Mavericks surfers ready for battle.
Mavericks surfers ready for battle.

From the equal-opportunity Desk: New guaranteed-to-run “contest” announced for Mavericks!

The wave our World Surf League loves to hate is back!

Mavericks pioneer Jeff Clark announced a new, guaranteed to run surf “contest” that will take place this winter at Mavericks. Every male and female surfer will have ample time, and there will even be room for you to paddle out, if you’re feeling particularly brazen. It will not be a World Surf League event, as Santa Monica loves to hate California’s most iconic big wave, and there will be a “significant cash prize purse” for winners.

How will this miracle happen? By moving it all to the virtual realm, of course, where sharks are pedophiles and Erik Logan’s “robust horizons” spread out as far as the mind can imagine and we must now read the press release for it is our sacred duty to fair and balance.

The Mavericks Surf Awards is a video performance contest where athletes and videographers submit their best surf videos of Mavericks throughout the season, and winners are selected for various categories. All surfers – men and women, seasoned professionals and up-and-comers – are eligible to enter.

A significant cash prize purse will be be divided across five categories: Male Performer of the Year; Female Performer of the Year; Biggest Wave; Best Wave; and Best Barrel. 90% of the prize money for each category will be awarded to the athlete and 10% to the videographer. The window to submit videos is November 1, 2019, through April 15, 2020, and will culminate in an Awards Ceremony in Half Moon Bay in May.

“Our mission is to celebrate Mavericks and support the men and women who have dedicated their lives to surfing this amazing spot,” said Jeff Clark. “When the WSL decided to cancel the contest at Mavericks, it was yet another sign that the times have changed, and we need to change, too. The logistics and politics of running a one-day surf event make it incredibly difficult. This is an opportunity to rewrite the script, keep the surfing pure, and stay out of the way of the athletes who want to go out there and free surf for the pure joy of it. Every swell, there are photographers out there documenting amazing moments that no one even sees. Now we have a way to capture those moments and recognize the best of the best every season.”

Ok, a few questions. I know the WSL cancelled the contest but didn’t they retain the rights? It doesn’t seem like The Mavericks Surf Awards has anything to do with Santa Monica whatsoever. Did Clark and partners find an end around by tacking the word “Awards” on instead of “Contest, Invitational or Pro?”

Should BeachGrit announce its “tour” next year starting with the Quiksilver Pro Awards before heading to the Bells Awards?

Clark says, “Every swell, there are photographers out there documenting amazing moments that no one even sees.” What do you think these photographers do out there with the documented moments no one ever sees? Do they gather on Pillar Point at day’s end and burn their memory cards? Send them all to Santa Monica where they are plastered into the Wall of Positive Noise? A great mystery.

Last, I usually know how I feel about things like this. I have a sense that it is either stupid or fun. This seems fun but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might also be stupid. Can you help me decide?

Thanks in advance.

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Like a pretty winter-time Gold Coast point.

Bristol, England: First vision of surfers riding waves at yet-to-open Wavegarden Cove!

The world's loveliest two-footer, on demand!

Not sure how long this little piece of vision is going to last so get it while it’s relatively warm.

Here, a day before it officially lifts its skirt to the public, are two waves ridden, and one butchered, at the world’s first full-sized Wavegarden Cove, Bristol’s The Wave, and as shared on LinkedIn by Project Manger Monica Lumsden.

This is what I see: a lovely two-foot, blue-water wave of approximately forty metres length that allows two turns, three if you’re fast or very little before evaporating into deep water. There is no air end section, which may or may not matter given its location.

One presumes better surfers will explore its cavities with scrupulous concern, buttons tweaked etc, before any official vision is released. Nevertheless, this clip, amounts to a precise document of what the average surfer might expect.

Sessions cost forty pounds, the joint opens at eight and last surfers hit the water at three.

Book here. 

 

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From the anti-colonialism dept: Brave Costa Ricans say “Beat it gringo”; turn tables on white surf instructor!

"War parties fell into line on either side, dredging up old grudges under the banners of a new conflagration. At one point a jungle sicario was even mentioned."

You been to Costa Rica before? It is to the US as Bali is to Australia. A tropical getaway close to home.

Comfortable. Non threatening. A modern-day ctrl alt dlt for $499 return.

It’s a beautiful place. Tacos and dime bags and warm water. Consistent, user-friendly waves. A culture going back thousands of years (the Guanacaste tribes predated even the Maya). Old jungle.

I worked there for a couple seasons as a surf instructor. My secret shame. Pushing god knows how many VALs into their first waves. VALs that should now, by my calculation, be paddling in front of you on their 7S fishes, and, in some cases, for the more advanced, Hypto Kryptos, in the fight for two-foot closeouts at your local.

VALs that are penning op-eds on The Inertia about how surfing needs to become more inclusive and democratic.

But I jest.

I met many lovely people. Made friends for life from all over the world etc.

Surfing is massive for the country. The town I lived in was essentially built around the first surf school, circa twenty, twenty-five years previous. It’s now a thriving wellness centre with dozens of high-end surf and yoga retreats, holidaying A-List Hollywooders and supermarkets selling expensive cheeses.

The Ticos are a well adjusted, friendly people. Progressive. No standing military since the forties, despite having the fight-loving Nicaraguans on their northern border. Powered by 98% renewables. Per capita one of the happiest places in the world.

But, like any developing country with a reliance on western tourism, there’s an undercurrent of antipathy towards gringos. Especially ones like me that move there and take jobs. Me and the Mrs was robbed twice in one three-month stretch.

Home invasions, everything gone. Perpetrated by the same little crew. We knew who they were. They knew we knew. Things got pretty heavy. War parties fell into line on either side, dredging up old grudges under the banners of a new conflagration. At one point a jungle sicario was even mentioned. Can you imagine it!

In the end, we decided to split. It wasn’t our turf. We got the message. A lesson for me on staying in your own lane. Plus I’m a massive, massive fucking wuss.

But, I digress.

Costa Rica loves surfing so much that they’ve gone and made a National Day for Surfing, in recognition of its value to the country.

Well, ain’t that swell? Will we ever see one in Aus, US, NZ, EU?

What would you do on your National Day of Surfing?

Would you celebrate it in the water with all your new VAL friends? Or would Australians, say, marinate at home with a Skegss album, a favourite piece of quit-lit, braiding beards and wondering where it all went wrong?

And, tell me, what’s your best run in with the locals story?

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Perversion: Great White sharks, long thought to be introverts, regularly meet with “friends” to feast on baby seals in carnal orgy!

"A grotesque version of a dinner party."

It seems as if every single day brings a new disturbing revelation as to the morals of the ocean’s most feared predator. We have long known Great White sharks are “man-eaters,” that they have no qualms with turning the ocean an ugly shade of blood red even when there are whale watchers present, that they sneak around scaring, biting, menacing and growing to a rotund 40-feet but what I learned today is simply a bridge too far.

A sort of amorality that we haven’t seen since Humbert Humbert was speeding across the country.

Great White sharks, it seems, are not only child predators but meet up with other likeminded Great White sharks to participate in a carnal bacchanal, feasting together on baby seals in a bloody orgy.

On land, we have a name for this. The National Man Boy Love Association. I don’t know what the sharks call their “friendly get togethers” but we must immediately learn for if we don’t our own baby seals may fall victim to their sickly charm. Come read with me and let us learn what Great Britain’s leading scientific journal has to say about this perversion.

Great white sharks, long considered savage solo predators, may have their own grotesque versions of dinner parties.

Scientists have tracked the oceanic beasts routinely meeting up in the same groups to feast on baby seals together.

And they say the sharks form ‘distinct communities’ and spend time with the same comrades more often than they would if the meetings were random.

The discovery, by researchers at Macquarie University in Australia, turns theories about the sharks’ social inclinations on their head, the team said.

They had been watching almost 300 great white sharks off the country’s southern coast for four-and-a-half years.

Returning to feed at a seal nursery in the Neptune Islands, off the coast of Adelaide, the sharks appeared to meet up with purpose.

In the past the gatherings had been assumed to be random and simply a result of all the sharks going where they could find the most food.

And I simply cannot read anymore just like I couldn’t finish watching the film Call my by your Name.

Disgusting.

Absolutely disgusting.

Artist rendering of a Great White shark tenderizing a baby seal.
Artist rendering of a Great White shark tenderizing a baby seal.
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Breaking: World Surf League reveals “tremendous opportunity around how to monetise our fans!”

Hello, hardened purist.

World Surf League President of Content, Media, Studios and Big Mouth Burgers Erik “ELo” Logan gave a long and wonderful interview to the industry website SportsPro yesterday and it was so very elucidating. You know how difficult it is for us to peer over that Wall of Positive Noise no matter how we try. Almost impossible for The People™ to see the gilded wonderland beyond but thankfully SportsPro was there for us and so was ELo but almost not for, as he revealed, he nearly missed the interview due to “taking one too many extra waves this morning.”

Who he took them from was not shared.

Oh it is purely fascinating and I won’t even try to summarize. I’ll give you the view straight and without my breathless editorialization. Let’s dip our paddles right in.

On leaving Oprah to join the World Surf League: “As an active surfer myself, and a storyteller working for Oprah and others, I thought, ‘wow, what an amazing opportunity to take storytelling in the sport to a new level’. The idea around this is to be just a massive storytelling engine where we can connect the humanity and the power of surfing to the masses. What we’re creating on our platforms is this very broad diversity of ways to elevate and deepen engagement with the sport.”

On giving Gabriel Medina a voice: “I think it’s important to really note that the way we’ve approached it from a studio perspective is we view our athletes as partners. If we do our job right, we can make them bigger and more powerful stars globally. That not only benefits them, but when that happens it benefits the league and benefits the studio.”

On turning lead into gold: “Surfing is a universally accepted global sport, it’s a very personal sport because of the individual nature, and it’s always you against mother nature. Because of that alchemy for what exists in the ocean, it really gives a great arena for rich and layered stories.”

On getting rich or dying trying: “We think there’s a tremendous opportunity around how we can monetise our fans on a one-to-one basis incredibly well. We want to try to figure out the right way to do that. What a broader content offering does is allows us the opportunity to do it beyond just what our play-by-play rights could be. We see a very holistic ecosystem out there around the sport of surfing that is inclusive – not only content, but also acquired content, live play-by-play, ecommerce, endemic partnerships. We see a very robust horizon for us.”

On choosing either red or blue pills: “That matrix of rights, and that matrix of thought, in terms of how the league is maximising our rights and also growing our audience at the same time is what we and the ownership group are really talking about a lot. How that needle is threaded is one that we spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to figure out where we want to put those bets.”

On and on it goes and you must thread the needle through that robust horizon yourself but before we leave each other, I am beyond pleased, tickled even, to report that The Biggest Little Surf Website in the World, and its Longtom, snuck onto ELo’s stage. Shall we read together?

There are factions within the surfing community who have their doubts, however; in short, some hardened purists are not buying what the dapper, suit-wearing execs at the WSL are selling. One writer for the satirical surf outlet BeachGrit recently described the tour’s latest ventures in content as possessing ‘a schmaltz problem’, singling out Brilliant Corners, a slickly produced yet syrupy travel series hosted by former European longboard champion Sam Bleakley, as ‘very nice, very pretty and as obedient as a tame animal.’

Oooooeee! Hardened Purists! Maybe even better than Grumpy Locals!

We need t-shirts stat and I’ll inform you of when they’re available.

In the meantime, buy a regular ol satirical surf outlet one here!

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