Three type sevens, according to Bristol Scale. | Photo: Napoleon Dynamite/MTV Films

VAL update: “Bristol Scale” revealed in response to English wavepool’s anti-kook test!

Jordy's Pout

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A scale from one to seven. Where do you appear?

Due to a flood of kooks claiming they could shred, The Wave in Bristol announced last week they’d started testing the “expert” bona fides of surfers booking advanced sessions.

To get into the tank on its highest setting, surfers now have to prove they’re able to:

• Comfortably ride waves above 2.0m
• Paddle in large waves and strong currents
• Duckdive
• Take-off consistently
• Generate speed
• Perform turns
• Negotiate sections
• Demonstrate respectful surf etiquette

A very good criteria.

But what will the actual scores look like?

Will it be a binary pass/fail or will we be graded?

If we’re looking at a grading system then obviously it should be called The Bristol Scale.

Unfortunately, there’s already a Bristol Scale out there, a diagnostic medical tool that classifies human faeces into seven categories.

The holy grail of gut health is to consistently pass types three and four.

And yet…yet…it just works when applied to surfing.

Let’s examine.

Type 1:
There’s some ability hiding somewhere, but this is fucking ugly to watch. Why such a pained expression on your face when you forced that laboured six-stage cutback?

Type 2:
You can throw buckets, but you can’t link your turns for shit. And get real, with your frame you need at least five litres more volume.

Type 3:
Ooooh, now we’re talking! You manage to contain your explosive core with a natural talent we’re all envious of. Raw.

Type 4:
Smooth like a freshly waxed scrotum. All the over-used Curren-related adjectives apply.

Type 5:
You’ve got good flow, but that’s because all you do is cruise in your wanky “state of trim”. Do a proper turn for fuck’s sake. And get off that mid-length. Wait, that you, Dev?

Type 6:
When did they start allowing SUPs in the tub?

Type 7:
DENIED! You’re out of control, all over the place, and your putrid mess is screwing it up for everyone. Please fuck off forever.

Dane Reynolds, more raw talent than anyone in the 2000s. First Chapter

Matt George’s guide to aspiring WCT surfers: “Don’t rely on raw talent and be a footnote in history like Dane Reynolds, Chippa Wilson and Craig Anderson!”

Matt George

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Also, get Pipe wired in your teens and "if someone gives you shit, punch them in the mouth. Don't be a pussy."

Having been both intimately and undeniably involved in professional surfing since 1980, having competed within and having been a dues paying member of both the IPS and the ASP and having covered the pro surf scene, including the WSL to date, for over 30 years, I thought I just might offer these seventeen supplemental training tips to the kids:

Decide whether you want to be a great or just be in the game.
No shame in just being in the game, look at Ace Buchan, or Caio Ibelli or any of the middle of the road guys. But if you want to be Kelly, then heed the following steps multiplied by 10. (Or in his case, by 11.)

Learn how to read, write, speak and think in English really well.
Don’t be a dumbass. You have interviews to do. Fans to captivate. Ideas to share.

Homesickness is a deal breaker.
Grow up.

Learn to eat the world’s food and love every bit of it.
You think Kelly Slater just won the Triple crown at 47 years old on Florida home cookin’?

Fall in love with wetsuits.
It’s not called the seven seas for nothing.

Buy a globe, spin it and dream.
Know where you are going, dummy.

Absorb all the classic stories about absolutely everything that has happened on the pro tour both past and present.
Find Nick Carroll.

To hell with drugs and if you must, only drink beer and red wine in moderation.
You want to be John John or dead?

Do not rely on raw talent.
Without hard, obsessive work, guys with raw talent will be professional surfing history’s sidenotes. See: Dane Reynolds, Craig Anderson, Chippa Wilson.

Decide on your goals right now and write them down and stick them to the ceiling of your bedroom right over your pillow so that they are the last thing you see before you go to sleep and the first thing you see when you wake up.
Lazy = Last

Pick a winner, study him, emulate him.
Unless he is Andy Irons, then just kiss your golden career goodbye.

Buy the right people lunch.
Get feedback from them. And unless your Dad is Shane Dorian, parents don’t count.

If someone gives you shit, punch them in the mouth.
Don’t be a pussy.

Get the Banzai Pipeline wired in your teens.
Or forget it.

Take chances.
And forgive yourself for them.

Be fair in all things, but never forget the laws of surfival.
This is not about being a lamb…this is about being a lion.

Do it now.
Kelly Slater won his first world title at 20 years old. Get to work.

Good luck out there.

"1.85 million?" "No. One dollar and eighty five cents." "Cool."

The Great Sponsorship Fallacy: Wildly flush, multi-billion dollar mainstream companies pay surfers, skaters, snowboarders pennies on the dollar!

Chas Smith

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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?

Gimme dem feet!

Miracle: Florida boy wins prestigious surf contest days after having foot nearly severed completely by deleterious blacktip shark!

Chas Smith

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"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.

Radd (pictured clutching second favorite trophy) standing next to the great Brett Simpson.
Radd (pictured clutching second favorite trophy) standing next to the great Brett Simpson.

“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.

Watch: Free diver with “species dysmorphia” hand feeds suspiciously calm Tiger Shark as if he was a mama feeding her man-eating young!

Chas Smith

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The calm before the end of mankind?

A very few short days ago down in the Bahamas where water the color of sapphire caresses sun-reddened Canadian skin, a free diver hand fed a Tiger shark as big as a small New York apartment. The video, which has since gone viral, represents the glorious dance between man and man-eater. Between what is and what could be.

We can all get along.

And let’s read of the account directly from MSN, half-genderless-parent of the very woke MSNBC.

Although many people would be scared to find themselves in open water surrounded by tiger sharks, this was not the case for free diver Dante Weston, who was captured hand-feeding the sea creatures on January 16 near Grand Bahama Island. Underwater photographer and videographer Szilard Janko was along for the journey with Weston and managed to capture a moment on video that he would not soon forget. The footage shows Weston floating above the ocean floor and reaching into a metal container and removing a piece of fish, as a tiger shark swims toward him. Once the shark gets close enough, Weston uses the piece of fish to guide the animal closer to Janko’s camera, before he lets go of the snack and allows the shark to eat it. “Each shark has a different personality, this one very gently takes the fish out of the hand and then is gently redirected to swim away,” Janko told Storyful. Tiger sharks are “aggressive predators,” according to oceana.org, and one of the “Big Three” in the shark attack world, along with great white and bull sharks, “because they are large species that are capable of inflicting serious injuries to a victim, are commonly found in areas where humans enter the water, and have teeth designed to shear rather than hold,” according to International Shark Attack File.

Beautiful, no?

Except those with memories that extend past seven years will remember the darkly prescient drama Mars Attacks!, starring Jack Nicholson and the best others (SJP, Glenn Close, James Bond, Lisa Marie Presley, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short, ‘Nette Benning etc.). That film, which has aged like a Nostradamus text, predicted that peace-niks, collaborationists, hippies will actually spark the end of the world.

Again, prescient and I can’t help but think this mirrors, exactly, the above clip.

Much to think about.

Much to ponder.

More as the story develops.