This morning I went for a surf on my new
asymmetrical surfboard from Album. The waves were small, walled and
dumpy. I had a fantastic time and will discuss the revelation of
asymmetry soon but in the meantime we have something very important
to consider.
The pre-surf change.
I had forgotten my towel, you see, and stood there behind my car
in black APC jeans looking at my trunks. What to do? Get my car,
close the doors and try to be discreet? Use my shirt as a makeshift
towel? Not surf?
Then I thought back to the very first time I visited Derek
Rielly in Australia. I had come to write something for Stab and
Derek and Sam picked me up at the airport, said there were waves
and we were going surfing. Nothing but nothing beats washing off a
transpacific flight like salt water so I was happy. We went to some
beach south, or maybe north, of Sydney, got out of the car and the
waves looked fun.
Derek proceeded to get all the way naked in order to get into
his wetsuit. I can’t remember what Sam did but I do remember
thinking “Wow! Australia is so much more progressive! So much less
uptight than America!”
I assumed that everyone naked changed in Australia and only
realized this was not the case days later when, in Bondi’s carpark
watched Derek get full nude again and watched the upset stares from
passersby.
In any case, Derek was progressive and as I stood behind my car
I thought, “Fuck towels (except Leus
who make an exceptional product)” and got nude myself.
I stood for a minute, out in the open and felt… free.
Then I went out and had a fantastic time in slop.
When I came in I saw all manner of men changing from wetsuit or
trunk to pant or short and vice versa. Some had normal towels.
Others had long dumb panchos. Some were standing on mats with their
towels. Others were standing on the street with their panchos.
If they only knew what true liberty really felt like. If they
only knew that shame needn’t control their lives. If only we could
all be free.
You won’t find me in a towel again (unless its by Leus). I
encourage you to be bold too.
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Question: Why does surfing hate
tennis?
By Chas Smith
Nothing raises a surfer's hackles like the racket
and the ball!
One long ten days ago I asked, right here, who
is surfing’s natural enemy? We all need an enemy. Someone to kick
against. Someone to really oooooooooooh just hate. And as I thought
about surfing it felt like we didn’t have one.
You, of course, were so helpful suggesting mental health, work,
chaffing, self, $2 parking, etc. and I would gladly accept any of
these and form committees to combat and write hate messages about
on my surfboard. But just this morning as I sat down with my
delivered daily copy of Olympics.org that surfing
chose an enemy six short years ago and has been chaffing against
ever since.
Tennis!
Oh you recall the original harangue. It is in our hall of
fame!
And since then I have read various passive-aggressive bashes
against tennis culminating in surfing’s Olympic ambassador, the
reason our boys will fight for gold in three medium years. Reef’s
ex-owner, Argentina’s own Fernando Aguerre just today!
He told Olympics.org:
“We had paddled out but there were no waves,” Aguerre said.
“We kind of figured out that waves were going to come at some point
but we didn’t really know when they were going to come because they
were out of our control.”
“Then he got elected and started talking about Agenda 2020
and it was approved and then I realised this looked like real
waves.”
Suddenly things began to tumble into place. First, in 2015
surfing was unanimously voted on to the programme for the 2019 Pan
American Games, in Lima, Peru. And then came the big one, in Rio de
Janeiro, on the eve of the 2016 Olympic Games.
The “real work” has started now and the high is, for
Aguerre, clearly still intoxicating.
“Now they (young people) don’t need to become tennis players
or track and field athletes, they can be surfers and Olympians,”
the Argentine said with obvious pride.
But I don’t get it. What makes tennis so bad? It’s played
outside, the scoring is not subjective, the men are handsome, the
women are beautiful, the money is good. It’s both easy to
understand and enjoyable to watch.
Is surfing just jealous? Is that why?
Help me understand!
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This is the dream, of course. Coiled up with a pretty
thing in a timber accented van, tailgate opened to reveal startling
vista.
Watch: #Vanlife for old men!
By Derek Rielly
Not all surfers living in vans are pretty things
blogging for cash.
The images of #Vanlife that ripple across our little
telephone screens ignite an insatiable fire, equal
parts lust, travel, freedom.
Do you remember when The New Yorker
wrote about all these pretty surfers laying around undressed in
camper vans, doors open to reveal startlingly beautiful vistas?
Like this?
The reality of #vanlife, of life, is vastly different.
If, at a certain point, and age, you’re living in a van, it’s
not because you blog for cash and have a gorgeous thing to share it
with.
It ain’t #van life. It’s living in a van. No hashtags.
The job disappears. You get divorced. Maybe you make a bad
decision, get in fight, a lover’s spat turns into a court case, and
you spend a year or so in the can.
All the money goes. It ain’t easy to cover rent. So you figure
you’ll spend a few weeks in your car until the storm passes and
life rights itself.
But it doesn’t.
And then you start to like the freedom that only hitting the
bottom can bring. Work when necessary, as little as possible if
we’re going to be honest, and days spent swept up by the ocean, not
by the office cube.
Like Bob, here, who lives in the most rudimentary of vans and
calls the Avalon beachfront carpark home.
I wouldn’t call this film an inspiring call to arms, more a
terrifying example of what happens if you don’t get your shit
together while you’re young.
And, yet, as a document of a man trying to get by in life as
best he can, handed lemons, makes the metaphorical lemonade stand,
it really is quite beautiful.
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Zach Weisberg (in all white) exports his favorite surf
move.
Pocket Shaka: Buy or Sell?
By Chas Smith
Should a new craze be sweeping the surf world?
If you listened to the latest Grit!
podcast (Do now here! It
is noted not surf journalist J.P. Currie approved!) you know
my position on the shaka. I find it a wonderful bond that ties all
surfers together and should be used by us regularly and
exclusively. Oh sure it is uncomfortable when you first start but
that’s what irony is for. Toss ironically until it becomes second
nature.
I also broadcasted my position on the pocket shaka or the “poka”
which is used by Zach Weisberg of Venice-adjacent’s favorite
longboard skateboard website The Inertia.
If memory serves I called it, “A pathetic attempt to be both
edgy and impossibly short at the same time…”
Or something.
But now I’m rethinking. Should we be doing this every time we
put our hands in our impossibly small pockets?
Is the poka a buy or is it a sell?
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These gun trucks were very common outside the capital
and I still dream about bringing one here.
Yemen: Killer in the Streets!
By Chas Smith
Chapter 5: Boys acquire Landcruisers and watch Sean
Paul.
(I am writing a series about Yemen because what is currently
happening there is terrible beyond. My inaction disgusts me and so
I am going to introduce you to to the country because… the place,
people, culture all deserve to be saved. Catch up, if you wish, on
the links below…)
One of Yemen’s most celebrated pastime, prior
to getting bombed, was kidnapping foreigners and ransoming them
back to family/business/country or origin. It was a pure financial
play, not religious or political, and the kidnapers seemed to know
the market value well, never going bananas and, say, asking for
millions of dollars for a teacher or hundreds of thousands for a
journalist.
A new road was needed through town so a person would be borrowed
and the road would get built. A new well? Borrow and build. It was
part of the ebb and flow of daily life with Yemenis even kidnapping
other Yemenis, and generally fun for all. Foreigners who were
kidnapped discussed the hospitality of their hosts, marveling about
the one-of-a-kind experience they were afforded.
And it was with this in the back of our minds that we spent
those first few days wandering the streets of Sana’a with neither
passport nor any real way to leave town. Yemen was as tribal then
as it is now with the central government maintaining only the
loosest control outside of the capital. Still, Yemeni troops were
spread from one edge of the country to the other and in order to
travel one had to have permission slips for each region from the
government.
But Sana’a was fantastically magical enough to hold our
attention. The old city was an almost untouched medieval throwback.
Donkeys navigated the maze-like pathways between ancient towers.
Men sat in the shade chewing qat. Women didn’t exist. I had been to
the Middle East twice before. I had climbed the great pyramids in
Egypt (totally illegally and a wonderful story). I had climbed Mt.
Sinai before dawn and watched the sun come up. I had hospitaled in
Aqaba for an entire week. I thought I was an Orientalist expert but
Sana’a forever altered what I deemed “exotic.”
We found the Arabic school J. was “attending” in order to fill
out the rest of our travel budget via UCLA scholarship. It was the
same that Johnny Walker Lindh attended for a year before running
off to Afghanistan in order to fight the infidel invaders in 2002.
Do you remember him? The “American Taliban?” He was grabbed by the
Afghan Northern Forces in the city of Kuduz, tried by military
tribunal, convicted of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, providing
material support for terrorist organizations, etc. and currently
serving his sentence in Terre Haute, Indiana until 2020 or
such.
One of J.’s Islamic Studies classmates was also attending. A
wonderfully eclectic boy who wore Blue Blockers and vintage
Jean-Paul Gaultier sandals and was dating a Japanese diplomat who
worked in Yemen’s Japanese embassy. He had a camera and so we
gang-pressed him into service as a “surf photographer.” Who needs
academia when you’ve got surf?
We found the Iraqi embassy, around the corner from the apartment
we were staying, and wondered if Saddam Hussein might be hiding
out. He had just been deposed and it would have made perfect sense
for him to end run to Yemen and wait for George W. Bush not to find
his weapons of mass and then apologize. I knocked on its door and
the guard angrily shoed us away.
We sat in our mafraj and chewed qat ourselves. The leaf is such
a staple of Yemeni lives that even the smallest home is outfitted
with a room dedicated to its enjoyment. The mafraj is an open space
with cushions pushed against each wall for lounging. The leaf is
grown in Yemen’s highlands at the same elevations as coffee. The
supple shoots are harvested, wrapped in plastic and sold in qat
souqs. The growers and sellers are as dedicated to their craft as
viticulturists and sommeliers are theirs. Good qat is expensive
even by American standards and our new photographer insisted that
we bought good qat since he had developed a full on addiction.
We waited for H.
And then after five days he arrived, calling in the afternoon
and apologizing for being held up in Dubai. He said would pick us
up for dinner that evening and before we finished our daily music
video binge (music video channels are the best in the Middle East.
Between Lebanon, Egypt, Bahrain and Qatar there is a steady diet of
European club hits, forgotten American gems, Bollywood bangers and
flabby Lebanese weirdness) he was there in a cloud of brand new
black Mercedes G-Wagon smoke. He told us in his odd Rhode Island
meets Dubai accent that we were going to sushi and sped though the
streets while showing us a brand new black Uzi he kept under his
seat in a neat briefcase.
“Sushi?” I thought.
But it was good and maybe had something to do with the Japanese
Embassy. H. was maybe 40, tall, thin, paired awkwardly brand new
designer jeans with crisp button-ups and seemed neither surprised
nor dismayed by our plan to surf his country’s coast. He told us
some of the provinces were basically lawless and that the
government wasn’t issuing permission for foreigners to travel them
but… “no problem. I’ll get permission for you. And I’ll send my two
best bodyguards along. How many Landcruisers will you need?” We
told him one and that we didn’t need any bodyguards. He insisted on
two bodyguards and two Landcruisers. We told him our whopping
budget was something like $3,000 for three months.
“Guuuuuys…you’re guests. It’s no problem…” he said and then ate
a bite of delicately seasoned cat tongue. “…Come to my house
tomorrow and you can get on the road.”