Trump supporter denied chance to buy iconic checkerboard slip-on shoes!

An employee at a Vans store in Kansas has been fired after, allegedly I suppose although he doesn’t seem to deny it, telling a kid with a Make America Great Again hat to fuck off.

“I’m sure he’s heard it before,” the employee told the kid’s mammy, who then reported the guy to his manager.

“My son walked into this store. That gentleman cursed and told him, ‘Take off your hat’. He said nothing to him, 14-year-old child, then he said, ‘F you’ to my son. My son said nothing to him, did nothing.'”

Shortly after, Vans, which is Dane Reynolds’ primary sponsor, released a statement saying, “The actions and comments from one employee in our Oak Park location are in contrast with our company’s values and belief in personal expression.”

And yesterday, it was revealed that Empire star Jussie Smollet, who’d claimed he’d barely escaped being lynched by two men chanting, “This is MAGA country!”, a hate crime that blew Twitter into the heavens and had GQ writing “They could lynch you if they really wanted to, and maybe get away with it too” , probs made the damn thing up.

From the safety of Australia, I ask: Are men, and boys, in MAGA hats tearing the heart out of America in “the blind rage of late-stage whiteness,” as posited by GQ, and therefore must have their smug faces punched as suggested by TV host Reza Aslan?

More importantly, should Vans invest a little cash in heating its stores?

Both employees are filmed wearing woollen caps and inflating jackets that belong, I would suggest, in Alaska’s famous tundra.

What happens when a VAL completes his metamorphosis?

It’s the year of the VAL, the Vulnerable Adult Learner whose behaviour and habitat has been well documented on this website.

Read here, here and here. 

Here, here, here and here too.

But what happens when a VAL eventually gains enough confidence in his, her, ability? They become an Emerging Intermediate, a more aggressive and threatening form of surfer than the VAL.

Don’t believe me?

Let us, as they say in polite circles, start the conversation.

The EI is unassuming because he has a carbon-wrapped board it discovered while being self-radicalized by surfboard review clerics on YouTube.  There is also a hipster sub-sect that can afford one-thousand dollar “artisan”, asymetrical twin-fins.

Emerging Intermediates further blend in and confuse everyone else because they actually make a legit wetsuit purchase from a mainstream company, be it an Xcel or perhaps a Matuse (see again hipster sub-sect).

The problem:

Newly radicalised, weaponised, and over aggressive, they will come to your peak and start shoulder hopping waves with their heads down. They are oblivious to everything. The newly anointed martyrs will make suicide missions into set waves, tomahawking down the face. The real treat comes when they actually make the wave but you’ve burned them. Tantrums and a detailed explanation of “The Rule of Surfing” will follow.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bse3Bs9BBwK/

You have EI’s who vacay in Bali to surf waves out of their league. They wear reef booties and tell everyone they hate wearing them. Secretly, they wish the booties came up to their knee caps and they proudly stomp around in them as proof of being battle-tested at Uluwatu and so forth.

The overarching problem with EI’s is that aren’t as easy identifiable as VAL’s. Therefore, you don’t know where the enemy is and you don’t know where the enemy fire will be coming from.

So what can be done?

Do we place a travel ban on VAL’s in Tourmaline, Pacifica, Venice, and Bondi, assuming that they one day will be radicalized as EI’s?

Is it our responsibility to de-radicalise EI’s by suggesting they go back to a fun board and a surf trip to Costa Rica?

Many questions.