From the heart-an-empty-hole Department:
Surfline plays the role of Mr. Grinch this holiday season!
By Chas Smith
No big waves for you!
This morning arch-conservative (in its
political leanings not wave measurements) surf forecasting website
Surfline delivered its Christmas calculation and it is very bah
humbug if you are the sort that craves big waves and/or craves
watching big waves.
Are you that sort? Are you like the World Surf League
President-elect of Content, Media and WSL Studios who is in Fiji
right now (I think) at #kalamakamp surfing the monster waves of his
young life?
Well, Surfline says screw you
and let us read from their report.
“It’s a really tough very long range/winter forecast in the
North Pacific, in what has been a peculiar past five to six years.
As mentioned above, weak to moderate El Nino’s are all over the
place in terms of North Pacific surf (and West Coast
precipitation). Add the anomalously warm water in the Gulf of
Alaska and it doesn’t make me feel great about our surf on the West
Coast this winter (especially Southern California).”
“If I had to give a prediction, I would say first and
foremost, it’s very low confidence — Southern California will be
below average for surf size, we’ll probably see warmer than average
air temps, and more days than normal of light wind/clean
conditions. Northern California may also see smaller than normal
surf and below average number of XXL days…”
We are apparently in a weak El Nino and this of course means no
big waves for you and it also means no big waves for John John
Florence and Kelly Slater at the just-around-the-corner Billabong
Pipeline Pro in Honor of Andy Irons.
Do you care?
Or are you wiping your brow while waxing up your 5’2 fish?
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Bodyboarder Noah Symmans, happy as a trout, despite
shark bite to leg. | Photo: 9News
Bloody but unbowed: Western Australian
bodyboarder “stomps on shark!”
By Derek Rielly
Don't run, don't hide, fight back!
It’s almost summer in the southern
hemisphere. And in Australia, that means shark
season. Hello you fragile, dreamlike creatures.
The count so far. Three attacks in the same harbour in the
Whitsundays, one fatal, and, yesterday, a bodyboarder was hit with
“traumatic leg injuries” while surfing at Mandurah, one-and-a-half
hours south of Perth.
‘Super sharky vibes’ before attack, says WA surfer Noah
Symmans. The West Australian
surfer who was attacked by a shark yesterday morning said he
“stomped” the animal until it let go of his leg.
Noah, 20, was surfing with a
friend at Pyramids Beach, south of Perth, when he felt a shark
biting his calf at around 8.40am.
“I was surfing with another mate
at a known break in Mandurah and it was fairly eerie vibes, a
couple salmon were about and it was overcast,” he
said.
“We were mid conversation waiting in the line-up when I felt
something grab my left leg and try and pull me under, so with my
other leg I stomped the shark until it released me and we gunned it
for the rocks.”
Mr Symmans was flown via helicopter to hospital after being
treated at the scene by lifeguards and paramedics.
Revealed: BeachGrit’s Instagram a sleeper
cell of easily triggered social justice warriors!
By Chas Smith
"This is so disrespectful. You’ve lost my
follow."
I spend a good 50% of each day laughing at
The Inertia and Stab. Maybe not 50% but at least
5%. I laugh at the safe space, big tent,
quick-to-apologize-with-tears-in-eyes-but-slow-to-ever-do-anything-even-remotely-meaningful
of The Inertia. I laugh at the
trying-super-hard-to-be-edgy-but-constantly-missing-the-mark-because-it-takes-a-little-spine-to-actually-be-edgy
of Stab.
I laugh mostly looking at their social medias. Both The
Inertia and Stab grew in the digital age where robust
followings could be bought/built and those numbers sold to
advertisers. It’s a nice model, if you launched forever ago/have
money, but there is so much strange hurt feelings and
misunderstandings in robust social media followings and these
regularly spill into the comments on Facebook or Instagram.
I look and laugh and think, “It’s a good thing we never had
money to build a robust social media following. Who needs that sort
of headache?” I assumed that those who followed BeachGrit
came organically and were in on the joke or at least understood the
joke.
That assumption was shattered this morning. Apparently our
Instagram account is a sleeper cell of easily triggered social
justice warriors even more full-throated than any that populate
The Inertia or Stab.
I posted a little ditty about Surf Snowdonia
building a Nazi-esque hotel that was causing some consternation
when I woke up and advertised the story on our Instagram with a
little screen grab from the cult classic Surf Nazis Must Die then
went about my business.
When I checked in a few hours later, though, all hell had broken
loose. Message after message declaring:
cassellpeter You have 109K followers and you
post someone with a Nazi symbol? Irresponsible. You’ve lost a
follower. Thought you were better.
d1242w Go fuck yourself you fucking white boy
racist.
kbskaleidoscope This is so disrespectful.
You’ve lost my follow.
lalhavali This symbol should not be used .
That’s not funny!
k8beauchene WTF?!
sllewhsa On remembrance day, really?
danielvaie Hate this picture😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡SHAME
SHAME STUPID STUPID
hindiana530 Whoops…this was an awkward post
noprogress 😮
ralphteriitaohia Bulshit 😢😠
dr_portugez_4_ 👎👎👎
jcvsolari Unfollow!!
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Now I know how those boys at The Inertia and
Stab feel. They feel good! Triggering the easily triggered
is like riding a good rollercoaster. All the thrill, none of the
danger. I now wish BeachGrit had a robust social media
following but it appears everyone unfollowed.
Maybe next year!
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Controversy: Surf Snowdonia at odds with
National Park over “Nazi hotel for dumb surfers!”
By Chas Smith
A planned expansion has come under heavy fire!
Imagine you are Surf Snowdonia, the very first
of the next generation wave pools. You swung wide your gates and
let the world in almost four-years-ago. An eternity before Kelly
Slater’s Surf Ranch, a lifetime before Waco’s Cable Park and
Australia’s Surf Lakes.
You were the crowning achievement. The kick-off. You made people
see the possibilities but does the surf universe care? Does the
surf universe even know you are still around?
No. You are a relic. You are the Apple II so what do you do?
Build a hotel, activity center (centre) and zipline, of
course.
Yes, the owners of the pool there in bucolic Wales have planned
for an expansion but it is being objected to by nearby Snowdonia
National and let us turn to the BBC in order to understand why.
Surf Snowdonia faces opposition to plans for a 106-bed hotel
and activity centre offering 100 new jobs.
Community councillors in Dolgarrog back the £10m plans at
the artificial lake, sited on a former aluminium works.
But opponents, including Snowdonia National Park, fear
traffic congestion and the scheme’s visual impact.
Planning officers said concerns about flood risk and
contaminated land should also be addressed before Conwy councillors
approved any scheme.
A zip wire, over the existing surf lagoon, stretching from
the proposed five-storey activity building would also be included,
according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
Snowdonia National Park said it objected because it felt the
building design was out of character and that the size and capacity
of the scheme was excessive, complaints mirrored by the Campaign
for the Protection of Rural Wales.
And there we have it. “Snowdonia National Park said it objected
because it felt the building design was out of character and that
the size and capacity of the scheme was excessive.”
Let us study the building design.
Very stern, I think. Very Templehof Airport in Berlin which is a
classic example of the Nazi style, best described as a
stripped-down neoclassicism and/or a utilitarian style for major
infrastructure projects and industrial or military complexes.
The size and capacity issue is understandable, I suppose. Would
you want lots of dumb surfers coming to your back yard? Dumb
surfers staying in a Nazi hotel?
Understandable indeed.
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Strider in his living room with the 18-foot high
ceilings, as photographed and appeared in the New York
Times.
Strider Wasilewski’s Malibu beach house
destroyed in California Wildfires!
By Derek Rielly
Star of the WSL's broadcast team loses house
featured in NY Times…
Three years ago, the New York Times made a visit to the
Point Dume home of WSL commentator Strider Wasilewski and
his family, which includes one wife and three sons.
It’s a gorgeous story of a Venice surf rat and his real estate
agent wife creating a rich reality, a lifetime home for their
precious family.
As a 14-year-old surfing
prodigy, Strider Wasilewski used to hunt the crowded Southern
California coast for quiet surf spots. One of his favorites was
Little Dume Beach, near Point Dume in Malibu, a crescent of sand
half-hidden in a cove at the bottom of steep bluffs.
“It was an untouchable area,”
gated off and accessible only to local residents, Mr. Wasilewski
said. But he heard about a family that kept their gate open. “They
lived right by the trail,” he said. “I used to run through their
yard. They would yell at me.”
Lily Harfouche, a real estate
agent and occasional surfer who spent part of her childhood in
Malibu, ran through the same yard with her teenage friends to get
to the beach. “You go down there, and it’s you and a handful of
people,” Ms. Harfouche said. “It’s so incredibly
beautiful.”
These days, Mr. Wasilewski, 42,
and Ms. Harfouche, 36, are married (they met at a reggae concert on
the Santa Monica Pier) and live with their three young sons on
Point Dume, in a simple open-plan house they call “the
barn.”
The front gate mural featuring Saint Mary
Magdalene emerging from trunk of car.
The couple bought a place on a
one-acre lot on Point Dume, took it down to the studs and created a
dream home on the hillside — which turned out to be too big. “I
remember texting Strider from the bedroom upstairs and asking if he
wanted to watch a movie,” Ms. Harfouche said. “I thought, ‘This is
nuts.’ ”
They often picnicked on a flat
part of the property, and they began to envision a new house there.
It would be small — around 1,300 square feet, plus a loft — and
would reflect how they really lived as a family. The big house,
which they still own, is now rented out.
The total budget was around $1.8 million, though that figure
is a bit deceiving, because Malibu is a difficult, costly place to
build. In reality, the house looks rustic and funky. The exterior
was built using old barn boards, and the exposure to the ocean air
has further weathered the wood and corroded the metal surfaces. “We
just love that rusted, beat-down beach kind of energy,” said Mr.
Wasilewski.
Little Dume Beach is a short walk from the house, through a
quiet neighborhood of homes set back from the street and down a
trail lush with vegetation. But Mr. Wasilewski and Ms. Harfouche no
longer have to sneak through someone’s yard to get there, as they
did when they were teenagers. Now they have a key to the beach
gate.
Yesterday, California wildfires,
driven by hot Santa Winds gusting up to a hundred and twenty clicks
an hour, tore hell through the celebrity enclave of Malibu.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Lady Gaga. Caitlyn Jenner. Robin
Thicke.
All of ’em hitting panic buttons.
And Strider’s house?
The chicest of ’em all. The only one that wasn’t a temple to the
depravity and excess of celebrity?