Chas Smith: “Forget me! I’ve found paradise!”

Chas Smith

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And it ain't Waco (flaming death) or Lemoore (smell of shit)!

Not every wave has a corresponding beach town and not every beach town has a corresponding wave but when the two collide oooee what a treat!

Marg River, Hossegor, Mundaka, La Jolla spring instantly to mind though there are many others and I would imagine, in this era of the wave pool, mayors from Waco to Lemoore are dreaming beach town dreams and of the beach town tourist dollars.

Of course they will never come. Waco is marked by flaming death. Lemoore is marked by the smell of shit. Inland towns might be cute, they might be quaint, but they will never be beach towns.

Which makes me think, in this era of the wave pool, that the beach town is a more valuable commodity than a wave.

Of course they will never come. Waco is marked by flaming death. Lemoore is marked by the smell of shit. Inland towns might be cute, they might be quaint, but they will never be beach towns.

I am currently in a very perfect one not far from Copenhagen but not necessarily close either.

I will not tell you where it is because, at my core I’m a surfer and as such like to keep secrets and am a selfish bastard. But there are amazing spandauer, coffee to die for, meals that melt a heart and vistas for days and days and days and days.

I might stay here forever.

Find your own damned beach town.

Insanely popular: Tesla sells out of Musk x Biolos surfboards!

Derek Rielly

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You wanted a Tesla surfboard? Too late!

You might’ve thought, two days ago, when Lost announced that it had combined with Tesla to make a $US1500 surfboard fashioned from carbon fibre that it might be a hard sell.

Of course, two geniuses and the might of the world’s most innovative tech giant made it a compelling sell.

For us poor men who work we must be careful how we squander our (pitiful) treasure, however. Food, a car, a little booze, maybe a gal of the night, occasionally, that’s about it.

Well, how about this?

Two days after the launch, all 200 boards had been sold.

Perhaps typical of the sorta consumer who’d buy a $US1500 Tesla board is Marques Brownlee, the tech YouTuber (six-and-a-half-million subscribers) and “ultimate frisbee pro”. New Jersey born Brownlee, who is twenty four and who doesn’t surf, announced to his almost three million Twitter followers that he’d bought the Musk x Mayhem collab.

Brownlee’s fans, predictably, went nuts, the tweet liked 11,000 times and retweeted 800 times.

Let’s do a little mathematics.

Two hundred surfboards at 1500 apiece? Why, that equals 300 gees.

Ain’t a bad biz model.

Vocation: The WSL wants “Airbnb Surf Experience” Hosts!

Derek Rielly

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Must be "unique and super fun!"

The earth stood still for a moment four days ago when it was revealed you could buy the attention of a two-time US Open winner, the charismatic and taller-in-real-life Brett Simpson, for $US338.

The WSL offers these Airbnb “experiences” across the world. You can have surf lessons with the best-looking man in all of Mex, there’s an intro to shaping in Biarritz, a feel-good help-the-kids experience in Cape Town. And so on.

It ain’t such a bad way to make a little extra cash, anything to keep a man away from the stupefying toil of real work, and as the WSL’s CEO Sophie Goldschmidt pointed out there is the “potential to spread the stoke of surfing across the world…we are confident we can take surfing to a new level.”

Surfers and Airbnb, as Goldschmidt told the The New York Times, are a natural fit. “When you have a big surfboard, it’s easier to stay in a house, and many top surfing destinations don’t have a lot of hotels anyway.”

Anyway, the WSL wants hosts.

WSL Airbnb Experiences are surf activities designed and led by people like you. From lessons to SUP tours and everything in between – if it’s unique, super fun, genuine, and interesting, then its perfect for WSL x Airbnb’s program.

We’re here to help connect as many participants as possible to you and your thing. Here’s how:

  • Partnering with WSL lands you at the top of search results in the surf section. That means more clicks, more customers, and more cash.
  • There’s a wait time to get approved on Airbnb. With us, you skip it. If you’re selected, you’ll be up and running ASAP.
  • Premium! There’s limited space in this exclusive program, and we’re holding it for the best hosts out there.
  • Promotion. Once you’re in, our goal is to keep you as booked as possible.
  • Set your own price. We’re here to help you figure out how much to charge, when to change your pricing, and more.

So what’s your thing?

I suppose I could swing together an itinerary at my beach.

0600: Stand at south end of beach while I point out the non-existent banks.

0700: Paddle ’em out when the tide’s high enough to create a facsimile of a rideable wave.

0800: Staunch bleeding of first head wound when kook lets go of ten-foot board.

0900: Apply pressure to femoral artery after another charge is run down by SUP.

1100: Take broken boards to repair shop.

Noon: Visit a cold-pressed juice shop and marvel at small bottles of nine-dollar drinks.

1300: Get drunk.

1900: Beat hell out of those that’s got it coming.

Whatcha got?

(Sign up here…)

 

The brightest light at the US Open is Filipe Toledo, unbeatable at HB except via interference. Photo by @tsherms/Steve Sherman/WSL

Opinion: “US Open allows for mankind to swallow spoonful after spoonful of putrid filth!”

Chas Smith

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Half-a-million fans excepted at world's biggest surf contest!

Today is the official opening day of the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, CA, or it might have been yesterday. I don’t exactly know since I’m still in Copenhagen, up early with the summer sun, eating avocado on rye bread with rhubarb, tomato, mint, olive salad in the side, swimming everywhere.

Copenhagen is a dream and Søren Kierkegaard was smart to be born here and not Huntington Beach where the dirty feet of sex-crazed inland empirians kick up so much dust during the US Open of Surfing that lung cancer rates sky rocket.

I have very mixed feelings about the US Open of Surfing and I tried to work through them in the book Cocaine + Surfing.

I watch a dirty perverted teenaged boy with the words “Sexx Simbol” scrawled across his chest try and slap the ass of dirty perverted teenaged girl with the words “Slap dat” scrawled on her lower back. Giggling from both parties ensues as he swings and misses and almost runs into a three-hundred-pound man riding a motorized chair with off-road tires featuring many Vans and Volcom stickers.

Here is my ode:

And if Agenda, in Long Beach, is a tri-colored mural of the five-year surf apocalypse then the U.S. Open of Surfing is its taste. The decayed flavor of good times turned very bad. A Mad Max-esque dystopian mess where God has officially turned his back and allows for mankind to swallow spoonful after spoonful of putrid filth.

I watch a dirty perverted teenaged boy with the words “Sexx Simbol” scrawled across his chest try and slap the ass of dirty perverted teenaged girl with the words “Slap dat” scrawled on her lower back. Giggling from both parties ensues as he swings and misses and almost runs into a three-hundred-pound man riding a motorized chair with off-road tires featuring many Vans and Volcom stickers.

A Monster Girl holding a T-shirt cannon watches too with a blank expression. I wonder if she ever fantasizes about shooting people in the face. I wonder if she could please just shoot me in the face. It would be a fitting end and my grave stone could read: “He died how he lived—like an asshole.”

Maybe I would even get a paddle out. Have you seen one of those? Where surfers paddle out on their boards together when someone dies and sit in a circle and splash water in the air and sometimes wear floral leis?

Ugh.

The U.S. Open of Surfing is like an unfortunate paddle out on land for an elderly and very bad horrible performance longboarder who died of a coronary or something. Much to everyone in the surf industry’s chagrin it is the biggest event of the year, and by far. Thousands upon thousands upon hundreds of thousands of perverts drain into Huntington Beach for one week near the end of July to make a mockery of decency and of my career. There are art exhibits, some skateboarding (maybe), some BMX (I think), free industry garbage like Hurley Frisbees and Mayhem temporary belly tattoos, underage drinking and a World Surf League qualifying tour event in the worst waves imaginable.

There used to be live music, but it got cancelled after the 2013 U.S. Open of Surfing turned into a riot.

Matt Meola air instructional: “Hopefully this stops that stupid fucking (360 or 540) argument!”

Derek Rielly

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Matt Meola uses hunting knife to explain diff between skate/surf/snow rotations in compelling instructional!

Are you weary of the air-rotation debate? That whole thing on whether it’s a “full rotation”, a 360, a 540 and so on?

The question, Do surfers, skaters or snowboarders have carte blanche on naming tricks?

The fun’s been going on for years. For background, read:

Rotation: Surfers are Math-tards! 

Kelly says, ‘It Was Actually an 810!”

Definitive: The Full-Roter is Dead! 

Even The New York Times deemed the matter of such world significance it threw a reporter and a couple of thousand words at it. Read that here. 

Yesterday, on Instagram’s version of YouTube, IGTV, Maui’s Matt Meola, who is twenty-nine years old and from Maui and whose Spindle Flip 540 caused a brief sensation three years ago, got into the debate with a to-camera instructional.

Using a hunting knife as surfboard and in a manner that could either be described as thoughtful or sluggish, Meola turns the rotation argument on its head.

Surfing is different, posits Meola, pushing the so-far discredited line that because surfers hit the lip at different angles and because fins means we gotta revert out of spins it can’t be compared to skate or snow.

“What makes the most sense is if we call it the exact degrees but that would be too confusing,” he says.

It’s a strangely beautiful and thoughtful mediation.

Watch! 

Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
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