Meet: Your new surf hero!

Chas Smith

By

The brave woman who stood up to leading surf website!

They say that you should never meet your heroes. That they won’t live up to the expectation. That they will let you down and leave you with a hollow emptiness that you will later try to fill with cocaine and booze. Well, I met my hero today (via the phone) and call bullshit on the commonly held notion. She exceeded my lofty imagination and I do believe she should be your hero too.

Her name is Demi Boelsterli and she is a Santa Barbara local, one-time pro, artist and coach. She also tattooed “Fuck Surfline” on her foot.

I wrote about this in the new book Cocaine + Surfing (buy here in America, here in Australia, here as an Audible and here as an iBook)! Shall we read together?

I go to Surfline to see what is happening in the water even though it means that damned Marcus Sanders gets my click. It’s calling 3 – 5 occ. 6 “Primary/peaking WNW swell blends with some smaller SSW swell this morning. Many spots throughout the region offer broken-up and fairly peaky, waist, shoulder-high surf with occasional head-high sets.”

Basically gibberish.  Surfline only speaks nonsense, so much nonsense that some amazing woman just tattooed “Fuck Surfline” on her heel. Can you imagine the frustration that it would take to do that? Fuck Surfline, but from the accompanying webcam I can see it’s good or at least fun.

A little backstory. I had been sent the Instagram post of the tattooed Fuck Surfline foot a while back and it stuck with me. I wondered, “Who is this magical woman?” But knew that I would likely never find out. She would stay there in the mists of my mind.

Well, just two days ago the great Jen See was reading the book in Morgan Maassen’s Santa Barbara coffee shop, stumbled across the passage and texted me, “ha ha the “Fuck Surfline” girl is my bestie!”

I immediately begged for an interview and today I got!

Chas: Please tell me all about Fuck Surfline!

Demi: I grew up in Santa Barbara and there’s this joke my friends and I all had about Hoatio Spoonbender (Horatio Spoonbender is the name associated with many Santa Barbara photos that appear on Surfline). We would laugh and say it was an alias for people to submit photos of Sandspit and other more local breaks that we didn’t really want blown up. It became this big thing where we’d start going on to Instagram and if anyone had a picture of the more local breaks we’d put an emoji of a spoon on it. I think some people started getting mad but it was just this big joke to us. Anyhow, Morgan Maassen (one-time BeachGrit principal!) told me that he’d pay me $100 bucks to get “Fuck Surfline” tattooed. We happened to be at a buddy’s house who had a tattoo gun so I had him do it on my foot. “Fuck Surfline” on one and “Go Home” on the other.

Chas: Do you still have?

Demi: There are just a few dots now but I’m thinking about getting it again this winter.

My hero. And yours.

See her art here and buy some!

A healthy left in a flat river!

Watch: This outrageous (little) left breaks from 7am to 10am every day!

Derek Rielly

By

A wave every ten minutes. And it ain't a wave pool!

Who doesn’t love novelty? A new board, a loose pair of shoes, a tight pussy (or ass), a different wave?

The joint pictured, Gasolines, is a shreddable little left created by the commuter ferries that ply the Tejo River between the crummy old fishing town of Barreiro and the Portuguese capital Lisbon.

Every morning, between seven and ten am, the ferries leave Barreiro Port, hit the juice, and, depending on the tide and the wind, create a wake that foils down a gorgeous, if hard to read, sandbank. The size of the wave depends on the speed, the boat and how many commuters are on it.

“Sometimes there’s no wave at all and sometimes they turn into Pipeline,” the German surfer Nico von Rupp told Surfline.

In this clip, we see the Portuguese surfer Joao Kopke snatch a runner underneath his pal who looks like the bell boy sent off for a toothbrush for his master.

Confused!

#gasoline is a wave that happens due to a huge boat that takes people from #barreiro to #lisbon. Everyone that’s in the boat is going to work and the wave size that the boats generates (you have one every 10min during two hours) varies according to the number of people that are going to work. A full loaded boat generates a bigger wave! But there’s a lot of other elements to have in mind if you want to surf this river wave generated by this boats, like tides and winds… We (me and @joaokopke ) had the pleasure to be guided by Ricardo “P1”, the guy who discovered this amazing phenomenon. So, while, #portugal was in a flat spell this day, we scored perfect and long lefts in a river! And of course I had to drone it to get the best angle! #mavicpro #ridingportugal @wsl @kswaveco @tapairportugal @gasoline_acd

A post shared by White Flag Productions (@whiteflagproductions) on

 

Disgraced WSL: Equal pay for equal work!

Chas Smith

By

Worldwide outrage grows!

It is time, friends, to break out the pitchforks and begin our march to a town that is very near Venice, California. Oh, I am not speaking of Gardena or Hawthorne, the respective homes of twin incel + surf lifestyle blogs Stab and The Inertia. No. I’m speaking of Santa Monica and the official headquarters of the World Surf League.

Rage is swelling globably over the very clearly sexist snafu that occurred earlier this week in South Africa. You recall? That a man and a woman both won a surf competition and the World Surf League decided it was a good idea to take their picture with the man holding his winnings of 8000 rand and the woman holding her winnings of 4000 rand?

Criticism was swift with your own humble surf journalist declaring that the WSL’s equal pay schtick was a corrupt lie based upon a silly algorithm and that they should all burn in the hottest fires of hell but only after I write a Pulitzer prize winning expose in the vein of Rogers and Hammerstein.

A more important journalist, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Clementine Ford, declared very much more eloquently:

The impact of sexism on women’s careers is about so much more than legislation and formalised pay grades. By repeatedly sending the message that certain pursuits are masculine and that women trying to involve themselves are just obnoxious interlopers, society enables the continued disadvantage of those not privileged by gender. It’s not good enough for large corporations such as Billabong to need the public to point out these obvious inequalities, nor does it reflect well on the general make-up of those institutions that discrimination like this is seen as so standard that literally no-one thinks to challenge it.

And a group in South Africa has taken it upon themselves to right the World Surf League’s horribly sexist wrong. Let us learn about the WLS.

The Women Love Sport (WLS) campaign is a collaborative movement of ordinary people seeking to respond to the incident in which a young teenage girl won half the prize money of her male counterpart in a surfing competition in South Africa.

The question is: Can public outcry lead to positive change?

We think it can.

Let’s do more than just criticize, and show the world that women, and men, are willing to show up for women in sport.

This Women Love Sport (WLS) campaign specifically aims to contribute funds to women’s surfing in South Africa.

If you stand with us please make a donation to this movement.

We will ensure that the money is used in one of or all of the following ways:

1. Make a donation towards the female winners at the Ballito Pro 2018.

2. Make a fund available to supplement women’s contest winnings in other local surfing contests.

3. Make a donation to SurfingSA to further their existing work in women’s surfing development.

This is a community initiative showing SUPPORT for all existing investment in women’s surfing – from sponsors to event organisers – and is an act of solidarity with female athletes who battle to voice their frustrations in their competitive fields.

Please note: We pledge to make all financial contributions and dissemination of funds available to public.

I support fully, especially the public outcry part, and think we should still march to Santa Monica. Will you join?

Donate here!

Champions ride DHD!

Get rich: Invest in DHD Surfboards via equity crowdfunding!

Derek Rielly

By

Warning: "You may lose your entire investment, and you should be in a position to bear this risk without undue hardship."

Are you good at picking winners in the stock market, Fantasy Surfer and so on? I’m fabulously terrible. Loss after loss after loss.

I would’ve had far more fun pulverising hundreds of thousands of dollars with a rock or drinking expensive martinis made with ancient gin and eating stale salted peanuts in some famous hotel bar.

Recently, the phenomenally successful surfboard company Darren Handley Designs launched a crowdfunding campaign via the website Equitise.

If you didn’t know, Stephanie Gilmore, Mick Fanning and Matt Wilkinson all ride DHDs. Do they work? Does a Pope shit in the woods?

Wanna hang on my shoulder and read the prospectus?

In the last four years, the company has achieved considerable growth and attracted talented management that are focused on brand positioning and amplifying distribution channels. International sales represent 35% of revenue and with the introduction of EPS surfboards, DHD is well placed to increase this share. The company has also acquired the iconic Modom brand. As an established and innovative brand with existing offshore production relationships, work practices and product ranges, Modom is the key to expanding the product range of DHD and tapping into the surf accessory industry. Modom also has a loyal customer base and its own impressive riders Craig Anderson and Taj Burrow.

DHD is raising capital to increase inventory, invest in product innovation and marketing. Alongside and in addition to these plans, the company also has major growth opportunities in the EPS and soft surfboard market as well as accessories and fashion.

If you’re new to the speculative game or don’t have much cash to throw around, Equitise will relieve you of up to ten thousand Australian dollars.

If you’re a sophisticated investor (click here to see if you qualify) oowee… ain’t no limit to how much you can toss into the pot.

Are you in?

Yes?

Before you invest your lifesavings, please be aware that,

  • Crowd-sourced funding is risky. Issuers using this facility include new or rapidly growing ventures. Investment in these types of ventures is speculative and carries high risks.
  • You may lose your entire investment, and you should be in a position to bear this risk without undue hardship.
  • Even if the company is successful, the value of your investment and any return on the investment could be reduced if the company issues more shares.
  • Your investment is unlikely to be liquid. This means you are unlikely to be able to sell your shares quickly or at all if you need the money or decide that this investment is not right for you.
  • Even though you have remedies for misleading statements in the offer document or misconduct by the company, you may have difficulty recovering your money.
  • There are rules for handling your money. However, if your money is handled inappropriately or the person operating this platform on which this offer is published becomes insolvent, you may have difficulty recovering your money.

Still excited?

Click here to invest. 

 

Those three White Noiz's at the front (the Holy Grail just got sold) of the rack are for sale for five hundred Australian dollars apiece. Free beer included!

Buy: Craig Anderson’s prized HS surfboards!

Derek Rielly

By

Five hundred dollars apiece! Plus free Japanese beer…

If you’re kicking around Sydney’s northside and you’ve got a few c-notes in your billfold, I can’t think of a better way to liberate that cash than with the purchase of one of Craig Anderson’s old-ish surfboards.

Craig, you might remember, was the star of Slow Dance and Cluster, the participant in one of the great moments in surf history, helped popularise one of the most significant board designs in recent history, quit Quiksilver despite being offered a million bucks a year and the company’s blessing to start his own label, and a couple of years back did start his own label, called Former, with Dane Reynolds and a skateboarding man.

Several Februarys ago, I watched as a Jew supplicated himself before Craig at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem; the day before at the Jaffa Gate, American girls had swooned as Craig roared past on a Segway, your reporter in the hottest pursuit!

Craig, who turns thirty this year, is a surfer whose surfboards matter, I think. And if you go to the Hayden Shapes headquarters, in Sydney’s Mona Vale, today and tomorrow, you can buy one and examine a few others.

Still left (a Holy Grail just sold for $A600), are three 5’7 1/2″ White Noiz’s, hand shaped by Hayden Cox, with Futures fin boxes (the best in the biz and the choice of champions from John John to Ando and so on), Former, Electric and Huff stickers and in a condition that ain’t pristine but ain’t beat-up either.

The price? Five hundred Australian dollars. Three-eight or so Americano.

Come and Hayden will even give you a Kirin beer for free!

Click here for more details. 

Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
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