Lady and gentlemen... place your bets!
Oooooee, I caught cracks for delivering a singularly underwhelming performance during yesterday’s much anticipated podcast interview with the World Surf League’s President of Content, Media, Etc. Erik “ELo” Logan.
“Gritless!”
“Softball!”
“Do better next time!”
“Etc.!”
All completely honest, true and well-deserved. The only problem, and it’s a small one, is that is probably the best I can do.
Uh oh!
I may have forgotten to mention, at the outset, that I’m not an investigative surf journalist… I’m a tabloid gossip column surf journalist and sorry for the confusion.
But here’s really the thing. My point in going to meet with Mr. President Etc. was, number one, because it was funny and, number two, to begin the process of nudging the World Surf League off the path it chartered when Dirk Ziff purchased it for free those four years ago.
The well-trod ground of manufactured respectability and politically correct charm.
The bland common area.
Surfing’s revered historian Matt Warshaw wrote, more poetically than I ever could, in the forward to Cocaine + Surfing (subscribe to the Encyclopedia of Surfing here!)
The blandness, yes, but mostly the hypocrisy. The sport’s own self-betrayal. We should know better – we used to know better – than to try and reshape surfing into a sport that fits into a Mutual of Omaha ad campaign, or at Olympic telecast. Selling the sport isn’t a crime. But sell it on our own terms, the way Bruce Brown did with Endless Summer. Make them come to us. And if they don’t, so what? But no, we continue slicing off our legacy of cool, of independence, piece by piece, in exchange for a seat in the nosebleed section of mainstream culture. Then we compound the error (not “we” actually, but the World Surf League, the NYSE-traded surfwear companies, and whoever convinced the IOC to make surfing an Olympic sport for the 2020 games in Tokyo) by passing off this auto-swindle as growth and progress.
Amen.
Now, did yesterday’s chat do anything other than make me complicit in this auto-swindle? Certainly not but by the time I’m finished dancing through the High Castle we’ll have Longtom calling heats from the booth, Joe Turpel Michelob Ultra drunk underneath the WSL coffee table, Jed Smith and Vaughn Dead ushering the losers out on a rail while interviewing, a flat screen television in the judges’ tower that allows viewers to heckle directly, proper betting tied directly into the broadcast and the professional surfers brought out like racehorses where punters can can feel their thighs and look at their teeth before placing bets.
Or something.
Aside from cutting the draw down, the action in the water has never been better.
I want to break the action on the land.
I could barely hear the discussion because the sound of you two giving each other hand jobs drowned everything else out.
First time commenter here because of how awful that was. Your questions, even if user-submitted, were embarrassing. “Who would you want to invite to dinner?” “Screw, marry, kill?” You had an hour with a main voice at the WSL and you totally squandered it. You didn’t need to attack him, but you should have asked better questions, or actually, any real questions at all. Every other episode you talk about how the WSL needs fewer surfers, shorter events, how there is a fundamental tension between growing the league and keeping lineups from getting more crowded. You forgot all that and just swooned.
P.S. David Lee did okay.
a solid first inning, but a distinct lack of swearing let you down. top points for the solid dad pun in the name.
Fuck surfing sucks. So embarrassing.
Well played and 10 years from now Elo will help finance “Welcome to cocaine, now go to Yemen” the movie.
podcast/interview was BORING.
When you’re conversing with a fella who you probs have more in common with than you disagree about, it’d be kinda weird to be adversarial and subversive when you’re there yakking away.
Nope that’s the game. Ever see a politician and a journo have a chinwag once the cameras turn off after what looks like 15 minutes tearing each other a new one? It’s the game, and only surfing is so soft as to think it’s impermissable.
I have yet to listen. Did he at any stage say “reach out’? I need to prepare myself.
i think the problem was that you had this funny setup of “BeachGrit vs E-Lo”, with him cast (accurately) as the kook from oprhahoma, the SUP adult learner douche, and because he fully owns that, because he’s clever and experienced in talk radio and media in general, he’s never going to give us the satisfaction of getting mad over that (unlike an actual kook like ashton or backward fin beth).
so, once that move was off the table, you guys couldn’t get to the next step, which would have been “erik, this isn’t about you or any one person at the WSL. but…here’s what i hate about the WSL: and then just start firing shots until you’re out of bullets.”
he might have a rehearsed answer for all of it, but at least you get your say.
So I’m at my local this morning doing key snappers and drinking Bud Heavy out of a coffee mug, and I overhear two bro-bros saying the WSL purchased Beach Grit on the hush. If so this all makes sense. He does have a silver tongue but we the poor and tired deserved more Chas. I love you either way….
I wish! But also never. And I agree. I’ll promise to do better and probably fail again! But I’ll keep at it because I believe.
I too, believe. If you do however sell out to ESPN, Fox, WSL, or some other multi-national conglomerate can you just make sure the comments section remains intact? As a side note, do you think OWN is behind The Inertia?
Key snaps and Bud heavy in the am! Down at the beach checking the surf. Ha ha!
needs more coke
That is the stupidest post I’ve ever read!
The latest lipped ep is epic if you’re into surf stuff.
It felt like you were interviewing Emmet from “The Lego Movie”.
I just saw it
So true, ha ha hooeee
“Everything is awesome! Everything is cool now that Elo runs the World Surf League!”
Actually I just dropped my kid in a seat then went next door to hang around the lingerie store.
They really are dickheads.
Appreciate the sentiment.
Chas, you just have to ask the basic question, “Why does professional surfing pander to a potential audience that does not surf (or exist) and ignores it’s core, but niche daily participants?”
Wouldn’t an engaged audience be more tangible than “Two birds in the bush”?
Chas can you take hippy, as an example of an ancient core lord of yore, to the next interview? Pretty please? And let him ask questions? Alongside Matt warshaw?
His paddle was to become our trophy 🙁
To be fair, there’s not much to investigate: entertainment company with a single focus niche market, hires someone efficient and experienced who also happens to be interested in same activity.
Don’t let the carefully calculated foot-in-the-door de-rail the grittiness of the ‘Grit.
Once the shiny lizard money-men get their hooks into you, you merely are the fried tomato on the side of their brunch rather than a genuine critical voice.
I completely hear you. The calculation depends on me wanting to be included in their vision to be “cool” or “go to the right parties” or whatever. In truth, I couldn’t care less about all that. All I want is a fun product for us to laugh at.
Welp… hang onto that detachment because I think you’ve signed up for a wild ride over the canyon of corruption. Even if you don’t realise it, your cartoon long-underwear butt-flap has gotten snagged in the door of the locomotive and the track is pretty windy.
Agreed! Well said.
If this was a different Surf Splendor podcast advertised as a ‘discussion’ with ELO, then I think it would have been just fine. But your positive opinion of the guy (which is fine, he actually sounds like a pretty good guy) threw you off from being able to deliver what you promised. You replied to me once regarding ELO with “Bullshit positivity is bullshit,” but ELO’s positivity is reasonably genuine and maybe it threw you off LOL.
I don’t think you have to deliberately be an asshole to him next time (I think the main point is to hammer the WSL on certain things, not hammer ELO who just started at WSL), you just have to stay focused. The other thing is that ELO didn’t get defensive at all, which makes it actually harder to harp on certain things. But that’s where the interview is less about ELO, and more about the WSL/surf industry/surfing in general.
Not investigative surf journalist? What about your books?
Maybe change your handle from “surf journalist” too then if that’s the case. Or at least that stupid fucken beanie.
I’m not interested in more Elo meetings though. Elo gets a pass for actually engaging, unlike BFB.
What we were promised was a one-off meeting where Chas would ridicule Elo for being a sweeper and let him know in no uncertain terms that everything the WSL touches turns to kook.
I think I’m done caring about ELO:
https://getyarn.io/yarn-cli…
Ehh.. maybe so. Lot of speculation. My mom used to say the honey/vinegar one all the time.
My read was a function of my expectations for the interview, which were high and elevated by it being billed as more of a crusade for truth joust in the lead up. I didn’t want blood, or dickness, just substance, more than what we’re fed by WSL. I think Chas wants that, too. That didn’t really happen. The first 3/4 of it sounded like The View.
Hope this was a turning point. Suppose we’ll see.
I never thought I’d live past 30. I’m categorically blind to the long game.
At least the view had tits.