One of the most interesting things about the business
experiment called Former, with Dane Reynolds as its CEO,
is its determination to succeed.
Dane tore up a $400,000-a-month
contract, and Craig Anderson a million bucks a year,
to pour themselves into Former and early signs
suggest neither surfer is too proud to package or promote the range
of t-shirts, pullovers, pants, beanies, trunks, towels, jackets
and… nail polish.
Me, I kinda like the nail polish thing if it ain’t black.
Black reminds me of rain-soaked days in film festivals with
earnest young men looking gloomy, smoking sad cigarettes and
wearing hats that belong on the captains of sea-going boats. It’s
an easy wear.
I figure, if you’re going to be a nail polish guy, at least
throw a little sun-ripened technicolour in there and get real
fruity.
The Former range includes the colours: white
devil, jazzberry jam, banana mania, radical red and atomic
tangerine.
The full “Premium Violence” set costs twenty American dollars
plus postage.
How long was Samsung the title sponsor of the
World Surf League? It was at least two years right? And maybe three
or four. In my memory, Samsung had even sponsored the Association
of Surfing Professionals and had stayed on because they believed in
then CEO Paul Speaker’s vision.
Right?
Whatever the case, they were around long enough to know what
good surfing looks like and apparently this is it.
Good surfing is a boggy mid-faced backside turn on a waist high
wave. It is an embarrassing halfway hack. An awkward herky-jerky
hip twist. A strained neck.
For shame, Samsung.
This is worse than blowing up people’s
ears with your phones. This is worse than my Samsung
washing machine that got recalled because the top was flying off
and injuring people during the spin cycle and I got “two” options
when I called the recall hotline. Repair or replace. I chose
replace of course and was then informed that “replace” meant I
would get a $50 dollar coupon that could be used toward the
purchase of a new Samsung washing machine so I then chose repair. A
man came to my house, took the top of the washing machine off and
tied it back together with two heavy brackets. After he left the
spin cycle wouldn’t work at all so I had to call another different
technician. He came and tested the machine and told me to always
use the “heavy load” cycle. It still didn’t work so another
different technician came and tested the machine and told me to use
the “heavy load” cycle BUT never to use the heavy spin. Always use
the light spin. Now it works as good as the above turn.
Fulfil the criteria of just three and, yes, you
are, officially, a filthy kook!
I’ve been a kook for so long I can’t imagine
being anything else. There have been a few moments when I
thought I’d finally shucked kookdom, when I was teased with the
prospect of delirious and unlimited delights.
The three straight airs landed. A couple of odd-looking,
out-on-the-face, ass-in-the-air reverses. A lucky tube.
They were illusions, of course.
I started too late. Didn’t obsess enough about it to permanently
burn the movements into my muscles, the processes into my
brain.
I got thinking about it yesterday when I flew to the mountains
for a one-day hit of snow. Epic season. Don’t wanna miss it. Took
my kid. He’s ten. I’ve ridden fifty-ish days over twenty years,
he’s had a week over three. He flies down the blacks hitting
everything and spinning. I’m kicking the tail out, panicking at
speed, catching edges and groping the piste on toeside turns.
Kook forever. But I accept it. It’s my state.
Are you a lifelong kook? Do you recognise yourself in the
behaviours below? Three or more and, it’s official, you’re a
kook!
You believe surfing is a democracy: As vibrant
as our game is, it ain’t a tableau of fairness. Never was. It’s a
meritocracy. The best surfers get the best waves, get any wave they
want and if they want to drop in on your disorganised jabbing of
the lip, if they want to paddle around you to takeoff on a wave
from its most critical juncture, it’s their prerogative. If you sit
out the back hissing at the unfairness of it all, then you are a
kook.
It’s your surfboard, not you: The kook is what
keeps the surfboard industry alive. Your failures can’t be
attributed to the misplacement of limbs, the panic as you hover in
the lip, the razor-blade paddle technique. Gotta be the board. And
so you buy and accumulate surfboards like a vain woman does shoes.
Every night when surf shop employees go home they laugh at you and
your stories of boards“not working” and your earnest selection of
$200 carbon fins.
You are a princess with a pea: You know the
old fairy tale? About the gal so regal she could feel a pea in her
bed even when it was buried under twenty mattresses? You actually
believe you can feel that subtle concave washing between the
fins.
You think literage is everything: Once you get
that magic number you’re obsessed by it. But what’s the
literage? How many litres? Can you build it in a 27.5?
You don’t get localism: The universal rights
of man and so forth. You’re the guy who calls a Hawaiian off a wave
at Rocky Point or an Indonesian at his home in Bali. You believe
that whomever is on the inside, wherever it is, has the absolute
right to that wave. It doesn’t if they’ve they’ve just arrived from
Italy and piloting a Wavestorm or it’s a pro-level surfer who’s
ridden the same hometown ledge, expertly, for the last ten
years.
You own at least one shark repellant: Leash,
shield, band.
You write screeds on Kelly Slater’s Instagram
criticising his surfboards.
You talk surf whenever you meet someone. Did I
tell you about my last trip to Costa Rica? Nicaragua?
Vacations are sought at surf camps: Games
of pool, surf movies, other like-minded boys? It’s a YMCA with
tan!
You use a change poncho: What do you
hide, little man?
Look down to the WQS then batten down the
hatches!
Have you been tracking these hurricanes,
Harvey, Irma and Jose? Watching them form, bob, weave, dissipate
and grow? It’s fascinating and what’s most fascinating is they way
they defy prediction. The experts, weathermen, etc. can all
postulate all they want but the storm decides what its going to do
and only decides at the very last second.
Much like the Brazilian Storm!
Do you remember the predictions of Brazilian dominance from five
or such years ago? They were going to win, win, win, win, win, win,
win. There was going to be so much winning that the country of
Brazil would be sick of winning.
Gabby won and it seemed on. Adriano won and it seemed go-ish
time but then… stall. John John took the wind and it seems as if
all the winning was overstated. I mean, I guess two out of three
ain’t bad but it never seemed… dominant.
But maybe just maybe we were tracking the wrong Brazilian Storm?
Maybe the Gabriel Medina led hurricane wasn’t the one?
For if you look down at the WQS all you see is Brazil.
Jesse Mendes
Yago Dora
Alain Delon
Michael Rodrigues
Willian Cardoso
Jean Reno
Tomas Hermes
Alejo Muniz
Jean-Luc Godard
Yves Montand
Bino Lopez
Crazy no? Most of these will be filling into the Championship
Tour in the coming two years and then will a non-Brazilian ever win
again?
Actor/Director Simon Baker says its true! Which of
our surf stars should head to the silver screen?
I have never read a Tim Winton book but I think
he is kind of a big deal in Australia and writes about surfing… or…
surf. Or… you know, something. His novel Breath might be
his biggest hit. Should we read its back?
When Loonie and Pikelet started to surf, they cycled from
Angelus to the beach with their styrofoam boards, buffeted by the
wind and, when they finally get to the sea, the waves. They
couldn’t help it: they were terrified; they were addicted.
Among the local surfers, one guy stood out. He turned up
alone, when the swell was highest, and left the rest of them for
dead. Gradually Loonie and Pike got to know this loner, Sando, who
took them under his wing. Half a lifetime later, Pike can’t free
himself from where the ride took him.
Does it make you want to purchase? Does it sound erotic? Well,
famous Australian actor Simon Baker has turned the book into a film
also called Breath so you can watch instead. Let’s quickly read
about that now.
“What was I thinking?” jokes Baker, recalling the decision
to make his directorial debut with Breath, which premieres in
Toronto. The film, which Embankment is selling worldwide, is an
adaptation of the 2008 novel by Tim Winton, a coming-of-age tale
about teen surfers in 1970s Australia. The movie stars two
non-actors in the lead roles, and Baker shot the whole thing in six
weeks, mainly on location on Australia’s west coast.
“Here I am, never having directed a film before, dealing
with kids who’ve never been on a film set before, and we’ve got the
ocean — which can’t be controlled and is such a key factor in the
story — and we’ve got almost no time to do it,” he recalls. “I
thought, ‘I’m probably going to fail miserably, but I’m going to
have a great time trying.’ ”
But Baker did have one advantage: He knew the world
described in Breath inside out. Because he lived it. Like Pikelet,
the film’s narrator and main character, Baker grew-up amid the
“crass machoism” of 1970s Australia with the twin loves of surfing
and the arts.
“I’ve been surfing since I was 10,” he recalls. “When I read
Tim’s novel I found myself weeping out of empathy for friends I
grew up with. I was living in America at the time, and his words
evoked the things I missed most (about home), the everyday sights
and smells of the growing up in Australia at that time, for those
of us who discovered the ocean and surfing played a big part in the
formation of our identity.”
For the leads, teen surfers Pikelet and Loonie, Baker cast
Samson Coulter and Ben Spence. While neither had ever acted before,
both knew their way around a board.
“I needed kids who can handle themselves in the ocean,” says
Baker. “It’s a lot easier to act than it is to surf.”
Wait… what? It’s a lot easier to act than it is to surf? That
just can’t be true. Simon Baker must never have seen In God’s
Hands.
But let’s pretend it is easier to act then to surf. Which of our
WSL heroes would you most want to see in a feature film? Gabby?
Jordy? Who?
