Have you been to Florida? I have and driving
from base to tip of that generally sweaty phallus altered my
deep-seated prejudices. Altered them to the point where, preparing
to leave for home I thought, “If someone held a gun to my head and
said, ‘You are moving to Florida, cunt*.’ I wouldn’t even be
upset.”
Before touching down in Orlando, I thought Florida was home to
Castro-hating Cubans, Confederate flag-loving crackers, hurricanes,
the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Ernest Hemingway’s cats and very small
surf. Oh, of course I was right but it is also home to so much
more. The Scientology Sea-Org headquarters, strip clubs, Cracker
Barrels, the University of Florida and Florida State University,
Ron Jon Surf Shops, a statue of Kelly Slater and so much more.
But speaking of that statue of Kelly Slater, you know that he
hails from Cocoa Beach some few minutes north of Melbourne, which
is where the Hobgoods are from (I think) and some few minutes south
of New Burna, where Aaron Cormican is from, which is almost near
Ormond Beach, where Lisa Andersen is from, and I could pretty much
go on all day.
And how so many good surfers in Florida? The surf is very small
and also not good. How such star power?
Well, I was told a story today from someone who knows Kelly
Slater well. This person said, “Kelly says the reason that surfers
from Florida are so good is because the waves are super fast and
dumpy and so you have to pop to your feet crazy quick to even have
a chance to get down the line. Florida surfers have this ability
better than any other surfers and it translates to Pipeline and
everywhere else he says…”
Now, I have no way of knowing if Kelly really said this or
something like this or if the person was confused. I plan on asking
him but in the meantime, do you think it is true? Is it why Kelly
is a Pipe Master? Why the Hobgoods are untouchable in the heaviest
Indonesian reef passes?
Should we all move to Florida even without guns pressed to our
heads or getting called “cunt*”?
*The Inertia has a fine story about getting called a
cunt but the website spells it “c*nt.” I encourage you to read
I Got Called a C*nt by a
Grown Man.
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Watch: Mag makes best surf film of
2017!
By Derek Rielly
Watch, and hear, Dane Reynolds sing Piss In My
Mouth!
In case you’re not aware, Vaughan Blakey is the deeply
talented older brother of the WSL commentator Ronnie. He
is also the co-frontman, alongside Ozzie Wright, of the band,
Goons of Doom, and makes a living as the editor of the
Australian magazine, Surfing World.
Recently, Vaughan, in his position as editor, and along with
Danny Johnson who is the art director of the magazine, created a
movie called Scary Good. It is Vaughan’s secret major
feature, and his first since Doped Youth in 2004.
Could Doped Youth be improved upon?
It’s been almost a decade-and-a-half but Vaughan, and Mr
Johnson, have made a movie so good it left me gasping like a fish.
Watching Scary Good I was unable to feel the usual
emotions of envy and jealousy because it was a creation beyond
anything I could’ve made.
The scenario is simple: bring musically inclined surfers, along
with a producer and actual band people, to a remote beach house.
Make music. Make surf.
It costs eight dollars to buy (link at the bottom), which feels
too cheap.
Note: it is the first movie I’ve bought since Kai
Neville’s Cluster a year or two ago.
Yesterday, I spoke with Vaughan about the film.
BeachGrit: Whose idea?
Vaughan: I guess it was my idea, but the genius of the movie is
all Danny Johnson. He was the poor bastard who spent three
months locked in a room cutting the thing up. Full freak effort.
Concept-wise it was a bit of a carry-on from movies and styles the
both of us have always loved. Real Axe and Nix Nic
Nooley and all Toby Cregan’s clips capture such a rad rawness.
Andrew Kidman has always scored his own movies like Litmus
and Glass Love, and then with Doped Youth we had
no budget for music so we made up a fair bit of that soundtrack
ourselves or asked our friends who were bands to give us music. But
we were definitely amped to see if we could do it all in one surf
trip, surf and score, which I’m pretty sure hadn’t been done. So we
got the house, fitted it out with a recording studio, invited
everyone we knew who could play Smoke on the Water on one
guitar string and prayed for waves and in the end it turned out so
much better than we could have hoped for. When I sent the final
movie to Taylor Steele I told him it was a bit like
Shelter but with a house full of roaring drunk, foul
mouthed Aussies.
We got fucking death threats just for being in that zone. One
day the guy behind the counter at the servo says, “Are you part of
that surf mag trip? There was a mob in here earlier threatening to
come up the house and bash you guys. You better watch out.” I gave
him the address and told him to send ’em up but our crew never got
challenged by anyone face-to-face the whole time.
BeachGrit: Tell me how you were received by local
surfers? Were they pleased to have such a cultural awakening in
their little, and let’s just say…nameless… town?
We were there for 10 days and mate we got fucking death threats
just for being in that zone. I went to the servo down the road one
day and the guy behind the counter says, “Are you part of that surf
mag trip? There was a mob in here earlier threatening to come up
the house and bash you guys. You better watch out.” I gave him the
address and told him to send ’em up but our crew never got
challenged by anyone face-to-face the whole time. We surfed all the
worst waves on the best days and didn’t blow out a single spot so…
fuck it. We did have around 75 people swing by the house
though, including heaps of friendly locals which was the sickest.
Crew came and went, musos, celebrities, full mixed bag, but we
really built the whole week around Wash – Creed, Ellis and
Beau’s band, cause fuck man, they have so much muscle in the surf
and with their music and they’re the best lads you’ll ever meet to
boot.
You were right about Creed. He is an animal! And his
song, Johnny is a Kung Fu Master, sings!
Candy is the most magic human. Big heart, beautiful brain,
interested in everyone and everything, loves his music, sounds like
Barry White and surfs like Black Dynamite.
I like this exchange in the film.
Creed: How ya feeling?
Beau: Pretty shit.
Creed: A few comedowns in the morning.
Beau: So weird. I feel so weird.
Creed: I’m real…lost… right now.
Beau: I feel like such a loser.
Creed: Fuck, I don’t know, ay. I felt all sad all of a
sudden and now I’m just walking around…
It all feels very real. Was that scripted?
One hundred percent legit. We did do a couple of skits like
Asher Wales on the bongo but most of them ended up getting cut. We
had mics on crew at different times during the days and nights and
most of what you see is exactly as it happened. The drinking,
smoking and swearing like motherfuckers, it’s just what kids do in
that tiny little window of their lives when they get to enjoy
complete freedom and that obviously comes with a few downtimes,
especially after 10 days of ripping in. It wasn’t for us to judge
or censor or edit that stuff. Our only goal was to make sure we had
sick songs and that the energy of the week was represented as
accurately as possible in the final cut because it was one of the
best times I’ve ever had on a surf trip and a big part of that was
because everyone was so comfortable and free to be themselves. Not
a single surfer missed an early either. Not once.
How about the big left! Tell me more. Haz Bryant was
very sad afterwards with his sore head.
That was day one. Hazza (Harry Bryant) and Otto (Kai Otton) were
onto it cause they spend a lot of time down there but everyone else
was just settling in. My favourite thing about that session is how
stoked Hazza is on his big boned air off the back of the wave. Gets
a 10-foot pit and smashes his head on a rock but he’s more pumped
on tweaking his throwaway! And the Wash song is a
banger.
Who did the Sex with a Guy song? It’s
brilliant! Sexing for hours!
That was the first song recorded. It’s by a dude named Josh
Rawai and he is a messed up totally awesome guitarist. They tracked
that on the first night, pretty much took over the studio. But we
weren’t there for great musos to play. We were there to see if the
surfers we’d invited could make a half-decent album, so that was
Josh’s only contribution at the house. He nailed it though.
The Former boys came up late and were on the biggest Bubbler
crusade. Drawing dicks weeing into mouths in the dirt on all the
car windscreens and stuff. It was the theme of the night but pretty
sure nobody actually went there.
Did you ever think you’d have Dane Reynolds singing,
“Piss in my mouth!”
It’s funny the things you say after a couple of beers. That was
the one big blow-out night of the whole trip and I remember saying
to Dane “Mate everyone I know with twins looks so tired all the
time!” Ha! The girls weren’t even born yet. That was a big party
though. The Former boys came up late and were on the
biggest Bubbler crusade. Drawing dicks weeing into mouths in the
dirt on all the car windscreens and stuff. It was the theme of the
night but pretty sure nobody actually went there.
I loved the song Set the Bar Low to Achieve your
Goals too. Did you?
Sooo much. That’s Vinnie. What a legend. You should see his band
The Cloacas. Wild little
teenage muscle-men from the Sunny Coast. Bowl cuts, mohawks and
they play in boardies with no shirts on and no tatts! Jake Vincent
and his sister Jaleesa are the surprise stars of the movie. Sick
surfers, super free-spirited, kind and enthusiastic and wild
without being reckless. Dunno, there’s something about the
generation of kids between 18 and 25 right now that is so upbeat
and refreshing. They honestly don’t seem to care that people might
get offended by the way they choose to have fun. Such a healthy way
to live. People getting offended is the new cancer.
The comedic opening is clever, very dry. Scripted or
no?
Crafted but not scripted. We wanted to start with a bit of
banter with Creedo and Beauy, all them by the way, and then out of
nowhere drop in a full blown, full frame dick shot, make it known
right from the start this is not a kid’s movie and not a movie
that’s been made with any consideration of the easily offended. We
kinda only got halfway there with the opening shot but the energy
of it is all real, the whole movie is just how it all happened. And
the soundtrack blows my mind.
Who is that little ragamuffin with the blond bowl, real
mouthy? She surfs so good.
Jaleesa Vincent from the Sunny Coast. That zone is the punk rock
capital of Australia right now man and Jelly Bean is gonna change
women’s surfing. She’ll be the first of her kind in the same spirit
as Fletcher/Ozzie/Dane, a full creative culture shifter built upon
a foundation of fully ripping.
I think, best surfer movie, as in cultural document,
since Cluster. Tell me your thoughts.
Around day eight of the trip Danny and I kinda grabbed each
other and had this full-on lightning bolt moment. I was like “Fuck
man, it’s like we’re making Morning of the Earth or some
shit!” It felt like we were capturing something way bigger than the
film itself. Don’t get me wrong, a huge stupid call and we were
drunk as hell, but at its heart Morning of the Earth is a
document that captures perfectly the counter-culture mood of its
time by showcasing the lifestyle choices the surfers were becoming
passionate about. That’s what it felt like we were doing, only
instead of Simple Ben and free range chickens and veggie
gardens we had Battle of the Bowls, cartons of mangoes and
packets of Champion Ruby. I dunno how this thing will stand up over
time, but I can definitely sleep at night knowing it’s as real as
shit gets in the age of “authenticity” being the most flayed word
in the English language.
"Someone is going to die and that’s the unfortunate
reality of it."
Ain’t no fun when your town becomes, of all a sudden,
the “Isle of Jaws.” Esperance is a pretty, and let’s
face it until recently pretty dull, town seven hundred clicks
south-east of the Western Australian capital, Perth.
“It’s severely hectic down here and someone is going to die and
that’s the unfortunate reality of it,” Esperance Ocean Safety and
Support Group leader Mitch Capelli told Perth
Now.
According to reports, Esperance fishermen are baiting and
killing Great Whites because of a lack of government action.
Fishermen hooked a feisty ten-footer that had been filmed biting
and bumping boats on three different days.
“A lot of people have been calling me up and saying, ‘Let’s just
go out and catch it because no one else is going to do it’. I’ve
really been strongly advising against it because if we’re going to
be taken seriously then we need to be … going about things the
right way,” says Capelli.
The shark expert and filmmaker David Riggs told Perth
Now that Esperance “is the latest White shark hotspot (to
be) recognised on the planet. Before we had dropped anchor we had
six 15-foot Great Whites pushing our boat around. It’s
full-on.”
The Great White is a protected species, of course. And the law’s
gonna come down on anyone who rolls back to the dock with a dead
White on the deck.
So what sorta heat y’gonna get if you ice a White?
First offence. Ten gees.
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Congrats: Chas Smith becomes pro
surfer!
By Chas Smith
A major career move!
I would like you to take a few minutes this
morning to congratulate me on becoming a professional surfer.
Thanks! It has been an incredible run from surf journalist to
professional surfer, one that I never quite thought I’d make.
And how did I become a professional surfer? Oh. I just decided
and let me walk you through the process.
The kind people who run the Building the Revolution
Instagram account messaged me the other day with a question:
How easy is it to become a pro surfer? Skaters, wakeboarders
and snowboarders have to have a company think they are worthy
enough for a pro model. Pro team sports athletes need to be picked
for a team. Golfers need to be on tour. Surfers? Who decides if a
surfer gets pro status.
And this really got me thinking. I know how difficult it is for
skaters and snowboarders to go pro. As stated, it is your board
company who “takes you pro” and you must jump though many hoops and
even very talented kids never get “pro” status.
As things happen, I was chewing on this when I bumped into a
very famous surf agent in the grocery store. After exchanging
pleasantries I asked, “Is there any formal requirement to become a
pro surfer?” He answered, “As long as a kid makes 100 bucks
surfing, he’s a pro as far as I’m concerned…”
I have never made a 100 bucks surfing but I am riding a tester
board right now from the gorgeous Album
Surfboards in San Clemente and I bet if I ask they
will give me a t-shirt and a sticker.
Which makes me pro.
A pro surfer. I probably won’t do the tour or be a video pro or
a travel pro. I’ll probably be a writing pro, writing about my
experiences pro surfing n stuff.
So long surf journalism. You were always only second best.
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Quiz: What was your greatest surf
moment?
By Derek Rielly
Come to daddy and tell a little surf story.
One thing about surfing: to know it is not
necessarily to love it.
With the possible exception of golf, there ain’t a game as able
to deftly erase a man’s esteem, confidence, identity and sense of
athleticism like surf.
How many times a week do you surf? Once, twice, every day?
All those sessions over all those years. The bad, the very bad,
the ok, the sorta ok, the kinda good. Onshore, onshore, a little
wind swell here and there.
Around it goes until…
Those moments.
I estimate that I’ve surfed 3640 times, each session around an
hour long.
And isn’t it just surf to think, how many of those precious
moments have I gathered, how many waves do I remember?
I’ve got a handful: surfing a wavepool at midnight under a full
moon in the Canary Islands, dropping in on a pal and landing one of
the five straight airs of my life, a tube in front of Little Groyne
Kirra that was clocked by a former top five pro surfer who told me,
on the beach, he thought I was dead.
And, another tow moment, a ten-foot day at a Sydney reef near
Narrabeen.
Bigger than anything I wanna be near or, given my big-wave
experience, anything I should be near.
I let go, the wave throws and all I want to do is straighten
out.
It’s too big, too round, requires too much commitment.
But I don’t want to be cleaved in two by the lip either.
With legs that are quivering and a feeling of such aloneness
that I might actually cry, I turn into the tube. It throws further
than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m screaming and my arms are thrown
instinctively above my head. I fly into the channel, pumping my
fist in the air like an alt-right hooligan. My two buddies on the
ski are nowhere, gone hunting peaks around the headland.
All that drama, and such a potential story, without a
witness? Can you imagine the desolation?
And after all those sessions? Travel? Money spent, time
squandered? That’s all I got? One shit story?