Breaking: Jon Pyzel eats a hotdog!

With only mustard! No ketchup nor grilled onions nor sauerkraut!

The heart of surf is beating strong but not up in Lemoore, California where wide-stance’d European girls check-turn monotonous green waves. Where Adriano de Souza is not coming out of a tiny barrel to confused applause. No. It is beating strong underneath the fluorescent lights of an out-building at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

It is beating strong at The Boardroom surfboard expo.

For it is here that the fucking surfers, the goddamn nerds, are mingling, caressing glassed rails, watching Peter Schroff stalk, listening to Devon Howard redefine the egg as a “big boy trike,” talking about surf and surfboards and surfboard rails and the weird minutia that turns us all on and by “all us” I mean the fucking surfers. The goddamn nerds.

Surf Ranch Founders’ Cup is playing on a few televisions but nobody is crowding to witness. It looks slow. It looks uninspired and the few stragglers stopping by seem genuinely confused by it. I ask a handsome boy, “What do you think?” He shrugs. I ask an older man, “What do you think?” He says, “About?”

I go outside and watch Jon Pyzel buy a hotdog. A hotdog with just a bun and the hotdog and mustard. No ketchup nor grilled onions nor sauerkraut. No flair just high performance, straight to the point, get ‘er done.

Hotdog.

And here is the damned thing. I’d rather watch Jon Pyzel, extraordinary shaper, John John’s secret weapon, 2x Stab in the Dark winner, eat a hotdog than a competition at Surf Ranch and that is God’s honest truth.