Question: Will Kelly Slater’s Bells’ heat
win leave him completely resurrected and refreshed?
By Chas Smith
Another 1000 year reign?
I am almost finished with rough rough rough
draft on next book and spend my days wrestling with word choices.
Really logging hours going back and forth between “he told me”
versus “he said” etc. and so you can imagine my thrill yesterday
when I clicked over to the World Surf League’s website and caught
Kelly Slater vs. Julian Wilson.
Kelly’s best wave featured a bogged first turn that he
turned into an awkward slide which segued into a weirdly caught
bottom turn into two more clean turns. His board looked chattery,
catchy and unreliable.
It was charitably awkward but he won and could this mean that he
wins again and again?
I ask because the film that best summarizes professional surfing
in its current iteration is the wonderful Interview with a
Vampire. A good friend texted me, this morning, comparing and
he was inspired. Together we went through each character and here’s
how it shakes out.
Tom Cruise’s Lestat is an almost note-perfect Kelly Slater.
Lusting for life. Never giving up.
Brad Pitt’s Louie is John John Florence, more or less. Very
talented. Very confused.
Antonio Banderas’s Armand is Gabriel Medina to a tee. John
John’s foil. Very powerful.
We went on and on through the rest of the move, casting Julian
Wilson as the boy who got nibbled by Lestat while Louie was
nibbling poodles etc.
But let’s stop there and you tell me. Is one heat win all Kelly
Slater needs to go from screen right (above) to screen left?
Is this the beginning of another 1000 year reign?
Or will these two put the stake in, as it were?
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From the
Biz-ventures-someone-else-should-start Dept: Play Reality Surfer
Today!
By Smurfaholic
Where the "mean" gets put into "mean-spirited!"
Fantasies can be fun, right? My top two
fantasies are as follows:
• A dimmable light, tender foreplay and Van Morrison’s Astral
Weeks on shuffle.
• A DeLorean, 1.21 gigawatts and a page-one rewrite of my formative
years.
But fantasies and their inherent optimism can be a double-edged
SUP foil fin. They can lead to disappointment, delusion and the
sprouting of bona fide hope. Yikes! As it was so poetically put by
some freedom fighter while being captured by some militia, “Hope
can be dan—.”
In his great-to-read-in-a-Planned-Parenthood-waiting-room book,
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck, modern day thinkman Mark
Manson (no known relation to Charles) illuminates upon notions of
reality and value in ways that can take a deep dive into
mid-life-crisis-induced, selfhelp literature to new depths.
Paraphrased highlights include:
• To want a thing is to create a vacuum of the thing. Thus, to
want is to lack.
• To accept a negative thing is a positive thing and to desire a
positive thing is a negative thing.
Play some logical jazz… and… ergo… To want a bad thing is a good
thing! Folks, I bring you the bottom up, critique’s wet dream,
undeveloped photo negative, modern day realist’s platform for
sports viewing adjacent entertainment: Reality Surfer!™* Why twist
your brain into knots over hypothetical heat winners when you can
choose the losers instead? Why let your emotions fly off into
flights of fancy when you can embrace the modern era of microscopic
scorn and disdain? Why place your analytical energy into a single
event champion when you can up your odds of endorphin production by
forecasting the four 33rds now known as the Bridesmaids’ Maids’
Maids’ Maids.
Functioning somewhat like the perpetual-case-of-the-Mondays
Sartre to the TGIF! Kant, or Danny DeVito to Arnold Schwarzenegger
from the endearing 80s monozygotic classic Twins, Reality Surfer!
™* won’t tempt one with victorious visions of grandeur but more so
allow one to relish in the delicious pleasure of seeing others
fail.
In mathematical form:
You Choose + They Lose = You Win
Imagine the matrix of speculative delight that could come from
watching yourself weave dazzling hypothetical defeat through an
event bracket before the event even starts. If you’re a hipster and
“all about that retro,” look at it like a Roman resurgence — albeit
more civilized — where plebeians packing the arenas were as pleased
at witnessing both glory and carnage. I can’t recall if it was Potz
or Turpel or Mel, but I’m certain that somewhere along the
careening coastal road of interminable rebranding someone in camp
WSL referred to these professional surf folks as “gladiators.” I
think it was Potz.
Not only would this give the bottom half of the tour a valid
reason for strapping on their leash and paddling out, just think of
how entertaining this would make the nonsensically-titled “Seeding”
and misleadingly-titled “Elimination” rounds. With Reality Surfer!
™*, every moment from the first buzzer is one of thrilling
anticipation.
To note, this platform is not for haters.
It’s for lovers.
Specifically, those who love to hate.
In truth, we all love surfing and we’re doing our best to adapt
to the vicissitudes of viewing our heroes devote their lives to the
dream tour. Without them, where would we direct our passive
aggressive, self-righteous superiority? However, if the competitive
surfing of someone whose name rhymes with, say, No One Guru, Less
He Vendes or Jack Fleestone bore you to the point where you want to
slam your head into the reef, this merely provides an opportunity
to snag a few snide points on the coattails of their professional
mediocrity.
What do you say?
Are you with me?
Do you have the skills to actually launch this platform?
I don’t! But let’s do it anyway! Let’s ride that wave!Let’s
embrace reality with some mother-fucking moxie!
Bonus Closeout Section:
Q: What did the realist say to the optimist while the optimist
was being mauled by a 14-foot
tiger shark?
A: Damn. That bites.
*This trademark symbol was copy/pasted and serves as no
ownership of this idea. However, if someone with an entrepreneurial
spirit decides to successfully launch this platform and make
boatloads of money as a result, please be ethical and give me
10%.
Remember, hell is very hot.
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“People don't like seeing old people on screens,” said
fifty-two-year-old Stephen Malkmus, former front man of slacker
rock band Pavement, “facts are facts”. It was my first thought
after seeing a wiry, wizened old man hopping across the face on a
Black Beauty. Followed by “Who shrunk Tom Curren?” It looked
like Occy had eaten half of him and spat the rest out. The famous
style, last seen so elegantly threading J-Bay, was almost entirely
absent. | Photo: WSL
Rip Curl Pro, Bells, Day Three: “Who Shrunk
Tom Curren?”
By Longtom
"It looked like Occy had eaten half of him and spat
the rest out."
You got your sea legs on for the fifty-year storm,
comrades, or as Kelly called it, “the twenty-year
storm from Point Break”?
Getting that so wrong must have made a mid-level marketing exec
in the Santa Monica high tower cry after the blizzard of hype
unleashed over the last 24 hours.
Beautiful, beautiful hype and has put me in the most positive
frame of mind imaginable.
Go elsewhere if you want to read negativity; this will be pure
positive vibration. Even scratching the opening sentence, “Sage
Erickson is not a CT surfer” does not bother.
A “full reset” was in the works according to Luke Egan.
“A different event” in the view of Peter Mel.
And that is the truth.
Somehow, this event is stretching out across a Biblical
timescale and Kieren Perrow seems as cool and insouciant as a
Spanish matador as the end of the event window scuffs the dirt.
The luxury of overlapping heats must give the illusion of
endless time.
Tomorrow will likely seem another event entirely as the fabled
fifty-year storm arrives.
I know the talk is of Carissa Moore and Steph Gilmore but my gal
is Lakey Peterson, and I think she can bring the best bottom
turn/top turn combination on Tour into the vortex tomorrow.
She will not, as Rosie said, “make a meal of it”. That faux pas
was even too much for Ronnie.
At some point during the Caroline Marks heat the conclusion
became inescapable: she is the Number One ranked Female Surfer on
Earth and I cannot watch her surf. Her turns look over-coached
and formulaic and she makes the very act of surfing look difficult
and awkward. Four-foot Bells Bowl made a lot of the ladies look
less than stellar.
“We’re gunna feast on it Rosie,” he quickly corrected.
Did you watch the women?
For some reason I seem to have lost the capacity to enjoy it.
Women’s pro surfing that is. Not that much of a mystery.
At some point during the Caroline Marks heat the conclusion
became inescapable: she is the Number One ranked Female Surfer on
Earth and I cannot watch her surf.
Her turns look over-coached and formulaic and she makes the very
act of surfing look difficult and awkward. Four-foot Bells Bowl
made a lot of the ladies look less than stellar.
Kelly beat Julian. It’s far more accurate to say Julian
lost the heat – so badly you’d almost call for an investigation –
than Kelly won it. You were rooting for Kelly? Me too.
Maybe I’ve just been spending too much time at the Pass watching
leashless vixens glide on longboards, taunting impotent Dads in the
shorebreak.
Kelly beat Julian.
It’s far more accurate to say Julian lost the heat – so badly
you’d almost call for an investigation – than Kelly won it.
An appreciative crowd had gathered to show Kelly the love that
was absent from the Gold Coast.
You were rooting for Kelly? Me too.
The waves slowed up. A restart was in the offing but Kelly
caught a dribbler up near Rincon. Went a wave under priority. Three
turns, one flubbed and fell off on a cutback rebound. A
mid-five.
Julian failed three rides in a row.
Kelly’s best wave featured a bogged first turn that he turned
into an awkward slide which segued into a weirdly caught bottom
turn into two more clean turns. His board looked chattery, catchy
and unreliable.
He later admitted that he “surfed nervously”.
Somehow, those two very ordinary waves were enough to put Julian
into a subtle combo. With eight minutes to go it was time for
Kelly’s much vaunted strategy game to come into play and he
squeezed the life out of the rest of the heat.
That sent Pottz and Joe into a froth and they had basically
granted him his Twelveth World Title by the time the hooter
sounded. If he paddles out on one of those chattery plastic paddle
pop sticks tomorrow he’s gunna get slayed.
Granted, he has to be the main pitch man for his board label but
surely for the love of God there has to be an old Merrick circa
2006 they can paint up with a Posca pen for the rest of the
event?
It was my first thought after seeing a wiry, wizened old man
hopping across the face on a Black Beauty. Followed by “Who
shrunk Tom Curren?”
It looked like Occy had eaten half of him and spat the rest
out.
The famous style, last seen so elegantly threading J-Bay, was
almost entirely absent.
Occy was still Occy, thank God, the equally famous jawline
expanding precipitously over the bull-like physique and threatening
to over-topple the Occ on his first few waves.
Tom got weirder than weird on a skimboard and everyone clapped
along. Occy did the best turn of the heat, with the truly beautiful
thing about it being the lead-up high-line. Post-modern pro surfing
has relied on the tweak and extra pump at the bottom of the wave, a
constant bugbear for aesthetes who value a pure line.
Occy added the tweak to the high-line, generating an effortless
acceleration. The resultant backhand blast got the plaudits from
the pundits but it was the set-up work that was sublime.
As for Tom’s skimboard surfing I simply don’t know what to
think…. maybe someone from Santa Babs can chime in.
All this abundant time that KP had to play with seemed to
evaporate at high-tide Winkipop. The swell had a few goes at
filling in, without much success.
Lanky Aussie goofyfoots like Ryan Callinan and Jacob Willcox had
the most success being able to fit the vertical backhand hook into
what Luke Egan described as a “shorter distance of time.” Quite
right.
Willcox, like Heazlewood, and even R-Call to a lesser extent,
seem to come from this mould of under-the-radar pros who have been
around for ever, over-looked and now are here on the scene fully
formed as CT level pros.
Filipe and Ciao had the heat of the day. Filipe, many cuts above
the level so far on display and under-scored, skipped out to a big
lead. A wave with perfect flow and variety was discarded by
judges.
Ibelli fought back gamely, in the words of the italian writer
Roberto Calasso, “He has no style of his own, but uses every
style”. The clock ticked down and Ibelli could not surmount the
score required.
Seth Moniz will win rookie of the year. Furthermore, and this
will offend some readers, but the diminutive greenhorn, with his
flawless top-to-bottom repertoire and glue feet, is a replica
Adriano De Souza with Hawaiian style. He easily accounted for Mikey
Wright, who hasn’t looked right at all so far this season.
A shorter distance of time. A perfect zen koan for the day.
Nonsensical and yet perfectly understandable.
We are still only halfway through round three, can you believe
that?
Tomorrow, I think, will be very entertaining. Worth getting
stocked up for.
Whatever Tom Curren smokes; I’ll take that if it’s OK with
you.
*A real Irish cable knit 100% merino wool beanie available for
$24.95 from the Aran Islands.
Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Remaining Men’s Round 3 (H8-16)
Matchups:
Heat 9: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Reef Heazlewood (AUS)
Heat 10: Willian Cardoso (BRA) vs. Yago Dora (BRA)
Heat 11: Owen Wright (AUS) vs. Ricardo Christie (NZL)
Heat 12: John John Florence (HAW) vs. Jadson Andre (BRA)
Heat 13: Italo Ferreira (BRA) vs. Jack Freestone (AUS)
Heat 14: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Heat 15: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) vs. Adrian Buchan (AUS)
Heat 16: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA)
Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Men’s Round 4
Matchups:
Heat 1: Kelly Slater (USA) vs. Peterson Crisanto (BRA)
Heat 2: Conner Coffin (USA) vs. Ryan Callinan (AUS)
Heat 3: Filipe Toledo (BRA) vs. Seth Moniz (HAW)
Heat 4: Jacob Willcox (AUS) vs. Deivid Silva (BRA)
Heat 5: TBD Following Conclusion of MR3
Heat 6: TBD Following Conclusion of MR3
Heat 7: TBD Following Conclusion of MR3
Heat 8: TBD Following Conclusion of MR3
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Bells tomoz, maybe.
From the equal-pay-for-equal-work dept:
Will the WSL run the women at ten-foot Bells tomorrow?
By Derek Rielly
"If the women are getting equal pay for an equal
job, they can't say it's too big and rough," says Maurice Cole.
When I heard about the forceful forecast for the Bells
contest, twenty feet and so on, I made a call to the
shaper Maurice
Cole, a Bells habitué for fifty years or
thereabouts.
Maurice, who is sixty five, was standing on the stairs at Bells,
wearing shorts despite the cold and staring at clean
three-to-four-foot waves. He was greeted by every pro surfer,
coach, administrator and fan who walked by.
Question: Is the forecast correct?
Is Bells going to be big?
Maurice paints me a little picture.
Two weeks earlier, it was eight foot on the back of a
fifteen-second south swell. Maurice, who was riding an eight-foot
long surfboard, sat fifty metres further out than the pack at Bells
and still got cleaned up by a seven-wave set.
“I dived under the first one and I surfaced, gasping for air,
just as the next wave was on top of me.”
That was a fifteen-second period swell.
Tomorrow it’s seventeen. And wrapped inside a forty-knot
cross-onshore south-west wind.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a south swell at
seventeen seconds,” says Maurice. “I’m a little bit hesitant to
call it. But. It’ll be ten-for plus, twelve-foot sets,
maybe. The biggest thing is the wind. I told Micro and Ace that
it’s going to be that big and that far out to sea, you’re going to
need to chip-shot into two of ’em. It’s a wave-catching contest
when it’s that big.”
The big question, says Maurice, is what to do with the
women.
Do you send ’em out when it’s ten-to-twelve-foot?
“There’s been a little bit of… ”
Maurice searches for the word…
“Energy… in saying, well, if the women are getting
equal pay for an equal job, they can’t say it’s too big and rough.
And it’s going to be big. The strength of the swell, I wouldn’t be
surprised to see virtually non-stop sets. That’s what happens. In a
south swell it just racks up. West swells are inconsistent.”
The women, therefore, will be the first heats on Friday morning
before the joint gets out of control, climbing back into the ring
when it drops to six-to-eight on Saturday.
Other notes: The water is an unseasonably warm 17.7 C, (64
degrees), Maurice has been employed to supply step-up boards for
various pros and the contest will, likely, run at Bells ’cause of
the difficult of using skis at Winkipop when it gets big.
“If you get in trouble on the takeoff at Winki, getting a ski in
there is pretty tough.”
And, how does tomorrow’s predicted swell compare to the famous
day in 1981 when Simon Anderson showed the worth of his novelty
three-finned design in fifteen-foot surf?
The difference, says Maurice, is 1981 was clean.
“It’s not going to be like ’81 at all. It’s going to be a
shitload harder. Ten times harder.”
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The last time Bells hit triple overhead we lost a great
one. RIP Bodhi.
World Surf League’s official forecast
partner says: “Triple overhead surf coming for Bells!”
By Chas Smith
Johnny get your gun!
Surfline as you may, or may not, know is the
official surf forecasting partner of the World Surf League. Oh that
doesn’t mean Surfline makes the waves like the brave men and women
who sit in Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch control tower and press
colorful buttons. No, it means that computer folk in a nondescript
Huntington Beach office call up to Santa Monica’s High Castle and
say, “2-3” or sometimes “3-4.”
Of course, 9-10 times the forecast is completely off but that’s
the joy of our Mother Ocean. She is a wily little minx all sassy
and alluring. One day showing a titillating shoulder, the next day
covering all up. One day batting “come hither” eyes, the next day
refusing to even look our way. She can kill with a smile, she can
wound with those eyes. She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
and she only reveals what she wants you to see. She hides like a
child but she’s always a woman to me.
She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you, she can
ask for the truth but she’ll never believe you. And she’ll take
what you give her as long as it’s free. Yeah she steals like a
thief but she’s always a woman to me. Oh, she takes care of
herself, she can wait if she wants, she’s ahead of her time. Oh,
she never gives out and she never gives in, she just changes her
mind and she’ll promise you more than the garden of Eden then
she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding but she
brings out the best and the worst you can be etc.
You get it. You surf too and back to the issue at hand,
Surfline’s computer folk called up to Santa Monica’s High Tower
mid-day yesterday, after completing a training video on workplace
sexual harassment and said…
“Friday is going to see double overhead surf turn into triple
overhead surf at Bells.”
Triple overhead?
Ooooee!
Do you believe?
Also, who does this means wins?
Lady and gentlemen, place your bets!
(Except for you J.P.)
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
