Gabriel Medina film trailer: “The man who
has ruthlessness in his bones and ice in his heart!”
By Derek Rielly
"Medina is as good a villain as he is a rider of
waves and the sport is infinitely better for his presence."
Earlier today, Brazil’s Gabriel Medina, two-time world
champ, seeker of no-one’s approval, loosed the trailer for
his upcoming bio film.
I’m a sucker for believable, beautifully made epics about brave
people in the middle of the ocean battling overwhelming odds
against nature to stay alive, and feel this might fit the bill.
As Matt Warshaw opined in December, “The WSL’s Wall of Positive
Noise is a vanilla-scented scourge upon pro surfing,
and Medina’s Dark Arts no-fucks-given approach to the game is
attractive by comparison, and thus becomes my own cudgel, my own
counternarrative, against the WSL’s endlessly vapid
presentation. Surfing, like all forms of entertainment, need
villains, and because Medina is as good a villain as he is a rider
of waves and the sport is infinitely better for his
presence. Second, Medina, for my money, is simply the best
all-around surfer in the world.”
“Everyone knows Gabriel Medina today, but few know the things I
went through to get here,” wrote Gabriel, in Portuguese, to his
eight-million-plus Instagram followers, a number seven-times
greater than John John and four times more than Kelly Slater.
Listen: “I want, more than anything, to see
a singing, dancing, fabulous Eddie Rothman, John John Florence,
Graham Stapelberg!”
By Chas Smith
Gleeful defiance. Feral wit.
But what is your dream, your deep down dream
that is more fantasy than anything else? Your chimera with almost
no chance of coming true but the almost haunts you? That
you could be discovered, whilst walking down the street, and made a
famous actress on a hot new daytime soap? That air-reverses will
enter your regular, consistent repertoire? Steph Gilmore will see
you landing all those air-reverses and fall madly in love?
Mine, that I’ve harbored for a few years now, is to turn the
award-nominated book detailing life on Oahu’s North Shore Welcome to
Paradise, Now Go to Hell into a Broadway, Off-Broadway
or even Off-Off-Broadway musical.
The opening number, featuring many ukuleles and steel guitars,
swells as the lights dim. The scent of coconut and rot sprayed into
the audience from hidden chambers. Curtains open to a rococo set
design featuring palm trees, passion fruit bushes, a large Volcom
Stone. Think Baz Luhrmann in Strictly Ballroom.
Thunder rattles the auditorium but… that’s not thunder it’s…
crashing waves. It’s…
…The Pipeline.
Billabong’s vice-president of marketing Graham Stapelberg can
now be seen lurking in the corner, stage left, behind one of the
passion fruit bushes. Shifty eyes. Nervous. He begins to dance a
very nervous dance. Twitchy. Modern.
Pipeline’s thunder becomes drum and bass techno track and Graham
Stapelberg continues gyrating, nervous, scared. Think Bob
Fosse.
And that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
I have no experience in musical theater other than once being
married to a musical theater actress. No playwright, songwrite,
choreography ability but I shared by dream, anyhow, with David Lee
Scales today.
He mocked it.
We also chatted about which current tour surfer will be our
world’s Aaron Hernandez.
Who do you think?
And even though David Lee Scales mocked my dream, do you believe
it is remotely possible? That we might someday see actors playing
Eddie Rothman, John John Florence, Kolohe Andino and Dave Prodan
dancing, singing, expressing the passion of Da North Shore?
Do you know any playwright/songwrite/choreographer?
I’ll cut you in on the box office.
Listen here!
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Celebrate: Florida outclasses Australia,
Reunion, South Africa and entire world combined for most unprovoked
shark attacks in 2019!
By Chas Smith
The sunshine state!
Oh it is good to be number one. To be able to
tilt chin back, slightly, puff chest out, a touch, and walk down
the street with extra long steps, arms swinging robustly. And
today, Florida is metaphorically strutting its stuff having once
again topped Australia, Reunion, South Africa and the entire rest
of the world combined for most unprovoked shark attacks on human
men in just-wrapped 2019.
Feel free to pop a bottle Yuengling and read the report
yourself:
For decades, Florida has topped global charts in the number
of shark attacks, and this trend continued in 2019. Florida’s 21
cases represent 51% of the U.S. total and 33% of unprovoked attacks
worldwide. However, the state saw a significant drop from its most
recent five-year annual average of 32 incidents.
Unprovoked shark attacks also occurred in Hawaii (9),
California (3), and North Carolina (3), with single incidents in
Georgia, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and the Virgin
Islands.
In Florida, Volusia County had the most shark attacks (9),
representing 43% of the Florida total, in line with the five-year
annual average of nine incidents in the area. The remaining
incidents occurred in Brevard (2) and Duval (5) counties, with
single incidents occurring in Broward, Martin, Nassau, Palm Beach,
and St. Johns counties.
By way of comparison, Australia had 11 attacks, Reunion had 1
and South Africa, once brave and proud, had 0.
Hang your metaphorical head in shame, South Africa.
Extreme weather: Melbourne wave pool closed
for second consecutive day due to freak “mud rain”!
By Derek Rielly
"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!”
By Longtom
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.