Slow starts and sleepy heats were a symptom of a somnolent South
Pacific and a funky breeze that laid down lips across sections that
wouldn’t stay open. Zeke Lau and Wiggoly Dantas sat too deep up the
reef for half a heat, while absolutely nothing happened.
Emblematic. Zeke got pinched twice, Wiggoly racked up a couple of
makes and that was the heat.
Wilko maintained command of his own performance against Ewing in
the last scrappy heat of the day. Threaded one for a mid seven,
incomplete on a bomb which could have been close to a ten. Ewing
got, not much, but walks away with a heat win for the year.
Caulerpa is the brown seaweed that embraced and enhanced the
vision of John Florence as he sat on the foam ball for a pair of
nines against Nat Young. Edible, favoured by Okinawans and claimed
to help increase longevity and virility. Available to citizens of
the coterminous United States according to Ed Ricketts in the
Log from the Sea of Cortez. If JJF goes through to the
quarter-finals or better and Wilko makes round five or better then
Teahupoo is essentially a dead rubber and we walk away and dream of
Trestles.
Fear is an essential element of surfing Teahupoo, no doubt. Life
changing wipeouts, according to Strider. The most fearsome image
for the recreational surfer, sprint paddling for the horizon as the
ocean sucks dry, paddling downhill, then uphill, up into the blue
sky against the blue lip, so impossibly thick, looking over your
shoulder into the pit and seeing someone beside you scratching into
it, maybe Owen maybe a Tahitian, and looking into the pit. The mind
rebels, goes blank, freezes in fear. Head snaps back to the
horizon, no more waves, then back to the channel to see surfer
gliding over the shoulder in a huge shower of spray. There’s no
other wave like it.
But still, not the scariest thing about Teahupoo.
That is seeing Toothless and his mates well sauced on a weekend,
getting corralled , fed warm beer after warm beer. Giving up on
escaping and then being physically frog-marched down the road to
the end of the road, gaining new drinking companions. Bottles
getting smashed, shouts, preparing for some street fighting with
“townies” from Papeete down for the weekend in jacked-up pickups
and lithe girls lounging in tropical sun. A little whitey caught in
a scrimmage of jacked up, tense drunk, hefty Polynesian men. The
romance of the South Aeas. Bit of play fighting going amiss,
someone throws a punch, Toothless has me in a headlock, friendly
for now but too firm. Marching onwards, stuck in a granite strata
of destiny. Cold fear. Drunk fear.
But no more digressions, I need that fucking Pyzel Ghost.
Winds turned trade, tubes stayed open. J-Dub and Ferriera
indulged a tube duel in conditions that verged on the magical. I
thought judges got the result wrong way around because they failed
to give any account of Italo’s full speed, full-rail punctuation
points on the ride.
Beatings to start the Fanning/Ace heat. Fanning should have had
a ten for the biggest chamber of the day– what were judges waiting
for? An aquatic unicorn? A new Global tour sponsor? Both would have
been more likely than a better wave and better surfed wave than
that today. Fanning made a critical error giving too much latitude
to Ace, who, without priority, collected crucial scores under
Fanning’s watch.
Last heat. Steinbeck looked forwards, with a masochistic
contempt, to confounding his critics with Log from the Sea of
Cortez, and knew it was likely to have limited appeal, but he
never wrote for the internet and coveted a new Pyzel.
The greatest beneficiary of small Chopes is/was not Toledo but
Jordy Smith and he is capitalising like Gordon Gekko on insider
stock options.
Can you live with a Jordy Smith world title and what will Kelly
Slater do to subtly delegitimise it?
Join us here tomorrow comrades for Finals Day and the final
instalment in the Indo-Pacific leg of the coverage.
*Henry Beston actually, but Morgan woulda if he coulda.
“A state appeals court ruled Thursday that a billionaire
landowner had no right to block public access to a San Mateo County
beach without first obtaining a permit, rejecting arguments that a
forced opening would be tantamount to stealing his
property.
The 50-page decision by the First District Court of Appeal in
San Francisco affirmed a 2014 ruling by a San Mateo judge who
ordered Vinod Khosla to give the public access to picturesque
Martins Beach, near Half Moon Bay, which Khosla owns.
It was the latest slap-down of Khosla in a long, increasingly
heated legal dispute with the Surfrider Foundation, which sued the
co-founder of Sun Microsystems after he shut the access gate
leading to nearly 90 acres of his coastal property in 2010. The
nonprofit group founded by surfers charged that the closure
amounted to development, requiring a permit from the California
Coastal Commission. A judge agreed, prompting Khosla’s
appeal.
“The courts said exactly what the Legislature said: The
public has the right to access the coast,” said Joseph Cotchett,
the lead attorney for Surfrider, in a hastily arranged news
conference in his Burlingame office. “It’s their ocean. It’s their
coast. It is not some private billionaire’s.”
Yes surfing, surfers, Surfriders, and the environment!
Good: 1 Evil: 0
This might be a terrestrial victory but is it a moral one?
Are we really happy that a single tech billionaire’s property
was taken near Martin’s Beach so that a mass of tech millionaires
could invade come in? Was this fight about the ocean or our
greediness for waves?
Let me poke a stick at our collective proletariat stance for a
moment before we gloat too hard.
Are we really happy that a single tech billionaire’s property
was taken near Martin’s Beach so that a mass of tech millionaires
could invade come in? (On the side, I wonder how much Surfrider
attorney Cotchett brings in?)
Was this fight about the ocean or our greediness for waves?
The Surfrider Foundation does some wonderful things, but this
legal effort doesn’t sit well. This isn’t like Mark Z’s Facebook
Kauai land grab. (Hawaiians Crack Zuck! Read
here.)
After all, if the Foundation really cared about the preserving
the environment, wouldn’t it be better if they fought to keep
Martin’s beach away from unknowns and in the hands of a
man who has the resources to keep its sanctity?
And don’t try to convince yourself if you started a giant tech
firm that you wouldn’t be the proud owner of a private piece o’
shoreline.
Maybe this is where our thinking goes afield.
In America, we don’t really hate the rich— we want
to be the rich! This thinking is common.
It’s the same reason so many rip mercilessly on King Kelly. They
don’t actually dislike him; they wish they had his fame, talent,
and 11 world titles.
Sure, it’s fun to play Communist with other people’s stuff. But
while we don’t have the time to talk Adam Smith, we should consider
what it will be like the evening when Elon Musk comes knocking at
your front door with that smug smile informing you of your eminent
domain notice to allow his hyper-eco battery train to save the
average shmo from overcrowding.
Hey, not so cool, now, right?
Why? Because we aren’t billionaires. Our property
is important.
Man, I’m glad that Khosla got his can handed to him. Not because
of my elevated sense of duty to the environment but because I’m
selfish and want to surf anywhere I please.
The same is true of Surfrider, and of you, I suspect.
Now, close your eyes once more and imagine a crowded beach
jammed packed with high-tech daytrippers on custom-colored resin
drip boards waxed by their assistants. Oh, and all your hand-picked
friends can squeeze into the lineup, too.