St. Kelly as he will appear on Vatican produced
materials post-canonization. | Photo:
@sensitiveseashellcollector
Breaking: Kelly Slater doesn’t hate the
Waco wave pool!
By Chas Smith
"I'll definitely pay you guys a visit."
The world’s greatest surfer is an accomplished
man by any standard. Kelly Slater has won professional surfing 11
times, launched multiple brands including but not limited to
K-grips, Purps, OuterKnown, Slater Designs surfboards, Gisele
Bundchen and The Surfers. Most recently he has handcrafted,
alongside USC engineer Adam Fincham, the most famous wave pool to
date called Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California.
Of course wave pools have been around since the turn of the
century but Kelly’s was far and away the best with its green barrel
and delightful dairy farm scent. Nothing like it had ever been
seen.
Since its debut more wave pools have come online using different
technology, most notably the Barefoot Ski Ranch Cable Park in Waco,
Texas. Many professional surfers have enjoyed and many
non-professional surfers too who can pay the almost too reasonable
$60 to $90 per hour for barrels and airs.
If I was Kelly Slater, a different inland wave pool pulling
focus from my Surf Ranch would infuriate. I would burn with rage
each and every night, laying in my Hawaiian bed
plotting its destruction. I would loose spies to go and surf it and
throw sand into its gears. I would write very nasty things about it
on Instagram.
Humans everywhere are lucky that a pettily jealous man like me
is not Kelly Slater.
For the real Kelly Slater went on to the BSR Cable Park’s
Instagram feed and provided unsolicited advice on the following
video of a surfer testing out wakeboarding.
It is a good point as the corners on the jump do appear
needlessly deadly. He followed his advice with praise.
kellyslater: I’ll definitely pay you guys a visit. Congrats
on it all. No hate here. I appreciate what you guys have done. But
round those corners down! Especially for this kook on a wakeboard
(me!)
Kelly is almost too good to be true, a model for all of us, but
the fact that he drops “No hate here.” gives me small hope that he
does spend at least some time laying in his Hawaiian bed
plotting BSR Cable Park’s destruction.
Like I would do.
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Chas Smith, left, and Derek Rielly. Happy as larks at
Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch.
Bad Eggs: “Surf writers stuck in the friend
zone!”
By surf ads
But surf fans even worse!
Surf writers are idolaters. Sycophants. Failed
scions of the surfing family tree that trade on their only
worthwhile commodity to bask in the reflected glory of the demigods
that they can never become.
Or so I thought as I finished up watching The End of the Tour on Netflix the other
night, a crumpled quiver of tins at my feet.
Have you seen this fillum? It’s a biopic about the late American
novelist David Foster Wallace, who at one stage in the nineties,
was considered to be the greatest living writer in those United
States. He was an unwilling literary darling, brilliant but flawed
(aint we all?) and the movie details the burgeoning friendship
between he and a Rolling Stone journalist who’s been assigned to
write a hard-hitting piece on him and his alleged drug use.
Only thing is, the journo, David Lipsky, is an aspiring writer
and DFW fan himself. Lipsky struggles to move in for the kill – how
can he tear down something he loves? – and eventually abandons the
story completely.
In typical Foster Wallace fashion the movie is intended as
insightful expose of the contemporary American psyche yadda yadda
yadda. But for me, sitting there half drunk in the half dark as the
credits rolled and the next flick queued up (a documentary on Tickling? Por que
no?), it got me to my previously outlined observation:
surf writers are just a big bunch of Lipskys. Fan boys. Unwilling
to write anything inflammatory lest it ruffle the feathers of the
surfing elite they so adore.
Because, I thought to myself as I kicked away the cans and
headed for bed, most surf scribes have not reached the competitive
or talent levels of their subjects. Instead they leverage their
craft to increase their own surfing time and subsequently rub
shoulders with the movers, shakers and shape shifters of the surf
industry.
Their assimilation leaves us with three basic categories of
acceptable surf story. There’s the new school freesurfer eschewing
the mainstream competitive career. The old school competitor
eschewing the played-out freesurfer mould. And the rags to
riches battler/phoenix rising from the ashes. They’re the only
narratives we can muster. Because they’re the only ones sponsors
want us to hear.
At least the Rolling Stone editor pushed Lipsky to ask the hard
questions where necessary. Surf journalism is, for the most part,
one giant bro-down. I put myself to bed, wrapped contently in my
new found realisation. Those fucking two-bit hacks. All recruited
through social connections, comments sections or kitsch Instagram
accounts. The only source they’d ever double check is their coke
dealer .
And yet, and yet. Something didn’t feel right. A foul nor-easter
blew up through the open window as I fell into a deep sleep under a
blood red moon.
It was on this night that Nick Carroll came to me in a dream. A
ghostly apparition, he was dressed in a Greek toga with an olive
leaf behind his ear and with a David Foster Wallace-signature
bandana over his bald head. He stood at the foot of my bed. He
clutched old copies of Deep magazine to his breast.
“Mr Surfads,” he said in a booming voice. “You’re falling into a
trap of fallible generalisations. There has been, and is still, so
much good in surf writing. It’s not just all puff. Remember
Melekian on Irons,
Brisick on Drouyn,
Pawle on Branson, Doherty on Peterson,
me on my little
brother. These were stories that were prepared to
upset the status quo, take different angles, disrupt the scene. You
are focussing on the wrong target.”
Neither flat nor timid. Three greats, Adam
Blakey, Sean Doherty and big granddaddy Nick Carroll.
The wind blew even stronger behind him. My linen curtains
flapped, twisted and furrowed, and for a second assumed the
familiar waves of the Billabong logo.
“You’re right,” I said. “Of course you’re right. And many of
those guys ripped too.”
I sat up in my bed to face him.
“But even then you’re all still writing for or promoting through
media outlets that rely on industry advertising to function. You’ve
told some of the stories that need to be told. But not all of them.
You come to me with exceptions, not rules.”
Nick shrugged his shoulders and floated out the window,
muttering something about needing to visit a wayward BG
commenter.
The curtains fell dead.
I woke with the windows somehow shut, soaked in sweat. The
bastard’s got a point, I thought. There is good in surf writing.
From Hynd to Carroll to Samuels to Rielly to Smith. Men and women
with credentials in and out of the water.
Indeed, it’s a torch that’s carried by this esteemed
publication.
But even Chas’s 200-word handjobs and Longtom’s occasional long
toms are still only scratching the surface. LT’s recent article on Andy dug a little deeper, yes.
Hard questions were asked. Why was Andy’s condition
covered up for so long? Is it because those that were supposed to
report on it objectively were his friends? And friends with the
institution that enabled him?
But Andy’s is the one story we are beginning to hear. How many
others have we not?
And then it hit me like a Taylor Steele boxed set. Our
subculture and the industry that sustains it readily construct
heroes. We feed off the mythology at all levels. It captures our
imagination. It sells boardshorts. Their exaltation equals
exoneration and they are protected by a corporate-media complex
that has its own survival as its main concern.
How can we expect objectivity from it when we are all a part of
it?
So maybe surf writers aren’t idolaters. Maybe they’re just cogs
in the giant industry wheel, unable to poke a stick through the
spokes. Many do try, and try well. For every Stab Style
Guide there’s a Surfer’s Journal.
But still the wheel rolls on.
Yeah, it’s hardly a new notion. I’m not the first person to
break through surfing’s fourth wall. And really, does any of this
matter? Would anybody outside of our quirky little niche of a
sport, a pastime, a lifeblood, need to know what’s going on?
Or even care?
But The Old Man On The Point was right about something else too.
I was focussing on the wrong target. It’s not the writers that are
the problem. They’re doing the best they can in an industry that’s
still finding its feet on the big stage. And the industry, well,
it’s just doing what all industries do.
The real problem is us. The commenters. This whole brain fart
brings to the fore the oxymoronic nature of the contemporary surf
fan.
We’re a bunch of big fucken babies.
On one hand we want our sport to be left to the core. Us
disgruntled locals. Fuck the mainstream. Fuck the WSL. Yet at the
same time, we’ve evolved to a point now where we demand the
transparency and accountability of our heroes and the systems that
support them, just like we’d expect from a mainstream sport.
Who’d have thought we’d care this much about the WSL, for
instance?
So what do you want from the surf media?
Cottage-industry hacks keeping everything rose-tinted? Or a
fully-fledged independent fourth estate ready to tear holes in the
myths and institutions we hold dear?
Of course this is a derivative, simplistic take on a complex
issue.
And when it comes down the it, who’s going to pay the cheque for
our very own Bernstein and Woodward anyway?
Fuck, maybe we should all follow competitive tickling for kicks
instead. It’s pretty kinky.
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Coming soon: Surfing sabermetrics!
By Chas Smith
Safety surfing so dull it will break the World Surf
League!
I am a very big baseball fan. I love everything
about America’s pastime and especially in America’s finest city.
The smell of freshly cut grass, hot dogs, the way the sun sets over
Petco Park, spiked root beer, the crack of the bat, the languid
pace which allows for mindless conversations etc. It is a beautiful
game with a beautiful history which, for the past few decades, has
pitted traditionalists against statisticians.
You may have watched the film Moneyball. It followed the Oakland
As general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) as he infused
statistics into his decision making process. A walk, for example,
is praised. A steal is not valuable. Making consistent contact
beats swinging for the fences. On and on. Players are encouraged to
do the statistically correct thing at the statistically correct
time instead of going with their gut. Scouts, out observing the
next generation of players, are devalued as statistics will tell
managers, general managers and owners everything they need to
know.
There have been a backlashes to what is called sabermetrics with
recently retired player Jayson Werth saying, for example, “They’ve
got all these super nerds, as I call them, in the front office that
know nothing about baseball but they like to project numbers and
project players.”
Super nerds indeed but I do wonder if the super nerd principles
were applied to surfing could a middle of the pack pro win a
title?
I would imagine there are statistics on which moves done when
score the highest. Like, if you catch three waves within the first
ten minutes, no matter how bad those waves are, and do three little
jams and two little squirts you are guaranteed a 12.4 heat total.
Or, like, if it is big and barreling forego the biggest set wave as
the statistical chance of failure increases and instead aim for the
second wave in each set.
Super nerds could parse everything and create computer programs
that would ensure heat wins. Safety surfing to the extreme and
terribly dull but I do wonder if, say, Ace Buchan was to employ a
team of super nerds and surf exactly how they told him to surf,
based on waves and competition, catching the exact waves, doing the
exact moves, if he could easily win a world title.
What do you think?
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Yago "Miklos" Dora shuts the door loudly on Hermes, I
think. | Photo: WSL/Cestari
Day Two, Tahiti Pro: “Ultimate fun! A dream
day for a recreational surfer to dodge the tube!”
By Longtom
For the world's best a nightmare of sitting with
dreams evaporating into long lulls without meaning and or end.
Round two completed in listless head-high surf.
A dream day for a puffy middled recreational surfer to dodge the
tube on some fluffy runners without witnesses. Ultimate fun.
For the world’s best a nightmare of sitting with dreams
evaporating into long lulls without meaning and seemingly without
end. I imagine Ziff, if he were watching, would find it vexatious
(“Waiting for the ocean to deliver exciting conditions has been an
obvious issue”) and confusing.
Now that Sophie has gone from red-hot to lukewarm on the wave
system as the ultimate answer squaring that circle whilst
maintaining the fantasy that Pro Surfing can take its rightful
place among the great and elite competitive sports will take some
wrangling, billionaire or not behind the wheel.
You wonder whether he has fully thought through the risk in
dismantling the architecture of a Tour that has weathered ownership
changes, name changes, convulsions in format and location and yet
has remained stable in its core mission: to produce a credible
World Champion delivered through a year long tour. Once it
lies in pieces on the floor all the kings horses and men won’t be
able to put it back together. It seems like the last CEO to
properly understand and enhance that was ten-year CEO Wayne
Bartholomew.
Innovation brings risk. Ziff is quite right there.
I speak as someone who has innovated, flown into the sun
scattering my own dime like chicken feed into the cosmos and taken
a cold bath, losing everything.
But you wonder whether he has fully thought through the risk in
dismantling the architecture of a Tour that has weathered ownership
changes, name changes, convulsions in format and location and yet
has remained stable in its core mission: to produce a credible
World Champion delivered through a year long tour.
Once it lies in pieces on the floor all the kings horses and men
won’t be able to put it back together. It seems like the last CEO
to properly understand and enhance that was ten-year CEO Wayne
Bartholomew.
Owen Wright threaded some user friendly but technical tubes to
take down Joan Duru in heat six.
Ian Gouveia had broken a losing streak in the heat prior to best
Griffin Colapinto.
Michael February sat out a lull for the back ten minutes of his
heat with Connor Coffin needing a low two. He fumbled and bumbled
his way to get the score with surfing that would not win a heat in
the Junior Division of the local boardriders. The ecstacy of Rosie
Hodge in her description of the buzzer beater was Homeric in its
intensity. Later, Rosie asked Connor if he was looking forwards to
Surf Ranch.
“Haven’t thought about it,” Coffin deadpanned in reply.
With Sophie’s walk back yesterday from the Surf Ranch and the
impossible-to-imagine-eighteen-months-ago scenario of a blowback
against Kelly’s pool it calls into question the strategic wisdom of
the Founders Cup. Meant as a dry run and teaser for the main Surf
Ranch CT Event it has had the unintended consequence of bleeding
away interest so skilfully accumulated during the marketing
campaign preceding it. Glimpses of the pool maintained our vampiric
interest but like Shakespeare’s description of sexual
desire in Antony and Cleopatra too much of the
wavepool is like the other women who “cloy the appetites they
feed”.
While watching the next heat a shocking thought came to me:
Keanu Asing could win this contest if it’s held in head-high lefts.
No one makes a head-high left look bigger and more dramatic than
the diminutive Oahuan. It’s shameful and cynical to admit that
scenario crushed my spirit.
What about our dreams Mr Ziff, do they count in your world view?
Rodriguez delivered me from my personal torment to take the
heat.
Of all the athletes on the World Tour it’s Matty Wilko I feel
for most. Not just because he resides locally and I surf with him a
fair bit, not just because of the hard scrabble life in a van
upbringing with his old man. Not even because fate brought us
together and I caddied for him in Tahiti in a clutch heat when he
was on the cusp of getting axed in the mid-year cut (he survived).
In a WSL world devoted the bland it feels like he has given up the
most. Scrape away character and what remains is the diamond hard
calculus of winning and losing, and Wilko is losing. After losing
this heat against Japan’s Huntington Beach Kanoa Igarashi – is
Huntington on Honshu or Kyushu?– he’s cooked. Like the guy who
stole the plane in Seattle when they got him on the radio: “I’m OK,
Just a broken guy”.
I went back through the heat analyser and watched, assiduously,
every Matt Wilkinson wave in 2018 thus far. The same level of
rippage as previous. Some truly staggering judging calls against
him, particularly v M. February at Snapper. Incomprehensible.
This is the ball of confusion Mr Ziff. The fog of war that Pro
Surfing will be eternally mired in. It is incomprehensible, even to
the lifelong fan. To the casual observer, no matter how in thrall
to the thrill, how much wide-eyed positivity they display when
shown the video images, they will never understand.
One athlete in the history of pro surfing was understandable to
the non surfing public, Mr Robert Slater, and he ironically, is the
one leading you down the path away from the goal you seek, and from
which there will be no return. The World is what it is and when the
spectacle is gone from pro surfing it will be much diminished.
Did you notice that Billabong has dropped out of sponsoring
Tahiti? I suspect Sophie made the trip to Tahiti to duchess
officials and assure them that without the backing of Billabong the
WSL is in for the long haul. Another Pipeline debacle on her watch
would not be a good look for 2019. One thing I do know about
Teahupoo is that the yearly contest is a vital part of the local
economy.
Mendes squeaked past Zietz and Yago Dora went high to defeat
Tomas Hermes in the last heat of the day.
It was, as Jeremy Flores described it, “still a beautiful
day”.
Tahiti Pro Remaining Round 2 Results:
Heat 4: Mikey Wright (AUS) 10.83 def. Miguel Pupo (BRA) 8.33
Heat 5: Ian Gouveia (BRA) 12.27 def. Griffin Colapinto (USA)
11.06
Heat 6: Owen Wright (AUS) 14.27 def. Joan Duru (FRA) 6.00
Heat 7: Michael February (ZAF) 7.67 def. Conner Coffin (USA)
7.60
Heat 8: Michael Rodrigues (BRA) 12.90 def. Keanu Asing (HAW)
11.37
Heat 9: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) 12.17 def. Matt Wilkinson (AUS)
10.37
Heat 10: Jeremy Flores (FRA) 9.90 def. Patrick Gudauskas (USA)
9.70
Heat 11: Jesse Mendes (BRA) 10.03 def. Sebastian Zietz (HAW)
9.70
Heat 12: Yago Dora (BRA) 14.57 def. Tomas Hermes (BRA) 7.83
Tahiti Pro Round 3 Matchups:
Heat 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Michael February (ZAF)
Heat 2: Michael Rodrigues (BRA) vs. Ezekiel Lau (HAW)
Heat 3: Wade Carmichael (AUS) vs. Jesse Mendes (BRA)
Heat 4: Owen Wright (AUS) vs. Joel Parkinson (AUS)
Heat 5: Adriano De Souza (BRA) vs. Kanoa Igarashi (JPN)
Heat 6: Filipe Toledo (BRA) vs. Tikanui Smith (PYF)
Heat 7: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Wiggolly Dantas (BRA)
Heat 8: Kolohe Andino (USA) vs. Frederico Morais (PRT)
Heat 9: Mikey Wright (AUS) vs. Yago Dora (BRA)
Heat 10: Michel Bourez (PYF) vs. Connor O’Leary (AUS)
Heat 11: Adrian Buchan (AUS) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Heat 12: Italo Ferreira (BRA) vs. Ian Gouveia (BRA)
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Devastating: “Some dopes from something
called the World Surf League!”
By Chas Smith
ESPN destroys dreams of Dirk and Natasha Ziff!
It has been exactly one week, or thereabouts,
since the owners of professional surfing Dirk and Natasha Ziff were
feted at a grand Waterman’s Ball where they both received the
coveted Waterman of the Year award. Mr. Dirk decided it was the
perfect moment to stand up in front of his Surf Industry
Manufacturers Association peers and really accept much praise for
his World Surf League saving professional surfing from the slough
of despond and also light into “hater surf journalists.”
Even though his mic was unplugged he felt it important enough to
stand and shout (while Graham Stapelberg allegedly got into a
verbal altercation with the event site manager behind him):
And I ask you: Why (the hate)? It seems pretty obvious that
if the WSL keeps growing in popularity, and surfing takes its
rightful place among the great and elite competitive sports,
everyone connected with our sport, and certainly all the members of
SIMA, will prosper, except maybe a few grumpy locals who have to
deal with some new faces in the lineup. So…why not work
together?
Ahhh the dream of taking our place among the great and elite
competitive sports. So close now that Mr. Dirk is half in charge.
Right?
Maybe not. For today on ESPN, home of great and elite
competitive sports, the co-host of daytime programming introduced
an older clip from Nazare thusly:
Happy trails to the previous record for the highest wave
ever surfed. Yes some dopes from something called the World Surf
League claim to keep track of junk like that. This story is nine
months old but video obsessed millennial producers reminded somehow
that this guy Rodrigo Koxa riding this 80 foot wave off the coast
of Portugal…
Ohhh does that sound like a ringing endorsement? Some dopes from
something called the World Surf League?
If you were Mr. Dirk and had been spending every ounce of your
emotional capital rescuing professional surfing from the grip of a
few grumpy locals in order to deliver it to the likes of ESPN
except in its daytime programming, the lowest tier of any, a
co-host had no idea the WSL existed but knew it was staffed by
“dopes” would you feel bad?
Should Mr. Dirk feel bad?
I don’t think so. I think he should try on his grumpy pants and
join us in the gutter. The water is 80 plus!
