“Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute Christmas gift ideas, I have six!”

A Christmas promotion that’s still from the heart…

1.Gift the surfboard for the surfer with “decency and self-respect and pride in his skill set.” 

The Pyzel Ghost

$US725 (depending on your setup)

For approximately six months last year, BeachGrit’s prized jewel, the writer Longtom, mounted a relentless harassment campaign against me, in comments, via email, sometimes text. 

The mad bitch wanted a Pyzel Ghost. 

If you’re a student of surf history, as Longtom is, you saw John John Florence at Margaret River and you knew the board he was riding was a subtle, but significant, design breakthrough. 

He was vulture, the board was his precious lamb. 

From Longtom’s subsequent review,

“What you can’t see is the rocker curve. Which is the special sauce. You feel it as soon as you put it under your arm. The rocker curve cuts hard into the forward outline in a very distinctive way just in front of the chest. A recognisably Hawaiian curve, with a long sloping rocker curve out the aft end. If you can’t come to grips with that rocker curve, you can’t surf this board. That sounds harsh to modern ears tuned to inclusive language but it’s true.”

But, 

“If that means something to you, good waves are in your present or near future and you have a shred of decency, self-respect and pride in your skill set, then the Ghost is worth the effort to figure  out. You can do the best surfing in your life on it.”

If driving formula one vehicles or doing the best surfing in your life ain’t your gas or you want something energetic and cooperative for the smaller dregs, step into a Stubby Bastard, John John’s groveller.

As Pyzel told me, “I’ll see a guy just struggling to catch waves on some old high-performance shortboard and I always feel like I want to tell them that surfing could be so much more fun if they would just try something different, a little stubbier, more volume, flatter. I feel bad for those guys ’cause they are missing out and they don’t even know it.”

Buy, examine, both boards here. 

2. Gift the signature traction pad of surfing’s prized jester! 

Pro-Lite Matt Wilkinson tail pad

$US40

For forty bucks or whatever you get ‘em for, the tail-pad is the sorta mid-range present that delights and don’t send you into bankruptcy court. This tailpad, finished in a flashy graphic, reflects, accurately I think, the personality of the one-time title contender turned resort owner. 

It’s a three-piece pad and it’s fashioned using that fabulous micro-dot technology. Grippier when wet etc.

Buy, examine, here. 

3. Gift sunglasses that provide immediate style enhancement

Mr Pitt by Oscar and Frank 

$A160

You wanna buy a pair of specs for your gal, your stud, but the sub-hundred buck styles don’t cut it and who, apart from Post Malone and his ilk, has got the lettuce for $500 Ditas or Saint Laurents?

Here we got a mid-range sunglass that’s got the Italian acetate frames (the stuff that looks and feels like plastic but it’s plant-based), the fancy lenses, Japanese stainless-steel hinges and so forth but you’re gonna peel off less than two cees.

The brow-line style, here, has notes of Malcolm X meets Pool Party. A formidable combination for the revolutionary who also likes to let his fro down.

Buy, examine, here.

4. A Christmas gift that shields your provocative nudity! 

Leus changing poncho 

$US70

We live, in case you didn’t realise, in the new puritan age where an accidentally brushed ass is collared as rape and where nudity is punishable by fine and prison.

I make no claim that I enjoy the pantomime of attempting to cover my swinging dick and chubby, yet shapely and often favourable commented upon, ass, but if you got kids, which I do, they’ll wanna be covered.

I bought my two boys one of these Leus ponchos each, as recommended by Conner Coffin. It is a fine interpretation of an odd, but culturally necessary, item.

Buy, examine, here. 

5. A Christmas gift for the kook in your life or lover of kook lyfe!

Kook of the Day merchandise!

$US25 (t-shirt)

Kook of the Day is the original surf slams Instagram site and when its secretive, and anonymous, master isn’t making funny on IG, he curates a kook-themed gift store.

I like this twenty-five dollar t-shirt.

And this four-dollar beer cooler:

Buy, examine, Kook merchandise here. 

6. Gift a wetsuit made of Japanese Kobe neoprene! 

Vissla Shonan Japanese 3.5mm Full Suit

$US899

Remember, before Sheico in Taiwan took all the biz, when the best suits were proudly made with Japanese neoprene? If you didn’t know, it’s still a thing but it ain’t cheap.

This suit, which ain’t far off a thousand bucks, is about the finest thing you could buy your man, your woman, or yourself.

This suit is a collaboration between Japanese boutique wetsuit brand RASH and the Americans, Vissla. Each bespoke suit is hand-made by nimble fingered Japanese craftsmen in a gorgeous little factory across the road from dazzling, typhoon-fuelled Inamura Point.

Formidable!

Buy, examine, here.