Jimmy Buffett: “Ain’t afraid of dying… I’m
surfing a hurricane!”
By Chas Smith
Margaritaville star bravely conquers Hurricane
Florence!
If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it 1000
times… surfers are craaaaaaaazy! With our bushy bushy blonde
hairdos, our baggies and our huarachi sandals too ain’t no telling
what kind of no good we might get ourselves all mixed up in. Like
waking up really really early in the morning to check the
waves, or surfing in hurricanes.
You already know how much I love madcap defiance
of both nature and man but, I’ll be honest, I didn’t count Jimmy
Buffett amongst the loons.
Jimmy Buffett, whose music is described as “island escapism” and
is equally famous for the Margaritaville restaurant chain, posted
an Instagram photo this morning telling the world he is not afraid
of dying and he is going to surf a hurricane.
Folly Beach is in South Carolina, if I’m not mistaken but real
quick have you ever eaten at a Margaritaville? I thought about it,
once, in Honolulu but ate at a sushi place instead.
I’m looking at the menu right now, though, and if you and I were
meeting at Margaritaville today for lunch I believe I would order
the crispy chicken cobb or maybe the California club. If we were
meeting for dinner I’d order the Lava Lava Shrimp and possibly a
Cheeseburger in Paradise. No, strike that I’d order the Lava Lava
Shrimp and the blackened grouper sandwich with sweet potato
fries.
Most importantly I would order a Stolichnaya and soda. I totally
know that you’d look at me with your nose all scrunched and say,
“But we’re in Margaritaville, bro?” And I’d respond, “I know, I
know, I just can’t do it.”
A bummer for me in the moment, but I’d be happy later when my
mouth didn’t feel like a puckered bowl of fruit.
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Michael Wright, brother of O and Ty, releasing his bats
in Lemoore. | Photo: WSL/Cestari
Opinion: “Surfing can’t go on being
smothered in a cocoon, free of outside forces!”
By surf ads
"Letting go of the idea of surfing will liberate
you from its perceived demise. It's acceptance through
transcendence."
As the King rolled broken-pawed into his last
high-scoring Ranch run on Sunday po-faced surfers
bemoaned the latest corruption of surfing.This giant aquatic simulator, a hundred miles
from the ocean, pumping out folded lumps of dam water with a
Disno-reptillian conglomerate greasing the plow.
To paraphrase the great
philosopher Garth Algar: it looked like surfing; only, that’s
not surfing.
There’s no need to peer in to
that existential maw again.
But after seeing Surf Ranch in
full flight it could be easy to say surfing finally jumped
the shark. To plant a flag in the fake Lemoore sand right under the
Polo Ralph Lauren booth.
This is where we sold
out. Yet it wouldn’t be the first time…
This is the cover of a Tracks
issue from 1977.
Let’s read inside.
“Commercialism is
sponsors, endorsement, propaganda images, hard sell, soft sell and
the whole crazy game. It will hurt some aspects of surfing and it
will help others. But whichever way you look at it , the age of
commercialism in surfing has arrived. And it’s the most important
surfing development of the decade.”
Sound familiar?
Phil Jarratt was coming to grips
with the Bronzed Aussies 40 years ago, but he could just as easily
be describing Lemoore and the WSL in 2018. Just replace
‘commercialism’ with ‘The Ranch’.
Lemoore is a marketing team’s dream. Everything’s on
demand and ready to be packaged. Itisthe most important surfing development of the
decade, at least from the WSL’s perspective. Dirk, Sophie and
backwards Beth are (in Ronnie Blakey
voice) absolutely
frothingat the
possibilities. A wave pool for every strip mall.The WSL aren’t the first to try and
make a buck from surfing and they won’t be the last.
But for many it left an uneasy
feeling. Is this really where we’re headed?
Well, just as experiencing ego
death can lead to true enlightenment of the self, letting go of the
idea of surfing will liberate you from its perceived demise. It’s
acceptance through transcendence.
Dig it: Trying to put a label on
surfing is like trying to sweep leaves in a breeze. It’s in a
constant state of flux. Is it a professional sport? A
counter-culture movement? A spiritual release?
All of the above?
Probably, and more.
The problem isn’t which
direction surfing is heading. It’s more fundamental. We need
to stop thinking of surfing as a singular identifier. The concept
no longer stands up. It’s a misnomer. We’re not a broad church.
We’ve branched out into entirely different religions. You can still
surf in verb form, sure.
But surfing as a common noun?
It’s no more.
Just like the electric foil
ripping through the waterways of Florida has fuck-all in common
with the beak-nosed quad paddling into SA desert death slabs, so to
does the WSL action sport enthusiast target market have no
connection with me, or how I value surfing. It’s the crazy 88s in
Byron vs corporate surf retreats in Costa Rica.
The idea of surfing as a blanket
term no longer fits. Lemoore’s just another fork in a road that
left the highway ten turns back.
Surfing is a medium. An
interpretation. It holds up a mirror to the user and nothing more.
The cathartic nature of surfing has more to do with drug
consumption than it does with a sport. It’s a way for some people
to get their kicks. And a way for others to make money.
But there’s so many different
ways to do it now that trying to skin it is a futile
effort.
Again, this isn’t a new
idea.
Here’s Graham Cassidy from that
same Tracks in ‘77.
“What has to be remembered
in the outset is that surfing, whether amatuer or competitive or
day to day fun, is what the individual makes it. No one can take
that peculiarly personal element out of the pastime. Not money, not
hype, not media overkill. It is what makes the act of surfing so
inviolate. Surfing is no longer a counter culture, but a thing of
the masses. It can’t go on being smothered in a cocoon, free of
outside forces. The pastime is too popular, too big and too
unwieldy for such utopian-like detachment. This is, of course, the
unfortunate way of life.”
So criticise The Pool if you
need to.
Hold the WSL to account.
Especially when it’s as fun as the BG comments section.
But embrace the absurdity of it
all. And don’t cry for surfing. It’s already dead.
Long live surfing.
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Pound a haole!
Blood Feud: Kalani Robb launches Hawaiian
jihad on surf blog!
By Chas Smith
Former top-rated WCT pro calls on Rothman family
and Da Hui to strike this North Shore winter!
Doesn’t the arrogance of the elites drive you just
mad? Just blood bursting in the temples livid?
It does me.
The upper crust with their cuffed tweed pants and designer
soccer slides. The elites with their barely disguised disdain for
The People.
Today, Sam McIntosh workaday publisher of
the surf blog Stab, trying as hard as he can
to make a living for the workaday surfer too by hosting an air
competition in Waco, Texas, that I am very excited for, wrote about
his dreams.
Shall we read?
We don’t want some of the world’s best non-WSL surfers to
become Vloggers to save their hide. Our goal with Stab High is to
provide a platform for these guys to showcase their skill in a
controlled environment. It isn’t meant to be too serious; just the
world’s best aerial surfers, raw, all laying it on the line on the
same section, for a couple of hours on a Saturday night.
Oh I dream of saving the world from vloggers too. From the
Kardashians and PewDiePie and Smosh and their millions and millions
of dollars and millions and millions of followers for talking about
makeup and anal sex.
Kalani Robb, who makes video
logs for Catch Surf, felt the burn and responded with a call for
Hawaiian jihad.
“Not the smartest move talking shit about Hawaiians before u
go there this winter.”
CC’d on the fatwa were Eddie Rothman, Koa Rothman and Da
Hui.
Oh but Kalani, oh but the world is yours.
It is yours and the Kardashians and PewDiePie and Smosh. You are
the future with your millions and millions and millions and
millions.
Can you please leave us blogs alone?
To toil in obscurity with our tens and tens until progress rolls
us up into a Persian carpet and tosses us in a dusty closet.
Have you ever considered bloggers’ feelings, Kalani?
Well have you?
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The luxe room at Snowball. What games of the
flesh you might play here!
Dreams-come-true department:
Surfer/snowboarder mortgages house, buys ski chalet, never has to
work again!
By Derek Rielly
You living your dream?
It’s a hoary old line: find something you love
and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
Easier said than done, as we all know. I love cupping the
pendulous bosoms of middle-aged Jewesses and eating hot bread rolls
that have been buttered with a particular Scandinavian butter but
I’m yet to make a dollar out of it.
One lifelong surfer, and snowboarder, who has cut himself a
piece of the lifestyle pie is the Australian Dan Solo. This is a
man who wanted to be the master of his own ship but, like most of
us, got caught in the gotta-make-cash wheel. He had a pregnant girl
and was trying to live and survive in one of the most expensive
cities in the world, Sydney as if you had to ask.
Dan earned his bread as a web developer but says that every day,
as he rode the ferry to work, “I felt sad. All these grey men in
their grey suits with their grey frowns. My mantra is, you get one
crack at life, so you better make it a bloody good one. And I
wasn’t making my life a good one.”
For twenty years, Dan and his girl, Andy, worked hard and didn’t
save a cent.
Dan and Andy had a talk.
“We can’t do this for the next twenty years. We’re
miserable.”
When he’s not surfing around Sydney, Dan and Andy like to take
off for Japan. Buckets of powder. Real nice people. Good
electronics. Warm Saki.
Dan had always loved the Japanese vibe. When he was thirteen he
told his best pal that when he had a kid he was going to call him
after the protagonist in the Japanese post-apocalytic animated film
Akira.
By the time they’d hit their thirties, Dan and Andy had ridden
all over Japan. And so they figured, why don’t we open a little
boutique chalet in the mountains? The pair had been pouring
their lives into their Bondi apartment (Sydney is the second-most
heated property market after Hong Kong), a place where a crummy
two-bedder a click from the beach starts at a million bucks, and
had enough equity to peel off a slice and invest in their
dream.
(Their kid Akira wasn’t so little anymore either. He was
sixteen, fluent in Japanese after a life in the International
School system and loved to ride Japan’s powder.)
The luxe room at Snowball. What games of the
flesh you might play here!The joint pukes. The snow equivalent of
Cloudbreak or G-Land.
And the thing about Japan is, because of the big ski resort bust
in the late-nineties and the subsequent reticence of banks to lend
money to anyone buying property in the snow, it’s cheap, at least
relative to Australia.
So, three years ago, they bought a dreamy nine-room chalet for a
couple hundred thousand Australian at Madarao Mountain, two hours
by bullet from Tokyo. They’d driven past it and, on a whim, had
stopped and asked the seventy-two-year-old owner if she’d sell. Her
eyes lit up. Property is hard to shift in these parts. When they
went to sign the deal, it turned out they’d bought two blocks of
land.
Snowball Chalet, post-renovation.
Dan and Andy renovated the existing chalet, turning a trad
pension into a hip, but luxe, ski chalet. They stuck a yurt on the
other and turned into a buzzy little bar called the Shaggy Yak.
They’d banked on a twenty-five percent occupancy rate, something
they thought might be a little bullish, but it wound up at
fifty-five in that first year.
This year it’s shaping up to be over eighty percent.
Sexy apres ski in Snowball’s lounge.
The success of Snowball Chalet means Dan gets to split his
time between snowboarding the northern hemisphere winter in Japan
and surfing the rest of the year in Australia.
Sure he’s got a little work to do in the off season, dealing
with the website, online bookings, improvements on the joint, and
when he’s on the mountain his role is to host guests, riding with
’em on mountain, showing off the hot pools and snow monkeys that
live nearby, dinners etc.
The Japanese snow monkeys that live nearby.
Lovely pink snouts.
It sure ain’t digging ditches.
It’s a story, a lesson, I think, in learning think in a way that
examines, first, what you love, how you gonna earn your bread and
in what manner you plan on spending your pitifully short time here
on earth.
I see Dan in the surf, around the beach and it’s like he’s seen,
I dunno, the truth, I suppose. That killing yourself at work so you
might retire with a little cash at seventy ain’t the only way to
cut the pie.
More than that: you don’t need to be rich to live a rich
life.
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Victory: Surf becomes too absurd to make
fun of!
By Chas Smith
The day has finally arrived. Surf is officially
too absurd to make fun of. Too off the rails weird where even
The Onion, the pinnacle of American satirical expression,
could not make surf satirical or absurd.
Totally true.
As you know, I consume surf news like no one earth. And by
“consume” I mean that I Google “surf” first thing in the morning
and then click “news” then Google “surfing” and then click
“news.”
This morning I did that and read this story.
Standing firm in his commitment to the historic property
amid mounting apprehension over the approach of Category 4
Hurricane Florence, Myrtle Beach resident Dennis Brock told
reporters Monday he refused to evacuate from his family’s ancestral
Ron Jon Surf Shop. “I don’t care what the government tries to tell
me. This place is in my blood, and I’m not leaving no matter what,”
said Brock of the beach apparel and souvenir shop where he and two
of his cousins are currently employed as cashiers, where his uncle
once worked as an assistant manager, and where his father once
helped vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro pick out a
pair of sunglasses. “I’m not some coward who’s just going to flee
and abandon everything my family has worked so hard for. These
flip-flop bottle opener keychains, these waterproof wallets, these
boogie boards—they’re a part of who I am, and I’ll never abandon
them. If I have to die, let me die in the place that I love,
surrounded by collectable shot glasses and fridge magnets, wearing
the Bob Marley T-shirt and board shorts of my people.” Brock
reportedly prepared for the storm by stuffing several foam beer
koozies and tie-dyed beach towels in the cracks beneath the store’s
front doorway.
I thought, “What a legend. I’m doing a story.”
Then went on to try to find where this legend lived and realized
he was a satirical The Onion creation.
And then I stepped away from my computer and danced to Abba
because we’ve arrived. We’ve all officially arrived. So satirical
that it can no longer be satirized.
God bless surfing. God bless it each and every day.
