The journey to nowhere continues!
For the past two days, the world has stood still while various theories have been tossed around for a leash-pull incident at Venice Beach, California.
You first read about it, here, BREAKING: “WORLD’S LAMEST SURF ASSAULT” CHALLENGED BY “AGGRESSIVE LEASH PULL INCIDENT” IN VENICE!, enjoyed the brief but to-the-point response in BLACK GIRLS SURF’S RHONDA HARPER: “I’M GOING TO TELL BEACHGRIT, NO FUCKING COMMENT!” and, yesterday, the reveal that maybe the leash-puller had been unfairly set upon in BUT WAIT: DID A POOR BRAZILIAN MAN GET PILLORIED FOR MERELY REMOVING A LEASH FROM HIS SURFBOARD’S NOSE?
Today, in an exclusive from a BeachGrit reader in Venice, the tableau is filled in just a little more.
His email reads:
Rhonda Harper, Danielle Lyons, and Khadija Sambe show up at the Venice Pier to meet with a crew from NBC.
Once there, the group of women became “bossy”, “territorial” , “acting like they run the place”, “telling other surfers they can’t surf here because they are going to film”. They were snaking several other surfers repeatedly. (This is coming from several surfers questioned about that day, all were asked separately about what happened and all were saying the same things.)
Wagner Lima, noticing the film crew, went up and asked who they were filming. “The pro surfer out there,” he was told by the cameraperson. Being told she was a pro surfer and with her own camera crew, Lima watched to check out her surfing. Not impressed with her level of surfing, Lima laughed it off as being a “joke”, which he told the camera person. (This is coming from Lima.)
Lima then hits the water to surf. Once in, he starts getting the same treatment the other surfers were getting from the women. Getting snaked too. After putting up with it for awhile, the wave with the leash pull happens.
Lima mentions how her leash went around his board, so he yanked it.
He attempt to say sorry right after, but she wasn’t having it.
They all go on about there day, Lima leaves the water, gets smoothie, does some business. He sees the women again in the parking lot and goes up to them to apologize again. He gets cursed out and sprayed head-to-toe with water from the women’s rinse kit.
Soon after is when Harper starts her ruthless online vendetta against Lima. She shows up at the Venice Pier the next day and tells Lima she is going to ruin him. (This comes from Lima.)
Apparently, Harper is infamous in Southern California for showing up to surf spots with her group and acting like they run the place. (This also comes from surfers that said they recognized who she was and know how she acts. There’s even comments on surf forums about her. Her personal Facebook page is filled with posts she made showing anger towards men, white people and the surf industry in general.)
Harper’s vendetta against Lima included contacting a fairly new website called Seamaven, which had previously wrote up a little story on Harper. The person behind the website Molly Lockwood ends up writing a blog post titled “Surf School Owner Spends Free Time Harassing Black Surfer At Venice Beach”.
Either Lockwood may have been been feed false info about the incident from Harper, or she just used race-baiting to push her own agenda. (This is just going off her story and her replies to anyone not agreeing with her. She refuses to accept the fact that her story is filled with inaccuracies. For F’s sake, she stated the wrong day of the week it happened) and stereotypes.
To sum it all up: these women showed up to a new surf spot, tried to run the place, started snaking all the other surfers, then one of them got snaked and Rick Cane’d.
What troubles me about the event, and it should you too, is the notion of a ‘rinse kit’.
Have you ever heard of such a thing?
When did they enter common parlance and usage?
And, do people actually walk into a store and buy or does it come in the complete adult learner package?
