Blood Feud: Surfer magazine’s Justin Housman vs. The New Yorker’s Bill Finnegan!

"...lazy, derivative, and two years too late!"

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, William Finnegan’s masterful 12,000 word feature on the meaning, value and future of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch was released to almost as much fanfare as his Pulitzer Prize winning memoir Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.

Praise poured in from all surf corners.

Stab magazine, even swallowing bitterness at not being mentioned, wrote: “How fortunate are surfers to have someone as sharp as Bill Finnegan speaking to The Elites on our behalf?” The Inertia added, “…particularly poetic.”

Surfer magazine’s Justin Housman took a different path, though, writing on Twitter: “Meh. The New Yorker article was fine I guess, but also a bit lazy, derivative, and two years too late. Didn’t raise any interesting questions or cover any new ground.”

Whoa.

A certifiable literary blood feud not seen ’round these parts since Joel Tudor went after Noa Deane for penning a three-eye’d smiley face.

And whose side are you on?

Do you think that William Finnegan gets heaped with flowery praise by sycophants too enamored to be honest or that Justin Housman is blinded by possible jealousies?

Are you Team Surfer or Team New Yorker?


Promoted: Last chance to win silky three-board quiver (shipped anywhere in the world)!

A generous arrangement…

It’s Christmas. And who don’t need a three-board quiver delivered to the door of their hovel, whether you’re in Germany, Iran or gorgeous potholed Yemen (Plot spoiler: setting of Chas Smith’s new book)?

As noted a couple of weeks back, The Critical Slide Society, a swinging art-based surf brand whose Bondi store is festooned with a giant mural of Patrick Swayze as Bodhi, is offering a three-board quiver if you sign up to their newsletter.

A small entry fee, I think.

From the company:

Dreamed of walking into the garage and having your pick of 3 fresh slices of foam? A longboard from the king himself Thomas Bexon (Doc), a perfectly hand shaped fish from Josh Keogh and a soft top from Catch Surf for those smaller fun days.

Free boards aren’t something we take for granted, in all honesty, we’ve never got any freebies, and why should we. There’s definitely been the barter economy, a nice piece of art for an addition to the quiver. So the labour cost should roughly balance each other out! In this case..you don’t have to be on the world tour… just be the lucky name that gets drawn out of the hat.

Winners receive ~

– 9’9 Thomas Step Deck

– 5’6 Keogh Fish

– 8′ Catch Surf Plank

Sign up, maybe win, here. Entries close December 14, 2018.

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Holiday cheer: The World Surf League President-elect of Content, Media and WSL Studios brightens your season!

Ho ho ho!

We are in that time of year when “Surfing Santas” become as ubiquitous as Christmas trees in any and every coastal/surf community across the globe. Cocoa Beach, Florida, Kelly Slater’s hometown, tries to boast that it is the Surfing Santa capital while Huntington Beach, California and Bondi, Australia fight for recognition too. I suppose it is cute, or cute enough, but not nearly as cute as the World Surf League’s President-elect of Content, Media an WSL Studios dressing like a stick-wielding elf in a Manhattan Beach, California.

To be honest, I didn’t know that Santa’s li’l helpers carried sticks but that is a sniveling critique to make when faced with such wonder, with the very embodiment of Christmas cheer. I don’t want to write this because I feel it might be perceived as unnecessarily hurtful, but doesn’t ELo look like a…. I’m searching for a word that’s not “pimp” but has the same meaning. A…. flesh-peddler? In the best sartorial sense I mean.

I don’t have anything more to say, other than I look forward to finally meeting Mr. Erik Logan in less than a month for in less than a month he sheds the “elect” in “president-elect” and actually takes his proper place in Santa Monica’s high tower, lording over content, media and WSL studios. He promised to chat, I think, and I have no doubt that he’ll understand our humor, that he’ll see us as a valuable addition to the World Surf League family.

Don’t you think so?

I have never met a man who rides SUPs, religiously, that doesn’t have a finely-hewn sense of humor. Also, I’m certain the World Surf League is thrilled with our twin billing in today’s The New Yorker.

How could they not be?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrLtknaAvAt/

 


Watch: Chippa Wilson tear hell out of softboards in “Twenty”!

Twenty tricks, twenty boards, all in one three-hour session.

A few Sundays ago, BeachGrit joined with Chris “Chippa” Wilson for a very summer challenge: nail twenty tricks on different softboards over the course of one morning.

Chris, whom I first met ten years ago when he entered a contest I ran in my old surf mag and who took my breath away, then, in the same manner Dane Reynolds did as a seventeen year old, was the only man I felt capable of the challenge.

(Take a brief detour here to reacquaint yourself with Chip’s latest film, Video Number Four, which won Best Short at the Surfer Poll awards.)

On surfboards one would hardly consider able to fly, Chippa nails shuv-its, 540s frontside and backside and a 1440, proving anything is possible on these friendly beasts.

Boards used: Catch Surf 7’6” Odysea, Catch Surf 5’6” Odysea, Drag Dart 5’6”, El Nino 7’0” Cruiser, GSI 7’6” Beach Cruiser, GSI 5’6” Flounder Pounder, MF 6’0” Beastie, MF 5’2” Little Marley, Mullet 5’2” Fish Finger, Softlite 5’6” Mad Lab Beaker, Drag Drumstick, Mullet Spade, Softech 4’8” Kyuss King, Softech 5’2″ Mason Ho twinDrag 7’6” Coffin, MF 5’6” Eugenie, GSI Seaglass Project 5’6” Albacore and a Softlite 6’0” Pop Stick.

Click on the play button above for the long-form version (scored to the Barracudas’ Summer Fun or hit play, below, for the one-minute cut with John Cooper Clarke’s epic poem of futility, Evidently Chickentown.)


Literature: Pulitzer prize-winning author lionizes the great “Backward Fin Beth!”

"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!