Question: Does the Freshwater Pro taint
current and future WSL World Champions?
By Chas Smith
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.
Glass half empty/full: Worst flat spell in
history plagues north Florida!
By Chas Smith
“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 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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Brother Az ain't no stranger to swinging into
baubles like this. Jamie Tierney
Meet: Mexico’s teen version of Jack
Robinson/Bruce Irons/John John Florence!
By Jamie Tierney
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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Profound: Business VAL develops foolproof
middle-management risk assessment plan based on surfing!
By Chas Smith
Unlock your potential today!
And tell me true, is one of your favorite parts
about being a surfer all the many and varied ways you can apply our
favorite pastime to other aspects of life? If it’s not than life is
better in something other than boardshorts™ for you and you also
don’t exude the true Georgian
Spirit™.
But would you like to know who does exude the true Georgian
Spirit™? Business Leadership Strategy Consultant and one-year-old
VAL David Michels and would you like to know his advice about
change (I think) in the world of commerce?
I don’t know if it’s the coming of summer to the northern
hemisphere, where I live, or the increasing number of conversations
I’m having with business executives on the topic of change, but I
can’t stop thinking about surfing.
It’s a hobby I just recently picked up. I started last
summer on a family holiday in San Diego, and I’m glad I did. Not
only is it a whole lot of fun and a completely new
challenge—especially starting in middle age, not easy!—but it is
also an apt metaphor for how “change” is changing in the business
world.
Etc.
To me, change today is less like that old carnival game and
much more like surfing the waves. For one thing, change, like
waves, actually never stops. It can be large or small, fast or
slow, but it is continuous. No two waves are exactly alike, and
that’s one of the things that makes surfing so much fun. But there
are patterns: Waves form, roll, peak and break. Often, the
difference between a successful surf and a complete wipeout is your
ability to understand the characteristics of that particular wave
as it forms. These things are all true of change, too.
Etc.
As a surfer, you need a few things to be successful. You
need the right equipment—a decent board and, depending on
temperature, a good wet suit. As you venture out into the water,
you must decide which waves to try to surf, to pick your spots.
Positioning is paramount: Too early and you miss it, too late, and
it will crash on top of you. Then comes technique—the right
paddling motion to get into position and, critically, how you
balance on your board to find just the right edge. Oh yes, there is
a lot of skill involved, as I can attest as a relative beginner,
and you won’t always succeed. You need to either enjoy the ride or
embrace the lessons of the wipeout, and then get back out
there.
Etc.
Oh it goes on and on and on and by the end you’ll no doubt feel
that surfing has given you the keys to unlock your financial
potential.
Wait… what?
Sorry… I have water in my ears and forgot what I was getting on
about.
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"Yesterday an elderly lady came up to us at the beach
and asked if we could help fulfill her husbands wish to ride a wave
one last time. She said that he is suffering from dementia and most
likely has a year to live." | Photo: Ryan Giacola
Thanks for the laughs: Dying Man with
dementia rides one last wave
By Derek Rielly
Sooner or later it's gonna come, your last wave.
How do you want to sign off?
It’s hard to contemplate, but, sooner or later,
it’s gonna come.
Your last wave.
Maybe one VAL lecture on equality in the lineup or collision too
many vaporises the love.
Diminishing returns and a disgust in your atrophying skills
convince you to turn out the light.
Or you get old and you switch, first, to a longboard, then a
SUP, and then it just gets too hard.
Below, we see a terminally ill man, ruined by dementia, whose
loving wife helps him ride one last wave into the sunset.
