Shocking: Little town right next door to Kelly Slater’s Lemoore Surf Ranch goes thirsty!

Sustainability at work!

As you most certainly know, California, home to Disneyland, Seaworld and Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, has/had been gripped by a devastating drought over the past many years. Rain does not fall upon this arid land, or at least not until last year when there was much rain but it did not fall everywhere evenly, particularly not in the state’s central valley. Those flat lands are our industrial breadbasket where cows guzzle much water and crops drink much water and World Surf League professionals/rich businessmen surf much water.

As you most likely know, Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch is a “sustainable” facility in that it serves chia seed pudding for breakfast, uses upcycled surfboard foam dust for paving stones, harnesses “wind” power to pull the massive train through that precious water which is, according to SF Gate, being “conserved.”

Boy howdy, I bet the good folk in Stratord, just six miles from Surf Ranch’s reclaimed wooden gates, are very envious of all that conserved water. I bet they sometimes ride their bikes up 19th street there and peer over that reclaimed wooden gate to watch Kelly Slater and pals splash and giggle and hoot.

I bet they ride their bikes home, tuck their wheezing, thirsty children into bed and sing ancient lullabies about the end of the world.

Load Comments

An open letter from a bodyboarder: “You whored out your culture and identity for money and now it’s being taken from you!”

"You sold your flagship companies to corporate raiders, your peak governing body to a New York billionaire, the very experience of riding waves to those celebrities and moneyed types who can cough up $80,000 for a day…"

Hi everybody, I’m a bodyboarder.

Remember me, I’m the guy you used to make fun of and hate, before you hated longboarders, hipsters, SUP riders, foil-boarders, SUP foil-boarders, VALs and anyone else you deem not as surfing core as you.

I started bodyboarding as a kid in the early nineties, right at the time in Australia that a non-surfing, now disgraced surf photographer stopped just short of calling for open violence against what was essentially a bunch of kids, because they were beginning to crowd up the lineup.

I copped the insults, the derision, the board flicks or “delayed” turns, the occasional punch or slap. Nobody, but nobody, was as cool as surfers in the eighties and nineties. And nobody but surfers were to be allowed into their self-nominated cool kid’s club.

You would sell the ideal and the image to non-surfers, confident that surfing itself was too tricky, took too much dedication, required too much skill and patience and daring and bravery and all the other glorious adjectives you assigned yourselves, for the poor exploited suckers you were marketing to too ever actually take up surfing itself.

The cool kids club mortgaged their image, their style, their language, and their culture out into the mainstream world, and grew rich and successful of the back of it.

Jimmy Slade on Baywatch, Quiksilver in Times Square, surf stores in Wagga Wagga.

You would sell the ideal and the image to non-surfers, confident that surfing itself was too tricky, took too much dedication, required too much skill and patience and daring and bravery and all the other glorious adjectives you assigned yourselves, for the poor exploited suckers you were marketing to too ever actually take up surfing itself.

They would have to make themselves content to just ape the aesthetic and hope that some of the cool kid’s club cultural credibility would rub off on them.

That was one of the big problems you had with bodyboarding. It let the masses short circuit the narrative, skip the years of skill acquisition and dedication required to join the lineup.

It gave those masses outside the cool kid’s club the opportunity to open the door and come in.

And you tried to push it back closed with the mockery and violence.

You sold your flagship companies to corporate raiders, your peak governing body to a New York billionaire, the very experience of riding waves to those celebrities and moneyed types who can cough up $80,000 for a day at your biggest identity’s wave park. You created Luxury boat charters for doctors and lawyers.

Now, the financial good times didn’t last forever, but the economic beast you’d created to fund your lifestyles still had to be fed. Maybe if you opened the door just a little and let only a select few, preferably with money, from the outside into the cool kids’ club, it would be ok.

So, you sold your flagship companies to corporate raiders, your peak governing body to a New York billionaire, the very experience of riding waves to those celebrities and moneyed types who can cough up $80,000 for a day at your biggest identity’s wave park. You created Luxury boat charters for doctors and lawyers.

European backpackers can own a little piece of replica heritage with longboards and fishes copied from surfing spiritual heyday for $1500 each.

And the cream on the top? You get to go to the Olympics!

But, here’s the thing.

Now that the door is open just a little, the masses of aspiring surfers you created by selling the cool kids club aesthetic want in.

The weight of numbers has become too much. They’re crowding up your favorite breaks, they’ve gain control of your governing bodies, they’re diluting and reshaping your culture, and recreating the cool kids’ club in their image.

The surf school graduates, the #Vanlife influencers, the VAL’s, the ELO’s, all those exploited but previously excluded, WANT IN.

The weight of numbers has become too much. They’re crowding up your favorite breaks, they’ve gain control of your governing bodies, they’re diluting and reshaping your culture, and recreating the cool kids’ club in their image.

They’re telling the world, “This is surfing now”.

You whored out your culture and identity for money and now it’s being taken from you.

The masses are coming for you again, but in this new age, you can’t respond with open mockery and violence against their assault anymore.

So, you wring your hands, try to give credence to “grumpy locals” as the only true voice of the cool kid’s club, create silly performance pieces about satirical insurgencies.

You’re trapped in a nightmare of your own making.

And I’m over here, watching all this unfold, reflecting on the choices the surfing world has made, the actions and the behaviours that have led you to this point, and thinking to myself, “He who laughs last, laughs longest”.

Enjoy your future, cool kids.

Load Comments

It's just like Santa's workshop!

Miracle: “It’s insane…” professional surfers gush “…to come to a pool and press a button and there’s world-class waves!”

Can you believe it?

There’s been a bumper crop of wave tanks coming online this month with two, Bristol and Melbourne, opening to the public already/very soon and only the grumpiest of locals isn’t slightly intrigued by these latest, both utilizing Cove technology. The pools’ ownership groups are, I’m sure, thrilled that all the heavy construction is over, water spigots turned off, last bolts tightened down. Now it is time for the money to come rolling in but first, an opening-day party.

Melbourne’s included such stars as Chris Hemsworth, Julian Wilson and Sally Fitzgibbons and let’s go straight to Australia’s 10 Daily for the absolute latest.

Australian Pro-Surfer Julian Wilson told media this morning that the surf park was pretty groundbreaking.

“It’s an exciting time. The waves are perfect and they’re on-demand, so I’m feeling pretty spoilt this morning.”

“We’re one of the strongest nations in the world for surfing so I think this should only help,” he said.

World number four Sally Fitzgibbons also shared Wilson’s praise for the park.

“It’s insane! To come to a pool and you press the button and there’s world-class waves just pumping through — there’s nothing better.”

“We needed this facility to keep up with the rest of the world,” she said.

Ok, I’m feeling a little worried about our professional surfers and not just because they don’t have basic human rights. I’m worried about them for having to continue to manufacture wild-eye’d excitement every time they attend a pool’s opening-day party. To over and over again have to gush, “No way! Unbelievable! Perfect waves at the push of a button!” etc. They’ve all seen and surfed many artificial waves now and I fear the expected reaction, bent slightly at the waist, mouth agape, gasping for air will lead to mental illness.

Are you feeling a little worried too?

Also, is Australia one of the strongest nations in the world for surfing?

Yeah?

Load Comments

Just in: Dem Prez Candidate Tulsi Gabbard interviewed by Vaughan and Jed on Ain’t That Swell!

And to hell with you, dirty ol muckraking Hillary Clinton!

Here’s something like an Obama-in-2007 moment.

Two weeks ago, Ain’t That Swell podcasters, Jed Smith and Vaughan Blakey, spent forty-five minutes on a Skype call to the wanna-be democratic nominee for the presidential race, Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard is a surfer, lives in Hawaii, loves to shred.

Vaughan woke up one morning to a DM saying, “Hey guys, love the show, love to come on sometime.”

Vaughan’s nostrils were almost fatally distended by the presidential perfume.

He replied,

Tulsi didn’t reply for a couple of months.

Vaughan thought he’d blown it.

Then, when he was putting together a “Power Women” show, featuring Jodie Cooper, he figured he’d give it another shot.

“She didn’t flinch, said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it right away’,” says Vaughan.

Couple of weeks went by while the call was set up (“I got the vibe they were checking me and Jed out to make sure we weren’t complete psychopaths”) before they connected.

Listening back to the interview, Vaughan says his voice is a whole octave higher than normal.

“I was fucking gushing, it’s hard for me to listen to,” he says. “Did we handle it well or not? It felt unfuckingbelievable that someone in her position, running for the job she’s going for fucking had a sense of humour and wanted to be part of what we’re doing.”

Tulsi performs well, she references other episodes of Ain’t That Swell and patiently remains silent as the broadcast is diverted by Jed on his many wonderful little rants.

“I got off the phone buzzing off my head,” says Vaughan.

The beauty of the interview, he says, and beyond anything, is the acknowledgement that there’s still a filament that connects people who surf.

“That accessibility to someone like her, it sounds weird to say, only came through surfing,” he says.

Listen here.

Load Comments

Summer Vacation: Great White shark loving photographer takes two-year-old daughter to visit “the politest predators on earth!”

"Most people think I have mental problems, clearly they are projecting their own fears and insecurities - I love that."

Oh child abuse is a many-splendored thing. It can make one man weep and yet another man sing but let’s be honest here, between us, between just you and me… is feeding a two-year-old baby girl to “man-eating” Great White sharks one step too far? A bridge across the river Kwai?

Please, don’t get me wrong, I love going on ill-advised adventures with small children, having just sailed to Mexico with a boatload plus zero permission slips from their mothers, and also know that Great White sharks generally man eat, not baby girl eat, but… still.

I feel disconcerted.

Stomach churned.

Off.

Maybe I’m just overly-sensitive. Maybe I’ve got the wrong idea and the young baby girl will go strong and viral but… I don’t know. Let’s read the serious Daily Star piece then discuss amongst ourselves.

One man’s campaign to get up close and personal with great white sharks has seen him take his young son and daughter diving with the deadly animals.

Andy Brandy Casagrande says sharks are often misunderstood, and humans need to respect them in order to coexist in the ocean. And cinematographer Andy has taken his son Ace, who’s six, and daughter Nova, who is just four, diving with the sharks to teach them all about the giant ocean predators.

“Sharks are the politest predators on Earth, but you also need to have a mutual respect with them,” Andy says.

“Most people think I have mental problems, clearly they are projecting their own fears and insecurities – I love that.”

With a career that spans over 20 years, it’s not hard to understand how Andy secures such eye-popping photographs, but what’s even more compelling is the relationship now being built between his children Ace and Nova and the ocean.

Great Whites are the world’s largest predatory fish and can weigh up to a staggering 357st.

They can tear an adult apart in a single bite.

But even their intimidating rows of over 300 razor-sharp teeth haven’t stopped Andy from introducing his kids to the king of the sea.

“We took our two kids Ace & Nova to see Great White Sharks – and even cage dive – at the ages of 2 and 4 years old in South Africa,” says Andy.

On and on the story goes but… I’m just going to come right out and say it. Why in the world did the Daily Star use an ampersand between Ace & Nova in a completely normal news story? Are Ace & Nova a brand?

A brand sold at Target or H & M?

I don’t think so.

It should be Ace and Nova but also Great White sharks eat people for breakfast. Especially people who have just taken up surfing.

They can smell fear of failure.

More as the story develops.

Load Comments