Watch and Listen: A new hype track featuring an all-star surf cast sweeps Oahu’s North Shore!

"Pyzel surfboard the swell peakin' at noon!"

Music has been inextricably tied to upping the passions since the beginning of recorded time. The ancient Greeks marched into battle to the deafening beat of drums. The ancient Americans sent fife players out front of militiamen to both inspire and strike fear in British hearts. Napoleon had his favorite composer, Paisiello, write melodies and perform them during decisive campaigns and the modern basketball player will refuse to enter a gymnasium without noise-cancelling, full-ear headphones playing the very latest 6ix9ine track.

And so it only makes sense that Oahu’s North Shore, seven-miles awash in upped passions, has its own.

Kahleo’s There That Boy Go is a modern masterpiece featuring crackling, surf-inspired lyrics, an all-star North Shore cast (the Rothmans, a Florence, Billy Kemper etc.) and enough Pipeline to send shivers up this grown man’s spine.

A sample:

There that boy go, looking back I know there’s much to see.
Aloha vibes, aloha vibes is how I prefer to speak.
Hey haole boy, yeah haole boy, would you like to try some beef?
I just got my lei chilling out on the beach, tryin to eat.
There that boy go, Reef boardshorts, no shirt, no shoes.
There that boy go Pyzel surfboard the swell peaking at noon.

If this is not the best surf song on the planet you tell me which one is and then I will call you a fool.

And I only have one quick question. Is John John’s younger brother Ivan Florence the haole boy that possibly wants to try some beef?

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Breaking: Monster Energy changes Dusty Payne’s orientation!

Does drinking The Claw make you goofy?

Identity politics are still the rage and how much do you identify with your stance? Like, are you a capital ‘R’ regular foot, a capital ‘G’ goofy foot or are you a little more fluid? I ain’t talking fluid like Jamie O’Brien, going both ways. Mere mortals like us aren’t bi but are you bi-curious and/or relatively unattached to how you stand on a surfboard?

I am a regular foot but don’t feel any great pride. My little one, when she first started kicking a skateboard, tested out both regular and goofy for a few weeks before settling on goofy, like her mother. It made me happy, to be honest, because I think of screwfoots like I think of left-handed relief pitchers in baseball. I imagine them exotic, much sought after and extremely valuable even though I know that stance has nothing to do with dominant hand.

I envy goofy footers, I suppose, but I know a man who forced his little one into a regular stance at first sign of goof, possibly stunting years of progression but maybe not. Maybe he saved her from years of lackluster style.

In the case of Dusty Payne, Monster Energy, his drink sponsor, flipped him from a regular to a goofy and plastered him all over town. Like a real sassy thing.

Do you think he cares?

Would you?

Identity politics are, after all, still the rage.

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From the teenaged-girl Dept: The World Surf League releases a Snapchat-esque photo filter!

Wanna look like Johnny Ringo?

It was only a matter of time before the World Surf League rolled out a Snapchat-esque filter and you know what I’m talking about. The Snapchat-esque filter. A filter for your phone where you can take a picture of yourself  and then look like you are a reindeer or a woodland fairy and I’m not talking about “you” but your teenaged daughter.

Or Jared Leto.

Or Jared Leto.

They are very popular, anyhow, and the fact that it took the World Surf League feat. Oprah this long to shoot out their very own Snapchat-esque filter in an honest to goodness miracle.

But miracle no longer! Let’s meet the new WSL PURE Facebook (not Snapchat) Camera Effect!

Try the new WSL PURE Facebook Camera Effect!

We are on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower our global surf community to protect our oceans so we collaborated with Facebook on a camera effect to help raise awareness and make it easier to talk about the biggest challenges facing our oceans. Like the WSL Facebook page to use the effect and rally friends to protect, understand, and respect the ocean.

Submit your video to the WSL’s Fan Facebook Group for your chance to be featured on the LIVE broadcast.

You wanna look like Kaipo (above)?

You should. I know it was probably for shitty Movember but Kaipo looks exactly like Johnny Ringo in Tombstone and I don’t know why you’d want to look like anyone else.

Wait. Is that what the World Surf League feat. Oprah’s own Snapchat-esque filter makes you look like?

Sold

Buy here!

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Rent: Chippa Wilson’s Enchanted North Coast Ranch!

Live like the great Australian jibber!

Two weeks ago, BeachGrit joined Chippa Wilson, the world famous aerialist, for a Sunday of late spring A-frames.

The conjoining was to create a short film called Twenty where Chip would attempt to nail twenty tricks in a morning on twenty different soft boards.

Chip flies for director Luke Farquhar, on location for Twenty.

Hell of a good time etc.

Anyway, I was asking Chip about his pussy palace out the back of Cabarita, near Byron Bay there on Australian’s north east coast. It’s been featured in various shorts by What Youth, Stab etc.

“Wanna rent it?” he said.

It turns out, ’cause he travels so much, air shows, sponsor trips etc, that the Clothiers Creek ranch (here on Instagram) is open to the public.

It’s a gorgeous place to behold: you can sit under the trees and write stories about animals, paint landscapes, kiss as the sky darkens and thunderclaps explode in summer storms, spend warm nights with a frail little sleeper at your throbbing side, and you can chase funny chickens all around the yard.

And if you want to get a piece of Chip himself, ride one of the Drag softboards he keeps in the garage

From Air BnB. 

Designed for the Australian lifestyle, with elevated views over the local farm lands, a modern farmhouse style home with acreage / simplicity at its best.

Within 15mins drive from Salt Village Beaches and Cabarita Beach, this hosue is also minutes away the M1 Motorway giving an easy direct access to the Gold Coast Airport. It’s a real treat!

Spend your stay relaxing by the pool or chilling on the verandah enjoying the lush green views forgetting about near but distant city lifestyle.

Front doors opening to a entertaining deck with a selection of native trees surroundings brings total exclusivity with a indoor/ our door living flow throughout the home.

Also feel free to collect some fresh eggs from the chooks for breaky, coffee and tea grown from the fields across the road from the property!

For the whole joint it costs around $US300 a night. Chip will swing a twenty percent discount to the first three guests who book a trip between now and February 18.

Book here! 

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Revisionist history: Kelly Slater and the “surfing was not a career path” fallacy!

A lie but a beautiful lie!

I am very excited to watch the Momentum Generation, it’s true, though wasn’t always. When I very first heard of the concept I was dubious. It’s not like the stars of those Taylor Steele films, Rob Machado, Kelly Slater, Benji Weatherly, Ross Williams, Shane Dorian, Kalani Robb, etc. had disappeared without a trace. They had each been fixtures in the surf industry, their stories well-known and well understood. What could a modern film about them teach us?

David Lee Scales watched the film at the Florida Surf Film Festival, though, and told me it was great featuring introspection and moments of beautiful tenderness. It won the best documentary feature there, will certainly win many more awards and will also play on HBO on Dec. 11. An early Christmas treat for all.

In any case, I have read a quote from Kelly Slater taken from the film many times now, most recently this morning in a Washington Post story about Stephanie Gilmore and equal pay.

“Surfing was not a career path,” Slater recalled of his youth, in the HBO surf documentary “Momentum Generation.” ‘’It was just something you enjoyed doing.”

The first time stumbling across it I wrinkled my nose. The second time I scratched my head. The third time I said, “Really?” but quietly in my mind. The fourth time I said, “Did Kelly confusingly think he was part of the Bustin’ Down the Door generation?” out loud and thought it very clever but no was around to hear it so I’m typing it and still think it very clever.

Because what the hell?

Kelly was born in 1972, winning every amateur competition at 11, turned pro at 18 and directly won the Body Glove Surf Bout at Trestles which boasted a purse of $100,000 after which he signed a six-figure deal with Quiksilver. Not only was there big money in that early 90s surf industry, it had ballooned in the generation proceeding Kelly’s with Tom Curren, Tom Carroll, ’89 World Champ Martin Potter, etc. each making a good living out of nothing but surfing.

It certainly was a career path and a well-established one at that.

Kelly’s revisionist history makes me smile, though, because it proves the “surfing as rebellion” narrative is still tucked somewhere in the folds. I don’t doubt that he really believes it wasn’t a career path for him because that makes surfing like accounting, computer programming, dentistry or any other career path.

Something you have to do.

No, surfing is a passion, man, a feeling that moms and dads and the system just don’t understand and I am very much looking forward to The Brother Movie airing on HBO in 2030 where a grey Kolohe Andino looks at the camera and says, “Surfing was not a career path… it was just something you enjoyed doing.”

Viva the rebellion!

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