Still many more questions than answers.

There are still many more questions than answers about surfing great Sunny Garcia’s current situation, though it is now understood that he is in the intensive care unit at a Portland, Oregon area hospital.

The very first reports, coming out of Brazil, suggested his life was cut short but those have since been walked back. The International Business Times has reported that his hospitalization is due an alleged suicide but it is not corroborated nor is the source cited.

The World Surf League posted on its website:

The league confirmed “with heavy hearts” that Garcia has been admitted to the intensive care unit at an unspecified hospital amid speculation about his condition late Monday. The 49-year-old Hawaiian has won the Triple Crown of Surfing — which consists of three challenging events off the coast of Oahu — on six occasions, most recently in 2004. Sunny has always been a great champion of surfing, both in and out of the water. Our prayers are with him and his loved ones at this deeply challenging time.

Again, more questions than answers and many rumors are floating but the picture will certainly continue to clear up as the day moves along.

I spoke with Sunny a few times. His earnestness and thoughtfulness a revelation. One of my favorite Sunny stories was when he and Jeremy Flores teamed up to bring justice to an unruly Gold Coast scene. At the time I wrote, “Our surf world would be as boring as synchronized swimming without the likes of Sunny Garcia. Tattoo’d rage. Tax-evading awesome.”

As true then as it is now.

More as the story continues to develop.

Ride anything!

I’ve known that cars that could double as boats were a thing since I first began doodling in my kindergarten notebook. Who amongst us hasn’t dreamed of our automobiles doing more than just boring old driving? And so, a few years later, when my father showed me a picture of an Amphibicar 770 I wanted one deeply.

The Amphibicar 770 was produced in West Germany from 1961 – 1965 and was a thing of beauty. I craved mine candy-apple red and imagined racing around the streets then splashing into the ocean at top speed, flying down the coast at tremendous speed too. Then my father told me they didn’t drive well and also didn’t boat well.

Dreams die hard and I still wanted one, as I got older, for surf exploration but then I had exclusively of old cars, a 1960 Ford Falcon, a 1965 Ford Ranchero, a 1972 MG Midget etc. and knew that my vintage Amphibicar, while looking cool, would only ever sit in the garage.

Well, yesterday I learned that the world’s oldest car company wholly owned by its founder is one that manufactures amphibious cars and let’s head straight in to a thorough description.

Is it a boat? Is it a car? Actually, it’s the best of both – an amphibious vehicle. It’s the ideal solution for anyone who fancies driving to the coast and then… well, motoring out to sea. For the past 50 years, Tim Dutton has been at the helm of his eponymous firm. He started out in 1969 and is justly proud of the fact Dutton is the oldest car company in the world still wholly owned by its founder. He is based in a workshop in the pretty village of Littlehampton where he has his own slipway into the River Arun. Visitors can take a Surf out for a test drive/cruise. You won’t be surprised to hear that owning a dinky Dutton is a niche interest – Tim sells about a dozen a year. Most drivers/captains just want to have fun – who wouldn’t in a vehicle that looks like a cross between a sports car and a rubber duck? – but there are more serious applications, too.

Yeah. I know what those serious applications are. Driving them into line-ups infested with SUP foils, like Santa Cruz’s Cowell’s Beach which saw last week’s VAL/SUP foil/surfing dog mix-up. It’s the apocalypse out there, a Dutton is no larger nor more dangerous than a SUP foil and, I would imagine, handles similarly.

My dream is back and, soon, it will be the World Surf League’s President of Content, Media and Studios dream too only he’ll stand on the back of his Dutton swinging a paddle.

To each his own, I suppose, as that is the motto of the apocalypse.

Ride anything!

Also, though, while we’re here… what is the greatest car you’ve ever owned?

Nostalgia is a helluva a drug!

Nobody does meta like BeachGrit and so how wonderful was the just wrapped Bells contest at Bells Beach just off Torquay, Australia? A two-ish hour drive from Melbourne also in Australia with the best avocado toast I’ve ever had?

How much did you love? How good did you think it was?

I’ll answer for you.

So good!

Between Jen See, Sam George, Steve “Longtom” Shearer (obviously and mostly. Raising surf journalism to a place today’s children will speak about in hushed tones (through crazy new voice-optics machines (sorry, I’m so technologically behind that I still use an iPhone 4 and don’t know what voice-optics would even begin to mean))) and you, The People™, the coverage was the best ever.

But mostly you, The People™, (and Longtom, The People’s Person™™).

A professional surf contest never better covered.

Ever.

And so can we talk about nostalgia?

Should we?

There were many in the comments, ex-surf journalist/Hollywood screenplay-writer Ben Marcus chief amongst them (alongside Sam George), comparing this Bells contest to other Bells contests mostly from the early 1970s. And other surf contests from 1967. And other surf contests from when the Peruvians invented surfing long ago (buy here!)

But it was Ben Marcus, ex-surf journalist/music critic, who also weighed in on the relative glory of music in the 1970s, comparing the just wrapped best surf contest ever to the shit of music today.

On the Credence Clearwater Revival being better than Ariana Grande.

Fuck you, nostalgists.

Credence Clearwater Revival is an old wo/man band for old irrelevant times.

Just like Bells when Simon Andersen was surfing it.

Old-timey things are easy to praise because the book has been closed. The clock has stopped. It’s all over and, like old Coca-Cola before New Coke before Coca-Cola Classic, the memory grows in value even though the memory is artificial and mostly worthless.

Viva Ariana Grande.

Discuss.