Man goes to the aid of his kid who is punched for emulating his hero Jamie O'Brien at Tamarin Bay (pink foamie, GoPro etc). Is gang-ganged.

Surf Rage (Part Two): Mauritius Locals Beat Hell out of Dad and Son!

By Craig Jarvis

6 years ago

Tourists surfing Tamarin Bay get gang-banged!

We all know about the White Shorts in Mauritius, and there is so much terrible examples of their uncivilised behavior all over the internet.

There’s a whole lot of really bad stuff here.

It escalated at Tamarin Bay recently.

Kyle Kahn, a Cape Town surfer who is married to the grand daughter of John Whitmore – the doyen of South African surfing – saw his 13-year-old son get a smack from the crew and went in to intervene.

The results of this altercation can be seen here.

The 13-year-old was emulating one of his heroes in Jamie O’Brian, by surfing on a pink foamie with a GoPro on his mouth. Not acceptable. Hit the child, hit one of his friends, then gang up and wail on the dad.

Is the wave good?

Fuck yes, and it’s a rare kind of beast is Tamarin, but there are so many other waves around the world that have sorted their shit out and understand how to deal with crowds through hierarchy and respect.

Supers in J-Bay has a pecking order and it’s hard enough to get a wave, but you will not see children getting punched out here.

Keramas is busy with blockings, and with locals getting barrelled, but there are few legitimate fisticuff incidents, much like Uluwatu.

In Hawaii, the rules are fierce, and one step out of line and you’ll have the boys on your back, but in USA and in Australia for that matter, the threat of litigation is massive and throw a punch at a kid or to anyone, and get on the wrong side of a zealous legal team and you’re going to find yourself in a world of shit.

What is a crazy is that the White Shorts, from all accounts, are not even pure locals. They are blow-ins who arrived years ago and took over the Tamarin domain. The true locals barely surf at Tamarin, and anyone who knows the island and who knows all the variables knows that there are many other waves around. There are waves in the north-west, there are a bunch of waves in the south, and there are a few others on the Le Morne peninsula.

“It gives Mauritius a bad name and it doesn’t help me because I am from Mauritius. When people find out where I come from, there is anger pointed at me and it just makes my career path that much more difficult. These guys do need to know the far-reaching consequences of what they choose to do. Many people are affected.” Brian Furcey, a WQS surfer from Mauritius.

Most waves on the peninsula, however, have some sort of White Short dominance. You’ll get chased out the water at One Eyes on the odd day, and you’ll even get chased out the water At L’Ambulant if you happen to be out there when a local posse arrive.

WQS hopeful Brian Furcy is a Mauritian surfer who has been travelling through South Africa over the last month or so competing in the WSL Africa series. This situation is not ideal for the travelling professional.

“Of course this does much damage to me and makes my job so much harder,” Furcy told me. “It gives Mauritius a bad name and it doesn’t help me because I am from Mauritius. When people find out where I come from, there is anger pointed at me and it just makes my career path that much more difficult. These guys do need to know the far-reaching consequences of what they choose to do. Many people are affected.”

It’s a bummer.

There are enough waves for everyone, but the vibe is horrendous. On my third to last trip I got heavily vibed at One Eyes by the other guy in the water. That’s right, there were two of us in a perfect line-up, and he had to tell me that this “‘isn’t fucking South Africa.”

We surfed excellent waves together, with him glaring at me and paddling past me after every wave. He didn’t make many of his waves because he wasn’t that good a surfer, but wouldn’t if have been cool if we had chatted about surfing, about our families, about the absolute non-real idea of surfing a perfect reef-pass on an island with one friend and no one else? If we had hooted each other into set waves, warned each other about approaching sets and claimed each others’ bombs all the way to the channel.

Instead, we didn’t become friends and we surfed in silence, kind of both enjoying the waves but hating the experience.

The thing is, if you start hitting kids, it’s not about localism anymore.

It’s criminal behaviour. That shit’s got to be sorted out.

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"I feel bad. I mean, he's a kid. We're in waist-deep water and he starts screaming, 'You just broke my jaw! You can't hit a minor! You're going to jail! I'm going to sue you!'

Surf rage: NSSA Junior attacks Italian greyhound-loving accountant at Salt Creek!

By Derek Rielly

6 years ago

"He lost it! He threw eight haymakers! Stabbed board at me!"

Oh to be a gorgeous Millennial. Acres of perfect skin. Soft hair. Delicate gestures. A voice like a cooing Siamese cat.

Of course, anyone born in the last twenty years has also lived without criticism (medals for everyone! You’re unique!) or rejection (everybody picked for the team!) thereby making any sort of conflict a total mind-fuck.

An accountant from Aliso Viejo, Kevin Woolwine, who is thirty nine years old and who enjoys the company of his Italian greyhound when not surfing, experienced a mind-fucked kid during the NSSA’s National Interscholastic Championships at Salt Creek in June.

A little scene setting.

The surf is two foot. The NSSA contest eats up the point. There’s a black ball at the north end. The weekend horde is squeezed into the middle.

“I got two young kids. I only surf on weekends so I need to get out even if it’s complete dog shit,” says Woolwine. “I need that two hours of sanity away from screaming kids. I don’t care what it looks like.”

He got the screaming kid anyway.

I could see this kid on the inside but it was a garbage little wave, a crap closeout, and I wanted to go home. He absolutely lost it. He gets in my face and screams, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck out of here?’

“After about an hour-and-a-half of catching nothing I had to get out of there. So I take off on this fucking two-foot closeout. I could see this kid on the inside but it was a garbage little wave, a crap closeout, and I wanted to go home. He absolutely lost it. He gets in my face and screams, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck out of here?’

“I was leaving but I wasn’t going to let this kid send me in. So he steps in front of me and at this point we’re pushing forehead to forehead. Just foreheads. And I’m looking at this kid and I say, ‘There’s no way in hell I can fight you but, dude, you can hit me if you want. I can handle your punches (Kevin was a collegiate wrestler). He threw seven or eight wild-ass haymakers. All I had to do was hold my hands up with my elbows. He clipped me behind the ear once, but it was no consequence. While he’s punching me a wave picks up my board and cracks him in the head.

“I feel bad. I mean, he’s a kid. We’re in waist-deep water and he starts screaming, ‘You just broke my jaw! You can’t hit a minor! You’re going to jail! I’m going to sue you!’

He threw seven or eight wild-ass haymakers. All I had to do was hold my hands up with my elbows. He clipped me behind the ear once, but it was no consequence. While he’s punching me a wave picks up my board and cracks him in the head.

Let me provide a brief detour from the narrative here. Do we live in a brave new era of lame surf assaults? And do you remember the case of Montgomery vs Burdett in Virginia Beach, the current title holder for World’s Lamest Surf Assault?

Click here for that.

Or the time one surf editor went after another and detectives were summonsed in Goggans vs Smith?

Click here for that.

Anyway.

“He’s playing the victim and then he throws his board, fins first, at my head. After he missed with that he tackled me and tried to hold me underwater. I got out of his grip (wrestler, y’see) and I wanted to let loose, but, he’s kid, so I let him go. Another wave came and after we came back up he started jabbing me with the nose of his board. It was unbelievable.

“And then we get to the beach. And his dad has fire in his eyes. The lifeguard steps in and says he saw the whole thing. That I didn’t touch the kid once. Another bystander came in and said I didn’t hit him. Meanwhile, the dad and the kid were trying to turn mob on me and I was thinking, what am I going to deal with in the parking lot? One of the crew from the sponsors who was at least 260 pounds and covered in tatts told me, ‘You better get the fuck out of here now. The thing is, I understand their position. If I was over there and someone told me that someone much older had hit my kid I’d have the same reaction. But it was all based on bullshit.

“All my friends are making fun of me, having a fight with a sixteen year old but, dude, the amount of restraint I practised.”

Woolwine appeals to anyone who was on the beach filming to come forth with the footage, if only to share the laughs.

“I’m telling you, it’s internet gold,” he says.

As a sweetener, BeachGrit will pay $500 for any vision.

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Stab and The Inertia plotting the future.

Invasion: Reporting live from Venice!

By Chas Smith

6 years ago

A war for surfing's very soul!

I am currently sitting at a reclaimed wood and steel counter right in the heart of Venice’s Abbott Kinney drinking a hot fruit punch and listening to a “digital archaeologist” who “unearths deep musical emotion from obscure sounds.”

Venice.

Hot fruit punch.

It really feels that blonde roasts have become so ubiquitous in fancy coffee world that nothing is bitter anymore. Only very very very sweet with notes of cherry, Sunny Delight and Gatorade. I mourn bitter’s loss. I love bitter which may explain my general tone. It is also why I will cheer for France this Sunday in the World Cup final.

Being in Venice means I am very near to Venice-adjacent and Venice-adjacent’s own The Inertia and sister publication Stab. I am also very near to Santa Monica’s World Surf League international headquarters.

Enemies lurk around every corner. Inside every farm to table cafe and wine bistro. I already thought I saw Stab’s Sam McIntosh out on the street but it turned out to be German tourist wearing some lug soled Maison Margiela sneakers instead. I’m more worried about stumbling over The Inertia’s Zach Weisberg since he is three-feet tall and easy to miss. It would be very embarrassing to accidentally step on him after everything I’ve put him through here. An unnecessarily personal insult.

Herr Paul Speaker doesn’t seem like the coffee type and I’m not planning on taking a Segway tour of Muscle Beach so don’t plan on seeing him. Soph and Backward Fin Beth are mysterious though I don’t think they day drink and I’m going to start that at the appropriate 10:30 am.

Enemies everywhere and I wonder, has Venice and Venice-adjacent ever seen such a concentration of surf media enthusiasts? For decade Orange County held the surf industrial complex in its iron grip and, in many ways, surfing writ large came to reflect Orange County’s values. Conservative, cloistered, without imagination. What will surfing become here? The Inertia is trying desperately to morph it into a version of sport sandal bouldering. Stab is attempting to… to… I’m uncertain, to be honest. That rudderless ship will eventually wash up somewhere though and it won’t be pretty. Likely lots of Corona and party pics.

The World Surf League wants it to be broadly digestible. Understandable, relatable, clean. There is probably much head scratching in the office as to why all surfers don’t want this.

Each of these futures scare me but I don’t know which scares me most. The World Surf League’s, probably, though I have no talent whatsoever in sport sandal bouldering. I would like to hear presentations from The Inertia, Stab and the World Surf League. I’d buy lunch and listen attentively. Too bad each is more spineless than the next.

10:30 am. Time to drink.

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A horns-and-shaka tube exit at Honolua Bay! | Photo: WSL

Carissa Moore: “What am I outside of surfing?”

By Jen See

6 years ago

A gorgeous bit of existential dread!

About two months ago now, I drove to Ventura to interview Carissa Moore. I’d never met her. I showed up at the rental house where she was staying in between a trip to the Surf Ranch and a family road trip to Yosemite. She came to the door fresh out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, and gave me a big hug, like we’d been friends for ten years or more. Of course, we hadn’t.

We sat across the table from one another, my recorder — two of them, actually — between us, in a borrowed RV that was parked in the driveway. Occasionally a car cruised the quiet residential street. The tight space formed a kind of bubble that felt cut off from the world. It was perfect, in fact.

As a writer, you never really know what you’re going to get when you sit down to an interview. I knew I’d get something, of course. I’ve only once interviewed someone who really said almost nothing. Women athletes, they always have plenty to say. But would it be good? I wanted it to be good. Carissa proved candid, self-reflective, and funny. When I went back through the tape, there was so much laughing.

Here is a short excerpt from the interview transcript to taunt you! This is all part of my nefarious plan to convince you to read the full story. Is it working? Maybe it’s working.

Carissa: “I remember going home from [the 2017 U.S. Open at] Huntington and thinking, I have to make a decision here. I’m going to commit until the end of this year and give it everything I’ve got and let go a bit of the pressure and expectation. That was my lowest point. I felt like that was really a turning point for me.”

“I think, like, for the longest time, I just considered myself a surfer. It was really hard to look at myself and ask myself what am I outside of surfing? Like, how can I be happy if I’m not getting the results? What does success and happiness look like for me?”

“Do I want to do something completely different and go free surfing and make movies? Definitely. Definitely I want to do that. But am I making that decision because I’m losing right now? Or is it that I’m actually burned out and need a break? If I won, would I would be fine? Of course. I would be fine. I would definitely be fine.”

“I think both Steph and I are surfer’s surfers. We’d rather have there be lots of waves and just have it come down to performance. But the reality of it is, most heats don’t come down to that. So it’s like, I want to be able to do those special performances, but you’re going to have grindy heats most of the time, you know? So it’s just being able to handle the pressure when there isn’t as much opportunity.”

“I go to the ocean and I love surfing, because there’s an element of peace. There’s an element of, the rest of the world disappears, and it’s just you and the ocean. There’s something, there’s something about surfing that’s so spiritual.”

“I think taking the time to be reflective and reminding yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. That for me, what’s really helped me in the past couple of years, is that the results don’t define me. I’m more than a surfer.”

Now pour yourself a fresh beverage — your choice may depend on your time zone, or not! — and please enjoy the full story. Because you know you want to.

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From where you'd rather not be.

Biblical: This failed rock jump will collapse your nervous system!

By Derek Rielly

6 years ago

See the ocean open up and attempt to swallow Brazilian big-wave surfer.

There are rock jumps and there are rock jumps, wouldn’t y’say? Some require a sort of heroism, a fifty-metre run across a bare rock shelf as sets bear down, while others aren’t much more than a skip-skip-jump.

Snapper Rocks is unsympathetic and liable to humiliate. A few of those joints in Chile will entangle you with gigantic rock formations and collapse your nervous system.

And then there’s something like this, starring the Brazilian surfer Daniel Rangel. Now Dan, who is thirty four years old, ain’t no kook. He’s been surfing competitively since he was nine, lived on Oahu’s North Shore for ten years, tries to self-immolate at big Teahupoo every summer and currently lives on Kauai.

For kicks, he surfs a joint called Gardenal Slab, two clicks off Barra da Tijuca in Rio, and which he says is “the most dangerous wave in Brazil, if not one of the most dangerous in the world. Everyone who knows the place knows this.”

So when you see Dan in a situation of utter despair, a rock jump where, for a moment the ocean opens up and tries to swallow him, you know it’s sorta treacherous. This rock jump is at a slab called, appropriately enough, Shock near the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niteroi, Rio.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk8a0ken5Ao/?taken-by=foamball_unicorn

Was Dan worried when the ocean swallowed him whole?

“I was super embarrassed more than worried,” he says. “There were about 150 people watching and filming the rocks. So I was thinking to myself, what a kook move. Just trying to keep the calm face on and paddle away like nothing happened. But, yeah, when I realised I fucked up the timing I was pretty worried. Right after that, I borrowed my friend’s board ’cause mine was all fucked with no fins and caught this wave.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk3V3d0nmTt/?taken-by=foamball_unicorn

Which popped Dan’s shoulder.

“I was pretty pissed,” he says. “Popped it back in and in the heat of the moment caught another one half an hour later. After that I decided to go in ’cause I was in extreme pain.”

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