Venice-adjacent's other website claims, "Both
endorse death penalty!"
The Inertia is to surf journalism
what sexually confused boys are to the eighth grade. Meekly trying
to fit in but not knowing where. Saying loudly, “I like that too!”
when everyone else has gone quiet. Wanting to wear a My Little Pony
backpack but ending up in Green Bay Packers jersey and cut-off jean
shorts. It is endearing but also sad. And Venice-adjacent’s
definitive voice of surfing just outdid itself, angering its hero
Kelly Slater in the process!
Yesterday, almost a week after the tragic attack in New York
City which left many dead, The Inertia decided to weigh in
on the death penalty, posting the following to Instagram:
“What befell the city of New York on Tuesday – Halloween
day, no less – was nightmarish, to say the least. At least eight
were killed, according to reports, when a lone truck driver
intentionally plowed through a crowded bike lane area of Lower
Manhattan. Officials have called the attack an act of terror. The
culprit has since been apprehended and in the fallout, President
Trump (@realdonaldtrump) has called for the death penalty. ‘NYC
terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital
room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH
PENALTY!’ said Trump in a tweet. In a strange turn of events,
Worldstar Hip Hop turned full debate moderator, posting a series of
Trump’s tweets on Instagram with the caption, “#PresidentTrump
advocates the death penalty following the #NYC truck
attack…thoughts?” And among the more than 4,700 comments,
@kellyslater himself decided to chime in. ‘There’s no real reason
anyone who happily and proudly kills a bunch of innocent people
with no remorse should continue the pleasure of life,’ said Kelly
in a comment. Amid the hysteria in the comments alone, many of
which call for hanging the culprit, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov,
‘in the public square,’ Kelly’s sentiment seems tame.”
Hmmmm.
It took a lot of work to tie Kelly Slater’s position on the
death penalty to the position of Donald Trump but The
Inertia did it! Oh their “followers” were not happy, leveling
“Stay out of politics…” “You suck…” “Fire your interns…”
“Unfollowing…” attacks. Even Kelly Slater jumped in, declaring:
You’ve taken liberties with the context of my comments. But
keep up the click bait and sensationalistic headlines by trolling
comment sections of other people’s accounts for (non) stories. I
didn’t really take a stand with what or how I said this. It’s just
a knee jerk reaction and considering I was a mile away with my
daughter on the same sidewalk minutes after this happened, the
proximity of it hit home. I would advocate tying him to a post in
the middle of town and letting the public decide. Maybe that’s a
better headline. Not sure leaving him in jail on our dime for an
eternity is the answer.
Tying a murderer to a post in the middle of town and letting the
public decide his fate is wonderfully medieval and The
Inertia should have changed its headline but didn’t and
doubled down on its sadness by responding:
As surfing’s consummate spokesperson, we hold the utmost
respect for your opinion and endeavors. As such, your criticism
definitely stings. We’ll use it as a nudge to continue to
reevaluate and refine our evolving editorial process in the
fast-moving world of modern media. That said, we do believe your
opinions shared publicly on the most important (and sometimes
tragic) events in American and global culture – even on social
media – are newsworthy, and we respect your willingness to share
those thoughts. If anything, it drives conversations forward among
a group that otherwise might not discuss. Respectfully.
Oh hell. The Inertia‘s “editorial process” has been
“refined” and “reevaluated” a lot lately. But please don’t change
Zach and boys! You are the greatest you of all!
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Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little baaaby...
| Photo: What Youth
Industry: Is Volcom on the block?
By Chas Smith
One-time surfwear giant maybe for sale soon!
As just recently reported by Business of
Fashion and Boardistan, the French
luxury conglomerate Kering has contracted illuminati bank
Rothschild to sell German footwear manufacturer Puma, seeking a
reported 7 billion dollars in return. What a mouthful! And why
should we care? Well, the reasoning behind the proposed sale is
that Kering, which owns Gucci, St. Laurent, Al McQueen, et. al.
desires to get out of the athletic/streetwear game so it can focus
solely on being fancy.
And what does this mean for Volcom, which the group purchased in
2011 for 600 million dollars? Will it be floated back on the market
as well?
Ooooh let’s wonder!
I think probably yes and I think Oaktree Capital may purchase.
Oaktree, in case you forgot, owns Billabong’s debt and Quiksilver.
There have been rumors this year that the asset management firm
might want to buy Rip Curl. If if if it did and if it bought Volcom
too then do you think the United States government would come in
and bust up the monopoly because of its vast surf power or do you
think the United States government would scratch its head and say,
“Ummmmm why are you doing this to yourself?”
How much do you think Volcom is worth?
How much would you buy it for?
What if, as part of the sale, Noa Deane and Mitch Coleborn would
come and play lullabies for you each and every night?
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Jordy Smith, happy…elevated… in his back zip
O'Neill suit.
Faux/Real: The Back-Zip Wetsuit!
By Derek Rielly
Ancient technology triumphs in wetsuit design.
If you would examine your current wetsuit,
you’d find it to be a chest-zip or zipper-less suit. Am I
right?
To get into these suits is a melodrama. You must squeeze your
heft into a little hole, push one arm into a smaller hole, shimmy
it up around your chest, fix first arm, then second, throw the flap
over your head and so on. Its removal requires yogi-like
dexterity.
Some years ago, all wetsuits came with a long zip from ass to
neck. Entry was via a hole as big as your waist, not your neck, and
the transaction was completed in a minute or less. It’s
post-session removal was almost instant.
But then, partly through marketing (pressure on designers from
their sales departments to give something new to push), partly
through the need to create so-called advancements in technology
(testing showed back zips were slightly more permeable than a neck
entry), the back zip faded into memory.
A few weeks ago, I saw that Need Essentials had thrown
a few back-zip steamers into their
range. And, yesterday, while surfing with a pal in
Leucadia he loaned me a one-year-old O’Neill Psychofreak
with a back zip or, as its called by O’Neill, a “Zen Zip”.
It’s been a decade or so since I’d experienced the thrill of
easily throwing on a suit. It was elevating.
And after the session, all it took to loose my torso into the
sun was a one-handed rip of the neck closure and a yank of the
zip.
I find the back zip so superior to either zipperless or the
chest-zip that this hardly qualifies as faux or real.
But maybe I’m wrong.
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Matt Warshaw, the author of “The Encyclopedia of
Surfing,” called the antagonism toward Wavestormers “just the
latest misguided frustration for surfers, who are always pissed
off,” and said that it resembled the scorn that surfers had in the
eighties for bodyboarding, then experiencing a boom. “You saw prime
breaks like Off the Wall, on the North Shore, become nearly
overtaken by bodyboarders,” he said. “It was like the killer bees
were coming. You’d think there was going to be a civil
war.”
“The Cult of the Costco Surfboard!”
By Derek Rielly
The world's biggest-selling surfboard in The New
Yorker.
In your most uproarious fantasy, did you ever
imagine the biggest-selling surfboard in the world would be an
eight-foot long softie from a membership-only warehouse
retailer?
Over the past few years, the Wavestorm has been championed by
very good surfers, notably Jamie O’Brien, in the sort of ironic
gesture that often morphs into a general acceptance.
Like those ironic shakas you throw at pals that quickly replaces
a wave. Like calling everyone “bro” for laughs until it becomes
standardised.
Recently, The New Yorker examined the phenomenon in a
story called “The Cult of the Costco Surfboard”.
Read a little.
Though it has been nipped, tucked, and stiffened over the
years, the Wavestorm eight-footer has existed in roughly the same
form since 2006. That’s when Matt Zilinskas, a former manager of
the Boogie Board brand, and the Taiwanese businessman John Yeh, of
AGIT Global—Boogie Board’s manufacturer—tweaked AGIT’s sandwich of
expanded polystyrene foam and plastic to create a board for a
surfer’s “first standup experience.” The Wavestorm, a high-volume,
low-profit-margin play, was priced at a third of what most starter
surfboards cost. By 2015, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that over
half a million Wavestorms had been sold, and Costco was on pace to
sell a hundred thousand that year alone. (Zilinskas calls those
numbers “outrageous” but declined to provide more accurate
figures.) In peak summer, they can be bought at nearly two hundred
coastal Costco locations.
And,
The Web is where the Wavestorm phenomenon
has been most thoroughly documented. The Instagram account the Kook
of the Day, which has over half a million subscribers, compiles
surreptitiously snapped photos and footage of neophytes committing
various style errors and surfing sins. In one shot, a Wavestormer
wears board shorts over his wetsuit; in another, a person riding a
hoverboard drags the tail of his Wavestorm though an intersection.
One Kook of the Day staple is a shot of Wavestorm boards hastily
shoved through the sunroof of some sedan, splayed like pickup
sticks. A number of videos show Wavestormers face-planting in
foot-high surf.
But not all social-media fodder over the
Wavestorm has been as barbed. The Instagram account Team Wavestorm
Official—which, despite its name, is not affiliated with the brand
in any way—has more than twenty-three thousand followers, and
enthusiastically cheers on Wavestorm riders, whom the account’s
creator, Nate Rohner, calls “the outcasts of surfing.” There are
photos of locals riding the budget boards on the thunderous waves
of Makaha, a surf break near an economically depressed town in
Oahu, and there are surfboard selfies taken by Mike Coots, a
shark-attack victim who surfs on a Wavestorm because his prosthetic
leg would damage a fibreglass board.
Questions: do you enjoy the democratising
effect of cheap, easy-to-ride surfboards?
Do you own a Wavestorm?
Or are you such an insubordinate cuss your
mood grows dark at the mention of Wavestorm?
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Alignment: BeachGrit is “Chaotic
Evil!”
By Chas Smith
Surf media explained!
Do you love personality tests/character
profiles/internet quizzes as much as I do? I clearly remember the
first time I was made aware of Myers-Briggs and thought, “Whoa! A
key to my inner potential!” Of course it wasn’t, I have no inner
potential, but it is so fun to dream. And it is fun to dream with
each new variation that pops up. Like Alignment! Have you heard of
this one? It declares:
A creature’s general moral and personal attitudes are
represented by its alignment: lawful good, neutral good, chaotic
good, lawful neutral, neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful evil,
neutral evil, or chaotic evil.
Alignment is a tool for developing your character’s
identity. It is not a straitjacket for restricting your character.
Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or
personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can
still be quite different from each other. In addition, few people
are completely consistent.
So far so good. And where does the surf media fit here? Good
thing we have friends. A wonderful one sent me this via Instagram
yesterday and it has kept me pondering for hours.
And let’s disect!
WSL is Lawful Good:
A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or
required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the
discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his
word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A
lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful
good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and
compassion. Lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it
restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.
Surfer is Neutral Good:
A neutral good character does the best that a good person can
do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and
magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the
best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good
without bias for or against order. Neutral good can be a dangerous
alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of
the truly capable.
@kookslams is Chaotic Good:
A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with
little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way,
but he’s kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but
has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people
try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his
own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of
society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it
combines a good heart with a free spirit. Chaotic good can be a
dangerous alignment when it disrupts the order of society and
punishes those who do well for themselves.
The Inertia is Lawful Neutral:
A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal
code directs her. Order and organization are paramount to her. She
may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or
she may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized
government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because
it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot.
Lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it seeks to
eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.
Surfline is True Neutral:
A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She
doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good
vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutral characters exhibit a lack
of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such
a character thinks of good as better than evil-after all, she would
rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she’s
not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or
universal way. Some neutral characters, on the other hand, commit
themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law,
and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the
middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the
long run. Neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means
you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. Neutral can be
a dangerous alignment when it represents apathy, indifference, and
a lack of conviction.
Surf Splendor is Chaotic Neutral:
A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an
individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn’t
strive to protect others’ freedom. He avoids authority, resents
restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral
character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a
campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either
by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to
make those different from himself suffer). A chaotic neutral
character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally
random. He is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it.
Chaotic neutral is the best alignment you can be because it
represents true freedom from both society’s restrictions and a
do-gooder’s zeal. Chaotic neutral can be a dangerous alignment when
it seeks to eliminate all authority, harmony, and order in
society.
Stab is Lawful Evil:
A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within
the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts.
He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom,
dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or
compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to
rule, but is willing to serve. He condemns others not according to
their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social
rank. He is loath to break laws or promises. This reluctance comes
partly from his nature and partly because he depends on order to
protect himself from those who oppose him on moral grounds. Some
lawful evil villains have particular taboos, such as not killing in
cold blood (but having underlings do it) or not letting children
come to harm (if it can be helped). They imagine that these
compunctions put them above unprincipled villains. Some lawful evil
people and creatures commit themselves to evil with a zeal like
that of a crusader committed to good. Beyond being willing to hurt
others for their own ends, they take pleasure in spreading evil as
an end unto itself. They may also see doing evil as part of a duty
to an evil deity or master. Lawful evil creatures consider their
alignment to be the best because it combines honor with a dedicated
self-interest. Lawful evil is the most dangerous alignment because
it represents methodical, intentional, and frequently successful
evil.
What Youth is Neutral Evil:
A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She
is out for herself, pure and simple. She sheds no tears for those
she kills, whether for profit, sport, or convenience. She has no
love of order and holds no illusion that following laws,
traditions, or codes would make her any better or more noble. On
the other hand, she doesn’t have the restless nature or love of
conflict that a chaotic evil villain has. Some neutral evil
villains hold up evil as an ideal, committing evil for its own
sake. Most often, such villains are devoted to evil deities or
secret societies. Neutral evil beings consider their alignment to
be the best because they can advance themselves without regard for
others. Neutral evil is the most dangerous alignment because it
represents pure evil without honor and without variation.
BeachGrit is Chaotic Evil:
A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and
lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious,
arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for
whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed
to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his
plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly
organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work
together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he
can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him. Chaotic evil is
sometimes called “demonic” because demons are the epitome of
chaotic evil. Chaotic evil beings believe their alignment is the
best because it combines self-interest and pure freedom. Chaotic
evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents the
destruction not only of beauty and life but also of the order on
which beauty and life depend.
And do you agree? Is this the best summation of surf media? The
most accurate? Weigh in! And where do you fall personally? With
which outlet do you naturally align?
