Listen: “Dear World Surf League, take that damned carrot and shove it up your fucking ass!”

Today is my snapping point.

I don’t know why today is my snapping point with the latest iteration of the World Surf League but it is. Rage pulses through my veins. Pure, boiling rage and white wine from New Zealand’s Marlborough region. The morning started normally enough. A quick scan of surf news, a post on surf and wellness, a drive up the coast past shuttered nuclear reactors to talk surf with David Lee Scales.

We opened light, chatted about this and that before circling down to this week’s sizzling hot rumor that Surf Ranch was being taken off the World Championship Tour and being shuttered to clarification from the WSL that it is robust, healthy and alive, to further confirmation that it is indeed being taken off tour because “the pros hate it.”

In the midst of my back and forthing with Santa Monica surrounding the rumors, yet another carrot was dangled. Any time the biggest little website in surfing gets too far out of line, the “Stewards of Professional  Surfing and Surf Culture” let it be known that if I can fly straight for one minute and tow the company line, great collaborative opportunities exist.

There were moments, a few years ago, where I thought, “Amazing. Let’s actually do something together. Let’s actually involve the people who have given their lives to surfing, the grumpy locals, the salty nobodies, in a meaningful way. Let’s figure out a way to showcase them, what they love, what they find fascinating and, not appropriate but… celebrate it in a way that brings honor.”

Nothing has ever happened in those few years, save a trip to Surf Ranch for a bunch of crusty surf journalists and a few group emails to that same group from WSL CEO Sophie Goldschmidt.

And so, at this point, the carrot not only feels absurd, it feels insulting.

Then on my way home from chatting with David Lee I got a text from Jen See. She had been invited to a “Women’s Round Table” being conducted in Lemoore during the Surf Ranch run. She wants to go but the Tachi Palace doesn’t have any rooms, nor do the surrounding hotels, so she is planning on staying two hours away, driving in, driving out.”

“The WSL invited you to a ‘Women’s Round Table’ and isn’t putting you up?” I asked. “I’m just random freelance media dude.” She responded.

And God bless Jen See but she is not “just a random freelance media dude.” She is the most important female voice in surf journalism without peer and the WSL wants her to drive to hell on her own dime for a ‘Women’s Round Table’ that will certainly be marketed as progressive and thoughtful through their channels while not putting her up?

Fuck them.

Fuck them for trying to launch a new “suite” of podcast programming that not only doesn’t include Ain’t That Swell, Swell Season, Surf Splendor etc. but nobody from Santa Monica even reached out to those who work tirelessly for zero dollars simply because they love the game. Nobody in that cursed High Tower thought, “There’s already a bunch of fantastic surf podcasts. Let’s throw them some resources and empower the core.”

Fuck them for, as Chief Marketing Officer Pri Shumate says, “…expanding from competition to community. If before our goal was to have this amazing home for core surf fans, we’re expanding into creating a community through surfing.”

The WSL is creating a community though surfing?

Yeah?

Well fucking guess what? That “community” already exists, has for a long, long, time and the bastards in Santa Monica ignore, belittle, undervalue it at every single turn, only treating it as a roadblock to unfettered and glorious mainstream growth.

Fuck them for acting like they are doing surfers, real surfers, a favor by broadcasting a high-quality stream “free of charge” littered with idiotic “Jeeps surfing the world” commercials and a level of commentary that would make the lobotomized cringe.

Fuck them for perpetual obfuscation, corpo-speak, press release, tennis tour nonsense.

Fuck them for dangling a carrot of partnership with no intention of ever truly partnering.

Fuck them for not recognizing they are beyond lucky, as lucky as we all know we are even in our worst moments, to get to be part of surfing.

That said, we’re here and we could all do something very fun but I’m tired of waiting and we don’t need, or want, that fucking carrot.

Dirk Ziff, I look directly at you and say, “Figure it out. Start by peeling off some of your billions and buying Jen See and her colleagues rooms, lunches, dinners, drinks and a day shopping for California Central Valley trinkets. Just figure it fucking out.”

And World Surf League President of Content, Media, Studios and Matcha Green Tea Crème Frappuccinos Erik “ELo” Logan? Either shit or get off the pot.

Need more soapbox? Don’t worry! I’ve got you!