A foul plan to make the world's most exciting
surfer look cheap!
Fame is a heavy, heavy burden. One moves from
“a really nice guy” to “that fucking bastard” in the blink of a few
high profile victories or few million dollars. And let us take the
case of Filipe Toledo, current best and most exciting surfer in the
world. The kind Brazilian has been the butt of a nasty viral
campaign that makes it look like he is a poor tipper. And being a
poor tipper
For our Australian, European, African-American and Japanese
friends… tipping is a custom where United States’ businesses pay
workers a very small wage while expecting the general public to
pick up the slack. Waiters, valets, bellmen, barmen, baristas,
etc., etc. etc., etc., all depend on the goodwill of the patron for
to feed their families.
Nasty but institutionalized. 10% tip is a slap in the face 15%
is for cheap assholes. 20% is considered a little high but what
what I tip because I feel for the people.
Enter Filipe Toledo. A picture has been making the rounds that
appears to show the Hurley Pro champ paying a $10.00 tip on an
$847.00.
Oh the outrage!
I have been sent the picture no less than 15 times though email,
text message and social medias and would have posted it but
something didn’t set right. The way it was cropped, to cut off the
total seemed… off.
And today my suspicions were validated. A source who knows
informed me that the tip was included at 18% which is traditional
for restaurants when the party exceeds six persons. So Filipe added
$10.00 on top of the already nice $152.00.
Who then is seeking to kill Filipe Toledo’s image?
Did a waiter take the photo and was he a Jordy Smith fan?
Did Jordy Smith take the picture and was he a Jordy Smith
fan?
Did a rabid anti-Brazilian take the picture and was he a Jordy
Smith fan?
Many questions.
What do you think?
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It's not as if the Hawaiian Albee Layer is an old fool
ragged with bitterness, living a grim bleakness, hating everything.
This is a progressive world-class surfer with ideas.
Albee Layer: “Other sports laugh at
us!”
By Derek Rielly
Why Jordy's "miracle" nine-pointer at Lowers should
never have happened.
Albee Layer is a surfer who will dance a rigadoon in
waves four feet or forty. Little surfboards and monstrous
guns.
Nathan Myers, from Surfer magazine, wrote a profile on Albee a
few years ago that spells out his arsenal. Read
here.
But.
It’s the suckling artistry of twenty-six-year-old Albee’s
mouth that we come for today.
After Jordy’s miracle
nine-pointer at Trestles three days ago, Albee posted
an Instagram story that showed the wave on his television screen
and the line, Nine points, ha ha ha.
Albee ain’t afraid to call it as he sees it. Let’s talk.
BeachGrit: I laughed my ass off when Jordy got the
nine in the final. Tell me your reaction. Did you think, wow,
perfection!
Albee: My first thought wasn’t, ‘Wow perfection’. (Laughs).
But it’s not like that wave was shocking or anything. They’ve been
handing out nines for “good” surfing every heat.
BeachGrit: Were you watching the magic unfurl with
pals? What was their reaction?
Albee: I was watching solo. Just a sad little lonely man
making fun of surfing in his living room alone probably while
eating something other than a sala
BeachGrit: What was the reaction on IG when you posted
the clip?
Albee: I got more replies to that than maybe any other video I
posted. Everyone seem to be very much on the same page as me,
wondering kind of why it seems like every heat now judges back them
selves into a corner in the first set of scores
BeachGrit: Do you think it’s remarkable that it was,
in the judges’ eyes, almost the pinnacle of surfing, the “perfect
ride”?
Albee: I believe they give high scores for a couple reasons.
A. Because its what they are used to doing and a hard habit to
break. I also don’t think they really familiarise themselves with
modern-day surfing as much as they should. And B. This is a big
one. High heat totals get views. No one’s scrolling through the
videos from the day and clicking on a heat with 10-point totals.
No, they will click on the 18-point total heats. In terms of
clickbait, the surfing is almost irrelevant because it doesn’t
matter if you like what you see once you watch the video. Getting
you to start that video gets views and views equal value to
sponsors and overall make the company more valuable. Also I’m not
picking on WSL in any way on this. Clickbait is used by every
company with a website. I use it as much as possible, it’s
basically my career. What bums me out is the way they use it. I
believe it halts the progression of surfing.
BeachGrit: All that said, the judges do, and they’re
transparent about it, operate according to a heat-by-heat scale.
And if a couple of floats on an insider is granted a seven, even
one turn on a wave double the size has gotta be the nine. Do you
like the concept of “the scale”?
Albee: Hell no. Other action sports laugh at us for awarding
perfect scores. You can go through the history of all other sports
at X-Games and stuff and people not even in that sport can probably
list you every 100 point score that has happen because they were
all historic at the time. That’s what we should be reserving tens
for. Something no-one has ever seen before. If one of the
lowest-rated surfers on tour can catch not the best wave of the
day and do not his very best surfing and still get an
excellent score, no one has any incentive to learn anything new.
And when no-one learns anything new people lose interest in
watching and when that happens surfing as a business suffers and
I’ll lose my job! Ha! So it’s all connected and that’s why I make
such a fuss about these things. Surfing is a spectator sport and
without surf fans none of any of this is possible. So it isn’t fair
to deny surf fans the absolute best surfing and I feel like the way
the scale is set now we are doing just that.
BeachGrit: The scale system renders all statistics,
all scores, irrelevant, meaningless. Because if they’re gifting
nines in one heat, but not another, how can there ever be any
statistical comparison? What do you think?
Albee: It needs to be consistent for everyone in every heat.
So what if one heat the waves suck. Give them small scores, it
won’t affect the outcome. If one heat is firing score them
accordingly but don’t give anyone a nine or ten unless it’s a wave
we can all remember easily in five or ten years. That way heats
would stay wide open till the end. If we kept those nines like
Jordy’s and several others around sixes like they should be in the
scale of what is capable in surfing right now then barely anyone
would end up comboed. So come to the end of the heat and someone
needs a score maybe they learned a new trick in the off-season and
with a minute left they need a nine and it’s time to bust it out
and create a moment we will all remember.
BeachGrit: Kelly likes to jump on your social (ok, he
jumps on everyone’s social) to debate these sorts of things. Does
that thrill you?
Albee: I love kelly. Even though he still won’t take me to his
pool. I’ve talked to him a bit about all this and he doesn’t agree
with everything I say but he agrees with quite a bit and it’s rad
’cause otherwise I’d feel like I was that crazy drunk surfer at the
bar rambling about back in the day or something. But the fact that
the GOAT cares enough to at least engage in these discussions with
me and others means there is something too it.
(Watch Albee’s marshmallow moves in his film here.)
And how’s Albee swing in contests? A little irony, given his
online debating with Kelly, is his biggest contest win was at the
Surf Snowdonia wavepool.
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Hi-tech: A new modular surfboard!
By Chas Smith
Is this the future or... not?
Do you like or dislike traveling with your
surfboards? I used to dislike it and extremely but then, just one
month ago before a short trip to Baja, I went to my local surf
shop, bought a brand-new 5’10 Pro-Lite bag and instantly changed my
entire life.
It was heaven! Pure heaven! Two boards fitting safely and
snuggly with their fins tucked in a pocked and the whole thing
resting easy on my shoulder because designers got smart and crossed
the strap across the bag kitty-corner so it wouldn’t swing around
and whack the unsuspecting. Not only was it easy, it was sleek and
hip, complimenting my Costume National carry-all perfectly.
Before one month ago I would wrap my boards in towels and then
put them into a 9 foot coffin that professional snowboarder Travis
Rice left at my house and then I would fold the coffin in half and
ducktape it down. I hated. Hated. Hated. And hated so much.
All to say an industrial designer just made a new hi-tech new
modular surfboard. Let’s read about it in Outside
magazine!
…acclaimed designer Thomas Meyerhoffer prefers the word
“adventure” when describing his latest surfboard, the 2PRT. His
creation splits in two just above the fins to help it pack down for
airplanes and buses. But more importantly, the split also makes it
modular. Users can combine various nose and tail styles to create
the perfect board for all kinds of conditions. Surfers of varying
skills and preferences can mix and match nose and tail options to
take it from a thruster to a fish to a pintail longboard with
ease.
The 2PRT is hardly the first travel-minded board. For a
short period of time, Walden sold the Tri-Fold, but it never seemed
to take off and is no longer offered. Carbon Compact and North
Shore Travel Boards offer segmented surfboards, but both designs
require tube inserts and either bolts or clamps to keep everything
from falling apart. Meanwhile, the 2PRT uses a slick and simple
system where a key loosens a latch that pops up to separate the two
ends. Total setup time: 30 seconds tops.
Surfers who travel a lot will love how well the board breaks
down. In fact, Meyerhoffer has already designed a golf-style bag
that fits two noses and two tails and won’t cost you extra airline
baggage fees. (Checking a surfboards runs runs between $75 and
$150.) You can also toss the system in the backseat of your Mini
when grabbing a few waves before work.
Even if you’re not prone to taking surf trips to Baja or
Indo, the 2PRT is worth considering since it allow for a lot of
experimentation and adaptability. It can be set up for nearly any
kind of wave, which means you can invest in one board instead of a
quiver.
I don’t trust this Meyerhoffer adventure character at all. He
may understand how things come apart but does he understand rocker,
concave, etc.? He ain’t no Matt Biolos or Jon Pyzel or Sharp Eye
or… Matt Parker (Album Surfboards) that’s for damn sure. Right?
I’ll stick with my brand-new Pro-Lite bag thank you very much.
But what about you?
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“You know what gets my dick hard? Helping out my
friends.” John C Reilly, narrator of View from a Blue Moon, with
the relentlessly fantastic surfer-filmed duo John John Florence and
Mr Blake Vincent Kueny.
John John: “Forced to strip for Old
Men!”
By Derek Rielly
"Shorts down, shirt up. You have to show it's
natural…"
Drug tests. How do you feel about ’em? If
you’re shucking iron or exploding over a hundred metres, I suppose
they do keep the charlatans from the honest folks, although perhaps
it’s more a case of who can hide their juice best.
But surf?
All the beautiful musculature in the world ain’t gonna give you
the rose bud jams of Dane Reynolds or the cat-spitting turns
of John John. Yeah, I get that peptides and so on help a brother
come back from injury, but even so, does that matter? Wouldn’t it
be a more wonderful world if Kelly could juice up and get that damn
foot better?
Anyway, I’ve never wondered too much about the collection of
urine samples, but in this episode of #TourNotes, a once-great
franchise whose luminous glow has dimmed somewhat over the last
year, John John reveals the crude machinations behind the
collection of a sample.
Cut to: Tour manager Rentao Hickel introducing John John to a
man, sixty-ish, wide-brimmed hat, face gothically stencilled with
white hair. It’s the drug tester!
How does a drug test work?
“You to have to pull your shorts down and shirt up, show that
that it’s all natural coming out of there,” says John John.
John says he’s been processed for drug tests more than ten times
and describes the difficulty of having to urinate while an old man
watches (and not even for five hundred dollars, as is the going
rate in the queer game, “I love your vunderful pee-pee,” man says
while you paddle his red ass), the process sometimes made harder by
the natural course of events such as pissing in your wetsuit,
unaware of upcoming test.
Also, in #TourNotes below is the surprise reveal that Todd Kline
is a superstar bass fishermen and wildcards have to sling the WSL
two thousand dollars for the privilege of competing.
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"See that John? That is where I left my best pals on
earth behind. I miss them every day."
Sad: Ross Williams’ resting bitch
face!
By Chas Smith
Is John John's coach unhappy in his new role?
Was Ross Williams your favorite World Surf
League on-air personality last year? The Momentum Generation star
was just the right mix thoughtful, surf-smart, genuine and
soothing. His mid-heat analysis toed the line between truly
interesting and interestingly true.
When he announced that he would be moving from the booth to John
John Florence’s side as personal coach it was a sad day but also a
happy day. Sad for us, the audience. Happy for Ross who now got to
share his insight with one of the most exciting surfers in the
world and maybe just maybe usher in second consecutive world
title.
But do you think he regrets his decision to leave Ron,
Turps, Pete, Pottz n The Razz?
I studied him during the Hurley Pro there leaning on the
competitor’s tent railing, staring out to sea. His expression never
changed. It was steely. Serious. Sullen.
Someone intelligent messaged me asking, “Why does Ross have
resting bitch face?” And I thought, “That’s is exactly what is is.
Resting bitch face. Perfect. But why indeed?”
Is it very difficult to coach?
Is it not all that it is cracked up to be?
Does John John yell at Ross behind closed doors much like Trump
does at Sessions?
Or is it simply a matter of having left the cast too early?
What if, say, Joey left Friends mid-season five. He
would have had to watch five more seasons of Ross, Rachel, Monica,
Chandler and Phoebe having the times of their lives and I guarantee
his expression would have transformed into permanently dour as
well.
Speaking of, am I right here or no?
Ross: Barton
Rachel: Pottz
Joey: Turpel
Phoebe: Strider
Chandler: Pete
Monica: Ronnie
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
