Blue Crushing the man!

Have you ever stopped to consider what our professional surfing world, this professional surfing life, would be without Pipeline? The crown jewel of Oahu’s North Shore gives the professional surf fan our meaning, in many ways. Our raison d’etre and imagine if the World Surf League Championship Tour ended in… Brazil, say. Or Lemoore. Very sad.

Well, as you know, the women do not get to end their season in Pipeline and don’t have any contests there but would like for this harsh Pipe-less reality to be shattered on the shoals of equality. Shall we turn to the sporting website FanSided for more?

Yes?

Ok.

Known as the mecca of surfing, the little stretch on the beach on the North Shore of Oahu aka Pipeline has been the home of the last contest on the men’s championship tour (CT) for years. In 2010 women were barred from competing there, having to finish their seasons in other Hawaiian locations such as Honolulu Bay.

Now the women are no longer willing to stand by while the men get to catch the greatest waves in the world. The Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing along with representative Heidi Tsuneyoshithe are now lobbying for a resolution that will allow women inclusion in the North Shore contests.

Any women’s surfing fan will probably remember the last scene in Blue Crush where Kate Bosworth’s character goes out and secures a monster ride on the legendary surf. The sight has been the motivation for women and girls since the early 2000s, however, in 2010 the ladies of the CT were sent away in order to make more room for the men’s competition.

Do you have any opinions on this one way or the other? Who would you like to see, most, in those Pipeline barrels? Who least? May I offer a suggestion? Overlapping overlapping mixed heats. Tell me that wouldn’t set your heart on fire.

More as the story develops.

Post-apocalyptic yoga.

Now that the end is officially nigh, the lights turned out, young surfers once brimming with hope, visions of robust contracts dancing in their heads, sent outside penniless to join their snowboard brethren we can/must continue to talk about the post-apocalyptic future. Our own surf ads kicked it off so right yesterday, pointing at an aggressive bicyclist as a potential way forward. I would have liked Jen See’s take there, as she has many toes in that bike world, but will also say that Red Bull’s Rampage, a mountain bike event, is the most exciting extreme sport thing around.

In any case, some out there imagine now that funky, weird surf brands are out of the way big blue chips will come swooping in, checkbooks open wide. Lululemons pouring out millions. Banana Republics just gagging to sponsor Michel Bourez. G-Star Raw. Etc.

I think there is an assumption that these companies (save Banana Republic and G-Star Raw) are successful, have much more money than our funky, weird little surf brands and spend much more when given the opportunity.

Well, I have had the fortune of looking over a few shoulders into the business side of our surf, skate, snow game over the last decade and can say, without exception, non-endemic companies pay pennies on the dollar for professional athletes.

For all the wacky things the surf industry got wrong, it poured money back into the community. The “community” may have meant rococo surf events and parties, bloated magazines, super surf dads and their bratty little air-revo bastard kids but it was still the community. Our community. Non-endemic brands don’t care about the space. They’ll lock a talent up for as short as they possibly can for as little as they possibly can. Every single time.

So when you start seeing Lululemons and Banana Republics, Maui Jims and Men’s Warehouses affixed to boards feel very bad for the surfer riding. Not only is s/he forced into poor fashions but also quite literally poor.

Very quickly, though, who should BeachGrit sponsor in this post-apocalypse?

Who would wave our banner most wonderfully?

"He got nipped, but all of us have been bitten by a shark at some point."

I wish there could be a break in this shark news, truly I do. My eyes are bloodshot red, fingers worked to the bone but news, horrifying news, keeps pumping out of Florida at record pace and what sort of surf-cum-shark journalist would I be if I left it all on the floor? Rotting? Festering?

A poor one is what and so I press on for you, for the craft.

Yesterday we learned of San Francisco running back sensation Raheem Mostert and his wife, then girlfriend, who visited New Smyrna and was bitten by sharks three times in a span of 30 minutes. Almost unbelievable.

Today we learn of brave young Logan Radd, a fine surf name if there ever was one, who triumphed over a vicious shark bite by winning the prestigious Toyota USA Surfing Prime opener in the U-14 division and let us go straight to the newspaper of record at conservative hotel chains across this great nation. Let us read from USA Today:

Four months after lying on a cot in the Holmes Regional Medical Center emergency room, Logan Radd scored, you could say, the second-biggest victory of his life Sunday.

The 13-year-old Florida surfer captured top honors in the 2020 opener of the Toyota USA Surfing Prime series at Sebastian Inlet, winning his under-14 division, in the eventual Olympic qualifying event that attracts the top young amateurs from the East Coast.

Radd, an outstanding young surfer who was bitten twice on his left heel by what was believed to be a blacktip shark back in September and needed 19 stitches, considers this his most coveted trophy.

“When I first got back in the water, it felt kind of weird,” Radd said. “Now, if I see a shark, I get a little spooked, but I think anyone would.”

Physically, he’s fine, although he was sidelined three weeks after splitting his stitches trying to surf just days after getting bit. He still managed to win one of the divisions at the National Kidney Foundation contest in Cocoa Beach.

“Lucky it was (just) his heel,” said Gordon Lawson, the head judge at last weekend’s contest. “He got nipped, but all of us have been bitten by a shark at some point.”

A hearty, hearty congrats to young Radd but… is this really true? That all Florida surfers have been bitten by a shark at some point?

Every single one of them?

Incredible.