"Since the wild dust storm rained mud on us last
night, our dedicated crew of facilities technicians, divers,
robotic vacuum cleaners, sweepers and even lifeguards have been
scrubbing non-stop…"
Pool surfers’ lives are in tatters this morning after it
was revealed Australia’s first commercial wave pool would remain
closed after freak “mud rain” that left the facility with
a brown tank.
From Urbnsurf,
Since the wild dust storm rained mud on us last night, our
dedicated crew of facilities technicians, divers, robotic vacuum
cleaners, sweepers and even lifeguards have been scrubbing non-stop
to return our surfing lagoon to its usual crystal-blue state.
Regrettably (due to the thick nature of the dust) we’re still hard
at work cleaning our lagoon, and in the interests of our guests’
health and safety, @urbnsurf#melbourne
will be closed tomorrow, Friday 24 January 2020.
An act of God that must’ve taken the joint’s PR team by surprise
given “mud-rain” is unlikely to’ve made it onto the list of
potential closures.
Death, turds, paralysis, board through an eyeball, lightning,
hail, these you can prepare for and mount compelling responses
to.
But to be shat on from outer space?
Meanwhile, tears have been flowing on the company’s IG account
as punters struggle to come to terms with the chaos of life.
Oh no! How is Saturday looking? I was booked in for the 9th
of Jan and did my back on the 8th of Jan so missed out. my rebook
is for this Saturday. Please tell me it’s all going to be ok… and
it’s my 40th today, I’ll head down after work tomorrow and give you
a hand cleaning it if you need?
We’ve literally just landed in Melbourne having flown from
Sydney especially for tomorrow at your pool, having booked two
sessions each the second they came live. You could have given us
some warning yesterday/this morning?? Please please find a way to
fit us in this weekend on your rights? We’ve booked flights, a car,
two sessions… it’s been an incredibly expensive weekend
There was some good advice to be had, howevs.
4ft and offshore on the surf coast tommrow. Would rather be
there!
you guys should head down to the surfcoast , it’ll be
pumping and a lot of us are back at work now , so there will be a
few less crowded breaks. Two days of great swell , adventure and
sun – free of charge
If you’ve got a sesh booked at Urbnsurf, hit ’em up via email
([email protected]) for updates.
Phones are aching with traffic. You ain’t gonna get through.
Alternative board designs are like crack
cocaine to me, likely because they are a crutch for limited
ability, stiff, slow, five-point bottom turns and all that jazz.
Alternative designs can make you feel better than you are, or at
the least stop rubbing your nose in the insufficiency of a mediocre
skill set on high-performance equipment. Asymmetrical surfboards
are viewed through this lens, incorrectly I think. Billy
Lee-Pope
Longtom on Album Surf Disasym: “For me,
stiff, slow, lacking ability, I had a lot of brilliant, really
fun moments!”
But, "If surf-time and go outs are at a premium
then experimenting with asymmetricals is likely a poor return on
investment."
So many rabbit holes to get lost down with surfboard
design and scarcely enough time in a human lifespan to get a taste
of everything at the buffet, if you’ll pardon a mangled
metaphor.
Alternative board designs are like crack cocaine to me, likely
because they are a crutch for limited ability, stiff, slow,
five-point bottom turns and all that jazz.
Alternative designs can make you feel better than you are, or at
the least stop rubbing your nose in the insufficiency of a mediocre
skill set on high-performance equipment.
Asymmetrical surfboards are viewed through this lens,
incorrectly I think.
Although alternative, there’s nothing inherently low performance
about them, unless your definition of high performance is strictly
pegged to CT standard surfing.
Alternative ripping.
Is it a thing?
Yes it is.
We credit Ryan Burch as the modern-day maestro, with Bryce Young
his understudy. Dane Reynolds gets the dad bod all over alternative
boards. A cornerstone of the movement is asymmetrical
equipment.
Experimentation in the southern hemisphere was carried on
primarily by Allan Byrne from the Gold Coast via New Zealand and
Phil Myers at Lennox/Ballina.
That’s the basic history of it.
It had it’s moment in the sun and now it’s coming back
around.
The Disasym from Matt Parker at Album surfboards, Encinitas,
follows the line of the Ryan Burch process: performance
asymmetrical surfboards.
The one I rode is 5’10”, no volume number, which was blissful, a
generous foil with a parallel-accented outline curve.
The Theory as elucidated by Ekstrom at Windansea: longer rail
line on the forehand where you can apply more pressure and a
shorter heel side arc. I’m not sure that theory would stack up
scientifically under the rigours of modern high-performance surfing
but it works empirically for Burch and pals.
My first session in janky point surf did not go well, apart from
establishing the board as a very good paddler, especially into
waves with the sawn off nose. It felt stiff and sticky, then
lacking drive, which accords with Dane Reynolds initial impressions
when riding it in Mexican point surf for TheElectric Kool-Aid Acid
Test.
He was able to change something up in his approach, unspecified,
to make it work. That occurred on my watch too. Not so much my
approach but better waves bought the board alive.
A prolonged swell event from a tropical cyclone near Fiji
brought a ton of surf, of varying quality. Ryan Burch uses the
board in good waves in place of the high perf thruster. Both his
and Bryce Young’s feature the narrow, ski-type parallel outline
found on the Disasym.
With the single concave bottom it needs a certain hull speed to
break free.
Once attained the board feels completely different.
The stiffness and stickiness transforms into a very fluid,
slippery feeling. You get the downwind “catamaran” effect where the
rails feel more sensitive and effective the faster you go.
That’s an effect common to certain concave designs.
How much effect the asymmetrical outline and fin cluster has is
hard to say.
Watching Burch and Young it’s obvious they can draw different
lines, especially frontside, at say, Indonesian reefbreaks for
Burch and Angourie for Young. I rode mostly backside so
theoretically the toe-side top turn should have been
constrained.
It did not feel constrained.
I had planned to take the board
to the Tullamarine tub but based on the advice of
fellow asymmetrical rider Stu Nettle I left it at home. I doubt
there would have been the wavespeed to get it going. Parker markets
the board as a high-performance vehicle, which is true and fair,
but I’d go a step further.
It shines as a step-up in the good wave space.
The asymmetrical surfboard does present a conundrum for the
late-capitalist society surfer. The dichotomy between the leisure
class and the time-poor sod has never been more sharply delineated.
If surf-time and go outs are at a premium then experimenting with
asymmetricals is likely a poor return on investment. You have to
find something that works and stay close to it.
Obvs, young studs like Burch and Young who get paid to surf have
an entirely different surf equation to solve.
I do have a wave-rich diet, due to eschewing the material
pleasures of the consumer society in favour of Camus’ sumptuous poverty by the
sea.
I can afford to blow off sessions in search of new
sensations.
Don’t worry I work my little arse off, but there aren’t many
days when I can’t get three to the beach.
Curiosity and time: if you’ve got both on tap and some good
waves nearby.
Chilean pointbreaks come immediately to mind.
Maybe a Scottish or Icelandic reef, then asymmetrical surfboards
could be for you.
Probably not a bad pathway for an ex-CT pro looking to
reinvigorate a stalled career ie Matty Wilko.
Dane in the end pronounced judgement on the Disasym: “I got the
hang of it and it’s pretty sick.”
For me, stiff, slow, lacking ability etc etc, I had a lot
of brilliant, really fun moments on the Disasym.
It worked.
My judgement: I shall pack it for G-land as the small-wave
board.
Now we all know that politics and surfing don’t
often mix, no? Oh the two are very much oil and water but we can
also agree that if ever there was a virulently “anti-surfer”
politician, it was/is erstwhile presidential candidate and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Of course you recall how the one-time senator from New York, a
state not known for being overly friendly to our kind, possibly
“severed
off” two of surf journalist Liz Crokin’s ten
fingers.
You also certainly remember how she just called the only surfer
in the United States House of Representatives and only politician
to ever appear on Ain’t That
Swell Tulsi Gabbard a “Russian
asset.”
Well, in a new documentary she is going hard after Bernie
Sanders and his “Bernie Bros” and let’s read her
hurtful talk in a just-released interview promoting a
new four-part Hulu documentary.
“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support
him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got
nothing done,” Clinton said in the documentary. “He was a career
politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got
sucked into it.”
“I will say, however, that it’s not only him, it’s the
culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent
supporters. It’s his online ‘Bernie Bros’ and their relentless
attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I
really hope people are paying attention to that because it should
be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only
permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting
it.”
Now, I assume the Bernie Bros, per Ms. Clinton’s record, are
exactly like surf bros. Like, “Hey, bro, saw that sick little
nugget…Hey, bro, don’t paddle on me…” and feel very badly that we
are getting drug through this dirt.
But do you also feel bad or do political attacks roll off your
back like water off a shark’s?
Also, with no professional surf contest on the horizon, will you
watch and enjoy the new Hulu documentary?
More as the story develops.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Shark bites surfer.
Revealed: Surfers account for vast majority
of world’s unprovoked shark attacks, attracting the apex predators
by “splashing” and “wiping out!”
We’re number 1, we’re number 1 and don’t tell
me you don’t have a warm glow in your chest right now, emanating
outward, feeling real nice. Don’t tell me you aren’t proud as punch
because when was the last time we were number 1 in anything? Our
industry has been decimated, climate change is chewing through our
communities and/or burning them to the ground, Kelly Slater will
soon retire and then no one will even know what surfing is anymore
full stop.
Today we are proud as punch and let’s read the section
pertaining to our singular glories, what we do better than all
ocean-going folk combined.
Following recent trends, surfers and those participating in
board sports accounted for most incidents (53% of the total cases).
This group spends a large amount of time in the surf zone, an area
commonly frequented by sharks, and may unintentionally attract
sharks by splashing, paddling, and “wiping out.” Swimmers and
waders accounted for 25% of incidents, with remaining incidents
divided between snorkelers/free divers (11%), body-surfers (8%),
and scuba divers (3%).
It makes much sense that sharks don’t like to be splashed.
To be quite honest, I don’t like to be splashed either
especially when my eyes are open and the splashed water hits one of
them with some velocity. It hurts and, if I recall in my nearly
finished graduate degree in shark behaviors, the man-eating beasts
don’t have eyelids.
In any case, I’m proud of us and we all deserve to take the rest
of the day off.
Go surfing, get attacked, smile.
Today is ours.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Italo Ferreira: “The Olympics is something
gigantic for surfing seeing as just a few years ago it was seen as
a sport for bums!”
Our new world champ is wonderful, bright,
effervescent, magnetic, handsome, talented, fun, funny, has a
beautiful better half, progressive, snappy, happy, glorious, grand
but he said something today that made me very sad.
That put a tear in my eye.
I’m having trouble seeing right now, with that tear, so let’s just go to
Reuters. Let’s allow the news organization to give you
the details.
On Wednesday, freshly crowned surfing world champion Italo
Ferreira sliced through steep, fast-barreling waves off Rio de
Janeiro’s Leblon beach and popped several feet into the
air.
On the shore, dozens of young fans cheered and shouted as
the soft-spoken native of Brazil’s impoverished northeast carved
effortlessly through the swell. Most had arrived – parents in tow –
for a skimboarding clinic, a close cousin of surfing where riders
focus on small waves close to shore.
For Ferreira, one of two surfers set to represent Brazil at
the sport’s Olympic debut in Japan this summer, scenes like this
help explain how the sport, after decades of trying, finally scored
a spot at the Games.
“(The Olympics) is something gigantic for surfing, seeing as
just a few years ago, surfing was seen as a sport for bums,” said
Ferreira, after exiting the water, signing autographs and snapping
photos with fans.
Surfing is no longer a sport for bums?
No?
Well…
First they came for the standard thrusters, and I did not speak
out—
Because I did not ride a standard thruster.
Then they came for the men who wear below-the-knee boardshorts,
and I did not speak out—
Because I did not wear below-the-knee boardshorts.
Then they came for the Hurley team riders, and I did not speak
out—
Because I was not a Hurley team rider.
Then they came for the bums—and there was no one left to speak
for me.
