Surfing is a trivial pursuit. A sexy sabbatical
from the monotony and minutiae of life.
Of course, there are tedious stories of How Surf Saved My
Life and so on, mostly click-bait trash.
Then there is the rare occasion when surfing does pull a person,
people, away from the darkness.
This Netflix film, which is called Resurface, is
the story of how war veterans with post traumatic stress disorder
or PTSD (two out of every three vet gets hit with it, turn to
surfing to steal a little joy out of lives ruined by the spectre of
war-time atrocities.
“Surfing was on my bucket list. I was going to surf, and then go
home and commit suicide,” says one.
He ain’t alone. Twenty two vets kill ’emselves every damn
day.
Here, watch as men crippled, smashed, ruined by war find
quietude in the water.
“When I caught that wave it wasn’t death and destruction and
hell. The ocean is the one place I can go for peace.”
Watch.
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Confession: I don’t like short people!
By Chas Smith
I don't like their tubes and I don't like their
turns.
(This piece first appeared on Breitbart News)
Call me racist but I don’t like watching short
people surf and this goes from Adriana de Souza all the way to
Silvana Lima. I don’t like their turns I don’t like their tubes I
don’t like their little arms holding trophies at the end of
contests. I don’t like any of it and this goes from Keanu Asing all
the way to Tyler Wright.
Go ahead. Tell me I’m a giant sexist pig but I ain’t backing
down.
Now, I don’t necessarily like watching tall people surf either
and this goes all the way from Owen Wright to Chas Smith. We look
like flimsy willows about to blow right over all elbows and
assholes but short people are worse. They look like they are garden
gnomes who have been glued to their boards.
Be my guest. Paint me a homophobe. It won’t stop the way I
feel.
Because I feel that there should be professional surfing height
limits like there are at Legoland. You must be over 70 inches and
under 75 inches in order to take the ride (for men) and over 65
inches and under 70 inches (for women).
This would be more pleasing for everyone. We could all truly and
genuinely enjoy the show. Sure it is not the “politically correct”
opinion but it is the right one. And one worth being branded a
xenophobe to hold.
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Newport surfer Bobby Gumm.
Guaranteed*: Win a surf contest!
By Chas Smith
And fulfill your childhood dreams!
Late at night, long after the sun has gone down
and you are laying in bed, do stray thoughts ever infect your mind?
Like, do you ever think, “I wonder how it feels to be a
professional surfing champion? To stand there, on the beach after
vanquishing foes while the masses cheer. Hoisting a trophy. Being
sprayed with champagne. Being forever known as a professional
surfing champion…”
For sure you have, right? But then you sleep, wake, drink
coffee, go surf and do a few hitchy cutbacks and think, “Well son
of a bitch.” Champagne dreams evaporating into a cold, handicapped
reality.
Well guess what. This Saturday and Sunday in Newport, Oregon
there is an event you are guaranteed* to win. Let’s read about
it!
In the competitive world of surfing, there’s a unique
language. First, there’s the weather, which doesn’t necessarily
mean rain or sunshine, but wind conditions, specifically the knots
and direction. Then, swells, including height and direction, a big
factor whether you’re a novice or advanced competitor. The swell
dynamic is also important- choppy or smooth. Small waves are
considered ankle busters. And, don’t forget the break- beach breaks
put you on the sand. A barrel or a tube is considered the ultimate
experience. Dumpers are not fun, they usually precipitate a
wipeout.
Most important to any surfer is the ride and what he or she
can do with it. The feeling of catching a ride or “taking the drop”
down the face of a wave is exhilarating to any level of surfer. The
combination of balance, stance, and agility can turn the experience
from a drop to a masterful spin or aerial maneuver. This is why
surfing draws all ages of men and women to gear up or enjoy the
thrills of being a spectator.
The Oregon coast offers dynamic surfing opportunities. The
rugged coastline, unparalleled views, and offshore winds create
ideal conditions. With the right gear, surfers acclimate to the
chilly 55 degree ocean temperatures.
On Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, the City of
Newport Parks and Recreation will host the second annual Agate
Beach Surf Classic for surfers of all levels. According to Mike
Cavanaugh, Sports Coordinator for the City’s Parks and Recreation
department,
“This is a one of a kind event. It is sponsored by the City
in collaboration with private businesses. Most people have never
seen this; surfing contests are usually put on by surf
shops.”
Cavanaugh says the iconic headlands and vast coastline make
Agate Beach a good location.
“Last year we had 92 contestants and we expect a good
turnout again,” he stated. Agate Beach is also ideal for
spectators.”
Cavanaugh encourages surfers to pre-register online at
www.newportsurfclassic.com. Fees
are $40, or $50 onsite. “We want to be sure we can accommodate
everyone,” he said. “Last year we had a huge boom of onsite
registrations, so we had to change a few heats at the last
minute.”
The competition is organized into the following divisions:
Youth 12 & Under (with or without parent), Stand Up Paddleboard
(non-age, non-gender), Junior Women 13-18 (long or shortboard), Men
19-49 (longboard), Pro/Am Men (shortboard), and Men 50+ in Honor of
Bear Club Legends (long or shortboard).
Each division is broken down into heats. Saturday’s schedule
will have sixteen 20-minute heats with four to six surfers per
heat. There are two preliminary rounds for each heat. Organizers
try to give surfers the most time available in the water to
demonstrate their skills. Second rounds give people the benefit of
competition, since conditions and sets vary. A competitor’s score
is a lump sum of their first two rounds.
I surfed in Newport a few times as a wayward Oregonian youth. I
saw some of the locals and while God blesses their hearts if you
go, enter, surf you will guaranteed* win. And you will be a
professional surfing champion for the rest of your life.
What is that worth to you?
*Margin of error is 50% in case you get eaten by a shark
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Laird Hamilton, aged twenty four on the set of North
Shore.
Laird: “I was a minority in a racially
tense world!”
By Derek Rielly
The world's greatest rhino chaster on his new
biopic Take Every Wave…
Earlier today, a well-proportioned
fifty-three-year-old Hawaiian-born man, a superhuman some
might say, lighted up my telephone from his summer house in Malibu,
California.
Laird Zerfas (later, Hamilton, when his mammy split from daddy
and moved her and the boy to the North Shore where she married the
big-waver Billy Hamilton) was born in an experimental salt-water
sphere, was scouted as a model as a teenager and, later, turned the
whole big-wave thing on the head with tow-surfing, foils and so
on.
Malibu in summer is where Laird does his pre-season training:
running, swimming, paddling, six, sometimes seven days a week.
Maui, in winter, is where Laird besieges his favourite big
waves. Jaws etc.
Laird was calling to talk about the movie Take Every Wave:
the life of Laird Hamilton, the biopic directed by Rory
Kennedy, which is loosed into fifty American cinemas in two
days.
In a few hours he’ll be fronting the US premiere (the movie’s
world premiere was at Savage Cinema at the San Sebastian Film
Festival in Spain) perhaps even ditching the famous
flip-flops-with-jeans look.
BeachGrit: In the trailer, ’cause, caveat, I ain’t seen
the film, lost the link to the screener, you said the ocean
was where you could get away from trouble on the land? What
trouble?
Laird: I grew up a white guy in Hawaii and there was a certain
level of …of…of…aggression… on the land. Or should I say,
instead of aggression, a certain level of separation. I was a white
guy in a dark guy’s world. I was an outsider, like I am in surfing,
so it was a natural place for me. Some of my best friends are
Hawaiians and some of the greatest and most beautiful people are
Hawaiians. But when you’re a minority in a racially tense
environment you get used to being an outcast. I think that shaped
my life.
BeachGrit: Do you sympathise with the wretched treatment
doled out to Afro-Americanos by the White Devil on the
mainland?
Laird: I sympathise. First of all, it makes me anti-racial. I
always say I’m a human from earth. If you’re different we can talk
about it. I am anti-racial. I have friends of all nationalities and
I don’t discriminate.
BeachGrit: What’s the key to a remarkable
life?
Laird: You’ll never regret following your heart. You don’t
always know if you’re going in the right direction but if you go
with your heart and instincts it seems to pan out. At least for
me.
BeachGrit: How honest is the film?
Laird: It’s about as honest and open as I can be. I did twenty
five hours of interviews with Rory Kennedy, the director, and she
interviewed every person that she could and dug out archival
footage and she made a story out of it. What she chooses to put in
and what she chooses to take out, it’s all her and her skills. I
did what I could to make a great film. Some people are quite
surprised by it. But, is every single thing that happened to me in
it? No. You couldn’t fit it all in a two-hour movie.
BeachGrit: What keeps you awake at
night?
Laird: The wellness of my children. Things that I desire keep me
awake too. I’m kept awake by the inspirational as well as the fear
based. But the things that are fear-based have to do with my
family.
BeachGrit: Have you ever believed you were about to
die?
Laird: I have. Probably more than once. Most of ’em happened
when I was really young.
BeachGrit: Can you recount a specific
event?
Laird: They blend together. I try not to give anything like that
too much power.
BeachGrit: What’s failure to you?
Laird: Not willing to try is a form of failure. The lack of an
ability to say you’re sorry, there’s failure in that.
When I’m in danger, when I’m in a position of fear, I’m on high
alert. It’s the most awake I can be in my life. My awareness,
everything, peripheral vision, my senses are on maximum.
Everything’s turned up.
BeachGrit: What’s fear to you?
Laird: Fear is your imagination. Fear itself is an energy, an
emotion that is very useful. Being scared is something else,
however.
BeachGrit: How does fear manifest itself within
you?
Laird: When I’m in danger, when I’m in a position of fear, I’m
on high alert. It’s the most awake I can be in my life. My
awareness, everything, peripheral vision, my senses are on maximum.
I’m assessing. Everything’s turned up. It’s a mode I go into. I’ve
been there before and it’s got me through a lot of different
situations.
BeachGrit: What would you change about your
life?
Laird: Nothing if it would stop me from being here, today, at
this time. Listen, are there things I’m remorseful for? That I
regret? Yeah, possibly. Everyone has that. But, if the changing of
those things would change where I am, I wouldn’t change any of ‘em.
Listen, at a certain point, having regrets is unhealthy anyway.
BeachGrit: This ain’t movie, but that damn hip you
got sawn off and replaced a year ago. You’re awake in the
operation and you go home without painkillers. Oowee, that’s
tough.
Laird: It felt like a horse kick for three months. But it had
gotten to the point where I could barely walk. I’d surf for two
hours and then have to do two hours of mobility, soft-tissue work
to get it neutral. I don’t mind hobbling around if I can perform in
the ocean but it was starting to inhibit my ability in the
water.
BeachGrit: Is watching your hip get sawn off and
replaced with steel a fabulous experience?
Laird: The doctor was covered in my blood, all over his
mask. I could feel him yanking on me. I could feel pulsing as he
was doing shit to my leg. It wasn’t pain because they did a spinal
tap where they numb one leg. I called one of my buddies to talk
during the operation for amusement,
BeachGrit: How y’feel now?
Laird: Phenomenal. I run the beach but I got other issues now.
Other things that hurt, but not that.
BeachGrit: Take Every Wave is a life story. Describe
your life.
Laird: Listen, the film is full disclosure. Life is a
rollercoaster and no matter what is perceived in the media, there’s
a winter, a summer, a hurricane, a calm. Things happen. Experience
happens. My life is no different.
And watch in weird 360!
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Revealed: World’s Best Surf Town!
By Chas Smith
I'll cut the suspense! It's New York City!
(I’ll admit… it is late in the afternoon here and I am tired
and not drunk buuuuuut never mind. I wanted to write something
fresh and good buuuuuut… and while I was Googling “best surfing
towns” I saw that Surfer just
finished their honorable and serious but maybe a touch conservative
list (Haleiwa, San Clemente etc.) and I also saw an old Stab piece from
five years ago written by yours truly. No, the best surf town in
the world is not Haleiwa. It is New York City. And right now it is
pumping thanks to Maria. Please forgive the hotel/restaurant
recommendations in the following. Five years ago = 1000 years ago
in New York. Otherwise…. enjoy my lazy!)
New York is the only city on Earth that truly
matters. Paris is grand and London is nice and Sydney is chic and
Los Angeles is a dream and Cairo and Beijing and Helsinki and Tokyo
but New York is New York and all other cities prostrate themselves
before her.
New York is broken up in to five distinct neighbourhoods, called
boroughs. Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Rappers croon about the Bronx. Robert Mapplethorpe made very
suggestive art in Queens. Staten Island stars in Good Fellas and
hipsters have recently embraced Brooklyn but when Stab speaks of
New York it only speaks of Manhattan.
Why here? To be frank, I don’t know. Young Jack
Robinson’s father, when he gets your ear, will talk on and on about
how the rocks in Western Australia have certain magnetic properties
and those properties, when channelled and honed, will produce
surfing phenoms like Taj Burrow and his son. He sounds off, but Taj
is Taj and Jack is Jack just like New York is New York. Maybe
Manhattan has particular chemical properties. Maybe the earth’s
tilt focuses on the five boroughs and especially on Manhattan.
Maybe who knows. But when you get off a plane in New York. When
your train arrives you will feel it. There is the top tier and then
there is New York. The food is the best. The hotels are the best.
The art is the best. The shopping is the best. The architecture is
the best. The streets are the best. The music is the best. The
women are not the best. That is what Los Angeles is for.
Where to stay: There are too many places. The
Standard, the Standard East Village, the Ace, the Jane, the
Gansevoort but Stab chooses the Bowery above all else. It is
located in the lower east side, which used to be grimy but is now
so hip that it hurts. The Bowery will cost $400 or so dollars a
night but it is worth the dent. The rooms are generous, in space,
which is rare for New York. They have great old windows, some floor
to ceiling that peek out over the city. In-room linens are
comfortable. The public spaces are stripped down and built to party
in a very sophisticated way. It makes great cocktails. Again, $400
a night may seem hefty but New York demands your dollar and will
reward them with the best time. Do not stay cheap. Do not stay with
friends. Do not stay cheap.
What to see: Manhattan has sights for days.
Each little nook of the island is filled with treasure for the
discovery. The meatpacking district is fine for higher-end
shopping. Tribeca is fine for cocktails. The lower east side is
fine for hip buys. Central park is fine for thoughtful meanders.
Soho is fine for all of the above. Downtown is fine to watch
Patrick Bateman go to work. Walk, don’t ride or even subway. In
walking, you will discover the textural nuances of Manhattan. But
you will not see any beautiful women. Unless you are in Soho and
then you will see models.
The shivering, blinding contrast of life as a surfer in NYC. Early
Autumn hits in water still trunk-able and…
Where to eat: Everywhere. There are too many
places to eat in New York. It hurts the head to ponder possibility.
Do not listen to the hip New York crowd. They will crow on and on
about Momofuku or the newest this and the newest that. Their tastes
have become spoiled by excess. They no longer know what actually
tastes good. Start with Pastis in the meatpacking. Order a chilled
Sancerre, oysters and a steak plus frittes. Go from there.
What to dodge: Do not set foot in Brooklyn.
When in New York, the same hip crew that tells you to eat at
Momofuku will also live in Brooklyn and tell you to stay in/visit
Brooklyn. It is trendy. It is hip. It has better restaurants and
more refined boutiques. And this hip crew may be right but for you,
and for me, Manhattan is enough. Manhattan is, in fact, too much.
And so do not confuse yourself by ultra hip Brooklyn. Leave it
be.
Culture: The best museums in the world dot the
island. The best museums and priceless works of art and also
hipster hovel museums boasting the next Andy Warhol. Art is
fabulous, art is divine, art can be dull. Season to taste.
Broadway, literal Broadway, hails from New York. The latest most
wow musical theatre. Musical theatre is the worst. Do not touch.
Simply being in New York is enough culture. Soak in the
surroundings. Don’t look shell-shocked. Look slightly jaded.
Work: Who knows? Waiting tables? Moving other
people’s things out of their walk-up apartments into other walk-up
apartments? Selling magazines from a rack? I don’t know what people
do for work in New York. I don’t know how people have time for work
with so much culture and fun around.
Surf: You will surf at Rockaway Beach and on Long Island. You will
surf during Hurricane season and during the winter, if you feel
like wearing a 5 mm wetsuit, a hood, booties and gloves. It will be
shit, except for the three days a year surrounding the right
hurricane. You will surf because it is a novelty to New Yorkers and
you will get appropriate stares, nods of approval, questions. The
models in Soho may even talk with you.
Weather: Cold in the winter, humid hot in the
summer, perfect in the spring and fall. New Yorkers love it when
seasons change and they are right. It is loveable. Enjoy the
nuances of each. Dress appropriately for each. Dress appropriate
always.
The Good and the Not-So-Good
+ If you can make it here, as they say, y’can make it anywhere.
Truth is, having NYC on your CV makes interviewers just melt. Shit
don’t stop in the Apple and now it even turns on in what used to be
crummy burbs like Brooklyn. Waves, as y’mighta seen on the
Quiksilver webcast, can be as good as anywhere. It’s also the
centre of the universe, culturally and financially, which is pretty
much the reason it got hit so hard and so well by fanatical
muslims, so maybe that ain’t such a plus.
– Cold, inconsistent and when the novelty wears off, ain’t that
diff to any other dirty big city.
