The King is also a man of the peeps, travelling relatively incognito in Fiji Airways' coach… | Photo: @moralesedwin

Guess Who’s Going to Fiji?

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

Hint: busted foot, owns a pool, first name Robert…

Last night, shortly after officially withdrawing from the Corona Bali Protected at Keramas, Kelly Slater boarded a flight to Fiji to collide with waves Surfline says “will rival, and potentially surpass, some of the most memorable swells for Fiji.”

Kelly Slater Fiji — The Puerto Escondido photographer Edwin Morales, seated behind KS en route to Fiji. Also on the flight were “Nathan, Billy, Dame, Tom and Coco,” says Edwin. I’m guessing, Fletcher, Kemper, Hobgood, dunno and Nagales. Fill in the missing surname?

Do you remember six years ago at the Volcom Pro when the tour turned sissy, locked her thigh gates and cancelled the Fiji event?

Bigger than that maybe.

Read Ashton Goggans’ account here.

And Fred Pawle’s here.

Right about now, some readers will be finger stroking their foreheads.

Kelly can’t surf Keramas, can surf riotous Cloudbreak?

Well… yes.

Does anyone remember the magic of Kelly Slater, Tahiti, 2003, when he stole the world title lead from Andy Irons by winning Teahupoo with a busted foot?

Ain’t that hard to take off and pull in with a busted boot, Kelly said at the time.

Forcing your heels through the board on frontside hacks and all the pushing and yanking of airs is a little harder.

And, therefore, with Cymatic packed (editor’s note: The writer Longtom is currently testing the new model at Lennox Head and beyond, report next week) and a stash of rhino chasers at Tavarua, Kelly Slater will wake up to a warrior Sunday morning and take his ruined body off to do battle.

Here, Kelly commentates John John during the 2012 swell.

More as it comes, I suppose.

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Podcast: “Dane Reynolds didn’t let me ejaculate!”

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

Also are surfers mongo?

The velvety pipes of Todd Richards came to my home today and sat across from David Lee Scales, kitty-corner to me, at the zinc countertop and explained why surfers are culturally appropriating assholes. How surfers take the blood, sweat and tears of the skateboarders and snowboarders before them and laugh and mock and then call things that happen above the lip of the wave “Gorkin Flips” and “Bologna Sandwiches” instead of their proper nomenclatures born in the Fires of Mordor.

We are sons of bitches and no one would argue except Todd Richards is on a mission. He wants us to come correct. To unite with our brethren and treat aerial maneuvers in the same way or, at the very least, to call them the same things.

If you are unfamiliar with Todd Richards he is a professional snowboarder, wonderful skateboarder, very good surfer and the voice of professional Olympic snowboarding (the most professional kind). You can hear a little bit of his story on the podcast and then it is gloves off but this time it is me sitting quietly, mixing bloody marys to drink all by myself, while Todd and David Lee Scales attack, parry, counter-attack. It is a fantastic reckoning, our best podcast yet, and worth a listen because the future of surf terminology hangs in the balance.

Since I was sitting quietly, mixing bloody marys to drink all by myself when we recorded at 10 am this morning I am in no state to post all the video evidence presented on the show (because I clearly had to play through and it is now 5:39 pm and I’m on……….vodka lemonade I think) but you can and should click right here and watch.

We also discuss trucker hats in the lineup, the merits and demerits of zinc and Dane Reynolds who left the entire surf world with blue balls. Unfulfilled. Son of a bitch.

But do you say “kitty-corner” or “katty-corner”?

My dog must have pissed somewhere in the house because I just caught a giant whiff.

LISTEN!

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Breaking: Mick Fanning saves a fish!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

"It kept slipping out of his hands so he started scooping up with sand..."

And just when you think you know someone. Mick Fanning, 36, was heading out for a surf today when he saw a poor little fish flopping helplessly in the sand. The normal reaction would have been to step on the fish’s head, delivering a satisfying crunch up through the heel and into the heart but that is not what Mr. Fanning did. He, instead, saved the fish’s life and let us turn to the Gold Coast Bulletin for the rest of the story.

Amateur photographer Leisa Oakes started snapping shots of Fanning when she saw him trying to pick up the slippery fish. “I wondered what he was doing, then I realised he was trying to pick up this little bream which had flipped up onto the sand,” said the Tweed Heads resident who goes by @natures_jewel.

“It kept slipping out of his hands so he started scooping up with sand on to his board.

“He eventually got it back into the water, it was pretty funny.”

Fanning is previously best known for punching a shark in the face. Do you believe in karma? Do you think this rights the wheel or whatever?

I don’t believe in karma and would have stepped the fish’s head, delivering an enjoyable crisp up through the heel and into the heart. It is why Mick Fanning is a better man than me and always will be.

To Mick!

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"Keramas sits up on the reef and barrels and gives you all this face to do airs and tail throws," says Kelly Slater. | Photo: WSL

Weep: Kelly Slater withdraws from Keramas!

By Derek Rielly

7 years ago

Will only compete "when I'm comfortable where I'm at" says champ.

A few minutes ago, the eleven-timer Kelly Slater officially withdrew from the Corona Bali Protected, which is event five on this year’s tour.

It had only occurred to me to ask Kelly about his involvement in the event while inspecting the gambling odds for the event which will, most likely, start this weekend.

I saw that Kelly was a 17-to-one semi-favourite to win. Reasonable enough odds to toss a few shekels at it. First, I asked Dave Prodan, the WSL’s senior VP of Global etc who told me to “hold the phone on the withdrawing thing”.

I replied that I have very weak fingers and that I couldn’t hold on for long.

“I wouldn’t go reporting either way,” he said.

I then contacted Kelly who said that when he’s feeling comfortable with his foot and “where I am at” he will surf contests again. (He hopes to be back in the game for J-Bay, beginning July 2.)

By “where I am at” he meant, “Psyched to compete and not stressed about foot being an issue and boards super-dialled.”

(In the meantime, Prodan had written, “Prepare the withdrawing story.”)

Keramas, of course, is a very good sand and reef righthander on Bali’s east coast that used to be a terrific secret. Maps drawn. Vague directions given to friends of friends. A couple of bamboo huts (called warungs, an Indonesian word for “shop”) selling warm bottles of Sprite.

That was a dozen years ago and now there is a fabulous eco-resort called Kommune with five-hundred-dollar-a-night rooms and wellness retreats and massages and all the other accruements of good living. A grand improvement on having to negotiate Bali’s traffic although driving home the sophisticated man would often stop for a hot-oil massage midway through the journey.

And even though the surf forecast for the Corona Bali Protected (name don’t ring do it?) isn’t great, I do imagine the surfing will be as sharp as an arrowhead and as unpredictable as Kelly Slater’s whereabouts.

Other odds that might interest you, as they do me:

Outright winner

Griff Colapinto at 34 to one.

Mikey Wright at 41 to one.

Seb Zietz at 51 to one.

Kanoa Igarashi at 51 to one.

To make the semis

Julian Wilson at 2.70 to one.

Jordy at 3.75 to one.

Yago Dora at 13 to one.

Jesse Mendes at 21 to one.

Meanwhile, on the world title.

Filipe is paying 4.25 to one.

Italo’s at nine.

And Jordy’s at 23!

Gamble here!

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Wanted: Hayden and Mark Price are outlaws!

By Chas Smith

7 years ago

For smuggling!

When you were a younger boy or girl and watched Bonanza, The Magnificent Seven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc. did you find yourself cheering for the cowpeople in white hats or in black hats? Were you a fan of the good guys or the bad guys (goodies and baddies in Australian)? I have to assume that most of us here celebrated the naughty sneakers, seeing as most of us are generally unfit for… ummm… living industrious lives and so it is with great confusion that I approach the above posters popping up around North County, San Diego.

As you can see, it is a replication of old timey wall hanging used to catch criminals and let’s first learn some history from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Law enforcement officers have been posting wanted notices for centuries. We really don’t know when the FBI first distributed a wanted poster. Around 1919, we began issuing fliers called identification orders, or IOs. The 1919 IO of William N. Bishop, a military deserter, is thought to be the first. IOs listed key details about a fugitive sought by law enforcement and included a picture, details of the crime for which they were sought, their criminal history, and by the mid-1920s, any existing fingerprints we had. Soon the FBI started issuing wanted posters for notorious fugitives, like John Dillinger. At first these were issued by the Department of Justice of which the FBI is a part. And in the early 1930s, we started to publish a bulletin called fugitives wanted by the police that collected information about wanted fugitives from law enforcement across the country. Soon the FBI had formalized its own posters and when it created the 10 Most Wanted Fugitive program in 1950, we used a standard format that has become iconic.

Interesting, no? And back to our poster featuring Hayden Cox of HaydenShapes and Mark Price of Firewire. I know that I am supposed to be angry at the two “immigrants” (Hayden is from Australia and Mark Price is from South Africa) for smuggling American jobs to Asia but years and years of applauding baddies dies hard especially when the charge is “smuggling.” Aside from westerns I love love loved the Dukes of Hazzard and their moonshine smuggling. Oooooee I know that it is very verboten to howl the old Confederate flag today but Bo and Luke were my absolute favorites of all time and have influenced my life to a great degree.

Sometimes, when after the sun has set and the day’s writing is done, I sit in bed and fantasize that I am Bo Duke, Derek is Luke Duke and BeachGrit is the General Lee. There we are, acting recklessly, jumping, jiving while Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane (Stab) tries to catch us and get us in big trouble with Boss Hogg (the California Bureau of Better Business). It is a nice fantasy that also involves Cousin Daisy (Jen See), Uncle Jesse (Nick Carroll), Cooter (Matt Warshaw) and the narrator Waylon Jennings (Longtom).

Go Hayden and Price! Get those American jobs to Nam before they spoil or Johnny Law catches you!

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Eat beach grit spam!