Earlier today, a BeachGrit reader made a strong point
regarding the surfer bona fides of the WSL’s new head of
content, media and so forth, the “waterman” Mr Erik Logan.
“I know Elo,” wrote TheInertia regular KWhilden, “and
he paddles out most mornings before dawn to surf, and then drives
into work. It doesn’t really matter what he rides. In my book, that
qualifies as someone who ‘surfs’.”
And so I wondered, is that all it takes to be a surfer? To enter
the ocean on some sort of flotation device and express a devotion
to this activity?
If I like punching things, growling at other men and wearing
stretchy pants, does that make me an MMA fighter?
I’m hobbled by my own prejudices on the issue.
I don’t believe I can legally claim surfer status, even though
its been my only game since I was twelve, because of the so many
things I get wrong.
As for being a “waterman”, I think that requires a tremendous
affinity with the ocean, not just an enthusiasm for big surfboards
and spear guns.
Think of today’s unimpeachables—Brian Keaulana, say, or Mark
Healey, or Dave Kalama, or the late Rell Sunn—and you’ll find that
you’re thinking of men and women who not only know or knew how to
do certain things in the ocean with incredible skill, but men and
women who knew why they were doing these things, and dedicated
their lives to existing in deep harmony and accordance with that
profound sense of purpose.
When we call someone a waterman, maybe what we’re really
saying is that that person is entirely and uncommonly devoted—to
their core, in a subculture already rife with uncommon devotion—to
a coastal life lived in its totality, to the raw, edge-of-nature
wilderness experience that the ocean can offer, and to the
possibility that such devotion can lead to a better existence not
just as a person in the ocean, but as a person in search of a
meaningful life.
Now, you tell me: What is a surfer and when did you start
calling yourself a surfer, if ever?
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Listen: “Chris Binns to replace the ’89
World Champ Martin Potter in the booth!”
It’s World Surf League Day at
BeachGrit and, seriously, what would we do without them? I
would imagine a similar conversation is taking place in their rose
petal-scented Santa Monica headquarters right now. I would imagine
poor new President of Content, Media and WSL Studios hire Erik
Logan is scratching his head and asking Chief Executive Officer
Sophie Goldschmidt, “What the hell is this all about? What on God’s
green earth would they do without us?” And I would imagine CEO
Sophie Goldschmidt is looking over her shoulder for answers.
Looking first for ex-CEO Paul Speaker and then for ex-CCO Beth
Greve before shrugging when she can’t find either of them and
responding, “I have no idea. We give the bastards crazy high
quality free content at enormous sacrifice and this is how they
repay us. Maybe they’re retarded?”
Of course Ms. Goldschmidt would never call anyone “retarded” but
we are or at least I am. Retarded and proud! I’ve got two WSL
scalps under my belt now. Speaker’s and Backward’s and I bet it
aggravates them both to no end. I bet they try and spin why and how
they left the WSL but we all know it was me. We all know that the
incessant drum of the retarded drives even the most linked Linkedin
mad. Like Poe’s telltale heart.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
But, seriously, what would we do without them?
I’ll tell you what we’d do. Have a week like last’s. With
half-baked stories that no one wants to write and no one wants to
read.
But Erik Logan… are you reading now? Have I got your attention?
I’ve got you as my third scalp and the only way out is to come chat
with me face to face. You name the time. You name the place. You
name the outfit. You can even bring the coffee table.
David Lee Scales and I spent much time discussing the brand new
President of Content, Media and WSL Studios and his fate. All I
want is to chat. All I want is for one of those high tower folk to
recognize that the grumpy local is part of their audience and have
a very fun, maybe even boozy chat.
More importantly, David Lee
dropped an absolute bomb right at the beginning. There is a
semi-legit rumor that ex-Australia’s Surfing Life editor Chris
Binns is set to replace the ’89 World Champ Martin Potter in the
booth in 2019. Exactly 130 years since he won his world title.
If this is true, I’m absolutely thrilled. If this is not then…….
I’ll continue penning impotent rage.
Either way we all win or win-ish.
Listen here!
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Jen See: “It’s like a highlight reel of my
worst surfing nightmares!”
That’s what I thought when I saw the WSL's new
President of Content's Instagram yesterday.
It’s like a highlight reel of my worst surfing
nightmares. That’s what I thought when I saw Erik Logan’s
instagram yesterday. Have you ever surfed a line-up crowded with
stand-up paddle boarders? It’s like trying to cross the street in
Los Angeles, if the drivers, in addition to piloting giant
automobiles, were also carrying spears.
I have survived this ordeal and I have returned to tell tales of
the horrors I have seen.
“Why aren’t you riding a longboard?” The disembodied voice comes
from somewhere above me.
I look up and see a common sight: A middle-aged man, on a
stand-up board, paddle in hand, who wants to tell me how I should
be doing surfing. I’m not sure why he thinks I want his advice. I
mean, I don’t, really! But men in the lineup are going to give
their advice, whether or not I want it. If nothing else, this is a
thing I’ve learned in this life.
I’m paddling to the outside at a local break whose main claim to
fame is its proximity and convenience. Arcing ribs of Monterey
Shale hold bars of sand haphazardly in place. The combination
creates a peeling wave that doesn’t hold size — or really do much
of anything at all. Occasionally on just the right swell angle, it
approaches something resembling good. It’s the little point break
that could. It’s almost endearingly mediocre.
The place also hosts every kind of surf-like activity you can
imagine and maybe a few you can’t. Groms on boogie boards. Adult
learners on 10-foot softops, being pushed into waves and falling in
the shallows. Bikini-clad girls on longboards. Finless wavestorms.
That one determined guy on the sinking shortboard, who knows
better, but can’t help himself. Long-time locals on longboards,
just looking to get a few before their sun sets forever. The
skimboarder doing step-offs.
Then there’s the stand-up paddle boarders. They mostly live in
the nearby neighborhoods. The money came late to this part of town,
because for many years, it stood hard by the city dump. That’s long
gone now and a two-bedroom bungalow will run you a million and
change.
There are Sprinter vans in the driveways and stand-up paddle
boards in the garages. The men, and it’s mostly men in the SUP
ranks, walk down to the beach lugging their boat-sized crafts. They
carry their paddles like spears into battle.
And a battle it very often turns out to be. There’s a heedless
entitlement to these men. Who cares if their giant board comes
flying through the lineup when they don’t make it over the set
wave? We’re all just having fun here, right? Sure, I think, feel
free to bash in my skull with your loose board. I didn’t really
need that brain.
The men on SUP’s would never burn you, no way, they just want to
share the stoke. It’s chill, right? Yeah, man, it’s totally chill.
I totally love it when you burn me after I scrapped into a
shit-small wave in a crowded line-up. “Go on, take everything, take
everything, I want you to!” I scream in my best Courtney Love
voice.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit your board! No big deal, I’m sure!
Right, bro, I don’t care about my boards at all. I’ll just go home
and cry while I stuff an entire package of q-cell in this giant
hole. I didn’t really like that resin tint job, anyway. It looks
better now with a mismatched blob of fiberglass on it. I’m pretty
sure I’m going to start a new trend.
The first time I saw a foil SUP, I’m pretty sure I screamed out
loud at the sight. Suddenly, a giant board with a guillotine
screwed to the bottom appeared right in front of me. Dismemberment
seemed inevitable. I was born to be shark bait.
Look, in all seriousness, ride the board that makes you happy.
Surfboards are toys. They’re fucking toys we take into the ocean to
have fun. That’s it! It’s easy to turn them into fetish objects.
Who among us hasn’t smelled a board fresh from the glasser and
smiled? But ultimately, the goal is to go outside, get a few fun
ones, and go home happy. Surfing is our all-too-brief escape from a
world that often feels a little too real and a little too much.
At the same time, surfing in places like California is a social
endeavor, which is to say, it’s crowded as fuck. In theory it’s a
delicate dance between you, the ocean, and a bunch of other humans,
who all want the same scarce resource you do. In practice, it’s a
mosh pit in full flight, all sharp elbows, fast-moving bodies, and
a few stray shoes.
But even the most intense pit follows its own set of rules.
There’s a fine line between getting your fair share and being an
oblivious asshole. It isn’t actually all about you and your bros
having a good time at everyone else’s expense — or which guy has
the biggest stick. We’re all just trying to get through it and
hoping that someone will find the shoe we lost along the way.
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How much does surfing cost?
Announced: The World Surf League declares
war on people who surf!
This all started with Paul Speaker, some five
or so years ago in a rose petal scented Santa Monica backroom. For
it was then and it was there that the Association of Surfing
Professionals was given, free of charge, to a small group of men
backed by publishing magnate Dirk Ziff, who turned around and
installed Mr. Speaker as the new CEO.
The name was changed, two years later, from Association of
Surfing Professionals to World Surf League and Mr. Speaker
made the media rounds, visiting surf core favorites like Bloomberg and
Fox Business wherein he extolled his broad vision for the
future.
Now, I understand that surfing helps absolutely no one be better
at business. I think it could even be argued that some of the surf
industry’s troubles over the past few decades were actually
because everyone surfed. But I would continue to argue
that surfing in the water on a surfboard sans paddle is
essential, to… understanding why it all matters, what it’s all
about, how it creeps into the cracks of busted lives and refuses to
let go. Ever. Bottom line be damned.
Surfing is special, it matters and it belongs to surfers.
Now, a few hires outside of the ranks, some fresh insight, would
have been applauded but the tone deafness has reached a point where
I think the only reasonable conclusion is that the World Surf
League’s upper management actively dislikes people who surf.
People who surf are the “grumpy locals”
despised by Ziff. People who surf own brands being so pressured by
the League that they’ve decided to give up sponsoring events.
People who surf work at magazines, websites, podcasts, slaving for
love rather than money. People who surf spend more time thinking
about surf, traveling to surf, eating, drinking, sleeping surf than
is healthy but cannot be marketed to because it ain’t a market.
It’s a life.
People who surf don’t belong in the World Surf League.
Why the disdain? I don’t know. Maybe Speaker, Ziff, et. al. were
made fun of by surfers in school and this is their grand revenge.
Maybe they lost girlfriends to surfers even though they were all
cool jocks. I really don’t know and can’t imagine I’ll get the
opportunity to ask but am going hold out hope for Erik Logan.
I’m going to hold out hope that he is brave enough to come
play with us and laugh because he also rides a longboard.
Maybe close enough.
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Quik Pro Day 1: “Who is the quivering
coward? The fanboi bitch?”
Metaphysical questions plague the gorgeous French
beachbreak!
Used to be it seemed a year long tour was a grand
idea. But if I’m being honest, which is what they pay me
for, I’m suffering extreme pro surfing fatigue by the time the
European leg rolls around. My interest seems to peak sometime
around J-Bay or Tahiti with maybe a late flare up for a classic
Pipe finish.
Having to wade through the whole 34 man field again, not once
but twice just seems cruel and unusual punishment. A two-week long
Test Match between Bangladesh and Afghanistan was how BG principal
Derek Rielly phrased it in a text message. Minus John John and
Slater I want match-ups with contenders not another two-day slog
before we get anywhere near the chase.
Sophie wants to grow the audience, new hire Erik Logan calls the
league brimming with “untapped potential” and they keep throwing
out the same product.
How to actually grow the audience? An answer may lay in pro
surfings sister sport, MMA and it’s pro league UFC. I’m not a fan,
the equivalent of Backwards Fin Beth, what hard-core fight fans
derisively term “casuals”. But the pre-fight hype for the Conor
McGregor/Khabib fight effortlessly drew me in …..did you see?
Presser one in NYC Conor (biggest sports star in the world) told
Khabib to “shut yer mouth ya mad backwards cunt”, called him a
“little fanboi bitch”. Called his manager a ‘terrorist snitch”, his
Dad a “quivering coward”.
Not to everyones taste, but Joe Carr former UFC exec, now chief
strategy officer for WSL must have gazed longingly, lovingly at it.
That ability to generate hype, draw a crowd, get the fucking
despised casuals to get drastic with the plastic; what a dream for
Sophie and the new hires.
Who would be the mad backwards cunt? Who the quivering coward?
The fanboi bitch? ….assuming Pro Surfing dropped the #blessed and
went full UFC.
Sunny days in France playing happy families while we wait for a
roughie to bolt from the back of the pack is lovely stuff.
Touching. Chances of that drawing in a casual= nil. Chew on that
Erik. You can draw up all the direct to consumer pseudo
pay-per-view the Universe directs you to but unless you build a
proper drawcard, you ain’t got shit. The same thing we’ve had since
J-Bay. Two thousand hard-cores sipping peppermint tea on Facey
cheering on their gal.
In perfect French beachbreaks with a ton of waves ridden Jordy
sneaked past Zeke, a mild robbery , with a neat little left tube on
the buzzer. An entertaining heat.
Italo was several notches ahead in speed, power and repertoire
in his Rd3 heat against Yago and Asing. A huge dagger knifed into
the neck of a throaty closeout – a turn only he and maybe Colapinto
can pull – was lowballed for a 7. Other waves pushed him into a
comfortable lead that was never headed. Any hopes Dora might ride
some momentum from his silky Air Show victory were quashed by a
bumbling performance.
Julian Wilson laid down the best ride of the morning, a deeply
threaded tube, greased alley oop and hammer finish for an 8.5. The
days first excellent score. It looked like the Day of the Decade at
a Coolum beachie and he treated it just like that. Easy win…..but
in the post heat presser there was still that suspicion that J-dub
was over-analysing during heats, leading to mistakes in execution
and decision making. Not in this heat, but that is the pattern.
Everything is going fine, until it’s not. Maybe he can overcome
that mental weakness. Maybe not.
Medina started cool in heat 5 against Tomas Hermes and ex rookie
Ryan Callinan , then just cooly opened up on two rights to ice the
heat. 80% winning percentage in Europe. Mad cunt. I don’t mean that
rudely, just using it as an example of what a spicy presser to
build an audience might contain Erik. The biggest sports star in
the world calls his opponent a mad backwards cunt, in public, in
front of an online audience in the hundreds of thousands. I mean
mad cunt in the Australian sense as a term of praise.
What? Surfing’s different you say?
No it’s not you mad cunt, well only in the sense that it’s spent
the last 30 years trying to build an audience by throwing out the
same moldy product the mainstream has rejected time after time
after time. Listen to your chief Strategy officer Joe Carr who said
there are a “ton of parallels between both companies (WSL and
UFC).” If there is a difference it is that UFC doesn’t seem intent
on dumbing down the product to piss off its hard-core fan base.
It’s not the broadcast, it’s the build-up. Good heat in perfect
surf. Medina in total control.
Filipe was off in the next heat. A little flakey. Nervey.
Couldn’t quite nail a lofted lien air, was out of rhythm, got
frustrated and dropped his bundle. He didn’t need much against a
strong Connor O’leary and french wildcard Couzinet. But he could
not get it done. My view: I would like to see Filipe win next two
events and clinch the title before Pipe with a delicious low stakes
victory lap at the Pipeline for the haters. Chances of that
happening: next to nil.
My favourite wave was ridden in the next heat by Adriano De
Souza, owner of the most improved skill set in pro surfing. He
sizzled one right hand wave with so much extra torque in the turn
it made me pine even harder for John Florence. Midnight in
Australia, just me and my 2 thousand homies watching… I have to
look up the results to see who won heats 8 and 9.
I watched but I must have been wide awake dreaming. Pat Gudang
won on a bright yellow board with two big styled out backhand
thwacks. Ace sliced and diced….he would definitely not be the
fanboi bitch, or the quivering coward.
Too good. Lordy, lordy. Can you shorten this Euro leg as first
order of biz Erik?
Pretty please you mad cunt.
Quiksilver Pro France Round 1 Results:
Heat 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 13.86, Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 13.33, Matt
Wilkinson (AUS) 11.07
Heat 2: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 10.70, Owen Wright (AUS) 10.56, Joan
Duru (FRA) 9.50
Heat 3: Italo Ferreira (BRA) 13.40, Keanu Asing (HAW) 10.70, Yago
Dora (BRA) 4.57
Heat 4: Julian Wilson (AUS) 13.67, Frederico Morais (PRT) 10.46,
Wiggolly Dantas (BRA) 7.74
Heat 5: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 11.93, Tomas Hermes (BRA) 11.26, Ryan
Callinan (AUS) 10.33
Heat 6: Connor O’Leary (AUS) 10.17, Filipe Toledo (BRA) 9.10,
Jorgann Couzinet (REU) 4.00
Heat 7: Adriano de Souza (BRA) 13.50, Miguel Pupo (BRA) 8.50, Wade
Carmichael (AUS) 8.00
Heat 8: Adrian Buchan (AUS) 13.43, Ian Gouveia (BRA) 13.23, Kolohe
Andino (USA) 9.97
Heat 9: Patrick Gudauskas (USA) 13.90, Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) 6.67,
Michael Rodrigues (BRA) 1.50
Heat 10: Griffin Colapinto (USA) 14.24, Michel Bourez (PYF) 11.90,
Jesse Mendes (BRA) 10.83
Heat 11: Mikey Wright (AUS) 15.30, Conner Coffin (USA) 13.73,
Michael February (ZAF) 10.77
Heat 12: Joel Parkinson (AUS) 10.93, Willian Cardoso (BRA) 8.67,
Jeremy Flores (FRA) 5.90
Quiksilver Pro France Round 2 (H1-2)
Results
Heat 1: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 15.84 def. Jorgann Couzinet (FRA)
7.77
Heat 2: Ryan Callinan (AUS) 16.10 def. Owen Wright (AUS) 12.17
Quiksilver Pro France Remaining Round 2 (H3-12)
Matchups:
Heat 3: Wade Carmichael (AUS) vs. Wiggolly Dantas (BRA)
Heat 4: Kolohe Andino (USA) vs. Keanu Asing (HAW)
Heat 5: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) vs. Joan Duru (FRA)
Heat 6: Michel Bourez (PYF) vs. Matt Wilkinson (AUS)
Heat 7: Willian Cardoso (BRA) vs. Miguel Pupo (BRA)
Heat 8: Jeremy Flores (FRA) vs. Ian Gouveia (BRA)
Heat 9: Conner Coffin (USA) vs. Jesse Mendes (BRA)
Heat 10: Michael Rodrigues (BRA) vs. Michael February (ZAF)
Heat 11: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) vs. Tomas Hermes (BRA)
Heat 12: Yago Dora (BRA) vs. Frederico Morais (PRT)
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
