Straight outta Rockaway.
We joke and laugh and giggle and cajole surfing and professional surfing every day. It is undeniably ridiculous as it is fun and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times… we put on black pantsuits and go sit in the ocean, waiting to wiggle our bottoms and spew out our arms and legs all akimbo.
BUT it is also deadly serious. Deadly deadly serious and this is why The Inertia-style Adult Learners are such shit with their, “the-best-surfer-is-the-one-having-the-most-fun” “calm-down-it’s-just-surfing” bullshit.
We have spent our lives here and tourists ain’t welcome.
That’s why it put a tear in my eye, this morning, to read about surfing in the Rockaways in The Failing New York Times and Mr. Brian James in particular.
Let’s together.
Three years after Hurricane Sandy lashed the Rockaways, the boardwalk marched down the beach in broken segments as the public housing built under Robert Moses was hemmed in by condos. Out in the surf, not much changed as the bathymetry returned to normal, but the predominantly white, male crowd of surfers had.
Part of that shift happened when Louis Harris, 46, founded the East Coast chapter of the Black Surfing Association in 2016.
Mr. Harris bought his first surf board after moving to the Rockaways in 2006. After getting his bearings in remote beaches, he joined the crowd at Beach 90th Street.
“That’s when I saw B.J.,” Mr. Harris said.
Brian James — “B.J.” — the only other black man in the water, paddled over to Mr. Harris and asked if he wanted to hang out afterward.
“‘If you’re going to be a surfer, you have to take it seriously,’” Mr. Harris recalled him saying. “‘You’re a black guy. Everybody’s eyes are on you.’”
The rest of the story is beautiful but I would like to tip my cap to B.J. for proactively spouting truths in the lineup.
“If you’re going to be a surfer, you have to take it seriously.”
“We have spent our lives here and tourists ain’t welcome.”
Dude,
you are friggin’ funny some~times!
Heya, you do know that everyone luvs to make some $$$ off tourists, right?
Bectha you do too, ya know, try+sell some more of your books to them adult~learners,
who might take a surf~lesson, maybe dig the stoka~boka, want more, more, more riiight?
Me, I luv them surfin’ tourists, especially those fine~ies who’ve given R~dubs some of thee p***y!
Before or after an L.A. surf…
By the way, Chas
just for your consideration,
well to some of us who were born here+raised here,
consider this, ok? You’se be a part of Thee Problem!
Don’t~cha know what I’m yakin’ about again?
Have ya ever tried drivin’ around So. Cal? Or in Los Angeles maybe? Cursed at the traffic?
Well if you would just go back home to where’s ya were born at + maybe learned to surf at,
well we loc’s could drive around town waaay quicker.
Like I can now do over the next few dayz,
as many of ya’ll head home, hahaha!
Happy Hollow~dayz,
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Meee~ister Smith!
Btw,
many of ya seem to beee~itch
about that man~made barrelin’ wave that ol’ BG owner Chas was seen pullin’ into.
But ain’t it the same friggin’ deal as when ya go ride your snow~board? Or s8 in a park?
What, it ain’t pure, pffft, “Like a Virgin”?
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Hey Beach Gritters!
Happy Hollow~dayz to you all!
Get some, where~ever + whatz ever ya ride!
Hahaha…
RW
do trust fund kids count? or what about people on the dole?
When Kelly barred fun Keramas for atom-splitting Cloudy I realised he’s more of a surfer than anyone on tour currently or in recent memory.
The man just loves to surf good waves.
Even double John didn’t wag school for the greatest show…
He’s pretty good
Don’t blame me, you started this. I like Larry David too. I could have sworn I heard something about him filming episodes for a new season of Curb.
You did! Production started in late October.
Beautiful words of self-help
“If you failed trying surf…try again!”
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
So basically you don’t mind a back and forth, but you’ll remind it. Fuck. It’s like your mantra IS “back and forth”.
Speaking of mantras and back and forth, here’s a back and forth about a mantra:
https://youtu.be/uQbnjo3vxrw
Upvote for “East Indian giver”.
By and between give and take and back and forth there are many parallels.
Keanu reeves got paid.
You were in high school when Surf Ranch was revealed?
Everyone with a Y chromosome loves a BJ. There should be more BJs. BJs in the ocean, BJs in rolling fields. BJs in New York, BJs in Cork. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and for those of us eligible, I hope you receive the gift of BJ this festive season for it is truly a wonderful gift.
You’re obvs not married w/kids yeti. Merry 😪 Christmas 😪
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
While there is life , there is hope .
Better to hang on hope then dangle on a rope ?
I hope you are wrong. I am spending Christmas with my brother
Any port in a storm ?
I’m not sure the knock shops will be operating tomorrow so you’re gunna have to ask santa for a raincheck, hug it out and hang tight until your birthday.
Your right they are nothing but a prostitute!
Had this conversation with several of the prostitutes, it s fighting word, but after a reality check of their life, they are into agreement. Kelly’s the only one dumb enough not to see his reality.
https://youtu.be/B3eAMGXFw1o
Speaking of whores, fuk how good is rhi rhi ?
Technically a surf vid. Bikinis and a boogieboard.
Joey Ramone sang
It’s not hard not far to reach
Why so serious?
Just checking if i start “Middle Class White Male Surf Club” that wouldnt be precieved to well huh? Like a little bit racist and sexist?
Follow your dreams! White male surfing is vastly underrepresented! I’d suggest your first chapters to be in Hawaii and Brazil.
They get paid because their better surfers than you or me, who cares what they advertise. If that’s what you need to tell yourself so you can call yourself a surfer go ahead dude, but it makes you a kook more than anything
Often the paid surfers don’t care either. Getting boards made by someone other than their sponsor because they make better boards, drinking from refillable plastic bottles that spruik an ‘energy’ drink, but contain water, etc, etc. Except Oakley, them glasses were good, but no longer sponsoring surfing huh? Bummer.
Don’t be in denial people get paid to surf……. I’m sorry if your not one of them.
Nah man people need to realize there’s a massive difference between being a surfer and someone who surfs. I’ve surfed since I was a kid but I’m an engineer now I surf in my free time, it makes no sense walking around saying I’m a surfer when at most these days I’m surfing a couple times a week. I also play pick up basketball does that make me a basketball player? No it means I play meaningless pickup games, my problem with the adult learners is that they call themselves surfers. Unless your getting paid to surf you are not a surfer, it’s really that simple.
meh
Aww you deleted your little cricket rant
You got me! I posted it and then thought, “fuck, I’m such a loser for getting all worked up like this and this post is really shit anyway”. I thought I’d get away with the change of heart but there’s no hiding at the grit…
Haha you must be my conscience lol
I’m an amateur slave and sex toy who surfs.
Says the mrs
Maybe you’re just not a surfer.
Ive missed my best mates wedding, another mates funeral, many Christmas’s, family holidays (booked & prepaid), Sunday roasts, and more, to be somewhere A-grade pumping.
Just walk away like De Niro in Heat. I have zero regrets and zero self-doubt about making that call when the time comes, but I don’t pull the card for nothing.
Each year I choose a new gun and plane ticket over a crown on my busted molar, let alone buy new clothes.
I wore a hole in my 4yo jeans the other day so my wife said I have to buy new ones, I went to the store and all the new ones came with holes worn in the knees… I saved my cash.
I juggle work and family and a few maintenance surfs per week to stay sharp. My wife knows its who I am and 330 odd days a year I’m father of the year. The other days I’m out there.
One piece of bullshit I won’t take is that I’m not a surfer. I’m a surfer till the day I die. No matter what others things I do to pass the time between swells.
I don’t care for surf fashion, or hipsters, or adult learners, or Jeep ads. When it’s pumping all your sleeve tatts, $100 barber haircuts, asymmetrical Simmons fishes and new Jeeps wont help you surf anywhere near as good as a that guy on a dirty old 8’0 Bushman.
All those people you mention are the imposters to me, even those who do it for money. They can talk all the crap they like, look the part, get paid, whatever. But they’re the ones trying to be something they never will be.
And I suspect there’s a lot more like me here in the Commentariat, that’s why we jab at the imposters trying to bottle and sell what they aren’t.
PS I’m long form ranting tonight because it’s midnight and my kids just got to sleep and I’m not tired but nothing else to do haha!
You had me at “over a crown on my busted molar”.
I’ve recently received a dentist quote for 5 filings and 2 crowns, one of which needs to salvage a molar that’s only half a tooth. I just can’t afford it all! Yet within the last 12 months I’ve HAD to get a new wetsuit, booties, a regular shortboard and a step-up…
Hahahaaa that’s what I’m talking about!
Try an emery board on the tooth
TISM
This is serious mum
This is surfing man
Would love to know what the aging Ron Hitler Barassi would have turned this into ?
Fuck I’ve taken this surfing life seriously since 1980 and thoroughly agree with Brian James . You want to play ? You got to pay ! Not in cash but in blood and fear and pain and cold and cuts and burns and stings and going without ……………or wait at the end of the line , silent , until you do .
For the benefit of our overseas viewers, I’ll leave this here. It’s not necessarily the best representation of TISM, but it is the most appropriate song for the Komentariot and their lifelong quest to parse the contextual nuance of the Australian use of the word ‘cunt’.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
https://youtu.be/wPAQBtuUiLU
Not enough use of the C bomb for swellians
Yeah, I don’t mind the pop-croon approach to passive-aggressive songs, but definitely enjoyed their more aggressive songs like ‘You’ll Never be an Old Man, River’. And their use of punctuation marks was world leading in the music industry.
It’s pretty funny that the surf flick “Breath” presented surfing better to non surfers than most every surf movie made. The present Momentum Gen. was a real dude to surfers and non surfers. “Breath” was a real surprise to me, but the director nailed it… it’s too bad Hollywood and outside of Jack McCoy…and the Movie SURFERS, this pass time can’t be delivered with definition to masses.
That’s why pecking order must prevail.
You can thank Tim Winton. Excellent writer and regular surfer.
National Treasure . From Cloud St to Lockie Leonard Human Torpedo
Have you managed to watch Breath? Can’t imagine it’s playing at the Supergeil-o-Plex in Kiel, but who knows. Not in NZ cinemas yet, and it would be a shame not to watch on a really big screen.
Just finished The Shepherd’s Hut. TW’s writing never disappoints.
Fröhliche Weihnachten!
Danke Herr Naeraa . May the sun shine and bless you with gifts of light sadly absent from the Baltic end of the Canal to the North Sea . Mads I love his work even though I am from the other side of the continent away . So lovely to here one’s own story written in one’s own language seen through the eyes of an observant coastal dweller on the fringe , not tortured or an intellectual snob . Just someone who loves his place and has a gift to write it down and generous enough to share with the world .
I haven’t seen the film yet but forced the book down the throat of loved ones from Devon to Cape Town
Will it play in NZ cinemas?
Fuck, I hope so!
Except he takes 5 pages to describe walking past a tree!
Sounds like you are ready for Marcel Proust’s monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu ?
They say that’s what makes a writer a writer!
Simon Baker seem to be in the know as soon as to getting it right…
Interview to Breath
https://youtu.be/LQ2-xwkmuJ8
I watched that with my kids… was all good until the choking scene! Try explaining that to an 11 year old!
“Well, sometimes young Negs, when a woman loves a man, she needs a bit more… ‘excitement’ in her life than can be provided by stories of how the board felt under his feet as he pushed through an open face carve.”
Too funny…we fast forward it at that section…
Actually was watching Momentum Gen with born and raised 80 year olds from Malibu, they said turn it off that is notnsurfing, and than Breath came on the directory…we started watching it with the same 80 year olds and they were like….this director gets it.
Surfing in Southern California is fucking lost cunts.
My 3.5yo casually asked me what a gun is tonight*. He heard it in a children’s audio book FFS. I fumbled a brush-off answer ‘it’s a type of machine’ followed by my usual distraction ‘oh look at this…’.
*I’m Aussie and guns are alien and evil to me and I had no idea that question was coming before well into school age.
It was actually better than the book. I cried.
Chas, did you reach Sal for comment or was he on another call with Kelly?
Sal kept me on hold for an hour only to tell me that he gave Nike Surf it’s credibility. I’m gonna write that story someday. The funniest!
Nike Surf. Credibility. Pick one.
I’ll pick 6. Nike 6.0 that is. Major core credibility.
Ever see ESPN’s 30 for 30 about Nike titled “Sole Man”? Best thing ESPN produced since “Sal Man – The Kelly Slater BroMANce Story (Unplugged)”
“Hold on a minute Chas another calls coming through from my good buddy Kelly Slater you know we are friends right?” – Sal
I hear rockaway surfers are really nice. So they’re obviously kooks.
Shame man, by the looks of things the quality of their waves would drive most surfers to suicide. I reckon those who stick it out are more core than the whole CT combined
Not more core than GMed surely?
Sorry, I mean “more core than the entire CT minus Gabs”
fuk yeah
He’s a hellman!
Although he wouldn’t like me saying that.