The coming hegemony: The World Surf League buys everything related to surfing!

A vision!

I had an explosive migraine headache last night, one that rendered me completely blind and in a state massive confusion. A wild, undulating, rainbow corona closing out vision. Something deep inside my brain acting like a giant piston, driving up and down, up and down. Or like the Surf Lakes’ plunger, I suppose. I sprinted to bed, turned off the lights and fell into the deepest oddest sleep.

Somewhere around 1:00 in the morning I woke up and while my head still felt very loose, a clear prophesy floated in front of me. So clear, I could almost touch it.

(Interlude: Someday, when BeachGrit’s Origin Story is played out in yearly pageant like the Mormons’ have in upstate New York this moment will be a crescendo maybe scored to Bon Jovi’s Living in Sin.)

The World Surf League is going to buy everything related to surfing, not just professional surfing.

Dirk Ziff has the team he wants now, don’t you feel it? Erik Logan was the final piece and now, now it’s go time. The World Surf League already owns professional surfing and wave pools. In the next few years, and mark my words, it will buy Surfline for its cams Stab for its toothless, chummy fawning and Surfer for its historical assets. Oaktree Capital, parent of Quiksilver and Billabong, stock will get eaten up, Rip Curl will also get purchased and one or two of the larger but financially distressed surfboard manufacturers.

Wave pool construction will boom, they will be surrounded by Quiksilver, Billabong, Rip Curl stores with production centered in North Korea so costs can be cut to fast fashion levels and serve larger but financially distressed surfboards. Surfer bars will dispense piña coladas, Stab will throw worldwide parties that almost look edgy, Surfline will be moved to Austin, Texas.

Smaller brands/media entities will be tolerated but if they annoy and/or get out of line and/or present a non-mass adult learner vision of surfing then they will be purchased and shuttered or harassed into outer darkness.

Surfing and the World Surf League will be synonymous and I hear you and your, “I don’t care about pro surfing or the brands or the culture, I just go surfing at my local, man. Just me and my board and the waves, man.”

But your children won’t be saying that when World Surf League Surf Schools front every “ocean break” and give adult learners “a taste of surfing’s roots.”

Oh don’t worry. We’ll still be here for your children, making extra lots of fun and also presenting our origin story “Surfing is for Assholes!”