There have been many famous faces of Hollywood surfing and you know them all. Jan-Michael Vincent in Big Wednesday, Patrick Swayze in Point Break, Matt Adler in North Shore and maybe there is going to be you or someone you know.
Are you a surfer who wants to act and also wants to be a famous face?
Well, Hollywood is currently looking for a young man who is supposed to be sixteen, in the show (scripted), but eighteen or older in real life. The character is an “eccentric, non-conformist” (hello, BeachGrit reader!) who surfs, of course, but doesn’t have to surf at a pro level, obviously. Also, the young man doesn’t necessarily have to be a fantastic “actor.” Many theater kids have tried to bag the gig, apparently, and they just don’t have our glorious cadence.
Lastly, the whole business is taking place on the Outer Banks. Do you know there? Are you familiar with Salt Life? Can you catch a fish with a hook?
I can’t, and I don’t look sixteen, and I can’t act and I spending all my days writing which means I now surf below adult learner level.
“It looks like one of those crazy waves you see in the Caribbean or at the Newport Wedge,” Chris said yesterday. “Two waves come together and it makes a solid eight-foot vert quarter-pipe looking thing. We didn’t even miss with it. It’s so gnarly looking. There’s a lot of punch in those waves and it’s shallow so it’s not like you’re carefree. You still have to mind yourself. Everyone we surfed with got slammed at least once. It’s not a joke. It’s powerful enough to get your juices flowing.”
Wanna see it?
(The noted LA-based pro surfer and producer Oliver Kurtz is filming; Kauai’s Sebbie Zietz is on the wave.)
Are you tired of our modern milieu where gender and sexual orientation and lack of gender and lack of sexual orientation define absolutely everything? I sure am. I’m exhausted, to be honest, because who cares? (for one) and I don’t (for two).
Well, apparently Venice-adjacent’s sometime river rock hopping online portal The Inertia does care and a lot because founder-in-chief Zach Weisberg, proudly educated at USC though not directly implicated in the recent scandal, just tried to full-on out longtime surf personality Chris Cote.
Now, if you ever paid attention, even for 30 seconds, you’d know that trying to out someone even semi-privately is wrong. Why? Oh, don’t ask me. I’m exhausted, remember, but it is I think and extremely wrong.
Like, very very frowned upon.
Did The Inertia care when narrowcasting to its seventeen daily visitors?
No.
Always one to flaunt societal norms in defense of “the world’s most sacred spaces,” Venice-adjacent’s sometime aggressive parkour online portal just asked surf’s very last personality…
Can we put the record straight? Are you gay, bi or straight? Is it something that people know about? Is it something that you feel ashamed of or are you happy for being you?
Come see the world through the eyes of a very accomplished professional surfer!
Travel is a great and wonderful thing. A gift bestowed upon the 1%, who fly around in gilded private planes, and the poorest of the poor, who use their tired feet to walk hundreds of miles. A present given to middle class families, who wedge into economy class seats, parents watching The Big Bang Theory re-runs while their children toss biscotti at each other.
Kelly Slater, world’s most accomplished professional surfer, travels more than most and sat down recently with Conde Nast Traveller to share his secrets. Anything you didn’t already know?
Maybe.
I, for example, didn’t know that Kelly Slater was disappointed by the City of Angeles, the greatest city in the world in my opinion…
What is a city that least lived up to the hype?
Los Angeles. Don’t get me wrong, I love L.A. It has great food, a lot of my friends live there, and there are plenty of things to do. But the first time I flew into the city, I was just a kid, and I remember sitting at the window of the plane and descending through this layer of smog. I thought it was so dirty and gross—I didn’t want to breathe the air when I landed. Then there’s the traffic, which is just horrendous. You really do have to schedule your day around it. But there definitely is some good with the bad. Like, for example, the coastline. It’s nice as you get out to Malibu.
Nor did I know that he has a kink for dirty silverware…
Confess to one thing you’ve taken from a hotel room.
I used to collect the silverware from room service—that used to be my thing. For a long time, I had this mishmash of cutlery. And then, you know, if I need a towel and a hotel has a really nice towel, then maybe I’ll grab one.
"It looks like one of those crazy waves you see in the Caribbean. Two waves come together and it makes a solid eight-foot vert quarter-pipe…"
Five months since state and federal officials found evidence of brain-eating amoeba at the BSR cable park, the famous wave pool has re-opened, at least to media (regular folks can swing by on Friday), with a million-and-a-half dollar water filter and a deadly new wedge called ‘Freak Peak’.
The commentator and podcaster Chris Coté was one of the first to ride in the new filtered water, with the new wedge, and says after a day-and-a-half in the tank he felt as if he’d been on a ten-day surf trip.
“I’m sore, I’m tired, surfed out and stoked. It’s ridiculous, ridiculously fun,” he says.
“It’s truly a dream. You can sit out and there and surf for half an hour on a Lowers’-style right, then surf for half an hour on a Lowers’-style left and then you can, literally, call up the guy controlling the wave, this dude named Brian, just hold your arms up like an O, and he sends you a barrel.”
Still, “I would’ve gone either way,” says Coté. “We showed up and the water was nice and clear. I’d heard before that the water was slippery and I was mentally prepared for that, but it felt totally normal.”
The wave?
“It’s truly a dream. You can sit out and there and surf for half an hour on a Lowers’-style right, then surf for half an hour on a Lowers’-style left and then you can, literally, call up the guy controlling the wave, this dude named Brian, just hold your arms up like an O, and he sends you a barrel. It’s crazy how fast it all is. I mean, how many waves did I catch? You catch a wave and by the time you get back to the takeoff there’s another set coming. There’s no wait. You get back out there and you keep going. If someone falls you turn around and go. You end up catching dozens of waves. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, who knows? And it depends on the setting. The barrel is a one-wave set, so it comes every minute or two, then there’s the three-wave sets and if you’re surfing with a couple of friends, you’re going in full rotation. You never sit up. You keep catching waves over and over.”
“If you’re surfing with a couple of friends, you’re going in full rotation. You never sit up. You keep catching waves over and over.”
As for the Freak Peak, “It looks like one of those crazy waves you see in the Caribbean or at the Newport Wedge. Two waves come together and it makes a solid eight-foot vert quarter-pipe looking thing. We didn’t even miss with it. It’s so gnarly looking. There’s a lot of punch in those waves and it’s shallow so it’s not like you’re carefree. You still have to mind yourself. Everyone we surfed with got slammed at least once. It’s not a joke. It’s powerful enough to get your juices flowing.”
I ask Coté, who has ridden Kelly’s pool, which he prefers.
“Kelly’s wave is perfect but it’s a finite resource. You’ve felt the pressure. It’s so perfect but there’s only so many opportunity. But at Waco there’s no pressure. You can have forty, five reps a day. At the Ranch, maybe twelve.”
