"The BeachGrit crew was ecstatic."
It was with tremendous joy that I woke this
morning to find the Pulitzer prize-winning author William Finnegan
had penned an 8000 word dissection of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch for
The New Yorker. I had heard he was there for the Surf
Ranch Pro in September the same exact day I was but only heard
after I had left. Oh how I would have liked to shake his hand. How
I would have liked to thank him for writing a surf book (Barbarian
Days… buy here!) that
won the grandest award in all of literature.
Reading his elevated take is the next best thing to actually
meeting him, I suppose, and I savored every word of Kelly Slater’s Shock
Wave while sipping my black coffee sans cream or
sugar, enjoying his take on what it all means, why it matters
etc.
He quoted Matt Warshaw, calling him surfing’s “unofficial
historian” which made me a little sad for Matt. He has written both
the History of
Surfing and the Encyclopedia of
Surfing. What must he do to become surfing’s “official
historian?” Is it something we can crowdfund? I’ll look into it for
us.
He talked to Kelly Slater, the engineer Adam Fincham, Steph
Gilmore, surf fans and various other persons involved in the event,
in the pool, in the World Surf League and I was humming right along
until I reached the following passage:
As if to confirm everyone’s suspicions, Beth Greve, the
W.S.L.’s chief commercial officer, was photographed in Bali lugging
a beginner’s board across the beach with the fins put in backward.
Backward Fins Beth became famous in surf world—more than half a
million views on @kook_of_the_day. And then BeachGrit, an
Australian Web site that delights in trolling the W.S.L., blew up
the image to billboard size and installed it on a freeway in
Lemoore, just in time for the Surf Ranch Pro. The billboard shot
zoomed around the surfing Internet.
Slater saw it. He is a tireless online poster, with a rare
degree of patience. On his Instagram feed, a magnet for cranks of
all kinds, he has spent years debating flat-Earthers, laying out
innumerable scientific proofs that the planet is round. He’s a
well-informed environmentalist; right-wing flamethrowers rain
hellfire on him for that, and he often takes the trouble to reply
to them individually. When the Backward Fins Beth billboard went
viral, Slater showed a tiny bit of pique. On the BeachGrit
Instagram feed, he wrote, “Funny. Cheap. Character Revealing.” The
BeachGrit crew was ecstatic. They had successfully trolled the
king.
I smiled broadly remembering those days so not very long ago and
read the sentence, “The BeachGrit crew was ecstatic.” once
more. Then thought of all the times Derek and I have giddily texted
back and forth, both laughing on different sides of the Pacific,
examining every facet, every nuance of utterly pointless minutia,
from Backward to ELo to Leashgate. We are so easily prodded into
ecstasy and maybe that is what makes us different. Maybe that is
our spark.
You must, anyhow, read every word
of the Finnegan masterpiece but speaking of ELo…. a glorious
Christmas treat coming right up!
