Bad parking etc.
And I am still coming to terms with the wonderful, the fantastic, the otherworldly end to our 2019 professional surfing season. Jaws delivering such a show then Pipeline, defying all odds, serving up the best final’s day since those ancient Peruvians, high on cocaine, first pushed their “little horses” into the waves (buy here).
Everyone, every single man, woman and child across the entire globe celebrating the week. Not one person, outside the extended Medina family, mad.
No?
Apparently.
For rage, pure angry rage, is coursing through the usually good-natured island of Maui and directed at the World Surf League over the aforementioned Big Wave Championships but don’t take my word for it, please. Let us turn to the well-respected San Francisco Chronicle for all the juicy details.
A World Surf League competition has drawn complaints of trespassing, blocked roads and parking overflow from Maui residents.
Residents near Peahi on the island’s north shore issued the complaints about the 2019 Jaws Big Wave Championships event Dec. 12, The Maui News reported Thursday.
Residents of the main access road to the event for both drivers and spectators said traffic was backed up due to minimal parking options, construction and spectator street crossings, while some roads were blocked.
On the piece goes, growling locals sneering at our WSL. Santa Monica’s response?
The World Surf League said it has prior knowledge of the start date and event details, but cannot predict attendance at the free event.
“While we control all access to the event venue because it is on private property, we were not able to control the County of Maui-owned land where all the spectators gathered,” spokesperson Lauren Rolland said.
Resident Kolette Gunnison believes the surfing league should be responsible for ensuring road safety.
“Everybody knows that there’s traffic and the worst part about it is the pedestrians in the street, bad parking, cars are sticking out,” Gunnison said. “It’s just the danger factor of it all.”
Hmmmmm.
I’m going to side with the WSL here. Grouchy neighbors are lame.
No?
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Surf contests = some scam dreamed up by a bunch of surf bums so they could make a couple bucks for food and not have to get a job and now it’s morphed into this..lol…suckers
If you lived here, worked here, and tried to drive you would understand. The same thing happens everytime a big swell comes in. The tourists block the roads, with complete disregard for safety, laws, or private property.
The highly respected San Fransisco Chronicle should focus on publishing their defication maps and alerts and stay away from Hawaii
Crybabies!!!
Ancient Peruvians high on cocaine?
I think you must’ve been high on cocaine to write such an ignorant remark!
Wave pools will solve this.
My guess is you don’t own property
This is what happens when surfing becomes a corporate owned sport.. Its all about money, turnout and environmental damage becomes inevidable…Its not the best kept secret anymore and its not intimate either…Bunch of kooks show up and now its a 3 ringed circus…
Chas, when are you going to update the story of the bloke with the sun burnt anus?
Don’t tell Kelly!
Dive deeper:
https://www.mauinews.com/ne…
Nah, but it’s really tricky to light.
Italo can smooth things over – the People’s Champion™
If Caio Ibelli was driving around in Brazil minding his own business and Medina pulls out in front, causing heavy braking and a near collision. Who can we blame?? Charlie maybe, 89…. Elo
“Fuck the WSL.” – ND
Surely the WSL just needs to send over Turpel to laugh and giggle with the grouchy neighbor. Could be a nice way to re-assign him
The locals have every right to be mad. Time to move the event to Kauai.
Guaranteed a warm welcome there
Perhaps they could have an inter island ferry or something to bring spectators over from Oahu.
No waves there so possibly more parking ?
Is that the Aloha spirit? Sounds more like the New Yorker spirit to me.
is there more spectators for the event than there is during a big swell? do people actually make plans to go and watch a surfing competition? this is all news to me. I always just assumed competition spectators were friends/family of contestants, inquisitive locals or tourists who were in the area anyway. it has never occurred to me that people would actually plan a trip to see a surfing comp. does this really happen?
My mate a former national champ in possibly 7 divisions over a 40 year period goes religiously every year to watch the first CT event of the year at Snapper …. possibly because his in-laws have had a holiday unit on the hill overlooking the site since forever ?
thanks Jimmy. that explains 1 spectator.
I forgot to add that he is a mentor to a kid from our club who is back on the CT this year . So he may not count as a true spectator ?
This happens a lot Phat. Heaps of families with keen groms of both genders plan holidays around that Snapper event. Likewise at Bells, I’ve met third generations of Bells attendees. Less so at Pipe as Huli Opu suggests, though there’s a lot of quite knowledgeable spectators there, polite clapping at good-show surfing etc. I generally like crowds at surf contests, they’re never that huge and they’re nowhere near as retarded as the bleacher fans at football games etc. A lot of the time they’re just enjoying a day at the beach.
thanks Nick. during the coverage of Pipe the booth suggested that a lot of fans (international) had made their way there for the event. found it hard believe that it would be anything other than surf fans who happened to be on holidays anyway. couldn’t imagine there would be anything on the level of die hard footy fans who drag the family to Melbourne for the grand final so they see dad call the referee a blind cunt and then weep when his team loses. but I am pretty out of touch with comings and goings around a contest site.
ha ha I’d be pretty surprised if anyone from the booth spent any time wandering around in the crowd talking with people at random, I did a fair bit of that especially with anyone who seemed vaguely Brazilian and most of them were in Hawaii anyway. I,d say the vast majority of people who travelled to the North Shore deliberately for the events were people with professional commitments to those events – pros, WSL staff, surf company staff, media etc etc.
What’s quite hard to tell without proper research is the knock on effect of these events on the tourism profile of the area, like how many people are helped toward making Hawaii a travel destination by what they see and hear of the North Shore winter surf.
Aloha Phats. You’re fairly right. What you see on the beach at the comps in Hawaii is prob 70% tourists 20% competition family, friends and 10% the rest. The hotels and tourists get wind of the comps and then rush to where it’s happening. We’re always stuffed to the gills anyway with tourists 24/7/365 but ya can’t blame tourists for wanting to watch live. Most of those complainers on Maui are rich blow-in trust fund babies who have bought up everything out there in Haiku. There’s barely any locals or Hawaiians left on Maui. It’s mostly kook haole and recent immigrant Filipino service workers for the hotels.
Peahi is unique and I don’t think that WSL would get a free pass at Ho`okipa. WSL can’t risk losing Honolua either. I think that’s why there’s no mens event there.
Phats, there’s one narrow two lane road around the island. If you try to get into Paia, the small town on the way to Pe’ahi, at the wrong time of any day, you’ll be traffic jammed for 45 minutes.
Just getting to the supermarket is a nightmare.
Once there’s a big swell running, all the West side hotels tell their guests to go check it out, it’s like Maude and Claude have struck gold on their annual vacation
Great opportunity to for a local to stand on a corner and sell copies of a book about cocaine and surfers
(buy here)
Or Beach Grit t-shirts
Smoke Billy’s
Hemp err !
brah that’s funny cause get one local bruddah who sells from the side of the highway near Peahi with a sign that says Uncle Billy’s Smoke Goat Meat
Finally, my three years as a deep undercover narc on this site has paid off. Bruddah gwan down!
Rainbow bridge must be open ….. giggles
Great opportunity too , for a local to stand on a corner and sell …. Cocaine to Surfers ?
In the 80’s for sure.
In 89 I was tapping my atm card getting ready to pay for a round after our ice hockey game at next to Aloha stadium and a team mate said it was the north shore mating call. Thought it was funny.
I reckon some of those Akai bowls everybody in Cali talks about might be the go.
MCT oil? A cold, overpriced Balter maybe?
Or start a protest and get that Patagonia sponsorship
Lame
Given the current situation in this neck of the woods, a solution has presented itself. Should the grumpy neighbour decide things are too much, just throw a match in the underbrush*. Those light Maui winds should push the growing fire in the direction of the contest forcing the rude and inconsiderate spectators to jump into the surging ocean off the rocks and clearing out the contest infrastructure. Imagine how fast the wsl studio set would burn up.
*Please don’t do this, it’s not cool.
WCL ? World Coasteering League ….. might have to put it on the back burner now that PM Morrison’s Hawaiian Holiday got cut short …..Funny as it may seem to the average punter who may think the Xmas holiday period is sacred , it was common for me to work over Xmas , on the tools or behind the bar even though I was not elected by the people to lead the country , especially in a crisis ! Reminds me of Laws and Jones complaining about people like myself at Darling Harbour ,during the construction period , not working hard enough , from the windows of their Ivory Towers in the 80s …. except during their 6 week summer school holiday , and the other school holidays because they were on holidays ( no ratings no Laws or Jones ) pot calling the kettle black ? K#ntz !
Scomo
You don’t want him.
Now you want him.
Fuking lefties can’t make up their mind let alone a government.
Don’t worry Bex, I’m writing a hit song about the past week’s and other events. The chorus goes:
I’m a happy clapper
I shat myself at Maccas
If the economy was burning
I would have been returning
You get the vibe. It’s currently titled; ‘Ode to Bex’
Sounds like number one with a bullet on triple jays lamest 100
Mate, if Triple J are interested in it, I’ll supply the bullets.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
My favorite
https://youtu.be/MOuwzYTfqEA
That’s ok . As long as they at least try to keep the bastards honest …..
The other day I looked out of my window and saw a ups And garbage truck totally block my road for about 15 minutes. Traffic backed up a few hundred meters in both directions. It was excellent entertainment. I blame the WoSuLe.
WSL PURE garbage …. trucks , could be skater Kris Coat A’s fault ……
If it was blocking the road because it did a handbrake slide into a spot and the driver was calculating the real number of degrees transversed, sure, it’s possible.
540 degrees of separation
Only this morning I was stuck behind a pick-up truck on the Kam Hwy with a Wavestorm in the back. This was clearly the WSL’s fault
I’d say 50% WSL’s fault. Now, if you were stuck behind a Jeep w/ a Wavestorm sticking out the sunroof? 100% on them.
I block Ibelli , I block the roads …….
I blame the WSL’s Ambassador of Slow-Poke for not taking the helicopter like Magnum PI ? Everytime I saw him during the triple crown I prayed to the Gods that he would jump out of the helicopter and liberate himself ……. without a parachute …. giggles
This morning I was blocked up for about 15 minutes. I blame the WSL.
There’s a traffic light here in Newy where you can legally turn right but if you do, it blocks everyone else behind who just wish to go straight through.
Since this this right turn vaguely points to the beach, I’m blaming the WSL.
You mean the one at Scott and Watt that used to be two lanes AND no right turn but is now one lane with right turn allowed? So fucked
Glebe / Railway.