Get ready for a war in New York!

While we were busy complaining about the lack of… fire in the booth at the Tahiti Pro Teahupoo presented by Hurley a rumble was cracking the very ground asunder all the way across the globe in Spain. A quake ripping the oldest sort of continually inhabited surfing apart at the seams. A fissure split wide for the world to see and, yes, this was all happening during the World Surf League’s revamped Longboard World Tour and I know you don’t care but you will now.

In a quiet move, the WSL tapped egg aficionado, and all-around stylish man, Devon Howard, to be commissioner of the tour, stretched from one event to four with stops in Noosa, Galicia, New York and Taiwan. The rules were also adjusted to reward the sort of longboarding we all enjoy-ish watching (traditional) as opposed to the sort of longboarding that mocks human development and common sense (high-performance).

And let us read from the rule book:

Article 70: The surfer must perform controlled maneuvers in the critical section of the wave utilizing the entire board and wave using traditional longboard surfing. The surfer who performs this to the highest degree of difficulty with the most style, flow, and grace will receive the highest score for a ride.

So, you know, noseriding, control, footwork and whatnot.

Well, the high-performance longboarders on tour are NOT HAPPY and one in their ranks, E. Delpero, became furious after losing to a traditional longboarder in Spain and let fly a series of middle-fingers at the judges, the cameras and, I must assume, the commentators.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B19gaR9nS3T/

This family feud packed its bags right up, wounds still festering, and is coming to New York this weekend where Hurricane Dorian will be there to greet them. What is more, the famous Joel Tudor is set to surf in the event, his first in years. He, you know, is the godfather of modern traditional longboarding and I have to think that the high-performance crew will be waiting for him at JFK airport with zip guns and bicycle chains. Come read the comments on Joel Tudor’s oft utilized Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B11QWQnJ8Fn/

How did longboarding become such den of intrigue? I honestly don’t know but will be watching when the New York event kicks off and if there is a fight in the water I will actually become a fan and stop throwing rocks at leashless longboards that wash up on the beach when I’m sunning after my normalboard surf.

Is the enterprising surfer looking at the wrong enemy?

I trust that you have been following along, closely, with this wild summer of Great White sharks. Oh they’re everywhere in America. They’re shutting down beaches in my once-Arcadian North County, San Diego. They’re bumping fishing boats, feeding on whales and speaking an unflattering dialect of English off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod.

Worse, though, they’re chasing off tourists from that area depending on the influx of those seasonal dollars. My once-utopian North County, San Diego is fine. It never gets cold here but Cape Cod? Oooee! Summer is its only habitable season.

And what to do? How to possibly solve this pointy-toothed, rolled-back-eye’d man-eating problem?

Well, some Cape Cod businessmen and longtime locals are blaming seals, Great White sharks’ favorite snack after surfers. According to the august Yahoo! News:

Gray seal populations in New England were nearly eliminated by hunting through most of the 20th century, but federal protections passed in 1972 have allowed their numbers to proliferate. Today there are an estimated 50,000 seals around Cape Cod.

One proposed solution is killing seals to control their population. The practice, known as culling, is a relatively common tactic that has been used to manage species like birds, rodents and even kangaroos.

Proponents of seal culling say it is the most effective and efficient way to reduce the number of sharks in Cape Cod’s waters. Businesses that rely on tourism are suffering because the attacks are scaring off summer visitors, they argue. Others say the seals have become so numerous that they’re creating problems beyond just attracting sharks, such as stealing fish from fishermen and creating an unpleasant odor on beaches.

Has there been any backlash to this innovative plan? Surprisingly, yes, and from environmentalists, no less, who claim the number of human fatalities is still minimal compared to the absolute carnage a bacchanal of baby seal clubbing would cause. The “proposed solution” anyhow, as Yahoo! News points out, is moot seeing as gray seals are still a protected species in Mass.

But a boy with a club can still dream, can’t he?

Also, dear Australian friends, is there backlash in the Lucky Country to the clubbing of baby kangaroos?

More as the innovation develops.

Everything is not awesome!

It is Labor Day weekend in America. Time to drink American beer, eat American cheese and watch American college football. Saturday found me doing the latter while drinking a cold Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand’s Marlborough wine growing region. The game featured Stanford vs. Northwestern, two all-American programs known, amongst other things, for being wildly boring.

Like, good fundamentals-style boring.

So there I was watching, or half-watching, when the Stanford quarterback scrambled forward on a third and long play. He gained five yards before starting his slide, like American quarterbacks do to avoid getting hit, but Northwestern’s defense player went in hard anyway, leading with his forearm, smashing it on the chin of the quarterback, who was laying back in slide position, knocking his helmet off and likely knocking him out.

The announcers, one blonde, one brunette, both boring, jumped into action. One said, “That is going to be a personal foul and there is going to be an extra fifteen yards thrown on for targeting a defenseless player.” The other agreed. The play repeated over and over in slow motion while the announcers went back and forth, discussing the egregious nature of the hit, while Stanford’s quarterback was carted off the field.

And then the official on the field issued a simple personal foul penalty. The blonde announcer flew off the hook, calling it an atrocious, unforgivable missed call and lit into the officiating crew for a solid thirty seconds, invective after invective, until the game cut to commercial break.

When it came back on, a few minutes later, the blonde announcer was still incensed and said, during the break, that he had marched into the officials replay office, next to the announcers’ booth, knocked on the door and demanded an explanation. They gave him one that was unsatisfactory and he simmered down with a, “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.”

Now, this is a very long story and I apologize but it was an amazing display of how announcers’ can be on the side of the viewer, on the side of interest, intrigue, fun, opinion and information and I wept for what we, as professional surf fans are forced to deal with.

Remember, these college football announcers were corn-fed midwestern jocks and CBS, the station airing the game, has a multi-multi-million dollar deal with the NCAA, an organization so greedy, so authoritarian, as to give Kim Jong Un a run for his money and yet they felt it was not only their duty, but right, to elucidate.

Professional surfing is supposed to be the “youth sport.” It is supposed to be untamed, raw and “cool” and yet all we get is a Wall of Positive Sound. Cotton candy stuffed in our ears. Zero critique, zero disagreement, zero opinion besides the opinion that everything is awesome.

What the hell.

Imagine, just imagine, if Pete Mel stormed the judging tower after a botched call and demanded an explanation. Just imagine if Joe Turpel said how a professional surfer made a bad choice. Just imagine if the 1989 World Champion Martin Potter turned his naturally grouchy dial up a notch and let them all have it.

But no. The World Surf League has decided to build the safest space on earth where good feelings are allowed to flourish and all those grouchy grumps can leave and go to frown town all by themselves.

Moreover, that damned Wall of Positive Sound seems to be the way the League is trying to push surfing writ large with happy little stories about happy little men and women drawing happy lines upon the happy sea. Everything is the awesomest.

And my stomach hurts from all that pure saccharine. Well, as long as I’m alive BeachGrit will be anti-depressingly cranky and I really think it’s time to pull the best and brightest from Silicon Valley, or at least Silicon Beach, and figure out how to run a pirate stream.

I once tried, with the great Sterling Spencer. We set our computer screens up face to face, one playing the World Surf League broadcast, the other recording the feed with its little camera, us talking. It was not, if you can believe, a “high quality” production.

Silicon Valley, are you reading? Silicon Beach, any advice?