Lyndie-Irons-Pat-Tenore
"So in love with Pat Tenore," says Lyndie Irons. "I'm the happiest and healthiest I've been in a long time."

Gorgeous: Lyndie Irons Finds Love!

With RVCA co-founder Pat Tenore!

Yesterday, Lyndie Irons, the widow of Andy Irons, announced she’d climbed back into the love game with RVCA founder Pat Tenore.

Lyndie, who is thirty five years old, rang in the new year on Instagram, writing:

“So lucky/so in love with you @pmtenore#dreamguy ❤️ 2017 has been such a good year. I’m the happiest and healthiest I have been in a really long time and I owe it to this guy ! thank you for loving me for me and making me feel like the luckiest girl ever.”

And ain’t it time!

It’s been seven years since the Great Love, the man who pushed her against a tree on his twenty-fifth birthday in Encinitas and kissed her breath away, a week later telling her he loved her, died in a Texas hotel room.

“From that first kiss I knew he was the one. In that first second. I knew we’d always be together,” Lyndie told me. “My life with him was like a movie. It was unbelievable. I don’t think, I know the guys on tour, they all travel and do their thing, Andy was just…  he had so many demons, I guess, that set him back a little bit in life, but I never felt that way. That’s who he was. He got dealt these cards and he was just trying to figure out life the best he could. He had a lot of ups and downs but it came along with who he was. He was up high and on top of the world and then he’d falter a little bit and then every day was like a movie. I think back now and wonder how I had the energy to keep up with him. I don’t even have the energy to keep up with baby Ax and Andy was on a whole other level. He lived every minute to its fullness. He was the only person so far that I’ve met who actually lived that quote. He really squeezed everything he could out of every day and it was game on the second he woke up. It was crazy, but I loved every minute of it and I wish I could…  still have it.”

Lyndie’s new boy, Pat Tenore, co-founded RVCA in 2001 with the pro surfer Conan Hayes, sold it to Billabong in 2010 for an undisclosed amount and is its current president (Conan’s trajectory has been very different).

Pat, who is forty-four, is very good at jiujitsu, has a gold tooth, owns some very expensive and rare luxury cars, has three kids and, is as fine a man as there is to refloat Lyndie’s broken heart.

It’s a gorgeous day! Happy new year!

 


"Don't be jealous that I've been chatting with advertisers online all day..."
"Don't be jealous that I've been chatting with advertisers online all day..."

Revealed: Stab advertises for laughs!

"Ads suck when they suck..."

Well it is officially the new year and how do you feel? Hungover? Filled with hope? Dread? Our friends at Stab appear filled with a desire to be patronizingly transparent with their business decisions and what fun! Let’s together read from their most recent post!

We get it. Ads suck, when they suck. But done brilliantly, transparently, they work. When the true DNA of why a brand exists comes through in an ad, it can be incredible.

As you know, Stab’s biz model relies on advertising and advertisers. Without paywalls and e-commerce, the cost of entry’s the occasional ad. But, notice we control who you see? You don’t get the same programmatic google ads that follow you around the internet. We do our best to play gatekeeper to who we allow to haunt our site and magazine.

Because we see you with your ad blockers, we see you chirp chrip chirping about sponsored posts. But hey, that’s how we manage to rent floating bridges in the ocean, or pay for the hair + make-up on Sage Erickson, or for a boat in the Ments with Jordy Smith and 12 cleanskin surfboards.

This post is about saying thanks to those supporters who believe in Stab and work with us. In a strange kinda way, you should as well. Without advertising, we’d have a paywall and you’d have much less to look at, and no one to tease.

Enlightening. While the first part, about protecting you from programmatic Google ads that follow you around ain’t true (Google knows how many people actually visit a website and Stab tries to charge advertisers four times their actual traffic) the last part about running ads to get teased seems right.

And it makes me love Stab again! I can’t wait to see what collaborations, advertorial and branded content gets unveiled for our laughs this coming year. What would you like to see most? I’d say an aged rocker sporting trunks but that is so 2017. What about… an aged rocker sporting sunglasses? Maybe Scott Stapp from Creed? That would be funny. Or… an aged rocker sporting sandals? Maybe Kevin Martin from Candlebox? That would really crack me up.

What else? What Stabvertisements would you like to giggle at this year?


Jordy-Smith
"There is an international pro tour, on which some of the world’s best surfers perform occasional miracles in 30-minute heats. The judging is wonky, obtuse, subjective. Surfing is, after all, more like dance than it is like baseball. If the waves are crummy, the contest will be unwatchable.'

Holiday repeat: “Pro surfing is wildly boring!” says NY Times

Surf for love and not for gold, says Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Bill Finnegan… 

Who has given us more precious insight into the game of surf than the New York-based, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Bill Finnegan? His memoir Barbarian Days treats surf as love affair, as fundamental do-or-die. I believe there is no better book on surf and destiny and man’s natural urges.

Read about Bill here. 

Today, in the New York Times, very prestigious in some eyes, or, in the words of Gavin McInnes: “New York Times readers wear J.Crew blazers and long for a world where black people would be their friend” Bill cast his eye on the relationship between being paid to surf and just surfing for the laughs.

Here’s a taste.

“Organized competition is entirely peripheral to surfing qua surfing. People surf for love. The pastime lends itself to obsession. Surfers travel to the ends of the earth to find great, remote waves. I spent much of my 20s chasing waves through the Southern Hemisphere. Most surfers have home breaks that they come to know at a subgranular level of detail. Committed surfing is a deep immersion, literal and philosophical, in the ocean. The goal, if there is a goal, is a certain drenching experience of beauty. It’s quite possible to surf for decades without laying eyes on a surf contest.

More visibly, there is an international pro tour, on which some of the world’s best surfers perform occasional miracles in 30-minute heats. The judging is wonky, obtuse, subjective. Surfing is, after all, more like dance than it is like baseball. Then there’s the ocean. If the waves are good, the contest will be good… If the waves are crummy, the contest will be unwatchable.

“But, with increased popularity, a slapdash competitive structure, different in each surf region, has developed. More visibly, there is an international pro tour, on which some of the world’s best surfers perform occasional miracles in 30-minute heats. The judging is wonky, obtuse, subjective. Surfing is, after all, more like dance than it is like baseball. Then there’s the ocean. If the waves are good, the contest will be good — and in that case I will probably be in the global audience, glued to the live-stream, waiting for something transcendent to happen. If the waves are crummy, the contest will be unwatchable.

“Surfing photographs well. It makes mesmerizing video. It is not, however, a spectator sport. With the exception of a few spots, on random days — contest organizers struggle to find just these spots and days — it is wildly boring to watch. The action is hard to see from shore, and there’s usually not much of it. Lulls between waves are long, rides mostly short and unexciting. Surfers themselves can watch waves for hours, but they’re accustomed to lulls. Everybody else is much happier with the highlight reel.”

Later, he begs for surfing to become uncool. It’s an incisive piece.

Read the full story here. 


Surf style: Tom Brady wears wetsuit!

While playing in a professional football game!

It is so cold in New England that Patriots’ quarterback, and husband of Kelly Slater’s ex girlfriend, Tom Brady is wearing a wetsuit underneath his football jersey. What appears to be a generic, possibly from Costco, black rubber chest, neoprene arm’d wetsuit.

Which makes me wonder. Is this the most high profile stage the wetsuit has ever been on?

I mean, tell me of a brighter light?

Are you proud to be a surfer today?


Resolution: Surfers go vegan!

Last decade's trend is sweeping the lineup!

We are now really on the cusp of 2018. The calendar has flipped in Australia and will flip soon in the Americas. And do you go all out with your celebration? Fireworks and booze etc. or do you stay home and watch television? Also do you make New Year’s resolutions? I don’t and can’t remember ever having had but if I was going to make one it would be to stop posting worthless pieces on BeachGrit.

It would not be to go vegan though according to PETA going vegan is trending amongst surfers. The militant pro-animal organization writes:

Surfing is about so much more than just raw talent. Learning to connect with Mother Nature—by working with the waves, not against them—is key. Being physically fit and mentally sound doesn’t hurt, either. That’s why it’s no surprise that so many surfing greats are opting to go vegan. Take a look at the lineup below, and find out how you, too, can ride the compassionate wave.

Which surfers are riding the compassionate wave?

Kelly Slater: In the video, the 11-time world champion revealed, “I haven’t had milk for probably 20 years now.” Those who follow him on Twitter and Instagram know that he has long been opposed to consuming milk, cheese, and other animal-derived “products.

John John: “I’ve become increasingly aware of food and its effects on the human body. All signs point to the idea that a plant-based diet is far superior to that of high animal-product intake.”

Alana Blanchard: “One of the reasons I am vegan is because I love animals so much and could never even imagine hurting one.”

Rob Machado: “I was raised a vegetarian so I was always aware of [environmental] issues. There wasn’t a whole lot of vegetarians around in the 80s—so we were ahead of the curve in that way.”

Jack Freestone: “Veggies.”

And other surfers I’ve never heard of.

So?

You in?