Feminine, passive, older: Surfing’s new Fascist World Order!

Rights are assumed in the surf now, not earned. An insoluble problem when the numbers exceed the supply of waves.

What a week here*, what a month! Surfing in the dock on two fronts.

The hottest new species of VALs shish-kebabed by a respectable bourgeois publication, the mighty Vanity Fair and then it’s inner entrails cut out and examined in the sunshine (in forensic detail) by the magnificent Magistrate Karen Stafford in the Ballina Courthouse.

Appropriate time to ask, as Sally Fitz would say, “Where you at?”

Surfing in the age of the Tub has become almost a byword for techno-utopianism for a new species of masters and mistresses of the Universe. The soft fascism of market-mediated narcissism peddled by the Murfers, as they are now tagged, rolls on with momentum undiminished by the Vanity Fair hit piece.

In fact, the photographer became insta-pals with the Murfers, the network extended, greater reach into American markets etc. These are the new, modern day Darwinians.

The Murfers have inverted the usual Darwinian rules of modern, crowded surfing and life.

Ruthlessness does not happen in the water or in the glossy shots but in the background as a red in tooth and claw version of self-branding total commercialisation.

To look into their hot soft eyes is to believe in a version of innocent theme park narcissism.

Darwin showed us that humans are like other animals. We compete for mates, for resources.

In the surf we compete for waves. Implicitly or explicitly.

Our animal inheritance is a consequence of the evolutionary success of what English local John Gray calls “an exceptionally rapacious primate”.

To believe otherwise, despite 50 years of a surf media ever ready to pander to self-mythologising grinning-hippie capitalists, is to deny reality.

I saw that reality relentlessly and surgically flayed and exposed in a court last week.

More on that in a moment.

Like all animals our existence and access to “our playground” is conditional, subject to all kinds of local and regional vagaries and territorialism, even sometimes to the threat or reality of violence. If Kala Alexander shows me his knuckles and tells me to beat it kook at the Pipeline, or Tahiti, or even Indonesia it’s likely I will submit. Even under the protective umbrella of the rule of law I may submit to the law of the Wolfpak.

The genie of technology can not be put back in the bottle. The bitter irony is the Murfers cause more harm with their soft fascism than the direct output of violence in the name of self-interest, but also tolerated by the community in the name of order. These are slimy, slippery eels to grapple with.

The VAL fantasy is access to a playground of uninhibited freedom accessible to all.

But this is a lie.

Like all animals our existence and access to “our playground” is conditional, subject to all kinds of local and regional vagaries and territorialism, even sometimes to the threat or reality of violence. If Kala Alexander shows me his knuckles and tells me to beat it kook at the Pipeline, or Tahiti, or even Indonesia it’s likely I will submit. Even under the protective umbrella of the rule of law I may submit to the law of the Wolfpak.

The rule of law which protects the VAL is the ultimate human construct. The ultimate freedom they fantasise about is only accessible in an even more mechanised playground, and it comes at a very high price.

These strangely fruitful internal contradictions constitute the new surfing myth and the true work of the surf writer in our new woke age.

Jodie Cooper, of course, is very far from a kook or a VAL. The violence perpetrated against her is of a kind that is much more repellent, even amid the chaos of the most crowded day of the winter. Even considering the breakdown of order during a tourist invasion which threw the vibe for the season from its normal strict but sunny disposition (the most noted local enforcer told me: “I’m a fucking mirror, they bring smiles and good manners that’s what they get back. If they’re cunts they get a smack”) into a dull, sullen resentment.

Something had to crack.

The perpetrator had few, if any, allies. Trussed up in an ill-fitting suit and clutching a mat, his last stand as some kind of local enforcer was now in the hands of two barristers and a solicitor.

The one, with a massive lionine visage and physique shaped by expensive wine and cheese.

The judge put the aggression of localism in the dock and found it wanting, not strictly on its own terms, but because it violated Cooper’s rights as an experienced surfer to her “perfect wave” .Rights are assumed in the surf now, not earned. An insoluble problem when the numbers exceed the supply of waves. Still, violence has decreased. Old hardheads mellow out or become legit family guys. The culture has become more feminised, more passive and older.

His sidekick: a version of Robert Duvall from Apocalypse Now who had been cryovaced for 30 years and then microwaved a little too long to thaw him out.

The judge did not share my appreciation of the comic effect of the barristers talking about a mat’s inability to cut back. She put the aggression of localism in the dock and found it wanting, not strictly on its own terms, but because it violated Cooper’s rights as an experienced surfer to her “perfect wave”.

Rights are assumed in the surf now, not earned. An insoluble problem when the numbers exceed the supply of waves.

Still, violence has decreased in the surfing world.

Old hardheads mellow out or become legit family guys.

The culture has become more feminised, more passive and older.

You’ve pretty much got to travel to the Third World, or Victoria, to be threatened these days. The Carcass case looks more like the last of an endangered species being put against the wall than any kind of brave new “Straw Dogs”** world.

Violence is more sublimated now into a soft fascism: my life is superior to yours, you can’t afford it etc.

Blocking and ghosting takes the place of the open fist but the Darwinian reality remains. The human animal will stay the same: a highlyinventive species that is also one of the most predatory and destructive.

More, much, much more to come.

*Boring Bay/Lennox Head/Ballina.
**Sam Peckinpah Film with Dustin Hoffman.

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Apocalypse Now: “Bible of the Sport” Surfer magazine officially endorses electric surfboard!

"Sit outside with the long boarders and catch more waves than ever before!"

I’m not one for nostalgia, no not at all, and generally concur with psychologists of old who classified it as a mental disorder. Time moves along, things change, no epoch was ever better than another or else Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris was written, produced and directed in vain. As you well know, Midnight in Paris showcased star turns for Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Adrien Brody, Marion Cotillard and Carla Bruni, who also happens to have the voice of an angel, and was not written, produced and directed in vain.

Which brings us around to Surfer magazine, the most important and historic voice in surf media. Matt Warshaw once edited the proud title which featured some of the best writers and editors to ever do it. Names like John Severson, Drew Kampion, Steve Pezman, Paul Holmes, Evan Slater and Sam George. For many years it set the tone of our conversation and still does, to a certain extent, which makes me wonder if electric surfboards are an exciting new opportunity.

For just yesterday the Bible of the Sport officially attached its name to Jetson, “…a surfboard that includes a miniature jet which gives you a boost at the most important moments: paddling momentum to take off on your wave. It is a surfboard that will allow you to catch more waves to make the most of your surfing experience.”

Jetson offers the 8′ Wahoo funboard quad ($4895.00) “Our 8’0” will be your go to board for those who want to ride a fun shape without loosing the paddling speed of a long board. Sit outside with the long boarders and catch more waves than ever before.”

The 9′ Grouper longboard quad ($5295.00). “Our 9’0″ will increase your wave count even when the crowds are heavy or the current is brutal. You will power into position and catch waves with ease and leave the crowd behind.”

And a 10’2 rescue paddle board ($6195.00). See Nick Carroll for details.

So tell me, are you excited about this new development? All this catching everyone else’s waves etc.? Did you hop on the last technological wave, excuse the pun, when Garrett McNamara showed us the great possibilities of the WaveJet in 2011? Would you like to make more of your surfing experience? The most even?

More importantly, will we even be able to discern VALs in the lineup anymore as they “paddle” into waves so far out on the horizon as to exhibit a Kai Lenny-esque ability to read the ocean?

Don’t let the VAL take your sea lumps. Buy here with no shame. It’s Surfer magazine approved!

(0% financing available now)

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Micro barrel.
Micro barrel.

Question: Does the Freshwater Pro taint current and future WSL World Champions?

Is the pool at Lemoore Kelly Slater's micro barrel coup de grace?

And I’m not asking for a friend because I really want to know. Me. Chas Smith. Onetime PEN award nominee (buy here!) All-time mixed-martial-arts master.*

The 2019 World Surf League Championship Series has been a heater so far, thanks in no small to our BeachGrit. The contests sizzle like they never have. Each Joe Turpel word singes and not because the contests have been superlative or Joe Turpel’s words extra spicy but because we, for the first time in recorded history, have watched these events together thanks to live chats, more or less.

And watching them with you (save J-Bay…. I love but too nasty time-wise!) then reading Jen See and Longtom straight afterward has given me the greatest appreciation for the 2019 World Surf League Championship Series.

Has it not been the best campaign ever?

Superlative physical accomplishments featuring John John Florence, heart-wrenching physical pain featuring John John Florence’s knee and Kolohe Andino. Steph Gilmore outshining every professional on tour, one moment, getting lapped by Carissa Moore the next.

With Teahupo’o in the dock, I can barely contain myself. It’s going to be shit, isn’t it. Global warming is going to serve up 2 foot micro barrels but would you like to know the micro barrels that really worry me?

Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch and honestly and truly fuck that place. It is an abomination not worthy of professional surfing. A mirage that not only derails the professional surfing season in its home stretch but also threatens to negate the poetry written by Steph Gilmore, Filipe Toledo, Carissa Moore, Gabriel Medina, Italo Ferreira, Kanoa Igarashi and Kolohe Andino all year long.

I’m totally not wrong.

Am I?

Kelly Slater invented his Surf Ranch so his damned eleven world titles will be sure to stand the test of time.

Didn’t he?

Please tell me I’m wrong.

Please tell me Kelly Slater isn’t an evil mastermind leaving wave tank world titles in his wake.

*The Deck 2.0!

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Glass half empty/Glass half full.
Glass half empty/Glass half full.

Glass half empty/full: Worst flat spell in history plagues north Florida!

“Absolutely pathetic..."

We surfers are natural born complainers or we real surfers. Everything can always be better, either lots or slightly, and this is part of what gives us our patented disposition, beautifully described as “grumpy” by our current Waterperson of the Year and owner of professional surfing Dirk Ziff.

You would be forgiven for thinking that “grumpy” and BeachGrit’s anti-depressive ethos are mutually exclusive but that is one of the many, unfathomable mysteries of this glorious pastime. Wrapped in neoprene and dipped in salt water, they become one and the same.

Well, our sisters and brothers in north Florida have many reasons to complain. Surfer the Bar, there in Jacksonville, is getting sued for playing unauthorized music and the region is experiencing the longest flat spell in history, to name but two.

The Florida-Times Union reports:

“The worst flat spell ever,” said Eddie Pitts, who runs 911surfreport.com, a local website.

“Absolutely pathetic,” said Bill Longnecker, who’s been surfing since 1960 and giving a daily telephone report — (904) 241-0933 — since 1984.

Since the second half of May, the surf has been nonexistent to marginally minimal, and people are getting grouchy.

“It’s like the first topic of conversation when you run into somebody who surfs,” said Matt Shaw, editor-in-chief at Void, a Northeast Florida culture and lifestyle magazine with its own surf report (voidlive.com).

Shaw tries to plan his life and work around the swells and the tides, making sure he has the right board to suit the conditions.

“Now just everything’s thrown up in the air,” he said. “I’ve got a shed full of boards, different sizes. I never felt it was superfluous to have so many surfboards. Now it’s like, do we even use these here?”

Brothers Pitts, Longnecker and Shaw each have the right attitude. Despair, existential dread, a profound malaise that, hopefully, seeps right into home and work lives. But their glass empty is our glass full.

Orange County, California has been fun. It appears as if Australia’s Gold Coast has too. The World Surf League’s President of Content, Media and Etc. has even been bagging drainers in Manhattan Beach.

I imagine even your home break, wherever it may be, has seen some surf-able days.*

But their glass half empty still contains some measure of good. Our north Florida brothers and sisters don’t have to worry about those dreaded waves of change plaguing the business world.

*North Florida excluded.

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Meet: Mexico’s teen version of Jack Robinson/Bruce Irons/John John Florence!

Half-gringo kid Alan Cleland Jr's got one of the world's heaviest beachbreaks in his front yard and a drug-cartel war in the back. Oowee etc.

Thinking about having kids, but don’t want them to become soft, spoiled first world brats who never look up from their phones? Meet Alan Cleland Jr, sixteen years old, from Pascuales, Mexico.

Alan’s the type of fully actualized young guy you’d want as your co pilot. Take him on a trip and he’ll expertly strap everyone’s boards onto the car, surf all day, call you into a good one, catch a fish, make a fire, cook it for everyone and eat his share last.

How did he get this way?

His father was a pro surfer from the San Diego area in the 1980’s. He didn’t compete much, but I remember seeing photos of him in Surfer, always deeply tubed at SD winter reefs with a serene expression on his face. Alan Sr started making trips south in his late-teens and fell in love with the palm groves and bombing barrels of Pascuales.

Soon, he had a local girlfriend there who turned into his wife and who bore him a son and a daughter.

Alan Jr doesn’t look half-Mexican. He’s got bushy blond hair, pale, sun-roasted skin and blue eyes. But when he says “Orale, chingon” to one of his homies you know he ain’t no gringo. He didn’t learn any English until age six and went to a Mexican public elementary school before switching to a home school program.

Pascaules isn’t friendliest spot for a kid to learn how to surf, but if you watch young Alan you’ll see what it’s done for him. He’s got that mas tranquilo approach to the barrel you see from other greats who grew up toying with heavy drainers like Bruce, Andy, John John and Jack Robinson.

The difference for Alan is that his spot is overhead 300 days and a year, breaks over sand, and until recently, was rather empty of people.

Not many grommies from Coolangatta or San Clemente have been stuffed into a trunk of a car and had a gun held to their heads the way Alan experienced at age 12. That happened on a midnight trip to Puerto Escondido when the driver of the car stopped to take a piss by he side of the road and got jacked by some hoods lying it wait. The lesson? Don’t drive at night in Mexico and if for some reason you do, don’t ever fucking stop to take a piss.

But growing up in deep, dark Mainland Mex isn’t, ah, the safest place for a young surfer.

Not many grommies from Coolangatta or San Clemente have been stuffed into a trunk of a car and had a gun held to their heads the way Alan experienced at age 12. That happened on a midnight trip to Puerto Escondido when the driver of the car stopped to take a piss by he side of the road and got jacked by some hoods lying it wait.

The lesson? Don’t drive at night in Mexico and if for some reason you do, don’t ever fucking stop to take a piss.

Alan’s home base in the state of Colima isn’t the safest joint either. In the old narco days, coke and weed were moved through that area to mainly to feed the addictions of North Americans and Europeans.

Now the explosion of cheap pills and meth have yielded a class of Mexican drug fiends. These days, you’re not as likely to catch a stray bullet from a Zetas/Sinaloa cartel “heating up the plaza” shoot out as you used to be. But a desperate junkie looking for a fix is not the guy you want to bump into on a quiet street after dark.

“Pretty much every bad thing that happens in Mexico goes down about 10 minutes from where I live,” says Alan.

To stay safe, he bolts up the doors to his house after seven pm each night and stays there.

He proudly surfs for the Mexican national team and is way better in small, weak waves that you might expect. He took second at a Pro Junior in tiny waves in Florida and recently made the semis of a QS in Acapulco.

He’s got a loose, almost hipstery style that may or may not find favor with the judges on tour, but he’s down to give it his best shot. If it doesn’t work out, he’s fortunate that Nathan Fletcher hooked him up with Vans, one of the last bastions of curated and subsidized free surf artists.

I filmed Alan in the clip above in the silky smooth point breaks of Oaxaca and was blown away by his natural talent.

Out of the hundreds of young pros grinding away in small, mushy waves at Huntington Beach next week, Alan’s one to pay attention to.

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