Help: Make surfing shitty again!

Let's have a laugh!

And here we are. The very first hardback copy of Cocaine + Surfing: A Love Story! rolled off the presses yesterday while Iran and Israel sent bombs whistling toward each other’s soldiers. While Taylor Swift escalated her war with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. The fact that it is being printed (official release date is June 12, 2018), while not newsworthy, makes me happy. I failed to enjoy the month leading up to the publication of my last book, Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell, because I don’t like/am not good at plugging my own wares. It feels as awkward as it does embarrassing and makes me gag.

And yet here we are. One month to go and I have a favor to ask of you. If so inclined, wanna buy a copy? I would never ever normally ask but I have a dream, a glorious vision, and it needs you.

See, I want the book to hit the New York Times bestsellers list.

Now, I don’t want it on that list because I think it deserves to be there or because I am a narcissist (I only play one in print). No. I want it to be on the New York Times bestsellers list because in the day and age of World Surf League blanching and Olympic inclusion and Ambassadors of Stoke and Leisure I want, even if only for one week, I want people across this country to open up their Sunday newspapers and see the words Cocaine + Surfing: A Love Story! staring right back at them.

Matt Warshaw gifted me the introduction and it is so beautiful that it is worth the price of admission. When it first dropped into my inbox tears filled my eyes. That’s true.

And he writes at the end:

In other words, for all the comedy and pointlessness I’ve talked about here vis-à-vis drugs and surf, and Cocaine and Surfing, there are stakes on the table. There are risks involved. For drug users, of course. But drug use can be can be temporary. Reversals are possible. Today’s bent coke-out surfer might be straight and redeemed tomorrow. The stakes for surfing, however, in terms of its identity-the way the sport presents and views itself-are also high, but not reversible. Barring some kind of apocalyptic global socio-industrial meltdown, a fully tamed and enfranchised and corporate-friendly version of surfing will never gain back what it lost.

Do I think this book will halt, or even slow, our slide into a broader, safer, blander age?

No. I do not. But Cocaine and Surfing is truthful and smart, and very very funny, and when I laugh it hurts less.

I think the laughs at having, even if for one short week, cocaine tied to surfing in the mainstream media instead of wave pool technology or Olympic surf training programs will be very funny. I asked my wonderful publisher how to scratch onto that damn list and she said, “Pre-sales.”

Will you like? Probably. The great Rory Parker gave it a full one star review and wrote:

The author spends the rest of the time rehashing apocryphal tales, summarizing things that other people have written, complaining about the surf industry, mentioning the clothes he wears, and navel-gazing about his career as a surf journalist.

So…. you can pre-order here here here or here if you are in Australia.

And thanks.

I love you all.