Watch: Waco’s new “eight-foot vert quarter-pipe” called Freak Peak!

Wanna get launched?

Yesterday, you’ll remember, or you will if you haven’t taken any unexpected slaps to the side of the face, the queer-friendly broadcaster Chris Coté‘s description of Waco’s new wave, which is called “Freak Peak.”

“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.)

Now tell me, immediate impressions and so forth…

(Click here to book your sesh at BSR. Ninety bucks for an hour where you’ll catch twenty, thirty waves depending on your fitness, skill etc.)

 


Modern Sexuality: Venice-adjacent’s other favorite “surf” website tries to out Chris Cote!

Stab? You are officially on the clock.

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?

Whoa.

How’d he answer?

Perfectly appropriately!

Shame on The Inertia, though. The last bastion of toxic masculinity. Giving river rock hoppers and aggressive parkourians a very bad name.

Shame indeed.

Stab? You are officially on the clock.


Come fly with me!
Come fly with me!

Revealed: Kelly Slater is a renowned silverware thief and found LA “dirty and gross!”

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.

What is his favorite city in the world?

Guess then look here.

If you get it right I’ll make sure your family has plenty of biscotti next time you wedge them into economy class seats.


Waco back in the bad ol amoeba days. Now cleaner and with new improved super wedge (not pictured).

Waco reopens with outrageous new wedge called the “Freak Peak!”

"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.

Coté was there to broadcast from the deck overlooking the pool. It’s part of a PR push to reassure people, who might’ve become squeamish after New Jersey surfer Fabrizio Stabile died as a result of complications from Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba, after riding the Waco pool, that you ain’t gonna die for a few waves.

“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.”

Listen to Coté’s podcast from Waco here!

(And no photos yet, but the photographer Peter Taras has a couple from media day that are very pretty.)

 

 


Rumor: Mavericks to run at even slightest hint of swell due to 500k permit fee!

The Pretty Big Wave World Tour rolls on!

I’ve been all day in a book hole. The deadline for my yet-to-be-completely-titled masterpiece is racing up and it seizes my nerves so then I don’t do my BeachGrit, smashing out masterpiece instead, but then I miss you all so badly that you’re all I think about.

I can’t quit you!

In other news, I have heard from a very great source that the Mavericks Big Wave World Tour will very likely run if the forecasted swell is even a semblance of ok due the alleged $500,000 permit fee paid by the World Surf League to…. whoever it is that collects permit fees.

$500,000!

That must even make billionaires and co-Watermen of the Year Dirk and Natasha Ziff wince.

Or maybe not.

How much is $500,000 to a billionaire? Is it like $50 to me? I wince at losing $50 these days but that’s also because my nerves are all seized over my yet-to-be-finally-titled masterpiece.

So far I’m thinking one of the following… Reports from Hell, We Will, in fact, be Greeted as Liberators or And Yemen… That Actually Sounds Like a Real Country.

Any thoughts? It’s a book about our Global War on Terror, by the way.

Mavericks.

I am not in the current mental state to give a shit.