President Erik Logan (pictured) sad that he lost his instructions on how to build IKEA's Flärdfull.
President Erik Logan (pictured) sad that he lost his instructions on how to build IKEA's Flärdfull.

Sweded: IKEA and WSL team up for “a line of products catered to you, the surfers and ocean enthusiasts of the world!”

Exciting days.

And it’s as if the World Surf League’s Santa Monica best-n-brightest including, but not limited to, Co-Waterperson of the Year Dirk Ziff, President Erik Logan and one-time Pottery Barn aficionado Kelly Slater sat down this morning, watched my not very hinged rant then said, “You don’t like corporate stupidity and absurdist greenwashing? Mic drop, skinny bitch.”

Boy oh boy, it was a dis track that may never be topped but have you not read the news? Have you not read that Swedish disposable furniture giant IKEA has teamed up with the WSL for… “a line of products catered to you, the surfers and ocean enthusiasts of the world” announced four months ago but stumbled out again today?

I have no idea what that sentence means but let’s head straight to the press release for much, much, maybe more.

WSL & IKEA are collaborating, and we want your input!

World Surf League and IKEA have partnered to create a line of products catered to you, the surfers and ocean enthusiasts of the world!

We want you to be a part of the process, helping us develop products that not only suit your lifestyle, but are better for people, the planet and society.

I clicked on the survey but couldn’t be bothered to take it.

Will you?

Also, who has a cuter bedroom, Co-Waterperson of the Year Dirk Ziff, President Erik Logan or one-time Pottery Barn aficionado Kelly Slater?

Argue now!

Sweded.
Sweded.
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Bodyboarder fight at Pipe goes nuke: “I’m a lazy motherf**ker, I’d rather just cut him up!”

Latest news from the North Shore etc.

In news from the eleven kilometre miracle, two Puerto Rican bodyboarders have squared up on the beach at Pipeline, with one determinedly holding what appears to be a little dagger.

The two bodyboarders do a lot of yelling and the show continues until a cop, in classic Hawaiian style, shuts it down by telling ’em it’s okay to scrap, but not to stab.

BeachGrit’s couple of sources say the episode started in the water when Lucas Godfrey, a noted Pipe charger and sometime star of Jamie O’Brien’s excellent blog series, collided with one of ’em as he attempted to go Backdoor, the bodyboarder, Pipe.

Words were thrown into the air, nothing serious, not a wave you’re going to throw a punch over.

Godfrey paddled away.

Then, according to our sources, another bodyboarder paddled over and started beating hell into the bodyboarder that collided with Godfrey.

“It was obvious they knew each other,” said a source who paddled in at the same time. “It was like a soap opera. It had nothing to do with surfing, in my opinion.”

On the beach, a witness called the cops and told ’em a knife had been pulled.

The cop arrived and, says our source, the bodyboarder “was talking to him bluntly, candidly, like a gangster, saying, ‘I’m a lazy motherfucker, I’d rather just cut him.’ The cop was, like, ‘You can’t be a sore loser and pull out a knife. That’s a whole other level of trouble.'”

Fight fizzed out. No injuries reported.

Watch here.

 

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Watch: “Core surfers boiled in tank of corporate stupidity and absurdist greenwashing!”

Let's bring the Grit to politics, to culture, to movies. Let's smear Grit everywhere!

In the depths of despair, I received a revelation. A quiet whisper barely audible over the muted grunts of professional surfers locked into silent bondage.

“Smear grit all over the world…” is what I heard. “Smear grit where it doesn’t belong.”

“What?” I shouted. “Smear grit where?”

But did not get any response.

I pondered the meaning for hours and hours before understanding the meaning.

Surfers, core surfers, boiled in a tank of corporate stupidity, World Surf League storytelling, absurdist greenwashing and Kelly Slater conspiracy have become so purified of any pretense, any wrongly elevated sense of self, any pride whatsoever.

Surfers, core surfers, boiled in a tank of corporate stupidity, World Surf League storytelling, absurdist greenwashing and Kelly Slater conspiracy have become so purified of any pretense, any wrongly elevated sense of self, any pride whatsoever.

We, but mostly you, are Buddha-like.

And we, but mostly you, will usher in a utopian dawn by chatting about various situations only tangentially related to surfing. By applying our selfless minds to all manner of this and that.

We owe the world our gift.

Also, have you been watching Haleiwa?

Every year the Vans Triple Crown rolls around, every year I think, “This year I should really care,” every year I don’t.

Maybe we fix that first then move to the plight of the Rohingya.

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JP Currie on quit-lit: “Better to disappear on the piss and burn like a flare all weekend than fizzle like a damp sparkler in a crumbling, onshore rivermouth!’

The question isn't why would you quit surfing but why… wouldn't… you?

(Editor’s note: this story by Scottish writer JP Currie is a riposte to Longtom’s piece from three days ago, I renounce Quit-Lit; why should we cede the space to the VAL hordes?”)

Spent last night in the back of my van. It was cold, far from restful, despite the fact I was in bed by 1900. Nowt else to do this far from home, at this time of year.

The dog provided some smelly warmth against the minus temperatures, but this was offset by his restlessness during the night, scraping the covers off me. Something outside in the icy blackness was bothering him. I never found out what.

At some point in the night I had picked up my phone. I read a piece by Longtom, renouncing Quit Lit. I watched the steam from my breath swirl in the screen’s glow. I wondered if the kids were sleeping ok. The baby had been coughing and wheezing all week.

At five am I went for a piss.

My bare feet burned on the frozen ground. It was barely light, but I could already hear the swell had disappeared, in spite of the forecast. The wind had picked up, too.

Northerly. Bitter. The two-degree air felt colder.

I drove.

Couldn’t even find the motivation to make coffee first. I checked a few other spots. Nothing doing. Ended up surfing a crumbly weird rivermouth. It only really works for an hour either side of high tide at the best of times, but it wasn’t even doing that. Not worth putting on the sodding wetsuit that had been sitting in a plastic bucket all night. Or the boots, or the gloves.

I left home at five am Saturday morning. Got back after eight pm Sunday. Drove more than four hundred miles. Best part of £100 on fuel. Surfed maybe four hours all in.

Can’t remember any turns. Whole weekend gone.

Tough to justify when the kids are at home. They’re just babies, too. Lot going on. Lots of changes, lots of stages. I haven’t been around much through the week. Work has been stressful, I’ve been checked out a lot.

Struggling, not doing things I need to.

Thought a weekend away surfing would be the fix. I’d come back feeling refreshed, feeling something.

Sometimes, in the heat of an argument, I’ll hold myself up against some of the other dads I know. The ones that go to the football on Saturday morning, then disappear on the piss til Sunday night.

Or my mates who’re still hitting the pills and the ket on the regular, into their forties. It’s not Trainspotting, but it’s not not either.

But neither are fair comparisons. They’re socialising, probably having a hell time. Sure, Mondays will be tough, maybe Wednesdays too.

But better to burn all weekend like a flare than fizzle like a damp sparkler in a crumbling, onshore rivermouth.

What Longtom wrote resonated for me this morning. The lack of context reminded me that no-one else really gets it. Each to their own.

Comments below buzz with perplexed temperate participants, like wasps trapped in a jar.
Man up and get on with it!
Fuck quitting! 
Why would you ever quit surfing?! 
The question is: why continue?
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Longtom: “Can the WSL crib the UFC playbook and fatten for sale?”

"If there is one thing the WSL should copy it's that sense of a sport, that even as it's grown massive, hasn't sold out the vital interests of its fan base."

So, the WSL is gunna run a reality TV show called Ultimate Surfer, based on the ultra-successful UFC franchise, and we need to find, as Chas has suggested, our hero.

This pivot has been a long time coming.

Are you surprised, like me, it took so long?

Worthy, I think to analyse this new direction and put some scaffolding around the idea beyond the breathless press releases.

No doubt UFC is the business and business model the WSL seeks to emulate. No secrets there, they bought on former UFC exec Joe Carr in 2017 to drive business development.

Carr was best known for driving the sale of UFC to WME-IMG for $4.2 billion. Yep, billion. A tasty prospect for Ziff, who got the ASP for nix.

Are there parallels?

Can the wozzle crib the UFC playbook and fatten for sale?

Joe Carr said in a 2017 interview he sees a “ton of parallels between both companies”. It took him two years to get there but he foresaw back in 2017 that the Kelly Tub would offer content creation opportunities like “reality programming and social media possibilities”.

The UFC itself was a loss-making business, described as human cockfighting, banned in many states when it launched its own reality series, The Ultimate Fighter. The premise of this show was simple enough for anyone, of any country and background to understand. Fight your way through a tournament and get a six figure UFC contract as prize.

The Ultimate Fighter has been a stunning success. MMA historians say the final fight of the first series in 2005, between Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar rescued the entire UFC franchise and catapulted it into public consciousness.

That was well before my time, my introduction to the sport came at the hands of the late great Brazilian tube maestro Ricardo Dos Santos. Down by Teahupoo’s boat harbour the young Brazilian and I shared some space and tube-riding sessions were the only thing able to get him off the screen watching MMA.

It was the era of Anderson Silva, and Dos Santos talked me through his greatness.

The parallels, of course, between the Brazilian toying with opponents in the the ring and Slater toying with the tube were obvious.

The UFC has the inbuilt advantage of an inexhaustible supply of interesting stories. Larger than life tough nuts like Tony Ferguson, Connor McGregor, Khabib Nurmogomedov make our middle-class Norte Americano surfers look one dimensional and insufferably tepid.

Absent Slater the WSL Mic’ed Up series has been a snooze fest. The Australian working-class story died with the retirements of Parkinson and Fanning. Coastal real estate prices saw to that.

UFC did experience huge growth post TUF. Multi-billion dollar sale, multi-million dollar broadcast deals with ESPN.

The WSL is trading in smoke and mirrors, hoping enough softball interviews where they pump their own tyres might create its own reality.

“Our growth over the last four or five years has been exponential,” said Erik Logan in his recent Sportspromedia interview, but he’d say the same thing to his cat every morning.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Finnegan, by contrast, began his long form reportage into the inaugural Surf Ranch pro having to establish the existence of Kelly Slater from scratch because there was zero brand awareness of him in New York City.

When your greatest of all time is an unknown with no reco in the Big Apple then you’re light years away from the mainstream.

UFC has other advantages apart from the visibility of genuine superstars like McGregor and Khabib and even the vanquished Rhonda Rousey. They control their whole biz from top to bottom, like WSL, but they ain’t strictly bound by the conventions of a true sport.

They can operate in a pure entertainment space, making blockbuster fights where and with who they choose. No CT schedule or QS grind to navigate. If they want to match up two crowd favourites, like Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz, invent a whole new made up belt called the Baddest Motherfucker and stage a card at Madison Square Garden they can.

And they did.

Could pro surfing do the same? Match up John John Florence and Gabriel Medina at ten-foot NoKanduis and live stream it for some imaginary title? We seemed to be on that path with the rumoured tour restructure, but that future looks further away than ever.

Lets not compare UFC pressers with WSL pressers, because one organisation has elevated the presser to a near artform and the other just serves up mashed banana.

It is worth noting the difference in leadership.

If there is one thing the WSL should copy it’s that sense of a sport, that even as it’s grown massive, hasn’t sold out the vital interests of its fan base. Dana is all over it, every day whilst we might get a glimpse of Sophie scurrying around behind the scenes on the webcast and a corpo-speak press release every six months.

Dana White, the UFC Prez, has been there since Day One and continues to steer the brutal sport of cage fighting. In a sense, he’s almost the polar opposite of our Sophie G. Knows the game intimately, is highly visible and accessible to the press.

Fully accountable, manages the sport for the benefit of the fans.

If there is one thing the WSL should copy it’s that sense of a sport, that even as it’s grown massive, hasn’t sold out the vital interests of its fan base. Dana is all over it, every day whilst we might get a glimpse of Sophie scurrying around behind the scenes on the webcast and a corpo-speak press release every six months.

We have a ready-made Dana White waiting in the wings and his name is Kelly Slater. Not that Kelly would do the right thing, but at least we know, that if followed his instincts, he knows what direction to head in.

The other great impediment facing WSL in following the UFC to the path of mainstream acceptance and riches is its embrace of woke culture, particularly greenwashing.

You can see the thinking and the desire to get out ahead of the curve, but when the rhetoric don’t match the reality all you are creating is what I believe they term in corpo-speak: “reputational risk”.

“It’s always you against mother nature,” Elo gushes in the sportspro story. “Because of that alchemy for what exists in the ocean, it really gives a great arena for rich and layered stories.”

But you put the reality series in the Tub Elo, a hundred miles from the ocean.

The WSL claims to become carbon neutral in 2019, but makes no mention of offsetting the immense carbon footprint of building a massive wavepool development on a Queensland floodplain nor attempting to deal with the Q’ey. To have some credibility in this space, Ziff would have to buy Brazil and reforest the Amazon to account for the carbon footprint at current rates.

See what I mean?

The WSL claims to become carbon neutral in 2019, but makes no mention of offsetting the immense carbon footprint of building a massive wavepool development on a Queensland floodplain nor attempting to deal with the Q’ey.

To have some credibility in this space, Ziff would have to buy Brazil and reforest the Amazon to account for the carbon footprint at current rates.

Will they stick with the green direction? Probably.

Will a sceptical public buy it? Probs not.

Is that bad faith criticism or realistic observations? Tell me where I’m being too harsh.

You can see, in this Age of the Storyteller phase of the WSL why they would want what the UFC has.

Money, broadcast rights, huge fan base.

What we can’t see is how this latest gimmick gets ’em any closer to it.

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