“I’ve seen the Zeke roll. I’m just out here making history. They
gotta make new rules to contain me. Excessive hassling. I
call it just a little love tap. That’s all it is. I love you. Just
let ’em know I’m here.”
Contest winner Filipe Toledo is tracked throughout the day,
giving children food, delighting in the crowd etc. Griffin
Colapinto is dry as anything when he calls, according to Keanu
Asing, Filipe’s ten-point air “miniature.”
Sebastian Z says, “My expression was Awwwwww! Griffin’s
expression was (making sound of deflating
balloon) Pfffft!”
Bliss out for four minutes or so. In English and Portuguese.
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Chris Cote: “Albee’s air is a 360!”
By Chas Smith
...with a revert out.
You have, by now, of course seen Albee Layer’s
latest very epic air. There he drops on a wedgy right, one pump,
two pumps and then up the wave’s face and into the ether spinning
clockwise. His nose comes around once and then his tail comes
around and… how many spins? Oh I lose count so quickly but it seems
the consensus amongst the masses is 540 degrees of spin.
Right?
“Wrong!” says one of surfing’s great voices Mr. Chris Cote.
“Albee’s air is a 360 with a revert out.”
The masses howl. “Are you retarded or something? Are you like…
retarded? Or something?”
“No.” Chris calmly retorts. “And I’m basing this entirely on
what skate or snow would call this. If Albee would have landed with
the nose of his board pointing to the beach then it would have been
a 540 but what he did is a nice 360 and a revert out. Look, there
are so many different types of airs out there and types of
rotations. It is super confusing, to some I guess, but I don’t
understand why people keep wanting to add spins when they’re just
not there. I’m part of a vocal minority and the debate gets heated
but it’s fun to have heated debates about something that isn’t
Trump or politics. But really what I would love to see in surfing
is beautiful straight airs, or somebody to do a really boned out
method over a section, land it and ride away. I have seen pictures
of guys doing methods but I’ve never seen a proper clip. What I
want to do is encourage beautiful airs.”
So?
What do you think?
I agree with Chris but not because I understand spins. I failed
Nature of Math in college. No, I agree with Chris because it really
bugs me when 5’10 men claim they are 6’0. I don’t know how tall I
am but tell everyone 6’0, when they ask, just to throw shade on the
5’10s.
A decade later, as BeachGrit was being spat out
of mammy’s womb, I got a ten-second clip sent to me via text from
Bethany’s then-manager asking, “Is this any good?”
The clip showed Bethany landing a frontside air in Fiji.
Creed McTaggart, who was also privy to the clip, had fallen off
a chair, yes literally, saying, “What the one-armed fuck!”
I was in the international airport at Los Angeles at the time
and said that the exclusive on this clip would make our traffic
soar, announce us to the world etc.
It didn’t.
As we quickly learned, it is far easier to repeat news than to
create it. Seven hundred and sixty five views and zero
comments.
Recently, the air resurfaced as the hero moment of
Aaron Lieber’s film
Unstoppable, “Bethany’s complete and untold
story that follows her journey from childhood into motherhood – the
ups, downs and her powerful resilience against all odds to become
one of the leading professional surfers of all time. From chasing
her toddler, to chasing the biggest waves, Bethany is continuously
rewriting the rules on being a fearless athlete.”
It ain’t bad. Movie comes out sometime in the US summer.
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Brazil wasn't kind to Gabs Medina, the 2014 champion of
the world, but the pool showed him as an artist, resourceful,
emotional. | Photo: WSL
Watch: Founders’ Cup “Crazy, Passionate”
Highlights!
By Derek Rielly
"The game has officially been changed!" says Joe
Turpel.
Did it feel, to you, that the joy of the Founders’
Cup was drowned out by the thundering waterfall of
Barrinha?
Oh of course you did, we all did, even me who, for a moment,
believed the Founders’ Cup to be the supercharged apex of a new
world order.
A few days prior and over the course of the two-day event in
Lemoore, California, BeachGrit ran seventeen stories.
Earlier today, the WSL dropped highlights packages for each of
the teams. Teams World, Brazil and USA excelled. Australia and
Europe lacked clarity, inspiration and were, mostly, clumsy.
With the clarity of hindsight, how do these shorts stack up?
Has the game, as Joe Turpel says, “officially been changed”?
Do you feel like a deflowered virgin or a swaggering stud?
Team world!
Team Australia.
Team Brazil!
Team USA!
Team Europe
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Hawaiian man hit with “lava bomb!”
By Chas Smith
"Even small pieces can kill."
The beloved Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi
is most famous for its lyric “they paved paradise and put up a
parking lot.” An apt rendering of our modern age, it is sometimes
difficult to imagine what this world must have been like before we
totally dominated it. Before we imposed our mighty will upon its
feeble strictures. But Hawaii has provided a glimpse of unpaved
paradise these last few months.
There have been devastating rainfall and floods on the garden
isle of Kauai. There has been a vicious concession grab on Oahu’s
Waikiki and now a volcano is threatening the entirety of the Big
Island.
For many years tourists have swooned as Kilauea has danced for
their pleasure. Little mini eruptions, lava flows to the sea, steam
etc. It is, in point of fact, the world’s most active volcano and
has been since man has waltzed the earth.
Things had, anyhow, been getting more serious with Kilauea all
month with larger sulfurous belches and lava flows burning fields,
houses and roads. Then on May 17 the volcano blew its stack sending
poisonous ash 30,000 feet into the air and also “lava bombs” which
caused the first reported injury. And let us
read:
A Hawaii man standing on his third-floor balcony was hurt
Saturday when he was hit by lava spatter, becoming the first person
injured by the Kilauea eruption.
The man’s leg was shattered from shin to foot as a result of
the impact, according to Reuters. He has been identified as a
homeowner on Noni Farms Road, but no additional information was
immediately available.
“I heard the injury was quite bad, serious to his leg,”
Hawaii County Civil Defense Administrator Talmadge Magno told the
Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Lava spatters “can weigh as much as a refrigerator and even
small pieces of spatter can kill,” Janet Snyder, a spokeswoman for
the Office of the Mayor, County of Hawaii, told Reuters.
I mean, son of a bitch. I would imagine, if you were lounging on
your third floor Hawaiian balcony, that you would feel immune to
nature’s wrath. What could get you all the way up there? What could
possibly cause you harm besides a bad building superintendent or
fussy doorman? Certainly not a lava bomb. But there we have it. A
cruel twist of fate.
Before today I did not know that “lava bombs” existed but from
henceforth I shall keep an ear out for their potentiality even
though I can’t imagine any effort could thwart. Maybe paradise is
fighting back. In the meantime, would you like to watch a short
informational video narrated by a man with a soothing accent? These
things help in times like ours.
Now that you are comforted would you like to watch a music video
of 90s college band Counting Crows covering Big Yellow Taxi? Sorry.
I am going to make you anyway.
