Buzzy_Trent_
Hard boiled! | Photo: Dr Don James

Warshaw: “Bourez a eunuch fainting on a daybed!”

But only when compared to ultra-stud Buzzy Trent!

You like a baited hook? They  don’t come better than surf historian Matt Warshaw describing Tahiti’s hard-shelled Michel Bourez to a “consumptive eunuch fainting on a daybed.”

Ridiculous, of course. But let’s get to context a little later.

Recently, Warshaw posted an excellent short piece by the big-wave pioneer Buzz Trent on women in surf. The story is fifty-four years old and moves, every so adroitly, from adoration to real talk.

I enjoy watching girls surf. There’s nothing more beautiful than a well-shaped girl riding a six-foot wave with the wind blowing through her hair. But one thing I can’t stand is girls riding (or attempting to ride) big waves. Why? Well, girls are intended to be feminine, and big-wave riding is definitely masculine. You see, girls are much more emotional than men and therefore have a greater tendency to panic. And panic can be extremely dangerous in big surf. I have seen exactly three women in the past who had taken off on big waves and then panicked. There is nothing in the world more ridiculous than a girl who dares to show off and then panics out. Girls are weaker than men and have a lessor chance for survival in giant wipeouts. Girls are better off and look more feminine riding average-sized waves.

I’ve seen many girls surfing … in fact, I know one or two who surf better than many men. Each girl surfer has her own style. Some surf gracefully; some surf more jerkily and perform well. And, of course, some surf like he-men. But to each day every girl who surfs, I give full credit.

Now, I’ve had a fascination with Buzzy, who died ten years ago in Hawaii, after reading an excellent profile in The Surfers Journal. My memory has faded a little and the story ain’t online, but Buzz was a pioneer of riding big waves on the North Shore, could run 100 yards in ten seconds, was an all-state running back and a Golden Gloves boxer.

I figure, time to fill in the blanks with Warshaw.

BeachGrit: You describe Buzz in your fabulous EOS as “hyper-masculine.” And that photogenic frame! Is there anyone among today’s top pros with his raw athleticism?

Warshaw: Michel Bourez. Except Michel is a consumptive eunuch fainting on a daybed by comparison.

What about the rest of surf history? Who is Buzzy’s match?

Tarzan Smith, this lunatic paddleboarder and street fighter from back in the Depression. And Zach Weisberg.

Zach? The founder of the “the world’s largest digital community in the surf, mountain, and outdoor space”?

I saw Zach recently, he looks like he just got sprung from ADX, he’s huge; he could bench 300 with Chas dancing on the bar.

Buzzy’s childhood was horrible. Dad abandoned the family, his sister fell down a well and died, Buzzy was in foster care for a couple of years. Just brutal. Surfing was a godsend.

BeachGrit: Could Zach haven taken Buzzy, at his peak? 

No way.

Could Tarzan Smith take Buzzy?

Oh man. I don’t know. That’s DC Universe business. Buzzy was the better athlete, strength-wise it’s probably a tossup, but Tarzan had a screw loose. My heart says Buzzy, but my gut says Tarzan.

Did he really, as Ricky Grigg, another big-waver say, kill a man in the ring? Or is that the typical of the exaggeration of that demographic?

I’ve heard that too, but I don’t know if it’s true. Buzzy never talked about it publicly. He was big on suffering, though. Being hard and tough was really important thing to him, and suffering was how you got there. Buzzy’s childhood was horrible in a lot of ways. Dad abandoned the family, his sister fell down a well and died, Buzzy was in foster care for a couple of years. Just brutal. Surfing was a godsend.

He was racist, for sure, and probably homophobic. Loved all things German, including, or maybe even especially, the German war efforts. I don’t know how much slack you cut a person like Buzzy, given the childhood he had, and the age he grew up in.

In that same article with Grigg it described a crash with his hang glider that I remember as sorta cosmic. Do you remember the details?

I think he flew into a water tank. Broke his back. He walked away from a lot of heavy things. My favorite one, and again, like the fight story, I’m not totally sure if it’s true — but my favorite one is that Buzzy got knocked off a high-rise while working construction, fell through air, grabbed onto an iron girder the next floor down, pulled himself up, walked back to his floor and kept working.

Buzzy, of course, came up with the aphorism “big waves aren’t measured in feet, but in increments of fear.” And did he really coin the term “gun” to describe a big-wave board?

“Elephant gun,” yeah. Buzzy wasn’t the first big-wave surfer, but he’s the guy who turned into theater. George Downing was the best when it got huge, but George did his thing and drove home without saying much. Buzzy kept the show going on land. “Increments of fear,” guns instead of surfboards, talking about Makaha and Waimea like they were battlefields. That’s all Buzzy. He invented the big-wave-man personality.

He also liked the words, “niggers”, and “faggots.” Was he a bad man or a man of his time?

He was racist, for sure, and probably homophobic. Loved all things German, including, or maybe even especially, the German war efforts. I don’t know how much slack you cut a person like Buzzy, given the childhood he had, and the age he grew up in.

We’re all going to get older. I can’t screw anymore. My prick doesn’t come up. It hangs down like a beat dog. But so what? I’ve fired that gun many times. It was a good gun. So the thing is, there comes a time, even in that, where you have to step down. You have to move on, or it gets ugly

Buzzy quit surfing in middle-age. Said he only liked big waves, done all he could etc. Is there a deeper story to it?

He didn’t like getting old, and didn’t want to be a lesser version of who he’d been. Here, I just found this quote from the interview he did with Ricky Grigg, in 2004. This might answer your question. “We’re in the twilight of our lives. Nothing beats age. Nothing. We’re all going to get older. I can’t screw anymore. My prick doesn’t come up. It hangs down like a beat dog. But so what? I’ve fired that gun many times. It was a good gun. So the thing is, there comes a time, even in that, where you have to step down. You have to move on, or it gets ugly. So I stepped down from that too.”

That ain’t gonna happen to me.

No kidding.

Load Comments

Griffin-Colapinto

Question: Should Colapinto do a Taj?

Does skipping a year on tour create magic?

One of the grandest parts of the World Surf League season ending in Hawaii (RIP) is the poor surfers dropping from tour and the best youngsters getting kicked up to the bigs. Hope, as they say, springs eternal and we all have two months to wonder what these new sensations will bring. To ponder their relative skill versus the established field. To dream. Then Snapper hits and they lose and by Marg River we’ve not only forgotten the rookies’ names but even that they existed in the first place. Hope, as they also say, is a cruel joke.

And let’s meet 19-year-old sensation Griffin Colapinto! He has officially made the cut alongside Tomas Hermes and Will-i-am Cardoso and let’s read what the World Surf League has to say.

Both Hermes’ and Cardoso’s paths to the CT are compelling stories, full of passion, pain and perseverance, while Colapinto’s story is that of a rising surf prodigy. His prolific North Shore skill set could make him a perennial Triple Crown threat. Each surfer will be welcome additions to the Tour in their own right.

The two Brazilians’ “compelling stories full of passion, pain and perseverance” says to me that they are old, life-hardened and capable. The American “rising surf prodigy” makes me wonder if he should sit out a year before jumping in.

Just like the one-time surf prodigy from 30 years ago Taj Burrow!

Do you remember? No? Well that’s what the Encyclopedia of Surfing is for! (Subscribe here today and buy a subscription for your loved one as a gift!)

Burrow earned a coveted slot on the 1997 world pro circuit, which he turned down—the first and only surfer to do so—claiming that at 17 he was “too young to do the tour full-on.” The slender (5′ 9″, 140-pound) white-blond Australian had by that time distinguished himself as one of the world’s most exciting surfers, matching an electrifying aerial repertoire with impossibly cool-handed tuberiding skills, and directing all maneuvers out of a smooth, low, aerodynamic stance.

Burrow easily qualified for the 1998 world tour, and earned rookie-of-the-year honors on his way to a #12 year-end finish. The following season he won two world tour events and finished the year runner-up to fellow Australian Mark Occhilupo.

What a slick, confident move and I wonder if the combination of slick and confident gave young Taj the unquantifiable extra zing he needed to not only stay on tour but soar?

I wonder if young Griffin could break the Ewing curse and become relevant by saying, “thanks but no thanks?”

It seems worth a shot. Every non-Brazilian rookie since Taj has failed to meet even basic expectation.

Load Comments

Optics: How Surf Ranch event plays!

The mainstream media reacts!

If you have been watching or reading the news during this past year it is assured you have heard the word “optics” related to the way an event or situation appears. The “optics” of politicians dating teenaged girls, for example, is not great even though dating teenaged girls is not necessarily illegal. The “optics” of meeting with lots of Russians during a presidential campaign even though Russians are wonderfully interesting and not banned, per se, are not the best.

You get it.

And the “optics” of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch replacing Lower Trestles on the upcoming World Surf League tour is not, I would imagine, how the powers wanted their exciting announcement to play in the public but that’s exactly how it is playing. Let’s read the Orange County Register!

Hurley Pro at Trestles removed from world tour, replaced by Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch.

The world’s best surfers won’t be battling at the cobblestone beach south of San Clemente, with the Hurley Pro and Swatch Women’s Pro at Lower Trestles replaced with a stop at Kelly Slater’s new man-made wave hundreds of miles away from the coast.

The Hurley Pro has long been a popular surf contest for local surf fans, who can get an up-close, front-row seat to the world’s best surfers.

Etc. Etc.

Surf Ranch replacing Lowers. An artificial wave replacing a real one. Man replacing God. Etc. Etc. And I don’t think this is exactly the case. I went off half-cocked the other day, writing that the WSL should be blamed for Lowers’ demise and, it should be, but my hurt obscured all the hardboiled surf journalism I did that day. Through hundreds of calls, emails, texts with tens of sources I baked it down to this.

The Hurley Pro was cut.

The Surf Ranch was added.

And they were two, unconnected, separate decisions based almost entirely on economics. And back to “optics”… would it not have played better to first add the Surf Ranch stop then a few weeks later cut Lowers?

Or would that have been dishonest?

What, do you think, was the asking price for title sponsorship of Lowers? I would have liked the World Surf League to hold a public auction. I know my partner Derek Rielly is not the biggest fan but I would have gone, raised my paddle and swapped my integrity if it could be saved and called the Hurley Pro brought to you by BeachGrit.

We would have had lots and lots of fun.

Load Comments

Brad-Domke
Will you look at this immense blue grotto!

Watch: When did skim get this good?

Skimboard virtuoso Brad Domke's board transfers at epic Cylinders.

I do love this permissive age of surfing, where anything goes, where the pompous certainty that surfing is only possible on six feet of fibreglass with three screws, has disappeared.

Recently, and completely through the medium of Instagram, I’ve become stimulated by the behaviour of the skimboarder, as practised, specifically, by Austin Keen and Brad Domke.

Domke, of course, needs very little introduction. He rides Nazaré, Puerto Escondido, Jaws and so forth on his little disc. And this three-and-a-half minute short of Domke castrating his surfboard by using it only to paddle into the wave before jumping onto his fifty-three-inch, flat-rockered, finless disc, will be difficult to remove from your consciousness.

The wave, if y’didn’t know, is Cylinders, an outrageous shorebreak in Newport, California. This day, says Domke, was the best he’s seen it in fifteen years.

“It’s days like these that (filmer) Dylan and I live for.”

Oh it’ll give you vertigo!

 

Load Comments

Neal-Kearney
What would drive a good surfer to ride switch, and nothing but switch, for an entire year? Disease! | Photo: @cheechonbeach

Tough: “I surfed switch for a year!”

Talented Santa Cruz goofyfooter switches stance for an entire year! Why?

I’m a thirty-two-year-old goofyfooter  from Santa Cruz, California. I was good enough to get free shit and swipe a little travel budget off sponsors, but not good enough to make a real living. Only Nat Young has done that.

Neal-Kearney
Here’s Neal at Keramas, Bali, in 2008, as a goofyfooter. Photo: Hamish Humphries

For the past year I’ve been riding switch.

Only switch.

Neal-Kearney
Here’s Neal as a naturalfooter in the summer of 2017, on holiday in Costa Rica. Photo: Cheechonbeach

Am I a masochist? Not exactly.

I’ve had severe neck, back, and hip arthritis that’s been giving me hell since I was eighteen. At first it was a degenerative disc disease, then it was Ankylosing Spondylitis (the auto-immune disease that Mitch Crews has), and even Lyme disease. I was doing intravenous antibiotics for a year!

My hips are the worst, bone-on-bone and covered in cysts. It’s clear that I have severe arthritis and widespread pain and fatigue, which has been dubbed “fibromyalgia”, but I reckon the doctors know fuck all so I’ve stopped worrying about the diagnosis and now concentrate my focus on managing the symptoms-which has been pretty much a full-time job.

After my second hip arthroscopy last November, where they shaved another bone spur off the head of my femur, I made a decision. As a goofyfooter, I pivot off my back left leg pretty hard. And the arthritis was so severe in my left hip that I decided to do an experiment to see if switching my stance for a whole year changed anything

Fuck, it was brutal.

Winter had just started and I was weak and fat from being laid up. I started like every surfer should: soft-Top. Longboard. Gun. Fun Board. I could barely pop up at first. The waves were starting to get going that winter and I was putting myself in some really dumb situations. Every wave I actually made were the early markers, then I transitioned into bottom turns, cutbacks, foam climbs.

Riding switch for a year, I discovered how hard it is to rewire your brain. It’s like writing in cursive with your non-dominant hand. It’s just so damn tough for most people. I found it as exciting to work on this handicap, even though I was getting consistently pummelled.

That’s about where I’m at now, spending as much time as I can on a surfboard with my left foot in front. I’m working on linking turns and trying to work on consistency through repetition. I’ve gotten a couple of sweet tubes on my forehand, but pig-dogging is awkward, so I’m workin’ on that.

My lowest moment was this summer in Costa Rica. I decided to bring a 70’s inspired Travis Reynolds 6’6” single fin to surf a heavy beachbreak. The single fin would have been sketchy going goofyfoot. Beautiful board, but Christ, I’ve never taken so many donuts. That’s when I started really second guessing my resolve.

Best moments?

I’ve had some barrels, some large waves, and survived a session at my favorite local slab. I think setting a goal, and sticking to it feels the best. It’s cool to step out of your comfort zone.

Riding switch for a year, I discovered how hard it is to rewire your brain. It’s like writing in cursive with your non-dominant hand. It’s just so damn tough for most people. I found it as exciting to work on this handicap, even though I was getting consistently pummelled.

I realized that there are ways to keeping surfing fresh, even with a body so torn up. I’ve been told by countless doctors to tone down, or even quit surfing, which is horrifying. So, ultimately, if I learn to switch at will, this may extend the shelf life of my surfing. I just need to learn to hold back when the surf gets hairy.

And let me say something, it feels… good… to be a kook again.

God, think of paddling out to overhead surf and committing to getting scrubbed across the reef nearly every time you surf. How is that not appealing?

Santa Cruz is a place where people can take you down and throw salt, so embracing being a kook is good for the ego.

I won’t lie. I was self-conscious about it at first.

All my friends know and have given me props and set waves, but it’s the blow-ins out in the water that get to me. They don’t know me, so they paddle around or burn me. That gets me riled up, so I have to remember that I’ve been doing the same things to kooks practically my whole life!

Full circle, man.

Load Comments