Surfers hopefully just remain addled and dumb.
Surfers hopefully just remain addled and dumb.

2020 Olympic Update: Surfing gets facelift courtesy of skateboarding!

A gymnastic-esque scandal rocks Olympic skateboarding!

Day 5 of plague-induced sobriety and I’ve lost my vigor. The fever has transmuted into something far worse, either the Bubonic Plague or leprosy, and I likely won’t be around much longer but at least I’m not part of USA Skateboarding.

Have you read the headlines? Have you seen the news? USA Skateboarding has suspended one of it officials over alleged sexual misconduct with a child. It is not a pretty story and let’s turn to ESPN for the details:

USA Skateboarding has placed executive committee member Neal Hendrix on interim suspension following allegations of improper sexual contact with a then-14-year-old skateboarder. Hendrix is under police investigation for the same allegations.

Professional skateboarder Julie Lynn Kindstrand Nelson, who goes by “Julz Lynn,” detailed the allegations to the Costa Mesa (California) Police Department on Oct. 11, providing a detective with a six-page letter describing interactions with Hendrix. The letter, also provided to espnW, states that when she was between the ages of 14 and 15 and Hendrix was in his early 30s, she performed sex acts on him at his request. The letter also states that he masturbated in front of her, photographed and took videos of her while she was naked and showed her pornography involving underage girls.

Etc.

A very ugly story. Bad bad bad but good for surfing? Oh don’t look at me that way. Don’t look at me at all, in fact, because you will catch what I have but let’s discuss a bit.

Surfing and skateboarding were accepted into the 2020 Tokyo Games at the same time and I would imagine to add youthful appeal. Snowboarding, which has been part of the winter Olympics since 1998, is the highest-rated, most-viewed category. It does not strain credulity to believe that the International Olympic Committee dreamed of an equal spike coming from the other two boardsports.

Even still, I would continue to imagine that many starched collars in the IOC, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, shook their heads at the mention of surfing and skateboarding while saying, “Nein, das sind keine guten Dinge. Sehr dreckig und schlecht.” And I bet they just meant it in the joint smoking, cocaine sniffing sort of way. That surfers and skateboarders are derelicts and not athletes.

I wholeheartedly agree with those starched collars, by the way. Surfers and skateboarders are derelicts and not athletes but then look at Neal Hendrix over there on the skateboarding side allegedly pretending that he’s USA gymnastics.

Vile vile vile and not a good look for anyone at all except surfing looks positively grand by comparison. And this is why sport stuff should be left to sport people and surfers should be left alone. No good ever comes from coaches, committees, training camps, etc.

No good at all.

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This ledge'll wake you from your drunken slumber, you sons o bitches!

First vision: Occy’s Wave Pool and all its pianissimo thunder!

She's flawless! And small! But early days…

The raw perfume of another wave tank is something terribly hard to ignore.

Three days ago, a sturdy contingent of WQS-level Australian pro surfers and the all-but-retired former world champ Joel Parkinson flew to North Queensland to test the full-sized prototype of the Occy and Barton Lynch-endorsed wave pool called Surf Lakes.

Surf Lakes is a a full-sized demonstration model located midway between the Queensland towns of Yeppoon and Rockhampton and uses a giant plunger to create waves, unlike the sled-foil combo of the Slater pool and Wavegarden and the air pressure game of American Wave Machines.

How it’d go?

The waves are very small (one-to-two feet, with the plunger working at forty percent capacity), very pretty and green (Surf Lakes uses tap water) and the background to the pool is artist’s impression-perfect mountains and cattle farms. This ain’t dirty ol Lemoore or cult-crazy Waco.

However. 

A mechanical breakdown means the demos are being postponed and the site has been closed until various parts are replaced.

It happens.

The various surfers at the site say the pool promises palpitations.

Want an early look? 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpZRu-1jcqu/?taken-by=beach_grit

 

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Digital manipulation @theeedforshutterspeed

Question: How much would you pay to watch John John Florence vs Gabriel Medina?

Or Italo vs. Toledo or Reynolds v Anderson or any surfer-on-surfer matchup you can imagine?

It was announced today that the upcoming pay-per-view matchup pitting Tiger Woods against Phil Mickelson will be priced at $19.99. If you are unaware of this unique sporting moment, Tiger and Phil are golfers with a historic rivalry. The Professional Golf Association powers that be decided to trim the field down to the both of them for a one day banger and let’s read a little more about it from ESPN:

The match, which will be played on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend at Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas, will begin at noon locally (3 p.m. ET).

The winner will take home the entire $9 million pot.

During the match, Woods and Mickelson will make side challenges against each other, with winnings being donated to the golfer’s charity of choice.

Sources said fans won’t be able to watch the matchup live in person, as there will be no on-site tickets sold.

So there you go and if the World Surf League is not forking over $19.99 to observe then I am writing directly to Fiji c/o Erik Logan because ain’t this exactly what we want?

Now, the golf tour is not getting cut or curtailed. This is a specialty event custom made for fun. I don’t know exactly how the format would work for surfing. Three 45 minute heats a day? One three hour super session? Something mobile? Start at Snapper end at Burleigh? I don’t exactly know but there is something here no?

Something exciting?

My question is, which matchup would you pay for and how much would you pay?

Please address your comments to Fiji c/o Erik Logan.

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Meet: The world’s greatest boss and yacht surfing stud Dan Price!

Hopefully the World Surf League's next hire!

I’m on day… four I think it is of fever induced sobriety and have never been so clear headed. It’s like the future is stretching out before me and I can see with my blistered but not bloodshot eyes the moves that need to be made. Can smell with my raw but not from cocaine nose all the right measures.

The future of surfing is now.

But we need other true visionaries to help tug this thing along. To help us reach our bliss and, as you know, the governing body of professional surfing has made an grand new hire recently, pulling Erik Logan away from Oprah Winfrey and setting him up as the President of Content, Media and WSL Studios elect.

He’s a step in the proper direction and we’ve have fun getting to know Elo but his Instagram feed has gone a bit quiet lately because I think he’s traveling to Fiji for a 385 day surf trip so I’ve been navigating around the social media application, searching for fellow travelers.

Today I found one.

His name is Dan Price. He is the co-founder of a credit card slider thing company and could not be better.

Dan likes himself…

Burning Man…

himself…

long hair…

…but most importantly…. Yacht Surfing.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl8To2Bnvr6/?taken-by=danpriceseattle

I’ll show myself out.

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Blood Feud II: Joel Tudor says “Y’all some gossip bitches! I’m giving (Noa) shit for biting his uncle’s stuff”

And Shawn Stussy enters the fray!

Did you wake this morning, as I did, to a bona fide blood feud between Joel Tudor and Noa Deane,  the first of its sort in what feels like months?

The noted San Diego longboarder and “competitive grappler” Joel Tudor was “angry with Noa Deane…for artistic appropriation and, quite possibly cultural appropriation too.”

See here.

(And read the story here.)

Joel, who is forty two years old, is no shrinking violet.

When Chas Smith posted the story on the Instagram account @surfjournalist Joel didn’t spare the horses, as they say.

Man y’all some gossip bitches begging for content and follower – we’re both friends …I’m just giving him shit for biting his uncle’s stuff so quickly – piss off troll pages like these. JOEL TUDOR

Man y’all some gossip bitches begging for content and follower – we’re both friends …I’m just giving him shit for biting his uncle’s stuff so quickly – piss off troll pages like these.”

No sense of humour?

“You are the spice surfing needs! How boring would today be without this?” Chas replied.

Ok ok …I’ll give ya a pass haha ..this is true ..surfing is way to soft these days,” Joel wrote back.  “But please remember Noah is like a nephew to me …I’ve known him since diapers …still love him – just disappointed.”

Readers were less disappointed than confused as to who the wronged uncle is.

Is it the Hawaiian sort of uncle, meaning any elder close to the family, which I suppose is Joel, or is there an inter-continental blood link as well as a blood feud between Joel and Noa?

Anyone got the juice?

And, to further augment the tension, should we bring the designer and shaper Shawn Stussy into the feud?

His label is called SDouble; Tudor’s is Double S.

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