Price comparison: Indies Trader III vs Surf
Ranch!
By Derek Rielly
Two weeks in the Ments on one of the best charter
boats in the biz? Or two days at the Pool? Same price!
Three days ago, the price structure for hiring the
Slater-Mincham pool was revealed, $11.5k per person for
two days of lake surfing. This included video, coaching, food and
access to the Surf Ranch, a masterpiece of man-made bathymetry, in
Lemoore, a lousy cotton-farming town four hours north-east of
Los Angeles.
As Chas Smith calculated, at eight waves a day, it
costs $718.75 per wave.
Today, pricing for this year’s charters on the Indies Trader
III, one of the sexiest boats in the Mentawai island chain, was
revealed. As a comparison to Surf Ranch, it makes for an
interesting philosophical back and forthing.
To hire the whole damn boat, eight surfers max, for two weeks,
with all food (“qualified chef with no expense spared on food
quality”), all drinks (yeah, booze too), airport transfers and
airport porters, staterooms with queen beds and ensuite for two of
the surfers and three twin-share cabins for the rest, plus
internet, dive gear, boards, fishing, kiting, SUP, whatever, is
$US64,383.
Divide by eight surfers.
Each man, or lady, pays $US8047.
Two weeks. Mentawais. One of the two best boats in the chain
(the other is the former Indies Trader IV, now the Ratu
Motu) and, if you add in a biz-class airfare, it costs
the same as two days at Surf Ranch.
Now. Let’s play fantasy surfer.
If you had eleven-gees, how would you spend it?
On a little drive to Lemoore and eight waves?
Or on an Indonesian odyssey? How many waves you going to catch
in two weeks?
Background. When BeachGrit was launched we planned on
having a surf betting component. We’d partner up with a betting
house and make it easy to win, and lose, on surf events, world
titles, odd combinations (first surfer to score a ten, first surfer
to get injured etc), scooping a percentage of the losses. Didn’t
happen ’cause betting houses only persist with surfing because it’s
the gateway sport that, eventually, can lead to you throwing your
salary away on horses.
Recently, we climbed into bed with Palmerbet, and as part of our
push into gambling we thought it would be a fine idea to use our
contacts to try and make a smallish fortune out of surf. We’d
document each event’s wagers and amounts won and lost. We’d begin
with ten k and turn it into seventy by December.
The title of the story was going to be, “How I Made $60k
Betting on Surf!”
Two weeks earlier, I’d interviewed the Volcom team manager Matt
Bemrose, who’d won Surfer magazine’s Fantasy Surfer at his first
attempt. He said betting with cash was almost cheating because “you
know everyone so well. You’re at the event, you know who’s looking
good, you know who’s got a magic board under their feet. This year,
for example, I’m going to Snapper early to get a good look at the
guys. You can see, immediately, who’s been working on shit in the
off-season. Filipe, last year, it was obvious he’d been working on
his rail game, that extension. He was thirty-percent better.”
Who doesn’t want the insider track?
I could almost smell the baby powder scent of the celebratory
bubble bath.
Just as we were about to launch, with inside contacts all lined
up, the WSL sent an email to athletes warning ’em that if anyone in
their entourage, from coach to team manager, was found offering
tips…insider trading… they’d face not just the punishments
offered under Article 173 of the WSL rule book (suspension,
expulsion, a fine five times “the highest amount able to be won
from the violating activity whether any benefit was received or
not”) but a visit from the Australian Federal Police.
Want to know what that means? Well, in 2011, “the Australian
Sports Ministers (both Federal and State) endorsed the ‘National
Policy on Match-Fixing in Sport’. The aim of the Policy was to
protect the integrity of Australian sport and encourage all
governments to address the issue of inappropriate and fraudulent
sports betting and match-fixing activities.”
In NSW, you’ll enjoy a prison term of up to two years for
passing on along “inside information” for the purpose of betting
and up to ten years… a fucking decade of trying to avoid
psychos with shivs and angry sodomites… for throwing a heat to
make a little play money.
Our contacts in the game tell us that over the past few months
representatives of the WSL have met with at least two of the
biggest sporting bet co’s in Australia.
To warn them of their distaste for gambling and to shoo them
away from the unimpeachable sport of surf?
Or to see, like us, if there’s money to be made?
A text message cat-and-mouse game with the WSL’s Dave Prodan
went like this:
“Has the WSL banned team mangers from surf betting? And has the
WSL been in talks with one of more betting agencies?”
No response.
“Don’t leave me hanging!”
One day later.
“Sorry, Derek, I don’t have those answers for you. I’m in
office today and look them up.”
Three days later.
“Sportsbet! Start at Snapper? No comment?”
“Start at Snapper?”
“The Sportsbet partnership!”
“With the WSL?”
“Oui!”
“Not that I’m aware of, possible, but no
partnership.”
And on, and on.
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Appropriation: Fashion coming for
surf!
By Chas Smith
Last year it was skate. This year it's our
turn!
When you see fashion/music/media appropriating
surf do you care? I remember, as a high school boy, seething at
classmates who wore T&C/Quiksilver/Billabong but didn’t surf.
“Poseurs…” I would hiss. “No good stinkin poseurs in poseur shirts
acting like full on poseurs.” I thought surfing meant something,
you see, and I thought that only those who actually did the
something should be rewarded with public praise and day-glo
gorillas.
This was costal Oregon in the early 1990s so who knows how real
surfers in Orange County, California and Bondi, Australia thought
about non-surfers wearing surf clothing but when I moved to Orange
County for college I stopped caring.
Anyhow, last year Thrasher caught on bigly with everyone from
Justin Bieber to your mom’s third husband and skaters were furious
about, crowing about cultural appropriation. Fashion analysts
warned that surf would be next and they were right. But are surfers
furious? A new wonderful interview with OuterKnown’s designer John
Moore suggests, “No!”
Surfing and fashion certainly aren’t strangers to one
another and have existed hand-in-hand for decades. John Moore, the
founder and chief creative officer of Kelly Slater’s Kering-backed
lifestyle brand Outerknown, says he’s watched brands reference surf
culture on the runway for as long as he’s been paying attention.
Surf brands, too, have always taken note of what happens in
fashion, though according to Moore, many of them probably wouldn’t
admit it. The appropriation and love, he notes, goes both ways, and
has for years. Remember the Chanel-branded surfboard made famous by
Gisele Bündchen in 2014?
Moore also calls out designers like Proenza Schouler and
Hedi Slimane who often toy with both surf and skate style. One of
Moore’s favorite-ever collections is Raf Simons’s “Black Palms”
range from Spring 1998. Only Simons’s second-ever runway show, the
presentation took place in a parking garage in Paris’s stylish
Bastille neighborhood with a soundtrack made up of extra-booming
rave jams. Of the clothes, Moore offered: “Those palm graphics are
indelibly stamped in my mind.”
What’s important about so-called “surf style,” though, is
that it isn’t just one thing, despite the tropical, Polynesian
imagery that represents the sport’s birthplace and remains most
associated with it today. It’s what Thaddeus O’Neil, a designer of
loungey, unisex playwear and of CFDA Fashion Incubator acclaim,
instead calls a “sartorial mash-up.” He of all people working in
capital-F “Fashion” would know, having spent his childhood on
Eastern Long Island surfing with his dad. (“These days, I try to
not miss a swell,” he says. “New York gets good waves, but it’s
also very fickle — so you take what the sea will give you when she
gives it to you.”) If he gets to surf three times a week, he says,
it’s Shangri-La.
“Surfers have adopted different prosaic clothes and
integrated them into what has become, over time, a coherent and
recognizable style,” says O’Neil. “Surfing has simply proven the
most powerfully iconic cultural vehicle for those motifs.”
Surf garb cycles through trends just as ready-to-wear does.
Moore explains that in the 1950s, surfing was a subculture defined
by stripes, blue jeans and made-to-order trunks. By the ’60s,
clean, slim and colorful silhouettes took over, followed by the
“soulful, psychedelic” influences of the ’70s and fluorescent,
big-logoed designs of the ’80s. Then, things “went south” in the
’90s, when everything got baggy and all production went
overseas.
“The common denominator across all eras in the evolution of
surf style is that surfing has always been about this intangible
cool,” says Moore. “And today, all designers and brands search for
it. This idea of ‘effortless fashion’ or an ‘I just threw this on’
vibe — surfers would laugh at these descriptors because that’s just
how they are every day.”
Mmmmmm the appropriation and love does go both ways, I think.
Anytime I see a major label playing with a surf motif it delights
me to no end and I even purchase from time to time. But what about
you? Do you care?
Do you hate poseurs?
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Wild: Surf legend’s explosive tell-all
memoir!
By Derek Rielly
Rabbit Bartholomew says, "I do not want to read
this book!"
If you know surfing, you’ll know the name Ian
Cairns, aman with the physique
of a comic-book hero (nicknamed Kanga) who ruled big waves, who was
pivotal in the creation of a world tour, who would launch the ASP
after tearing the game off the IPS’s Fred Hemmings and
whose thin-eyed stare could give a man stomach cramps.
For the past three years, Ian, who is sixty-five, has been working
with the Ireland-based writer Wayne Murphy on a two-volume memoir
called Kanga: the trials and triumphs of Ian
Cairns. Ian chose Wayne, a former contest judge
and pioneer of waves in Western Australia, to write the books
because, a, “because I wanted someone from WA to write this thing
because it’s important he knows that when you’re from Western
Australia you have a chip on your shoulder”, b,”because he wasn’t a
conventional surf writer. I wanted a different look at things” and,
c, “because he pested the crap out of me.”
Volume one, which is 544 pages long or 155,000 words, charts his
childhood, growing up surfing in Western Australia, having the
dream of making a living out of it right through the conclusion of
1976 and the introduction of the world circuit. Volume two is where
it gets interesting… dirty. The creation of the Bronzed
Aussies. His role in the Hollywood movie Big Wednesday.
Winning the World Cup. The launch of the OP Pro. The launch of the
ASP. WSL and the future of surfing.
Earlier today, I called Kanga, who lives in Laguna Beach with
his former pro surfer wife Alisa and twin teenage boys, to talk
about the book, the direction of pro surfing under the private
ownership of the WSL, why he doesn’t give, as Nick Carroll says, “a
flying fuck whether you liked him or not”, about testifying in
court against Da Hui’s Eddie Rothman and to ask why Rabbit
Bartholomew, his peer and also a titan of the sport, says, “I do
not want to read this book.”
The book Rabbit Bartholomew doesn’t want to
read.
About the WSL and the sport’s direction, he says, “We watch all
these moments, Paul Speaker and his treatment of surfing, the
disenfranchisement of the surf industry from the WSL direction,
hiring an Englishwoman, a former tennis and rugby executive, to run
surfing – in terms of painting a picture of what my perfect
vision would be, it may not align with what the WSL direction
is.
“I really struggle with the concept of it being a full-blown
league sport ala tennis and football and NBA,” says Ian. “As
surfers, we all do it for lifestyle and spiritual reasons. Look at
the comments on your articles. The gulf between the presentation of
the WSL and what the average surf fan thinks is so great. The
concept that you can find salvation for the economic reality of WSL
in attracting more non-surfers to support sponsors, to me, is the
exact opposite of what it should be. I’ve got a screen-grab of an
article that says World Wrestling Entertainment made 850 million
bucks last year. They have one-and-a-half million people pay ten
bucks a month to subscribe to their channel. These are wrestling
enthusiasts. They’re clear on who their audience is. I don’t see
that clarity coming out of the WSL.”
On Rabbit, who said, when asked for a testimonial, “Ian’s life
seriously impacted on me and many other people, for better, and
worse. I do not want to read this book”.
“Well… you know… that’s Rabbit’s problem,” says Ian.
“It’s not my problem. When he was a nobody and I was beginning to
be someone, I let him be my caddy. He was my sidekick. He thinks I
soured his relationship with people in Hawaii. He needs to look at
his own actions. When we were looking for a new executive director
of the ASP, I was the guy who proposed Rabbit. I knew the ASP
needed a surfer at the helm. I fought hard for him. Rabbit was a
great surfer, we were ultra-close buddies back in the early
seventies and we had to go through the turmoil to change the world.
If we look at the good times and the things we achieved we gotta
high-five each other. What a great time we’ve had!”
On Mark Richards, the four-time world champ who said, “Kanga
didn’t start the ASP for the benefit of Ian Cairns. He did it for
the benefit of pro surfing.
“This is consistent with how sport was in the years that I grew
up,” says Ian. “Sporting clubs were owned by the members not
billionaires. When I left the ASP I left with nothing but the
satisfaction of putting pro surfing on the correct path.”
About not giving a flying fuck.
“Everyone in some sense is concerned about what people think of
them. But I wake up in the morning and I think, what am I going to
today? How can I do all these things that are crazy and cool and
how can it benefit my family, my friends and all of this? The
moment you start to think about these things you move forward and
all those criticisms, which are about what you did yesterday, don’t
matter. If you’re thinking about the future, you’re already one
step ahead of the critics. Do I want to be disliked?
No! Do I want to be focussed on coming up with some
awesome idea tomorrow? That’s what I want to
do.”
As for his 1987 testimony against Da Hui founder Eddie
Rothman, who was indicted on racketeering and
drug distribution charges, which prompted his former Bronzed Aussie
pal Pete Townend to say, “I thought he was fucken nuts,” Ian says:
“This is just ethics 101. Myself, and many many other people, have
been tortured and harassed by Eddie and the Hui for decades. And
the truth is, Hawaii is an amazing place. I have many friends in
Hawaii. But I just hated the idea of gangs, I hate the involvement
of drugs in surfing and I hate the involvement the idea of
strong-arm tactics to stop people from doing things. I do think
there are issues, and I’ve reached out on a number of times to
Eddie, to say, ‘Why don’t we work together to help the plight of
Hawaiian surfers? Let’s take the gravitas that we both have in
surfing and do something really positive with it. Let’s not bitch
and moan about the past, let’s talk about what we can do in the
future.'”
When asked for a quote for the book, Eddie Rothman said, “Why
would I want to talk about Ian Cairns? That fucker kept me in
jail.”
Ian?
“The fucked up things I had to suffer through… What does he
expect? For me to get down on my jones and kiss his arse? Or to
fight back? Which is what I did. ”
Going to be a hell of a read.
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Listen: Chris Cote’s signature sound!
By Chas Smith
Come remember the good times.
Nothing defines the high water mark of the surf
industry better than potato chip surfboards, wrap-around sunglasses
and pop punk. It was the late 1990s and all was sunny and bright in
our world. Surf-skate-snow clothing companies begun in parent’s
garages were hitting the market, months later, with multi-million
IPOs. Quiksilver and Billabong were both worth more than a billion
dollars.
Pennywise, Lagwagon and Strung Out the soundtrack to every surf
DVD and our lives.
The genre was best defined by north San Diego County pop punk
outfit Blink-182. Their hits extended beyond Orange County bedrooms
and into the heart of America. Mtv played on heavy rotation. Tens
of thousands of people thronged to stadium concerts. Blink was a
phenomenon. The taste of a new generation.
And would you like a little surf lore? A very young Chris Cote
was a Blink guitar tech/roadie.
Chris, of course, would later go on to much fame as the
editor-in-chief of Transworld Surf, voice of the Pipeline Pro,
impresario behind Monday M.A.S.S., etc.
but the man has always kept music close to his heart and just two
days ago loosed a single upon the world, titled Friend’s Coming
Home.
The song is grown up, a touch. Matured with quality
instrumentation anchored by Cote’s honest voice. It is reminiscent
of slow core but still maintains the fun of those early pop punk
days.
Listen for yourself and then buy on iTunes. Because we live in
the future and 1998 is but a distant dream.
