Mystery: World Surf League sends very cryptic gift bag to super fan!

What does it all mean?

Have you ever won anything, like a raffle or free box of Girl Scout cookies or an all-expenses paid three-day cruise after you first went to an informational meeting about the sensibility of “owning” a timeshared apartment in Branson, Missouri?

I haven’t and haven’t really been jealous of people who do win until last evening.

For it was then that I received a message on Instagram that read:

Mate, I received a freebie gift pack from the Woozle as apparently I “watch a lot of live surfing on their app”. Contains a poster of an empty wave, curiously signed by Conner Coffin. A WSL t-shirt with every 2019 stop on the back, some cheap stickers, an invite to the Margaret River Pro which is free to attend anyway, and a dope Hydroflask. I bought one recently, sans WSL branding, for 50 clams.

Oh how my insides burned burned with a covetous fire but I also began to wonder. What is the meaning of this freebie gift pack? Certainly it’s a message.

Like, why an empty wave signed by Connor Coffin? What does this mean?

And why Margaret River? Why not Bells (the only contest with a price for admission)?

But back to Connor Coffin, what must have he been thinking when he put pen to poster on an empty wave?

My mind automatically goes to dark places but can you give me some good possibility about what it all means?


Heart-warming: World Surf League Champion Gabriel Medina finds Carnival love with superstar Anitta!

It's one for the ages!

Today is Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Carnival etc. The time of year Brazilians go all in for. The time of year they let all their clothes down and dance, dance, dance like everyone is watching. Of course, we all have a little Brazilian in us seeing as our champion Gabriel Medina is from the Land of Order and Progress and what is he doing?

Apparently finding love in the arms, and dog’s tongue, of Brazilian superstar Anitta.

Now, maybe you are unaware of Anitta but that only shows your cultural biases. She is clearly famous, possessing more than 35 million followers on Instagram, and… well let’s just turn to Wikipedia for the people, and their socialist encyclopedia, are never wrong.

Larissa de Macedo Machado (born 30 March 1993), known professionally as Anitta, is a Brazilian singer, songwriter, actress, dancer and businesswoman. She is managed internationally by John Shahidi of Shots Studios.

In 2013, Anitta was the singer who most remained at the top of iTunes Brazil and was elected by the same as the Artist of the Year She was also elected by the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte (APCA) as the revelation of the year in music in 2013. She is a five-time winner as the Best Brazilian Act on the MTV Europe Music Awards, and was the first Brazilian artist to win the Best Latin American Act award.

In 2017, she was chosen by Billboard as the 15th most influential artist in the world in social networks, getting ahead of artists like Lady Gaga, Shakira and Rihanna.

Etc.

And of course the woman who beats Lady Gaga requires a World Surf League Champion on her arm. Julian Wilson just had a baby, and is not a World Champion. Filipe Toledo, also not a World Champion yet, is happily married. Mick Fanning, while a World Champion and single, is under much scrutiny for his unfortunate rolling out of Stab in the Dark and World Champion 11x over Kelly Slater has had a rumored girlfriend for two decades.

Leaving Gabriel Medina.

Oh they look like they’re having fun here…

here…

and here…

And what if you were lucky enough to be his gal? Would you let your dog kiss his full lips or burn with jealousy instead?

Much to think on.

But what? Are you not completely sold on Anitta? That is mostly because you follow male professional surfing but here. Let me sweeten the deal.

And here…

And here…

And here…

Uh oh. He looks possessive dear Gabby. Run run run!


Keala Kennelly
Kauai's Keala Kennelly, torch bearer, door-buster etc, steps off a moving bus. | Photo: WSL

Opinion: “When did man-hating in big-wave surfing become a thing?”

Men are simple animals. Be kind to them.

Well enough, we’ve heard enough jabber from the menfolk to last three lifetimes. Batten down the batches, biatches, and brace yourselves for the only woman with the gall, experience and poetic license to fuck up every archetype you’ve ever engendered or that was forced upon you.

a) Women are different from men. We can produce progeny and you men cannot. Basic fact. That sorta puts us in a powerplay position for the duration of humanity so we shouldn’t need to play upon that fact, make you feel badly or left out. We most certainly should never abuse that power to manipulative ends if we are respectful human beings.

b) Because we have these special and ultimate abilities contained within our pelvises and minds we should have no need whatsoever to compare ourselves to you men. We do not need to be as fast or as strong or as anything as you because you lot are incapable of multi-tasking and that says it all.

c) Women’s surfing has been a non-event since forever. I could provide 400 examples of women surfing in recent history and no incidence of male-female conflict. Margo Oberg, Lynn Boyer, Brenda Scott-Rogers, Kim Mearig, Pam Burridge, Wendy Botha, Freida Zamba, Layne Beachley, Sarah Gerhardt, Keala K, Maya Gabeira, Paige Alms etc. Most of them had/have a reference as to their capacities who may have been a lesser surfer than them who was male. Did anyone see any one of these women man-hating? Yelling, screaming? Dare I use the word hysteria? Nope.

d) When did man-hating in BW surfing become a thing? And did that hate-thing simply impose itself upon the physical fact that women hold the monopoly upon the continuation of the human race and simply forgot this momentarily? Sincerely, I’m at a loss.

e) The next time I ask one of those bros who charge massive crimeney around the planet if I’m in or I’m out, I’ll listen like I always have. I have nothing to prove. I am their liability because they care. They will sacrifice themselves for me if I’m in danger and I distract them from the job at hand when I fuck up, so best I don’t or be absent.

f) Beers will be on ice when they get in. Men have simple needs.


Epidemic: “Hipster-like fashion trend of riding without a leg rope” a growing menace!

Be afraid. Literally.

Most of us surf because at some point, or another, we thought it looked very cool and you know what? We were right. Sun-kissed hair, tan skin, surfboard under arm, devil-may-care gait. It looked cool then and it looks cool now but, according to authorities in Byron Bay and environs, the “hipster-like fashion trend of riding without a leg rope” is a growing menace threatening VALs, EIs and the sufficiently competent alike.

What’s the likely outcome of this threat? Well, death of course and let’s read more about the gruesomeness together in the Port Macquire News. Let’s really cringe in fear.

A new beach fashion is making waves in Port Macquarie as surfers ditch their leg ropes to walk the board.

Local beaches are seeing an increase in surfers riding the waves without leg ropes, according to local observers.

Port Macquarie Surf School owner Wayne Hudson said the hipster-like fashion trend of riding without a leg rope was attracting more experienced riders but surfers needed to maintain their common sense.

“It’s a new fashion at Byron Bay,” he said.

Apart from preventing injury to other beach goers or themselves with a stray board, surfers can also use a leg-roped board to determine where a missing surfer is.

An attached surfboard can begin ‘tombstoning’ if its rider is knocked unconscious deeper in the water, instantly telling others that someone is in trouble.

Port Macquarie-Hastings lifeguard supervisor James Turnham said not wearing a leg rope because it was fashionable is an unnecessary risk to all involved.

Fucking hipsters.

But also, when was the last time you really, really tombstoned?


Womens sport is on the upward trajectory, objective fact. Pro sporting leagues are springing up everywhere, like it or not. Big wave surfing likewise. It's not a new beginning, but a second or even third coming. Hawaiian surf gals of the 60's and 70's: Betty Depolito, Lynn Boyer, Margo Oberg shredded the North Shore before ultra-machismo became the default social position. The “physiological barrier” to women surfing big waves is a strangely fluid concept. Here, the Hawaiian surfer Keala Kennelly on her barrel-of-the-year nominated ride at Teahupoo. | Photo: Tim McKenna

Rebuttal: “Women’s big-wave surfing is on the upward trajectory. Objective fact!”

Things are not just changing, they've changed…

The writer JP Currie took a look at Women’s Big-Wave surfing and found it, in the words of Norman Mailer, “Quaintsy Goysy, tiny, too dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish, fashionable, frigid, outer-Baroque, maqueillé in mannequin’s whimsy, or else bright and stillborn”.

Or something like that.

Maybe a fey impersonation of a Man’s manly activity. A crime against physiological reality, against Biology herself.

And just like Mailer and his pals used to review each others books with an unstinting honesty that could lead to a headbutt or Gore Vidals’ “Here comes the tiny fist!” I wish to call bullshit on the Scotsman.

His experience was of brothers and a stoic Maw.

Mine was of strong women too, a sister who devoted herself to martial arts training. By the age of 15 I had already experienced that woozy deep frozen feeling of coming to after being knocked out cold. This time by a roundhouse kick to the head from old sis. The last time I earned her ire. I’ve seen her break bricks with a hand, fight with swords, sticks, staffs. She is, like a plethora of female fighters in MMA, bad-ass. JP uses that as a plank in his argument that women don’t belong in the male dominated world of fighting. I see it as exactly the opposite: that with the right training and dedication a woman can develop into a superb fighter. A pro who can draw a crowd and a fan base.

Women’s sport is on the upward trajectory, objective fact. Pro sporting leagues are springing up everywhere, like it or not. Big-wave surfing likewise. It’s not a new beginning, but a second or even third coming. Hawaiian surf gals of the 60’s and 70’s: Betty Depolito, Lynn Boyer, Margo Oberg shredded the North Shore before ultra-machismo became the default social position. The “physiological barrier” to women surfing big waves is a strangely fluid concept.

Man’s World, men’s rules. I went straight from the University halls, the drinking and womanising cosseted train wreck where the “rules” seem to vary from day to day, depending on who had the money and the connections to buy themselves out of whatever trouble they got themselves into, to a life at sea.

The cook, a wiry little hardnut chick who might have been twenty, might have been 40, jumped up on the tray, dodged the scything tail, which was as big as she was, and secured a noose around it. They winched it straight up in the air with the deck winch and then the engineer got a 303 and started firing rounds into the head. It stopped thrashing and the cook dropped it onto the deck. I was so distraught I had to have a cry wank in the wheelhouse during the dog watch.

Twenty years old, dumb as a box of rocks, as green as the greenest greenhorn who’s ever found themselves hundred of miles at sea for months at a time. First shot, on the first night’s fishing on the ironically named FV Atlantic and the cod ends were overflowing. I could see a large inchoate object in the bag and when we spilled the bags onto the deck trays 18 feet of tiger shark flopped out like a psychotic newborn foal onto the tray.

The skipper was apoplectic.

“Get that fucking thing off the tray! Get that fucking thing off!”

I just stood there, rooted to the spot, frozen with fear.

What? How?

It was thrashing side to side, swiping prawns everywhere. Snapping its jaws. Looking at me with the coldest blackest eyes.

The cook, a wiry little hard-nut chick who might have been twenty, might have been 40, jumped up on the tray, dodged the scything tail, which was as big as she was, and secured a noose around it. They winched it straight up in the air with the deck winch and then the engineer got a 303 and started firing rounds into the head. It stopped thrashing and the cook dropped it onto the deck. I was so distraught I had to have a cry wank in the wheelhouse during the dog watch.

In the morning, we cut the jaws out and dumped it overboard. The cook gave me a look that could have opened a clam across a crowded room and said, nothing. Man’s world, mens rules.

Yeah, but nah.

I still remember the fantasies that I could surf better than the women pro’s, or that most men could. You still see and hear it today. Then Tyler Wright moved to town and I started sharing the line-up with her on the reg. She was 16. Down the drain went that little fantasy. The biggest day of the year at my local last year there were more 17-year-old girls on the peak than young studs supposedly at the peak of their testosterone levels etc etc.

Things are not just changing, they’ve changed. Maybe not everywhere, but Australia, Hawaii, maybe California.

I don’t know Flick Palmateer that well, but I met her a bit over a year ago. She was chilling by a pandanus at the Point, with a busted knee. We were all pretty irie on some fine CBD oil, if memory serves. Deep in my terrible male psyche maybe I felt a scintilla of superiority at going straight on some six-to-eight-foot Point surf while Flick was lounging in the sun, being a mega babe, a prototypical “Airhead YouTuber and Instagram model.”

Two weeks later, Flick was weaponising her gender and bumrushing the 18-wheeler at Jaws shown in the photo of Currie’s article. I was watching from the safety of the lounge room.

That was 2017.

Women caught more waves, made more waves, that year, in more serviceable conditions. 2018 was a different beast. Currie claims a backward step for women’s big-wave surfing and that as a spectacle it was a failure.

I watched with my daughter and wife, both surfers. Neither show a scintilla of interest in men’s WSL surfing. Both were transfixed by the spectacle. We should be careful about calling it a bit shit because it’s a live version of kook slams. Neither Billy Kemper or Grant ‘Twiggy’ Baker made a wave in the following heat. Billy Kemper won the event the next day without making a wave in the Final.

Kook slams in giant surf are a non-discriminatory event.

Currie’s most contentious claim is that somehow the gals hucking the ledge at Jaws, fighting to be included at Mavs are somehow doing womenkind a disservice. That seems a queer piece of logic to me.

If Israeli chicks and Peshmerga babes want to defend the homeland or put the fear of Allah into ISIS kooks then good luck to them.

Big-wave gals likewise. Biology can handle a warm gun.