Patagonia dealt with a crisis back east: a decision by
President Trump, the great un-doer, to shrink some of his
predecessor's national monuments. The pledge was a first for an
American president; limiting the size of monuments like Bears Ears
in Utah would mean the largest reduction of protected land in U.S.
history. Which is what led Patagonia, in early December, to change
its home page to a stark message: “The President Stole Your
Land.”
"We have an evil government," says Patagonia
founder Yvon Chouinard…
One of the most enduring stories in surf, and certainly
its most heart warming, is climber Yvon Chouinard and the
company he founded in 1973 called Patagonia.
They donate 10 percent of profits to various charities, they do
this thing on Black Friday where they donate total profits to
grassroots environmental organisations (in 2016 it was ten million
dollars), used Patagonia gear can be traded-in via their
Worn Wear
website and, true to its central coast roots, has
its office and flagship store in Ventura.
Lately, the company has become, rightly I think, enraged by the
American president’s approach towards his country’s radically
diverse and therefore important to protect environment.
Last December, Patagonia declared war on the US government and
Trump with a lawsuit in response to “his proclamations of
reducing the Bears Ears National
Monumentby 85% and
the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by almost
50%. Patagonia is suing over the interpretation of
the Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution in which the
country vests Congress with the power to manage federal
lands. The company’s CEO, Rose Marcario, contends that when
Congress passed the Antiquities Act of 1906, it did
not give any president the power to reverse a prior president’s
monument designations.”
In a recent profile in GQ magazine, the Patagonia v Trump war is
given lavish coverage.
“I asked Chouinard about the lawsuit and his personal
feelings about Trump. He thought for a moment, perhaps to contain
himself. “What pisses me off about this administration is that
they’re all these ‘climate deniers’—well, that’s bullshit. They
know what’s happening. What they’re doing is purposely not doing
anything about climate for the sake of making more money.” He
paused, bowed his head, and scraped his fingernails on the table.
He sat up again. “That is truly evil. That’s why I call this
administration evil. They know what they’re doing, and they’re
doing it to make more money.”
“Gradually, the conversation went even darker. About Trump,
Chouinard added, “It’s like a kid who’s so frustrated he wants to
break everything. That’s what we’ve got.” I asked sarcastically if
any part of him was an optimist. Marcario, sitting next to him,
laughed loudly. “Did you just ask Yvon if he’s an optimist?”
Chouinard smiled and cocked his head. “I’m totally a pessimist. But
you know, I’m a happy person. Because the cure for depression is
action.”
“In December, Chouinard was invited to Washington to testify
before the House Committee on Natural Resources. He refused. In a
response Patagonia made public, Chouinard wrote to the committee
chairman: The American people made it clear in public comments that
they want to keep the monuments intact, but they were ignored by
Secretary Zinke, your committee, and the administration. We
have little hope that you are working in good faith with this
invitation. To me, he scoffed and shook his head; Washington’s the
kind of desert a man like him could get lost in. “You sit down in a
little chair, and they’re up on high chairs looking down at you,
and they give you two and a half minutes to give your testimony,”
he said. “I’m not going to play that game.”
“It reminded me of how Chouinard had described his
childhood, growing up in Burbank, facing off against teachers and
bullies. When I asked him how it felt to be attacked by the
administration, he laughed. “I’m stoked. If you’re not getting
attacked, you’re not trying hard enough.”
Beware the corporation or limited liability
partnership that dares cross Kelly Slater in these his
salad years. While theoretically still on tour, the winningest
surfer of all time has sure been acting like a retiree lately,
using Instagram as his cane and beating the figurative heads of
commerce. Righting wrongs. Saving money. You recall just days ago
when he complained about ultra low cost local Australian air
shuttle JetStar’s baggage policy.
A snippet:
Apparently the people checking you in get a kickback on what
they charge you at the end of the month. Overweight charges equate
to about $.50/ounce! Just paid over $200 MEL – OOL for baggage,
more than the price of my ticket… again. I’ll never learn. Just
FYI, not an April Fool’s joke.
Hmm. Bummer. Like all ultra low cost local air shuttles. I did
not track JetStar’s share price after the whack but I certainly
will check RedSpot car rental.
Kelly’s next target appears to have unkind penalties in the
small print if the driver happens to get issued a traffic ticket.
The 11x World Champ took a picture of the fine print that
reads:
Please note a $55 infringement processing fee will be
charged to the credit card provided at the…
We cannot read the rest because of the large red circle and
commentary that reads:
So it cost #RedSpot car rental $55 to send the transport
dept an email with my details? Hmm.
Hmm is right. Kelly Slater is now out $200 Australian for board
bag fees on JetStar and another $55 Australian for rental car
ticket processing fees.
Damn this ugly ugly system. Should we start a GoFundMe?
The World Surf League’s move to Facebook could
not be coming at a more inopportune time. The social media giant is
caught in a massive information sharing scandal that is rocking
public confidence and share price. Things have gotten so bad that
CEO Mark Zuckerberg is headed before congress to explain how 78 odd
million people had their personal details gleaned by the firm
Cambridge Analytica.
78 million is an almost unfathomable number really. 5 thousand
is much easier to comprehend which is a good thing because almost
that many people watched the final between Mick Fanning and Italo
Ferreira yesterday.
4900 to be exact.
It is one of the gorgeous things about Facebook. Unlike the
World Surf League’s app or website, the exact number of viewers is
right there for all to see and for Cambridge Analytica to
purchase.
4900 professional surf fans watching and Mick Fanning and Italo
Ferreira bobbed, weaved and made lower “h” history. The heat was
certainly the most hyped of the year what with Mick’s Sainthood
Committee in full swing. Much media pounced on the narrative and
steered readerships toward the event. Every other Instagram post,
too, encouraged a live witnessing of history.
4900.
And let’s assume for a moment that four times as many people
watched the heat somewhere other than Facebook. Hell, let’s go buck
wild and assume that ten times as many people did.
49000.
Does that seem like a big number? It doesn’t to me either and
that is a buck wild figure which makes me very happy. For all of
the posturing and posing and re-branding and press-releasing I
could buy every single professional surf fan in this entire world a
beer.
I do believe this will be BeachGrit’s next/first
marketing campaign.
Very achievable. Very doable. I’d like to but every single
professional surf fan in the entire world a beer and furnish them
with love.
The Zeke Lau and John John Florence affair is
old news now, already picked over by the best in the game. In case
you were camping in the woods and missed, Zeke Lau surfed against
John John Florence in an early round heat at Bells and paddled very
aggressively, throwing John John off his game and winning.
Commentary was instant and harshly against Zeke. “Fuck that guy…”
“rude” “no place for that in surfing…” etc.
An amateur sociologist could have observed before easily
declaring, “Well, surfers are racist. Any time a person of brown
skin (Zeke, Brazilians) pushes back the establishment (blonde,
blue) reacts by reminding the offender he isn’t altogether
welcome.” But surfers are too vacuous to be racist. So what? Why
the near unanimous derision of Zeke Lau?
For answers we must travel back to Torquay where ancient grudge
breaks to new mutiny. And what is this ancient grudge? Jocks vs.
surfers of course! Nearly every comment I’ve read this week mirror
this one here
from Storm Boy. “Zeke is the worst kind of bully, an over-swole
knucklehead jock without the guts to intimidate off his own back,
instead paying a grown man to tell him who is weak enough to push
(paddle) over.”
Over-swole knucklehead jock.
Jocks vs. surfers, fighting in the Garden of Eden, fighting in
olde Egypt, fighting during the Industrial Revolution and fighting
at Bells. Where did the enmity first begin? Who knows but it is
certainly eternal. The jock with his organization and team muscle
head. The surfer with his uniqueness and individuality and lack of
roolz.
All fine and good but I am still confused. The viciousness
directed toward Zeke Lau for surfing like a jock, for being a jock,
seemed… uninformed. Hasn’t the World Surf League been pushing and
pushing and pushing “surfing” into “sport” since its most recent
remake? Don’t more and more and more professional surfers see
themselves as “athletes?”
All Zeke did was complete the circle and then you drew and
quartered him.
So which do you want? Is professional surfing a sport or is it a
gentleman’s game?
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The Brazilian screwfoot Italo Ferriera wins the Rip
Curl Pro against four-times bell shaker Mick Fanning. Three
thousand eight hundred fans watch the final on
Facebook.
Bells: “Italo maroons Fanning in front of
adoring fans!”
Hasn’t the little petri dish of pro surf fandom been
absolutely fizzing with outrage over the Zeke/John John paddle
battle? What a kerfuffle! I think we should discuss
(briefly), before we run a rope through the eyes of a compelling
finals day and string it up the flagpole. Seeing as it is likely to
be the only thing we remember from Bells 2018 once the St Mick hype
slowly dies down.
Rolling the videotape it was John John who made the move to
paddle to the inside of Zeke, and Zeke who blocked. John then let a
set wave go through unridden before Zeke took the next. It was a
display of aggressive intent but it hardly impeded Florence from
riding a wave. What it clearly did was rattle John John to such an
extent that he fell on every wave.
It revealed a curious fragility, did it not?
Even though John has created this perfect little fairy tale
world with World Titles and yachts cruising the outer islands and
supportive golden-skinned friends and fresh veggies grown in the
backyard and a friendly father figure of a coach, even given all
that there is a tremendous brittleness in the face of unbridled
aggression.
Sometime during the heat my wife came in and asked, “Why are you
blue?”
I looked up and realised I’d stopped breathing and was in fact
being asphyxiated by the plumes of mawkish sentimentality which had
filled up the room. It was like trying to breath through Black
Francis’ “ten million pounds of sludge from New York and New
Jersey”. And now Fanning was against Pat Gudauskas in the semi’s at
Bells! He’d barely surfed a decent wave at more than half
throttle!
It rings a bell. We remember how Kelly crumbled in the face of
aggression from Andy Irons. What a beautiful psychological
conundrum to observe in the Champ as he rolls into Margarets. Where
to go? Fight fire with fire ? But he doesn’t have any of the
psy-ops warfare that Kelly had and has. Question: What does a coach
actually do?
QuarterFinal one between Gudang and Michel Bourez kicked off in
clean four-to-six-foot Bells Bowl under a funereal gloom. Even
though Joe Turpel called it “already a classic” it was obvious it
was another one of those days where there was something in the
water. Bourez was awful and Pat G, the Hurdy Gurdy man, all limbs
flailing and hyped up energy spaz pumping wildly across the Bells
Bowl was only marginally better. What happened to understated
California style? It made my eyes hurt to watch it. Pat made the
semis with a six and five but he did remind me I still had a Gudang
Guram left over in the shed so I went and smoked it and got set for
the avalanche of sentiment to come for the Owen/Fanning
QF.
Fanning was Fanning Lite and Owen was bad. Bafflingly,
unbelievably bad. I couldn’t imagine anything surfing worse than a
new born Giraffe with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome… thought that
would safely be the nadir of the contest as far as needing a
metaphor for bad surfing went. Maybe Owen was channeling the
three-legged twin brother of the crippled giraffe? He was tepid and
hesitant and uncoordinated and incredibly unsavvy. Four minutes to
go and he gifted Mick a lovely inside runner that Mick dutifully
turned into a score. If it wasn’t for Owen’s impeccable integrity
an objective observer would be inclined to be asking some very,
very awkward questions about Owen Wright’s performance.
Sometime during the heat my wife came in and asked, “Why are you
blue?”
I looked up and realised I’d stopped breathing and was in fact
being asphyxiated by the plumes of mawkish sentimentality which had
filled up the room. It was like trying to breath through Black
Francis’ “ten million pounds of sludge from New York and New
Jersey”. And now Fanning was against Pat Gudauskas in the semi’s at
Bells! He’d barely surfed a decent wave at more than half
throttle!
Italo dropped the hammer on Zeke Lau, rendering tactics
irrelevant and in demonstrating what pro surfing could be and
should be in 2018 effectively passed brutal judgement on his peers
and the CT so far this year. His damning indictment left the charge
of mediocrity stamped on the foreheads of a majority of the Top 34.
There’s been a continuing error parroted by surfers and
commentators alike that the “criteria has changed” this year. The
criteria is exactly the same. Judges have decreed that the levels
of performance with respect to the criteria have to be much, much
higher to get a good score. Effectively they have changed the
answer to the question: “What is good surfing?” It is no longer the
conservative muck dished up for far too much of the last 5
years.
In the Biological sciences a predator is known to identify it’s
prey via a mental representation known as a search image. To
determine the answer to the question, what is good surfing, judges
had to develop their own search image; their own template made
flesh. That template has now been given a name (as it was for Kelly
Slater, and Dane Reynolds and Mick Fanning) and it is Italo Ferreira and
that makes me so hap. So so hap.
Medina waited a lifetime to kick off in the final QF against
Fred Morais. Just when it looked like he too had quaffed the
negative Kool-Aid that was starting to get a bad whiff about it he
unleashed a monster combo of perfect backside turns and then backed
it up. My god, I thought, Medina now has the best and most perfect
flow on Tour. His high volume boards require exactly zero spaz
pumping and intra-turn corrections. Can you Medina haters come to
terms with the truth of that?
The semis went as expected. Fanning easily accounted for Gudang
with his best surfing of the event. It was close to vintage,
classic Fanning. The torque, the wraps, the quasimodo pose claims
after banging shut the end section. It was all there. The fairytale
ending was looming.
Italo was just too good for Medina, and did you know Medina has
never bested him man on man? Me neither.
Before we hit the Final I received an email detailing a new
Sophie G collab with Air Asia (terrific airline, very cute
hostesses and stewards) whereby Air Asia was going to deliver a
prize for the biggest air every comp on the Australian leg. Bet you
can’t guess who won at Snapper. Ready? Sally Fitzgibbon. True! Any
ideas who won at Bells? I cannot recall a single made air. Maybe
that tail-free huck from Griff.
The Final was very good viewing live. I thought that. Millions
of Victorians and other Australians also packed the beach and
thought so too. Can we assume the 3600 watching on Facebook Live
also enjoyed? I say yes.
Italo looked wobbly as the onshore wind put gurgle through the
lineup but carried a slender lead into the mid way point of the
heat. Fanning caught the second wave of a set and turned on the
torque, delivering emotional candy to a crowd hungry for the
fairytale finish. He followed up with another scoring ride and took
the lead. The final seven minutes were tense, my heart was
thudding, 100 beats per minute as Italo stroked into a set. He went
big, then bigger and bigger before falling as the high tide back
wash intersected his closing move. It was enough for a lead
change.
Italo struck again with the best wave of the Final and two
minutes to go found Fanning, St Mick, marooned in front of an ocean
of adoring fans staring at an unyielding southern Ocean needing a
mid-range seven.
A minute and change to go and a set approached, which drove the
crowd into a screaming, whistling frenzy. The chimera of a wave
dissolved into nothingness as Fanning paddled into it and the hopes
and dreams of all save a few traitorous surf journalists went with
it.
The fairytale had ended, justice had been served. Italo gave
Fanning a long, long embrace. He hugged him and didn’t let go and
for the first time this event I found myself with a lump in the
throat.
