"There, I put the last sentence as a one sentence summary in case you are short on time."

Covering Pro Surfing is a brutal game. It took me a week to get over Brazil. Times zones, sleep deprivation, “jet” lag , all that. I know you scoff.

It’s hard to think of an equivalent sport that drags on and requires so much sustained attention over such an extended period. Maybe test cricket if it had a two-week waiting period?

I’m not complaining: living the dream, enjoying the journey as Filipe said today etc etc. The hourly rate is measly but there is a side benefit. I noticed it before I turned pro, getting up to watch Dane Reynolds. Watch enough and the body might feel stiff but the mind opens up to technical advancement. One day with coquettish amazement I did something on a surfboard I had no right to do. I call it the Dane effect. One day you just surf better than you should. Somehow the mind has absorbed a new technique and been able to translate into action.

It really almost should be a raison d’etre for a rec surfer to watch pro surfing.

But it’s not everyone in the top 34. In fact, it’s the very few. Which makes the John John injury such a blow for scribes as well as fans.

As Italo Ferriera said, “So sad about John, he’s so fucken good.” He said that to Rosie and straight after she disappeared from the broadcast. Co-incidence? Was she skyhooked to a secret WSL retraining encampment? Why? It wasn’t her fault Italo dropped the f-bomb.

So no John and a day late for the swell of the year at J-Bay. Made a steep mountain to climb, as far as providing an entertaining product for fans. Head high rock runners on offer. Strider Wasilewski with attack dogs tits well sheathed in a 4/3 made the astute comment that it’s an easy wave to run down the line on, hard to hit the corners.

So no John and a day late for the swell of the year at J-Bay. Made a steep mountain to climb, as far as providing an entertaining product for fans. Head high rock runners on offer. Strider Wasilewski with attack dogs tits well sheathed in a 4/3 made the astute comment that it’s an easy wave to run down the line on, hard to hit the corners.

I would have chosen a little Bonzer octafish and done just that. Run it down the line all day long.

Gabe Medina in heat one found no difficulty squaring it up and “hammering it shut”. It was soothing to have Turpel back in the booth. You’d want Joe there at the end to send you off into heaven “There he goes, closes his eyes for the last time, hammered it shut, sends it off and the judges should like it” It would be a nice way to go.

Medina was mechanical but in the nicest possible way. I ain’t a watch guy but if I was I imagine there must be some aesthetic satisfaction in contemplating the fine mechanics of an expensive watch. Which is what I feel when I see Gabe putting head-high waves to beddy-byes. The conventional narrative is that Gabe starts his year at J-Bay and there was nothing in today’s performance to counter that.

Italo was similarly sharp and tactile in heat two. A little faceplant on the bricks after a shallow finish was the only blemish. Soli Bailey got the best waves and showed some hints that he might be capable of opening up and showing some repertoire. There’s been something cramped about the way his front arm has led through the turn this year. An unfortunate tic that has made his surfing look nervous and forced. If he can relax and open up he could win some heats, and that would be good.

Jordy had ultimate flow. Jorgann Couzinet had terrible flow. Ciao had moderate flow but jiggled and bobbled too many turns to threaten the multiple Jbay winner. That question of flow is a strange one. Kolohe came on like a sorority gal with one too many trips to the sangria bowl before settling down and laying down one turn after another.

G-med gives me the Dane effect, so to Italo. Not so Filipe. Too frenetic, too otherworldly maybe? Maybe just a goofy/natural thing. No matter, Pip cranked up the heat of the day, which will surprise exactly nobody. Like Gabe he rocked a green board which looked very slick on blue walls. Despite the timing of the dropping of the WSL edit which details the capitulation at the Box (one wave where Jack Robbo takes a wave off Pip while he has priority: brutal) it could have been a lifetime ago for Pip. Electric, electic King of variety laid it all down in head-high walls. The 9.10 was the highest score of the day, the 8.5 was the better ridden wave, for mine. If you are catching up on the heat analyzer, start there.

Pottz was praying Michael February was surfing on a twin fin, my preference would have been a sleek Bonzer like the one he rode in Ghana. He looks better on alternative boards. That awkward angularity becomes perfect flow, on the modern shortboard trying to surf CT style it just ain’t right.

Don’t know about you, but I’ve never felt any relationship to Kelly Slater’s surfing. But I am enjoying this year, his 27th and possibly final year on Tour more than any other year. If the surfing is unrelatable the guile, the presence, the trash talk is not.

It’s all deeply engaging.

Having Slater surfing head high J-Bay with a head of steam for the year and Sal Masekala in the booth was close to heaven. He was off, by his own admission, after a dose of the flu. Turns a bit janky, a bogged cutback but two fives was enough to progress, as Pottz had predicted in the first heat of the day.

Standard day in head high J-Bay rockrunners and Pip looking unbeatable. There, I put the last sentence as a one sentence summary in case you are short on time.

J-Bay Men’s Seeding Round 1 Results:
Heat 1: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 12.03 DEF. Joan Duru (FRA) 10.57, Frederico Morais (PRT) 9.00
Heat 2: Italo Ferreira (BRA) 14.43 DEF. Soli Bailey (AUS) 10.67, Peterson Crisanto (BRA) 10.34
Heat 3: Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) 12.16 DEF. Adriano de Souza (BRA) 7.33, Jesse Mendes (BRA) 6.74
Heat 4: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 13.77 DEF. Caio Ibelli (BRA) 9.27, Jorgann Couzinet (FRA) 8.67
Heat 5: Kolohe Andino (USA) 11.43 DEF. Yago Dora (BRA) 9.84, Beyrick De Vries (ZAF) 8.30
Heat 6: Filipe Toledo (BRA) 17.60 DEF. Michael February (ZAF) 12.83, Adrian Buchan (AUS) 11.77
Heat 7: Julian Wilson (AUS) 13.97 DEF. Deivid Silva (BRA) 10.60, Jadson Andre (BRA) 10.56
Heat 8: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 13.17 DEF. Conner Coffin (USA) 11.84, Willian Cardoso (BRA) 5.27
Heat 9: Ricardo Christie (NZL) 10.66 DEF. Michael Rodrigues (BRA) 9.03, Ryan Callinan (AUS) 6.10
Heat 10: Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 12.40 DEF. Kelly Slater (USA) 10.67, Jeremy Flores (FRA) 9.27
Heat 11: Michel Bourez (FRA) 12.24 DEF. Owen Wright (AUS) 12.00, Jack Freestone (AUS) 11.86
Heat 12: Wade Carmichael (AUS) 13.24 DEF. Griffin Colapinto (USA) 13.23, Seth Moniz (HAW) 10.83

J-Bay Men’s Elimination Round 2 Matchups:
Heat 1: Ryan Callinan (AUS), Jack Freestone (AUS), Beyrick De Vries (ZAF)
Heat 2: Seth Moniz (HAW), Adrian Buchan (AUS), Jorgann Couzinet (FRA)
Heat 3: Jeremy Flores (FRA), Jesse Mendes (BRA), Frederico Morais (PRT)
Heat 4: Willian Cardoso (BRA), Peterson Crisanto (BRA), Jadson Andre (BRA)

Women’s Seeding Round 1 Results:
Heat 1: Stephanie Gilmore (AUS) 14.80 DEF. Johanne Defay (FRA) 12.57, Macy Callaghan (AUS) 8.40
Heat 2: Carissa Moore (HAW) 12.33 DEF. Bronte Macaulay (AUS) 11.70, Sage Erickson (USA) 9.97
Heat 3: Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) 12.60 DEF. Nikki Van Dijk (AUS) 10.30, Bianca Buitendag (ZAF) 9.83

Women’s Remaining Seeding Round 1 Matchups:
Heat 4: Courtney Conlogue (USA), Brisa Hennessy (CRI), Paige Hareb (NZL)
Heat 5: Lakey Peterson (USA), Malia Manuel (HAW), Keely Andrew (AUS)
Heat 6: Caroline Marks (USA), Tatiana Weston-Webb (BRA), Silvana Lima (BRA)

Australia's Byron Bay is a utopia of unfettered surf dreams…

If you like a little satire in between your airport blockbuster novels, you’ll know the writer Tom Wolfe, a pioneer of what is called the New Journalism where the techniques of the novelist are used in real-life reporting.

Think: full dialogue instead of direct quotes, the reconstruction of scenes as if the reporter had seen it with own eyes and so on.

In the hands of a great writer it’s a thoroughly entertaining way to lampoon the overblown.

Wolfe, who was one of the best, could yank the mask off any phonies just by recording what he’d seen and heard. His best essay is Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s which satirised upper-class New Yorkers raising money for the Black Panthers, whose righteous mission was to annihilate white devils like those writing the cheques at the party.

If you surf, you’ll dig The Pump House Gang. Read a little here. 

In the latest issue of Vanity Fair, a reporter, who uses many of the same techniques as Wolfe, goes to Australia’s surf-hippy utopia Byron Bay and follows a gang of Instagram influencer mom-surfers, murfers.

Courtney Adamo’s minimalist, Shaker-style kitchen is gorgeous, but you already know that if you follow her. The house—one of the first built in the historic town of Bangalow, New South Wales—might just be the most overexposed house in Australia. With its clapboard cupboards, wooden stools, bulk dry goods in mason jars, Blanc Marble countertops (“slightly more expensive than the Carrara,” she explains in a blog post about her kitchen renovation, “but we are so happy with the decision”), Dunlin Chelsea Pendant Lights ($669 each), SMEG refrigerator ($2,870), Lacanche oven and stove (“range cooker of my dreams” and, at about $10,000, a “splurge”), the kitchen is like a scene out of Little House on the Trust Fund Prairie. Adamo (@courtneyadamo, 250K Instagram followers) is a midtier family lifestyle micro-influencer, which, if you don’t know, is a thing.

And,

Courtney, Michael, and their first four kids (Easton, 14; Quin, 12; Ivy, 10; Marlow, 6) sold the house, the car, and many belongings, and embarked on a “family gap year” around the world. Adamo kicked off the voyage with a farewell piece in the Telegraph and the launch of her travel blog, Somewhere Slower. Then, after a highly publicized, lightly sponsored 18-month global search for the slow life (they never really considered a return to the U.S., she tells me, because Michael dislikes the consumerism), they alighted in Byron Bay, Australia. Wilkie was born there, the older kids were enrolled in school, and, after spending a year and a half working on their visa applications, Michael began a job from home as a managing director for a Melbourne animation company. Two and a half years after arriving, the Adamos are fully settled. They might start the day with a “surf sesh” before school. In the afternoon, they might “work together as a family.”

And,

All the “murfers” are here—the portmanteau of mum and surfer are Adamo’s clique of pretty, stylish, entrepreneurial, and creative young mothers of multiple children whose laid-back, unstructured lives generate a dizzying combination of FOMO and squad goals. They live in old-fashioned houses and give their carefully unstyled children names that sound dreamed up for a Goop collaboration with Lemony Snicket. They’re married to supportive, handsome, and scruffy men of purpose. They make their own hours and dinners and soap. They have their own brands. They are their own brands.

And,

On first impression, Byron looks like beautiful but crowded beaches, high-end stores and cute cafés, quotidian spring breakers, tourist shops and Greyhound buses, linen at a startling array of price points, and nourishing grain bowls sprinkled with petals. The Byron of your digital and increasingly brand-sponsored imagination, however, is all that minus the bad stuff; a carefully curated bank of images designed to stoke your lifestyle longings. (If such are your dreams.) It’s a land of large, “nomadic” “broods” who “find their tribes” on life’s “journey.” Never mind that Australia’s policies on immigration and refugees are draconian bordering on vicious. In this young, mostly white, ahistorical, neoliberal utopia of the imagination, anyone can go anywhere. All you have to do is have a yard sale, hop in the gypsy caravan, point a finger at a map, and take up legal permanent residence anyplace that best showcases your lifestyle.

And so on.

Oh god it’s cruel, although it barely scratches the surface of that enclave, which is a haven of narcissism and clandestine infighting etc.

Read here.