Shortly, and in waves that may prove to be an
improvement on yesterday’s
bad tempered, indecipherable closeouts,
although Courts C and Johanne Defay found inviting morsels, we’ll
be gifted the money end of the contest.
I choose, Jeremy, Ryan, Marc, Julian, Gabriel, Seth, Kolohe and
Italo. Betting agencies in Australia have locked out multi-bets
thereby eliminating the possibility of a million-dollar payout.
And did you know that Jordy Smith, Sally Fitzgibbons and
Stephanie Gilmore have all successfully negotiated the Olympic
selection process and have qualified for Tokyo 2020?
Quiksilver Pro France Round of 16 (Round 4)
Match-Ups:
HEAT 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
HEAT 2: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) vs. Ryan Callinan (AUS)
HEAT 3: Marc Lacomare (FRA) vs. Wade Carmichael (AUS)
HEAT 4: Julian Wilson (AUS) vs. Jack Freestone (AUS)
HEAT 5: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Adrian Buchan (AUS)
HEAT 6: Seth Moniz (HAW) vs. Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA)
HEAT 7: Kolohe Andino (USA) vs. Yago Dora (BRA)
HEAT 8: Michel Bourez (FRA) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
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Insidious purveyors of the haole shaka, Chas Smith, Ez
Logan.
Rumour: WSL owns BeachGrit; SUP champion
and Oprah Winfrey confidant Erik “E-Lo” Logan master
puppeteer!
By surf ads
News don't come for free…
France is popping. The early spring sun is
flashing its tanline on Australia’s east coast. America hasn’t been
overthrown by a pro-Iran/Shark/Dora troika.
Yet. The world turns.
So, I apologise in advance for doing this. But there’s something
Ben Marcus said last week I want to examine. A tiny morsel of
interest hidden in the OuterKnown of his plucked carcass that
could, if it’s cooked the right way, deliver a tender intellectual
treat.
BeachGrit’s owned by the WSL.
Yeah, I know.
The guy’s like a Jesuit priest in Tokugawa Japan, preaching his
outdated scriptures to a dead-eyed audience. His roots cannot hold
in this laissez-faire world.
But this particular conspiracy theory is not the craziest thing
he’s ever said. In fact, he could even be right.
WSL could be funding BeachGrit. And we’d all be bit
players in a grand false flag attack.
It’d fucken suck if it was true. Wouldn’t pass the pub test, or
comments section, for a second.
But, in today’s media landscape it’d be no more surprising than,
say, discovering Trump doesn’t write his own speeches.
News don’t come for free, baby.
Of course, BM’s way off the mark. The Wozzle is too scared of
its own shadow, too risk averse, to ever consider being associated
with this glorious bin fire.
And Derek and Chas strike me as many things, but
Machiavellian ain’t one of
them.
Yet, we know the Woz froths on a good content partnership. They
love to crow about them. Show ‘em off to the world. A big green
tick on some god forsaken ‘key engagement strategy pillar’
somewhere within the Santa Monica high tower.
But dissent is important. Critical opinion is needed. Walls of
positive noise can only hold so long. The masses are smarter than
they’re given credit for, and somebody needs to keep the bastards
honest.
So, who pays the bills?
For BeachGrit it’s Cheezstix. Bemboka luxury blankets.
Lonely singles in your area. Yeah, those fucking annoying pop-up
ads and videos are this site’s lifeblood.
And, for the best surf reporting in the free world, I reckon
it’s worth it.
Between our website, social, and OTT channels, we’ve built a
comprehensive network of surf, mountain, and health enthusiasts
whom we talk to every day. We can effectively integrate your brand
into our channels to ensure you’re speaking to the right audience
wherever they go.
Just check out their sponsors list. Samsung. Corona. WSL.
Michelob ultra lite.
What’s it mean? Every word they publish is tainted. And unless
you’re a single-use plastic, there’s nary a dissenting opinion to
be found.
TheInertia
presents itself as an army of woke, environmentally
conscious warriors. But its business model is built on the most
insidious form or post capitalism out there. Paid editorial. Where
church and state are no longer separated, and corporate brands are
allowed to infiltrate our lives so completely that we’re no longer
just consumers, but unwitting advocates in their pursuits for
profit margins.
It’s crass commercialism dressed in whatever political and
social trend is popular at the time.
We all make a faustian pact when we come online. Everything’s
for sale, including and most especially you.
But at least on BeachGrit we’ll look you in the eyes
when we fuck you.
Of course, BM could be right and BG might actually be a WSL
apparatchik.
Please find my resume, buried under the southern lifeguard’s
flag at Newcastle beach.
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You could make a case that Dora's performance
was the best of the day and find no argument here. It was loose.
Very Psychic Migrations. Big greased alley-oop on a left. Landed
and literally stepped off on the sand. Another styled-out reverse
on a right where he landed in the sand. It was one of those
cartoons where the character gets thrown into the sand and has to
be dug out. WSL
Quiksilver Pro, France, Day 3: “Sexless
crowd watches miserable closeouts, Medina survives, Toledo like
chimney sweep in Dickens novel, Yago best on day!”
By Longtom
The French beachbreak, like Michel Foucalt, is a
much overrated old fruit. Bad tempered and indecipherable.
To be honest, I ain’t the toothiest Francophile in the
tub ’round here. French boobs, yes. Houllebecq, Flaubert,
Stendahl, Gilet-jaunes, yes, yes, yes. Camus, De Beauvoir, Sartre:
love that shit.
The French beachbreak, like Michel Foucalt, seems very
much an overrated old fruit to me. Bad tempered and indecipherable.
When Jessi Miley Dyer stood in front of the camera at 8.30 CEST
this morning and said this was the best day in the waiting period I
thought, sick. After a million french close-outs had pounded the
beach at La Grav, it was more, what a punish.
Still there was drama, plenty of what poet Philip Larkin in his
ode to sexual awakening, Annus Mirabilis, termed “wrangling for the
ring.” Overlapping forty-five-minute heats gave plenty of
opportunity, and that was needed, but it was still, according to
Connor Coffin, “a lucky dip at best.”
When the world’s best beachbreak scavenger, Gabe Medina, scours
every inch of a lineup and can only rip a few four-point chunks off
the carcass in forty minutes you know it’s slim pickings.
I couldn’t advise a rewatching that heat but as live action,
with the Title in play, it was compelling sport.
Miserable closeouts, almost a total lack of surfable corners. Up
and down the line-up, firing at will, hucking left, then a huge
inverted backside spin which he tried to sell to judges as make and
got denied (unfairly, I thought). It was close to the perfect
sudden death scenario – French wildcard Mignot with nothing to lose
and a random lineup that could suddenly offer a teepee to the
lucky.
Charlie prowled the beach getting more and more stressed, more
visibly agitated. The salt and pepper beard seemed greyer by the
minute in the wan French sunshine. The dislike, repulsion even, for
this man confounds me. The smothering step-father adds a kind of
Grimms’ Fairy
Tale patina over the World Champions campaign and
contrasts with the worldly superstar dimensions: the hang-outs with
Neymar, the conference calls with Bolsanaro.
Great theatre.
Fifteen minutes to go and Medina trails the wildcard. Ten, five;
still behind. The unthinkable starts to seem possible. Likely even.
Four minutes and forty seconds to go and Gabe spikes a small left
toob, re-emerges and smashes the oncoming lip for punctuation.
Charlie loses his shit in the shorebreak, a one man World Cup
celebration and Gabe, of course, gets the score.
For Medina afficionados, I count myself amongst them, his best
heat of the year as far as finding a way to win goes.
Last minute reversals, after forty-five minutes of one surfer
leading the other, were the theme of the day. Kelly Slater did not
look as sparky and rejuvenated as his round nd one performance, but
neither did his opponent and housemate, Leo Fioravanti. Both
scrapped around in the straighthanders, Kelly cleaving more closely
to the Medina template of catching anything and everything in the
hopes something may materialise.
Which it eventually did when he slouched in a hollow cavern with
arms clasped behind his back. With the best wave of the heat on
ice, Kelly looked set to put the head-to-head match-up back to 2-1.
Dogs roamed the beach and a curiously sex-less crowd were silent
until with a minute to go Leo “spelunkered” his way through an
Hawaiian looking right, stepping off onto the sand and demanding a
reaction from the crowd.
That was the heat winner. The camera followed Kelly, cruelly,
into the empty locker room.
It did not follow Willian Cardoso who also led all heat and lost
to a buzzer beater by Wade Carmichael. He did not appreciate the
loss. Did he think the final score awarded to Wade was over-cooked?
The double bird he threw at the judges and the board punch-out
would suggest, yes.
But we will never know because the camera turned away. Lingering
near the cut-off at 19, that result could be the most critical of
the Panda’s career on the CT, especially with Yago Dora still alive
in the draw.
You could make a case that Dora’s performance was the best of
the day and find no argument here. It was loose. Very
Psychic
Migrations. Big greased alley-oop on a left.
Landed and literally stepped off on the sand. Another styled-out
reverse on a right where he landed in the sand. It was one of those
cartoons where the character gets thrown into the sand and has to
be dug out.
He motioned to the judges, “Look, what can I do?”
They were unmoved. Colapinto was not a walkover. He would have
won any other heat.
Poor old Pip Toledo. The pre-heat vision of Pip with the black
beanie sitting, whatever the opposite of jaunty is, made it look
like the heat was over before it began. He looked like a chimney
sweep in a Dickens novel, a junkie from Trainspotting, a derelict
Justin Beiber.
Why is he competing if the back is buggered? It seems cruel and
unusual self-punishment. He lost to Lacomare.
Kolohe surfs on. The round of sixteen match-up with Dora
potentially the best of the round. My dark horse pick, Soli Bailey,
out again in the round of thirty-two. Seventeenth place, a number
he has not been able to best all season.
It’s a cruel business, but he’s doing OK. He wont be driving
Ubers to Splendour in the Grass next
year. And he wont be the only one rueing French closeouts.
Still, there are always the pleasures of the flesh to
compensate. Larkins “quite unloseable game” beckons the single
man.
Quiksilver Pro France Round of 16 (Round 4)
Match-Ups:
HEAT 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
HEAT 2: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) vs. Ryan Callinan (AUS)
HEAT 3: Marc Lacomare (FRA) vs. Wade Carmichael (AUS)
HEAT 4: Julian Wilson (AUS) vs. Jack Freestone (AUS)
HEAT 5: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Adrian Buchan (AUS)
HEAT 6: Seth Moniz (HAW) vs. Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA)
HEAT 7: Kolohe Andino (USA) vs. Yago Dora (BRA)
HEAT 8: Michel Bourez (FRA) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
Roxy Pro France Quarterfinal Match-Ups:
HEAT 1: Lakey Peterson (USA) vs. Malia Manuel (HAW)
HEAT 2: Carissa Moore (HAW) vs. Tatiana Weston-Webb (BRA)
HEAT 3: Sally Fitzgibbons (AUS) vs. Johanne Defay (FRA)
HEAT 4: Caroline Marks (USA) vs. Courtney Conlogue (USA)
Quiksilver Pro France Round of 32 (Round 3)
Results:
HEAT 1: Jordy Smith (ZAF) 13.83 DEF. Frederico Morais (PRT)
12.40
HEAT 2: Jeremy Flores (FRA) 8.37 DEF. Caio Ibelli (BRA) 6.07
HEAT 3: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 11.16 DEF. Owen Wright (AUS) 5.30
HEAT 4: Ryan Callinan (AUS) 14.33 DEF. Michael Rodrigues (BRA)
13.00
HEAT 5: Marc Lacomare (FRA) 12.83 DEF. Filipe Toledo (BRA)
12.17
HEAT 6: Wade Carmichael (AUS) 11.93 DEF. Willian Cardoso (BRA)
9.70
HEAT 7: Julian Wilson (AUS) 11.33 DEF. Jorgann Couzinet (FRA)
6.17
HEAT 8: Jack Freestone (AUS) 8.56 DEF. Kanoa Igarashi (JPN)
8.33
HEAT 9: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 9.76 DEF. Marco Mignot (FRA) 8.84
HEAT 10: Adrian Buchan (AUS) 8.93 DEF. Conner Coffin (USA) 8.60
HEAT 11: Seth Moniz (HAW) 12.60 DEF. Peterson Crisanto (BRA)
10.77
HEAT 12: Leonardo Fioravanti (ITA) 12.43 DEF. Kelly Slater (USA)
11.00
HEAT 13: Kolohe Andino (USA) 10.34 DEF. Soli Bailey (AUS) 9.27
HEAT 14: Yago Dora (BRA) 14.50 DEF. Griffin Colapinto (USA)
13.23
HEAT 15: Michel Bourez (FRA) 11.67 DEF. Joan Duru (FRA) 7.56
HEAT 16: Italo Ferreira (BRA) 13.83 DEF. Jesse Mendes (BRA)
11.77
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Rebuttal: “Dora sounds like a selfish
bastard but, then again, he lived the surfer’s life!”
By frank
A character study.
(Editor’s note: Besides quit-lit, and the saga of
“man-eating” Great Whites, bashing/defending Miki Dora’s legacy has
become a favorite sub-sub-genre of surf writing. Dora, to his
credit, is a compelling study and while I thought I had
my mind made up about how history should remember the
man, the following piece changed it. Or at least made me very
conflicted.)
Michelangelo Caravaggio, without hyperbole, the
most impressive painter of his time, or all time; he painted his
monumental canvases alla prima, no preliminary sketches or
underpainting. Conceiving of an idea, he searched his mind for the
faces and figures he knew the best: the bums, the larcenous, the
gamblers crooks and slouches he hung with, and he brought them to
life as the saints and Gods and heroines who knew them to also
be.
When he painted The Death of The Virgin, the depiction of the
most holy woman “of the people”, he used the best model for Mary
that he could, a prostitute, whom he knew. She had drowned, and he
painted her as such.
The monumental canvas, commissioned and contracted for the
Church would of course be rejected by the Cardinal in charge. It
was so full of honest emotion, of love and sorrow and rage at this
woman’s premature death. It was, and is, the painting that would
certainly speak to the world.
An outrageous affront, cried the Cardinal! Crude beyond belief!
and unacceptable. Why? Because she had bare feet! (the official
reason), and of course the painting would not be paid for, instead
it was hidden away for years. However the open secret of the time
was that everyone, including the self-righteous Cardinal knew that
this woman was indeed a prostitute and therefore an improper
stand-in for The Virgin.
Caravaggio constantly flaunted his skill and ideas against a
church that at times supported him, or even apologized for him, and
then at times punished his very existence. The history of his work
shows us that the only constant was his dedication to his art.
Caravaggio was at best a rude and arrogant loudmouth and a petty
criminal, but at worst a rage-a-holic, guilty of murder. He
rejected his own brother who tried to help him, and he burned every
bridge he had, and used up every chance he was offered. He painted
himself as the villain Goliath, head hewn off. More than once! And
he did so because he knew he personified that monster, but also
because he knew he was the best artist to do it.
What an ego!
He doesn’t have a tombstone that I know of. He died alone on
swampy beach, sick and desperate.
Dora once claimed that he declined to share his thoughts on how
surfing made him feel, because “those thoughts were his own and he
didn’t wish to share them.”
One certainly wouldn’t want to do things the way Dora did. And I
for one, would certainly never want to emulate the tragic self
destruction of Caravaggio either, but it seems as if each character
lived their life for themselves and not for anyone else.
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Progressive: Elderly French women openly
mock Matt Warshaw, JP Currie and other “Quit-Lit-ers!”
By Chas Smith
Transformed lives.
Quit-Lit has been my favorite recent
development at BeachGrit. Who knew that hidden in the
seams of surf journalism’s simple tunic was a whole sub-genre
filled with passion, insight, truth and black depression? Longtom, Matt
Warshaw, JP
Currie and a host of fantastic comments have all
contributed to this richest vein of literature but while we wrestle
with when to stop surfing, a group of super adult-learners are
opening mocking our weakness and let us turn to France’s Riviera
Radio for more:
Surfing for the elderly – Several women at a retirement home
in Saint Malo northwestern France have taken part in “surf therapy”
sessions. The method according to the home’s management is
transforming the lives of many elderly people who say they no
longer “feel their aches and pains as they are focusing on
something else” and it’s also an activity which, for many has
“brought them closer to their grandchildren as they now have
something in common”. While participants ride real waves, they are
not required to stand on the board but lie on it.
Do you feel bad? Like a little piggy at the trough turning up
your snout and morsels that others would find incredibly
delicious?
Well you should.
Especially you, Matt Warshaw.
Also, maybe the secret, at the end, is embracing the boogie.
