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.
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Some people are still trying to claim shit from the Bronze Age. Talk about baggage…
I’ve never understood the locals only thing, what surfer doesn’t travel these days.
Being a cunt and travelling are not mutually exclusive.
Disclaimer – I condone localism somewhat.
she has nice feet.
Easy boy. But you do have a point
ha ha best comment by far :D:D
From my own experience surfing won’t keep em that way .
Concepcion?
edit, no you right, I’m wrong
You obviously have a cocaine problem… along with an “I” fascination.
Sandspit? Never heard of it. The tatoo must be working!
yesssss the best!
That tattoo would look much better as a tramp stamp.
kind of wanna see the dots. Need a before/after
Barrel or Na?: flipping off the camera
Wait that isn’t the Santa Barbara County shaka?
Wait, “few dots now”- tattoos go away?
Laser removal , surgical removal , amputation and / or death ?
Away, doth the foot-skin wear.
Just plain footwear will do CB.
No need for excess verbosity.
Keep it clean and tight.
‘Cept I didn’t mean footwear, I meant the skin on one’s feet. And I was feeling pretentious.
and I was being a prick.
High five
Can you two go sort out the middle east?
What, you mean like Tennessee?
Williams?
That’s a great idea, ric !
I think we can really make difference and resolve many issues, like our retirement funds and future coastal property investments.
Of course it’s not going to be easy and will likely take a while but I believe it’s a perfect pairing. CB doesn’t drink anymore but I do ! Like a fish !
He can host the round table negotiations and I’ll do the aftermatch functions.
We need a fairly substantial budget to get this ball rolling tho’ – doesn’t matter, WSL will cough up a bit. I hear Kuwait and Bahrain have gold medal aspirations in surfing and need a pool or two. We’ll be just fine.
Hell, what could possibly go wrong ?
i believe that foot tatoos aren’t all that durable really!
By the way, great article in Carissa Moore in the Red Bulletin. It was well written and you didn’t shy away from reporting her struggles with an eating disorder. Bravo.
Oh, thank you so much!!
I am glad I got to write that one, for sure.
Is there a link?
Yes! It was written as a print feature but you can read online!
https://www.redbull.com/us-…
Chas was gona post, I think, but he is easily distracted as we know!
Well written, Jen. Upvote.
But a bit long for us bg types fed daily doses of Derek and Chas’ curious attempts at journalism.
oh ha ha totally! it’s like 3k words or something stupid. but you know, print. we stupid things in print magazines sometimes!
$$$$ talk, bs walks.
Onya.
tried the link but could not find it
hmm, weird. is it bouncing you to a localized version of the site? like aus or europe or something? because i think it’s only on the us version. you can force it by hittin’ search, us region, and carissa moore — and you should be able to find it. this link works for me on all browsers, but i did not check on a vpn, sooooo idk.
https://www.redbull.com/us-…
thanks. good read. I was there when she won Honolua in 2015. Some of the best surfing I have ever seen. My impression was that a lot of these womens fathers are too invovled in the duaghters lives and that is why they don’t know who they are. They never had the space to discover themselves.
oh nice. yeah — there’s definitely something with there with the father-daughter relationship and how it gets bound up with competing.
thanks for reading!
Fuck dickbender!
Perhaps she could get a tattoo for homeless surfers like “go back to the van , tent or trailer park “?
My first thought about the Go Home tattoo: go home little piggy. I don’t care if you we we we your way there! Just Go Home little piggy!
https://youtu.be/bmZAAkjur3w
OttoesBeenThere . Looks like the middle piggy is having a whale of a time . Just after my favorites from little baby bum and the mother goose club . I really should get out more
Her work is angsty as hell without much substance, as well as being derivative of Basquiat without a clear purpose in execution of original imagery and ideas. Energy is there, but as a whole the work is devoid of anything unique, leaving the viewer empty with nothing to cling to.
Jeez you must be fun on Mondays if your like this on the weekend ?
People dislike me
Read that backwards. Makes more sense. Less clingy.
you mean “me like sid people” – definitely makes more sense
the problem with passionate art critics is that they’re a fecal bunch. Fickle too. They want to be disliked by people in general. But surfing is art. The art of disliking people. Not being disliked. Which means he’s a shit critic when it comes to the art of surfing.
I follow your logic. I like the idea of disliking people.
Which brings me to the real topic of this critical discussion.
[violins] I like being able to click the Comment link to take a reader straight to the Comments of an article. I dislike that it is still borked. [violins]
Signed: Prezidente, Comment Link Memorial Commission
I’m almost relieved when I find someone new to dislike.
Nope Otto. Critics do not want to be disliked (the ones I’ve met.) They merely want to be able to intelligently dissect work and share their analysis with others. Whether others agree, is not their problem.
Don’t be too hard on yourself for your lucid critique of Demi’s work .
I appreciate a good bit of art criticism. Keep it up.
Edit: I thought you were merely joking about her feet-toos, but now that I’ve seen a few of her paintings online I can more fully appreciate your criticism as ringing true. She needs more original iconographic depth. Or something.
Sub in a few male pronouns and this could be a book review for Cocaine + Surfing.
BUY HERE IN THE US: Cocaine + Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing’s Greatest Love Affair
Link: http://a.co/aDv3CEj
One of the dumbest tattoos ever. What’s the point if it’s on the bottom of her foot? She should have put it on her forehead.
too bad the waves in santa barbara are fucking garbage year round. oooh you might get one decent swell at rincon and that’s it. santa barbera has to be one of the most forgiving surf environments on earth. I’m sick and tired of surfers south of point conception who try to outwardly invoke localism in their line ups ur all fucking pussies get over it. if u wana see some real, raw, and legitimate surfing environments take a trip to northern california, my home, you’ll most likely share a lineup with just angry elephant seals and 20 ft white sharks looking for dinner but if u do stumble upon a lineup with me and the boys out you’re gonna get smoked bitch
that’s the spirit!
You seem suitably angry. Can we be friends?
I always find the biggest ‘locals’ are just cunts in the water no matter where they are surfing in world doesn’t matter if it’s at their home break or not.
And most of them doing the dickhead stuff can’t surf for shit anyway. It’s almost like they have small dicks to make up for.
do you have a local break, that you grew up surfing?
Yeah but I’ve lived now more of my life in another town with much better waves.
Call me God if you will, but “judge” has a “d” in it.
Bad behavior in the water is one thing but bad spelling is unforgivable. Amen .
Agree. We had to let go of a friend once due to bad spelling.
Orthographic obligations overriding amity and friendly relations ?
Yes, it became too much. “Curios, honist, suprise” were the breaking points. Can overlook if the person is funny but this faded. It was a very stressful time.
Good thing he doesn’t do tattoos!
A “Go Homo” tattoo could cause problems.
“Go Homo Sapiens” would have a nice ring to it but” Go Homo Erectus “might be a pain in the arse / ass ?
I’m struggling to accept “ass” over “arse” despite Derek’s insistence. That didn’t sound right. Rephrase.
nah man you obviously don’t know about getting juuged as in getting an ounce of fire kush for $125. now that’s getting juuged fucken morons
Upvote for the “fucken morons” .
ooooh you surf with sharks!! you must be super tough and stuff!
The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Ray nicknamed him Tubby Soft-Squeeze.
haven’t you commented this before lol?
I made a bored mistake of going to stab last night and he’s over there telling the same macho story about polar bear sharks and walrussaurs or whatever, several times.
Seems a pointless task if you ask me (which you haven’t.) He’s anonymous, and has something to prove to his anonymous audience. Go figure. Maybe he wants a participation medal from the Jebus.
Spoonbender sounds like an alias of Uri Geller ?
You’d think LV Loafers are lofty imagination inhibitors. But then again, LV Moccasins are probably not mock-a-sin enablers.
George Greenough’s Great Grandfather was named Horatio…
So genetically do we blame Horatio for George’s bowl cut or his feet ?
Hmmm, not sure. But we do know George rode a flexible spoon, one might say he was a “spoon bender”…
https://www.google.de/searc…
Bob Mctavish talks warmly of George’s boards , surfing and friendship in his book Stoked .