Longtom and the case for the WSL’s billion-dollar wavepool development Part III: “What can’t be denied are the jobs and growth!”

We are too deep down the rabbit hole now, it's simply too late to stop. The people need somewhere to live, something to do for work and somewhere to shred. It really is that simple.

My head is full of nonsense, so I’m grateful to the greater wisdom of the crowd here.

I think Chas got that very much right in his latest vid – surfers can solve world historical problems. Vis-à-vis wavepools, we’ve now collectively come to the conclusion that the Kelly Slater Wave Company, with its “wave system” as Dear Sophie calls it, is a tougher nut to crack, at least as far as the dollars and cents go, than we all thought during those heady days of Xmas 2015.

The big-buck corpo model works, but only in shitsville where land and water is cheap.

In Australia, still the surfing centre of the world, wavepools only work near people and people live in cities.

Coastal land is expensive, unless it goes ten foot under water when it rains and you are pairing it with massive urban development and, well, here we are.

It would be remiss of us though, in this new post-sport phase of the WSL, if we didn’t at least take the corpo spin at face value and take a look at the case for.

Me and Starky will go man-on-man about this when the dust settles. No soft shoe shuffle. His interests are advancing the real estate concerns of American billionaires and Australian property moguls and mine are, not.

I’m sure we will get on fine. Couple of UQ boardriders good ole boys.

In the interim, we can walk a mile in his shoes. You put the x’s and o’s into the equation and you get a fuck-ton of money going into a piece of land that made pennies to the dollar growing cane.

Huge money. Fifteen hundred houses is huge.

I went down to the local monstrosity, what was once a serene sward of green where cows grazed and a reservoir of cool morning air fanned a mile of occasionally epic beachbreaks is now an angry red mess of machines and dirt.

Two hundred houses. Tiny by comparison.

What can’t be denied is the jobs and growth. All the excavator drivers, surveyors, engineers, planners, landcapers for the little real-estate showroom. All turning a dollar from a piece of land and the dream of surf. That’s before the chippies and plumbers and sparkies and tilers and kitchen consultants and interior decorators etc get in there.

What can’t be denied is the jobs and growth. All the excavator drivers, surveyors, engineers, planners, landcapers for the little real-estate showroom.

All turning a dollar from a piece of land and the dream of surf. That’s before the chippies and plumbers and sparkies and tilers and kitchen consultants and interior decorators etc get in there.

McMansions, tastefully done. Plenty of toys in the garage. Modern, convenient, the subject of profile pieces and a million insta-perfect shots.

Coolum will be the same. And looking at it with Hegelian eyes, it really is the ultimate expression of freedom.

Human spiritual reality has transcended and freed itself of nature and is something separate and different. That’s roughly paraphrasing the old Kraut, but close enough to the gist of it.

Trophy tradie wife get the dream house, a little day-time dabble in anti-vax conspiracy on the side and Hubby gets his go-outs in the tub, a few sly bumps over at Damo’s house on the weekend.

Did you know Starky promised the people of Coolum a school on site? I hope that is a proper pinkie promise, because mad if true.

Imagine little Blayde and Jacxen and Bakardee wik-wakking all over the first few warm-up waves at the tub before school and maybe even surfing it for school sport.

Too much, right?

Sure, Mum and Dad will be hocked up to the eyeballs. This is Australia. But property. Equity. With a wavepool!

As Don O’Rorke said, “It is a simple sum – the only thing that drags down property growth is when there is no population growth.”

Australia is growing like billy-o. Unlike Europe and Asia and the Americas you can’t live in the middle, which means all the people will have to live at the coast. Even ten- foot under water Don’s places at Coolum will be worth a squillion.

Coolum is not New Orleans.

No, we are too deep down the rabbit hole now, it’s simply too late to stop. The people need somewhere to live, something to do for work and somewhere to shred. It really is that simple.

The wavepool development is an elegant solution to that problem. It makes Don O’Rorke a shed load of cash and, if WSL doesn’t fuck up the due diligence, gets them on the same path.

There really is no money in pro surfing, so if they can siphon off the real estate money we might continue to get our yearly World Champions.

You think I’m mocking. I’m not mocking.

OK. But, what do you think? I can hear someone ask.

My dream, just a little bit different to Starky’s in the details, is that the state govt under SARA compulsorily acquires the land, revegetates it back to pristine wetland with a small army of dole bludgers, names an endangered frog after Kelly Slater and WSL jumps on board the Blue Heart thing. Don O’Rorke donates a parcel of contaminated industrial land near the airport for the Slater pool and we all live happily ever after.

Yeah, not gunna happen.

Surely we’ve all got wavepool fatigue by now?

Don’t know about you but I am Un Chien Andalou*.

*Debased, pretty much.


Surfin' Santa (pictured)
Surfin' Santa (pictured)

Breaking: Retail giant Walmart forced to apologize over Christmas sweater featuring “surf-like” Santa Claus preparing a tableful of cocaine!

Just in time for the Pipe Masters!

We all know what the surfer’s drug of choice is. The one that most mirrors her wayward heart. The one that replicates his insatiable appetite in the water on land. It’s a love story (buy here) and in an apparent attempt to corner the elusive Christmas surf market retail giant Walmart offered a “surf-like” Santa Claus preparing a tableful of cocaine over the words “Let it snow.”

The sweater has, unfortunately, been removed from Walmart’s offerings and let us turn to People magazine for more.

The sweater’s description on the website read, “We all know how snow works. It’s white, powdery and the best snow comes straight from South America. That’s bad news for jolly old St. Nick, who lives far away in the North Pole.”

After the sweater was mocked and criticized on social media, Walmart issued an apology to Canadian news organization The Global News.

“These sweaters, sold by a third-party seller on Walmart.ca, do not represent Walmart’s values and have no place on our website,” the statement said. “We have removed these products from our marketplace. We apologize for any unintended offence this may have caused.”

The sweater, which was made by clothing company FUN Wear, is no longer available on Walmart’s website.

My question is, how will Walmart now corner the elusive Christmas surf market?

How will the executives hope to outfox gift idea geniuses at The Inertia?

More as the story develops.


Finn McGill knifing real pretty four-to-six-foot Pipe at the Trials.

Comment Live: Pipe Masters in Memory of Andy Irons trails i.e. Pipe Invitational!

The storm before the calm!

Today is almost the beginning of non-elimination heat surfing. Excited? You should be. Hawaiians are in the water vying for the two spots that have been carved down from fifteen, or something, a few years ago.

An absolute gutting.

I loved those older times, when Hawaiians, born and bred at Pipeline and/or Kauai, would run Champion Tour surfers up and down the reef. Scaring them into oblivion. Now these Hawaiians have their own “event” called the Pipe Invitational which feels a bit like an interment camp.

Does it not?

A representative from the World Surf League once told me, directly after the absolute gutting, that if I actually looked at the heat scores during those robust Hawaiian years, I would see most of them losing in early rounds and none of them really affecting much of anything.

Rude.

For surfing is what we feel in our hearts, not numbers that appear on bland pieces of paper.

No?

In any case, enjoy the show here but don’t forget to leave li’l ol’ BeachGrit open so you can be amongst friends for we do not know what the World Surf League is capable of. First they came for the Hawaiians, and I did not speak out — because I wasn’t Hawaiian.

Etc.


Selfless hero: Filipino surfer opts to save competitor from drowning instead of winning gold in Southeast Asian Games!

Come read the tale of Roger Casugay!

And have you ever done anything heroic or, at the very least, imagined yourself doing something heroic? I think it is human nature to picture ourselves at the very nexus of some colossal event. A hurricane blowing through town and access to Ol’ Doc Marten’s place has been washed out but we, fearlessly, grab our surfboards, paddle in and save the day. A child has climbed too high into a tree but we, bravely, climb up afterward, put the quivering youngster on our strong backs and, again, save the day.

Yes, we would all be great assets in/around any tragedy or high-stakes moment but what if there was also a gold medal on the line? What if saving the day also meant losing? Would we be that quick, that… selfless?

And let us meet true hero Roger Casugay from the Philippines. Let us study an example of good, proper decision making.

Filipino surfer Roger Casugay earned the Philippines its first-ever gold medal in surfing at the Southeast Asian Games today (Dec. 8). But even before winning the men’s longboard competition, the 25-year-old athlete was already heralded as the event’s hero for an unselfish act during a semi-final round last week.

Casugay was leading a one-on-one race against Indonesian surfer Arip Nurhidayat Friday (Dec. 6) when he noticed that Nurhidayat broke his ankle leash and was swept by towering waves at Monaliza Point, La Union in northern Philippines. Typhoon Kammuri (called Tisoy locally) has made conditions challenging at the 30th edition of the biennial sporting event.

Casugay, a surfing instructor, paddled back to Nurhidayat and helped him back to shore. Spectator Jefferson Ganuelas described the scene on Facebook, noting Casugay “rescued him not minding the ongoing race for gold medal.”

Sports fans—including many Indonesians on Twitter—are calling Casugay a hero, a title he’s uneasy with. “No, I’m not a hero,” he said to Rappler. “I didn’t really save him from drowning. He is a good swimmer. I just calmed him down.”

“We have a brotherhood in surfing,” he told CNN. “If someone needs help, you go. I didn’t think about winning and [am] just relieved that we were both safe. We were overjoyed when we reached the shore.”

Well, I guess the selfless hero won a gold medal anyhow and see? We should always be very dubious when served up a theoretical either/or. We should point to Roger Casugay and say, “Both.”

 


Are you the new custodian of Wayne Lynch's North Coast spread?

Gimme: Surf-prodigy-turned-master-shaper’s $3 million beach-mountain hideaway!

A backyard waterfall and your own environmentally friendly shaping room…

If you wanna buy real estate, pick a beach you wanna surf and buy as big a hunk of dirt as close to it as you can. Prices will dip, spike, and they’ll plateau, but over the years it’ll turn into a bankroll that’ll get you through your harvest years.

Lifestyle and cash? Who knew it was that easy.

Wayne Lynch, the child prodigy of the sixties whose backside jams in the movie Evolution were roughly 12 years ahead of the rest of the world, bought four-and-a-half hectares on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, sold it for a little under four-mill five years ago and moved to a beach-mountain hideaway just behind Byron Bay.

Now that prime piece of fine dirt with a nearby waterfall that’ll hold you spellbound for many hours or provide a scenic backdrop for self-portraits is for sale for a little under three-million Australian dollars.

Two hundred and thirty-one Frasers Road, Mullumbimby even comes with its own shaping room.

Make boards like Wayne.

Put on your raincoat, the real-estate spiel is about to rain down.

Diverse topography, rolling green slopes, lush rainforest with old growth trees backing onto a National Park. Two permanent drought proof spring fed dams, plus generous creekfront.

Backyard waterfall.

The comfortable ranch style home offers an easy living floor plan flowing out to covered outdoor areas. Relax and soak in the ambience of this unique place. Take a dip in the inground saltwater pool to keep cool on those hot summer days and enjoy the captivating views.

Comfortable, ranch-style home.

Spacious open plan kitchen and dining, plus two light filled living areas, four bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Away from the home with its own access is the working hub of three fantastic sheds boasting 5KVA of high quality solar power. The Australian Hall of Fame Inductee owner and world champion surfer has designed and created an environment friendly shaping room for producing his sought after unique custom made surfboards. Its an inspiring and tranquil work setting.

The perfect spot to observe the weather, build some cabins, (STCA), improve the acre (approx) of permaculture garden or if you have a helicopter, theres room for a helipad! The options are endless.

Within 15 minutes from the colourful and relaxed town of Mullumbimby and less than ½ hour from the beaches of Byron Shire. Gold Coast airport is only 52 mins away.

Book your inspection here.