Gosh, says here I can buy a dang house in Nicaragua for a hundred k and have a pack of cleaners for ten bucks a day.

Dear BeachGrit: Thank you all!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

It's is the day for love!

It is Thanksgiving morning in America, the time that most of us prepare bountiful feasts to share with our loved ones and ponder all of the many things for which we are grateful. I am grateful for getting my loved ones to agree to skip the bountiful feast (I hate turkey etc.) and I am grateful for you!

I am grateful for Derek Rielly because he is the best pal ever and makes BeachGrit sing.

I am grateful for Steve “longtom” Shearer because he makes me believe that surf writing can rival any other sort.

I am grateful for Negatron because he sets the tone for our conversation.

I am grateful for Julian’s Postie, mullet, turts, Chazz Michael Michaels, PacificNorthPest, OttoBeenThere, Wig’s Paddling Style, Mattysez, Building the Revolution, Nik Karol, Nick Carroll, Abscessed Lalama, dickie toledo, Ck T, Tired old guy, SleevePocket, stewie, Ami Lost, J H, Krill, Paulo De Tarso Duarte, pubes, Rusty Shackleford, Captain Clark, Twillsy, Angelo Pappas, david f, mybrothersajunkie, Nick D, nastrabrahmus, seven5seven6, ricmatic, Karl Von Fanningstadt, DrunkenAngel, thevoiceofnoreason and all the rest for making me smile each and every day.

I am grateful for The Inertia and Stab because of the never-ending stream of funny that flows from Venice-adjacent.

I am grateful for the World Surf League because it entertains on so many levels both purposefully and not.

I am grateful for Album surfboards and my sponsorship/pro surfer status.

I am grateful for the people because you showed me that I don’t need cold Michelob Ultra to be happy just Africanized trash bees and God’s too hot sun.

I am grateful for Joel Tudor’s black belt and Kelly Slater’s blue belt because I imagine they are difficult to earn.

I am grateful for Scott Hulet and The Surfer’s Journal because it makes surfing feel classy.

I am grateful for Matt Warshaw because without him surfing’s grand history would only stretch back to 2003.

I am grateful for my wife because, as the saying goes, behind every great surf journalist is a woman who accidentally married a surf journalist and somehow doesn’t leave him.

Thank you all and Happy Thanksgiving!

Loading comments...

Load Comments

Rough justice straight from the Nathan Strom dispensary! | Photo: Derek Dunfee/@joeljitsu

News: Joel Tudor Angry Again!

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

"Go suck a dick!"

For a long there it was hard to beat the social media performance art of San Diego longboard virtuoso Joel Tudor.

His Instagram account @joeljitsu (Joel is a black belt grappler) is, or least was, a hive of incendiary opinion.

Do you remember, Bullfight: Joel Tudor vs Shawn Stussy?

Blood Feud: Joel Tudor versus the World?

Blood Feud: Joel Tudor versus Kelly Slater?

Tudor: “Crying is for girls!”

Never pompous, Joel, who is forty-one years old, had a refreshing lack of fear in his ferocity. Lately, his account had gone so quiet, free of any scalding bile, that I had simply stopped looking.

Earlier this morning, a pal alerted me to a new storm brewing. Accompanying an excellent Derek Dunfee photo of Nathan Strom colliding with a fellow longboarder, Joel wrote:

“Getting faded.”

Joel’s almost ninety thousand followers were, mostly, thrilled. Five thousand of ’em liked it. And the comments were, again mostly, positive.

“Free channels for you, brother.”

“Love it. Gotta teach the new kids about traffic control and ding repair.”

“Speed bump.”

And so on.

Then in stepped someone called @byronthekid, who threw a towel over the circle jerk.

“Really? He could not have gone up and above or down and around? It’s just surfing…fucking play time in the water. I am so tired of this egomaniacal mentality. It’s not tough, cool, or respectable. It’s just fucking stupid. I used to have a ton of respect for you Joel, but encouraging this kind of shit as a grown man? It’s lost on me. Rise above.”

This made Joel pleasingly angry.

Joel: “I didn’t ask your opinion nor do I give a fuck ….dude is lucky Nate can surf & was able to turn away avoiding conflict or injury- Nate did the right thing ….anyone who thinks differently is a kook who don’t understand the lineup….get the fuck outta the way!”

From @byronthekid: “No Joel, I know you don’t give a fuck. That’s point and that’s the sad part. I understand the lineup. Fuck I learned from guys like you, but making a spectacle of this shit gets old. In fact, you told me in the Cardiff parking lot about 12 years ago that this very mentality needs to change because kooks aren’t going anywhere and people are going to keep crowding the lineups. I guess you for got that. Keep on keepin’ on.”

The spigot was opened.

Another follower wrote:

“To much drug mr tudor, do you have always bad coment with the peoples, too much drugs you are crazzy, ex Champion you be tooo old need more education mr marihuana.”

Joel replied: “Go suck a dick!”

Back in form! And don’t it feel good!

Read the exchanges here, and thrill to Nathan Strom’s back and forthing too.

Loading comments...

Load Comments

Writer (seen acting xenophobic, addicted, addled and obsessed with appearances)

Help: Am I a “self-destructive virus?”

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

Am I an "addicted derelict obsessing over appearances while harassing those unlike me?"

Almost every single morning I wake and chuckle at the surf world around me. It is all so marvelously absurd, so wonderfully silly, marked by moments of profound connection with you my brothers and sister (hi, Jen See) and such a pleasure to wade through. I wonder what adventures will present themselves. What storylines will unfold. What funny jokes will appear and turn my chuckle into a rolling laugh. Usually I look toward Venice-adjacent, home to The Inertia and Stab, for the funny jokes.

And this morning I stumbled upon a film review The Inertia’s Arianna Huffington, Zach Weisberg, wrote titled, The Tribes of Palos Verdes Eviscerates Southern California’s Entitled, Xenophobic Surf Culture. Such a mouthful and sure to hold bountiful treasure so I dove in headfirst. Would you like to read some snippets?

“Medina (the main character) never self-identifies as a surfer, which makes her observations more honest and interesting. She loves the act of riding waves. That’s it. Not the bullshit trappings of surf identity marked by understatement, fashion, and exclusivity.”

“In fact, the only characters that identify as surfers are, unreservedly, pieces of shit.”

“While Medina humors the Bay Boys by adopting some of their behaviors for the express purpose of increasing her wave count, she never converts to become a tattooed member of “the tribe,” so to speak. She’s too curious about the world around her for that. The self-proclaimed surfers in the film are uncurious assholes.”

“We can only hope that she doesn’t turn into a xenophobic, sexual predator like all the surfers she met at home. We can only hope that she doesn’t become the self-destructive, entitled virus colonizing Southern California’s most breathtaking coastal real estate. We can only hope she doesn’t become the addicted derelict obsessing over appearances while harassing those unlike her. For her sake, we can only hope she doesn’t become the thing so many of those shitty people who caused her misery proudly call themselves: a surfer.”

Oh the chuckles dried right up. I couldn’t help but think that dear little Zach saw himself as “Medina” and I was one of the “Bay Boys.” A “shitty person causing misery proudly calling myself: a surfer.” An “uncurious asshole.” A “self-destructive, entitled virus.” And it made me wonder, is he right?

When I started in surf journalism, almost a decade ago now, it felt to me the same as it does now. Marvelously absurd, wonderfully silly, marked by moments of profound connection with you and I thought we were all in on the same joke, to some extent. I thought insults/fun-making/cajoling were all part of this good-natured dance. When surf magazines very first moved online, many years ago, I loved going to see to my little stories and read the accurately brutal assessments of my skill in the comments below. It was fun and fun is what this is all about, no?

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe time has marched on and what used to be fun is now just mean and unredeemable. Maybe it looks just plain bad. Maybe I am the only one laughing and Stab and The Inertia and Paul Speaker and Graham Stapelberg and Oakley Razorblades and Rip-Current Rory and the cameraman in Oregon and the People’s Republic of China and the city of Lemoore and Mick Fanning’s beer sandal, etc. are all just shaking their collective head at my pathetic lonely display.

So I turn to you, my brothers and sister, for advice. Is it not funny anymore? Was it ever? Should I just stop with the fun-making once and for all and focus on… ummm… just BeachGrit?

Help!

Loading comments...

Load Comments

John John's demented oop from the last time the tour hit Keramas. | Photo: WSL

Candid: No Tears for Lowers!

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

Keramas is the new big shot on tour!

It was curious, yesterday, to read the extraordinary descriptions of the horrors of a tour minus Lowers.

BeachGrit principal Chas Smith complained of a “broken heart”. What Youth‘s Travis Ferré said he felt “icky”.

It was reminiscent, of course, of the epic tantrums thrown when the WSL threw on a test event at Surf Ranch two months ago. Chas said he hated the pool more, even, than the Apple Genius bar. Travis called it “elitist and weird.”

(Read that here.)

Calendar-wise, the Lowers event is replaced by five days of Surf Ranch gymnastics. And, here, you can subscribe to sentimentality (Kelly’s dominance of the wave) and existential worries and tie yourself up in contradictory knots and say it’s the end of surfing and so forth, but it ain’t. It just ain’t. (Did the vibrator replace the phallus?)

A more worthy discussion is whether or not Keramas, which swings into the Cloudbreak slot and which now become’s the tour’s high-fidelity event, is better, or not, than Lowers.

And let’s be frank.

Keramas is twice the waves Lowers could ever be. Three times.

Oh, on its day, Lowers delivers ripe, spilling lips, both left and right, which allows a wallow-and-suck orgy.

But only on its day.

How many days does it have? How much blue compared to grey? And that sudden arrival of a Great White colony? That ain’t no fun.

Keramas has push behind its Indian Ocean swells which allows a surgical virtuosity y’aint always going to get at Lowers.

Plus, you can watch the Keramas event from a pool, the bedroom of a five-hundred-dollar-a-night villa, and all through the bottom of a gin and tonic brought to you by a gorgeous indigenous host with honey streaks in her hair, spongy upright tits and skin the colour of an Ubud sunset.

Watch John John and Seabass at Keramas here, the Mad Huey event from last year below that, and tell me Lowers is better than Keramas.

It don’t come close.

Loading comments...

Load Comments

Historic: Surf Ranch “first-ever CT event!”

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

Erasing the entire past!

I’ve been an angry man of the people this week. Cantankerous. Hot under the baby blue Yves St. Laurent collar. First it was the finally-sunk-in realization that the Pipeline Masters is really and truly getting pushed to the start of the calendar instead of ending the season like God decreed many eons ago. Then it was that Trestles and its social stratification leveling charm was being removed from tour altogether.

Now it is the wholly expected hype the Surf Ranch event is getting/will get. Kelly Slater appeared on many social media feeds yesterday declaring it will be so outstanding that we’ll basically forget the ocean entirely. Stab, trying to outpace Venice-adjacent pal The Inertia by fluffing Kelly went one further and declared, “Lemoore’s May event will mark the first-ever World Championship Tour event in history.”

The first-ever World Championship Tour event in history.

Oh I know that a word or two was simply left out of the sentence. I imagine it was supposed to read, “The first-ever World Championship Tour event to take place in a wave pool in history.” Or probably, and less balky, “The first-ever surf pool event in World Championship Tour history.”

In any case, I feel what was actually printed is a better representation of how the event will be billed.

Hyperbole will fill the air. Superlatives. First-ever. Best ever. Perfect. Perfection.

And listen to me. Grumpy. Grouchy. Anti-anti depressive. What the hell is my problem? I don’t want to be the luddite. I don’t want to be the man ludicrously pushing against the march of science. I want to love a level playing field, chance being erased from the game but… I don’t know. It all feels…. sad. Maybe I’m just not ready yet. Maybe I’m still mourning Trestles. Maybe I need to stop drinking bourbon and get back to fruity vodka drinks.

Am I wrong? Will the Michelob Ultra Surf Ranch Classic be the most exciting event on tour? Do I need to get back to fruity vodka drinks?

Is bourbon souring my disposition?

Loading comments...

Load Comments

Eat beach grit spam!