Sugar Cub v Wolf: Watch Julian Wilson climb atop Kelly Slater like a wild animal in the night!

Julian v Kelly freesurfing in Portugal. Who wins?

Here’s a somewhat dated, though still compelling, hit from Julian Wilson’s YouTube channel that presents Julian and Kelly Slater freesurfing in Portugal in late 2019.

It’s interesting on two levels: Julian, thirty-one, and riding a trad sorta shape from the Gold Coast’s Jason Stevenson and Kelly Slater, then forty-seven, grilling his figs on his for-elite-surfers-only Slater Designs sled.

On a first viewing, Kelly makes the silk of his kimono ripple so sinuously as to suggest two women making love while Julian shakes his hips and mimics a femmie boy.

Winner, Kelly.

A second viewing and I appreciate the way Julian waves his hands back and forth as if he were icing a cake in the air.

Winner, Julian.

You?

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Shark season “officially underway” in Florida as 20-foot Great White “hungry for Cuban hams” and “Trump Pudding” menaces Mar-a-Lago!

"Looked as big as a box car."

Global warming, climate change etc. have made it seem as if Shark Week is every week but the apex predators still enjoy stalking during specific calendar months and one of their favorite haunts is south Florida where Cuban immigrants stack roast pork, pickles, mustard and Swiss cheese on delicate baguettes.

“Man-eating” beasts can be snowbirds too and let’s read a terrifying account before watching a terrifying encounter.

Last weekend, Zane Coker saw something at a Palm Beach County beach he hasn’t seen before. It was a 12-foot long giant hammerhead shark cruising in “full attack mode” in water only a few feet from the shoreline.

It was a little alarming, he said, because usually hammerhead sharks stay on the outside of the sand bar.

“I started shooing people out of the water,” Coker explained. “There were swimmers up and down the beach. I’m not trying to scare anyone, but when I look around, the lifeguards are flying green flags everywhere.”

Well, there is a scientifically-documented annual blacktip shark migration along Florida’s coasts each winter. Hammerhead sharks are known to eat blacktip sharks and Great Whites are known to menace everything, everyone, including but not limited to other sharks and surfers.

Just today a 20-footer was filmed patrolling Palm Beach, starving for Cuban hams and also Cuban biceps but, if history has taught us anything, will settle for stringy, over-salted, surfers tasting vaguely of cocaine or Donald Trump, his entire family and all his friends.

According to Jim Cocci, a local diver, “The great white shark came out of the mist.”

Diving near Mar-a-Lago, home of the Southern White House, Cocci said a friend receive a notification about a great white being spotted at the reef near The Breakers.

Twenty minutes into the dive in hazy water, Cocci said the marine biologist in front of him started yelling over the radio that he spotted the shark.

“Totally awesome,” said Cocci when the shark emerged just feet away. Cocci had his camera rolling.

It appeared to be 15 to 20 feet long. “Looked as big as a box car.”

A hungry box car ready to mambo.

Very terrifying.

No surfing in Florida.

No ocean bathing either.

Do you have the stomach? Can you look White Death in the eye?

Watch here.

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Breaking: In “appalling and unprecedented” attack, Queensland, Australia’s state government declares war on local surfers!

“Our main focus is to get more Queenslanders more active, more often through the sport of surfing.”

In an appalling, unprecedented and unprovoked attack, Queensland Australia’s state government has declared war on its local surfing population. Officials and community leaders are gathered days ago for the sixth biennial Global Wave Conference in order to implement a partnership between Queensland Government and Surfing Queensland that will likely “aggravate and annoy” surfers from Mick Fanning’s Gold Coast to Julian Wilson’s Sunshine Coast and never has a specific group been so brutally targeted for destruction in Australia’s proud history.

Per the press release dripping with malice and indignity:

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the partnership at the Gold Coast World Surfing Reserve, stating that the “Government fought to protect this part of the Gold Coast for surfers and ocean lovers, and WE WANT MORE PEOPLE to take part in surfing at all levels from recreation to elite.

“So supporting people who face barriers into surfing makes sense right now.”.

With more than 350,000 surfers in the state, Queensland Minister for Sport Mick de Brenni said the partnership would encourage more people to take part in surfing, regardless of their age, gender, background, ability or location, commenting “this partnership delivers diversity and inclusion programs for recreational, club and surf school participants that will allow individuals to overcome barriers to participation, including targeted programs for people with a disability, women and girls, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other under-represented groups.

Surfing Queensland Chief Executive, Adam Yates said he is thrilled to see the new partnership come to fruition, noting “we are incredibly proud that surfing is one of six sports identified to create a meaningful impact with this strategy.

“We firmly believe that surfing promotes a healthy lifestyle and can improve the quality of life for all Queenslanders.

“This new partnership will strengthen our delivery network, making surfing more accessible for all Queenslanders – whether you are five years old or 50.

“Our main focus is to get more Queenslanders more active, more often through the sport of surfing.”

New South Wales is already rumored to have closed its borders with Queensland and all flights from Coolangatta’s airport to Melbourne and Perth have been cancelled.

BeachGrit will continue to monitor the situation from its Cardiff-by-the-Sea desk and plans to up reports of shark attacks in and around Queensland as well as stingray attacks, jellyfish attacks and broken bottle attacks, the broken bottles being held by disgruntled and stupid surfers.

More as the story develops.

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Even celeb-obsessed TMZ loves big-wave surfing if you can mix in a little death.

Albee Layer on Nazaré Tow Surfing Challenge: “Our lives are click-bait!”

Big-wave highlight reels should be the spear tip of the engagement funnel for surfing’s mainstream foray. The formula, blood-soaked as it is, works.

Did you watch the Nazaré comp?

No, me neither.

(Too busy chasing a resurgent east coast low ‘round the local beachies… was almost as fun as a wave pool.

But I did see it making front page news on all of the major Australian mastheads this morning.

The freakish incident involving Alex Bothelo, which you’ve no doubt seen in your Insta feeds, has the world’s attention.

His jetski backflipping off 10-foot of whitewash like a kid flicking a bottletop.

The Portugeuse surfer was resuscitated on the beach before being rushed to the emergency ward.

Scary scenes on the live feed.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8b8qbyIwwl/

Latest is that he’s awake and in a stable condition. It’s a sobering injury.

In Australia, broadsheet The Sydney Morning Herald ran it above the digital fold on its home page: Big wave surfer rushed to hospital.

There it was on the populist tabloid news.com.au, sandwiched between ‘Children watch heroin addict overdose’ and ‘Mum, 43, mistaken for teenage daughter’:

Horror as big wave surfer pummeled.

This, in the middle of coronavirus, cyclones, bushfires, political intrigue.

It’s the true nature of surfing’s image in Ma, Pa and Cousin Irvine’s eye.

We don’t matter until we’re falling sideways outta skyscrapers.

Or, as Albee Layer commented on the WSL’s posts, “Our lives are clickbait.”

The news reels want wipeouts, kickouts, carnage. Not BL dissecting the degrees of difference in split-screen top turns at three-foot Keramas.

What percentage of the audience watch speed racers just to see the spills?

The Nazaré comp is manufactured drama. Boom crash opera for a Trumpian world.

Not to diminish for one second the athleticism, bravery, grit etc of the surfers and safety crews involved. They’re lions and lionesses among women and men. The progression envelope of tow has well and truly been pushed, if that’s your thing.

But for the general public, it’s the equivalent of jumping a row of flaming school buses on a PeeWee 50.

Impressive, enthralling spectacle.

Are we not entertained?

E-Lo and his team face an ethical quandary.

The formula, blood-soaked as it is, works.

Big-wave highlight reels should be the spear tip of the engagement funnel for surfing’s mainstream foray.

So do they turn up the pace?

Double down on the drama, and watch the media clippings and advertisers $$ flood in?

Probably.

But, it’s worth asking the question.

Where’s the line drawn, if not today?

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Longtom on Kelly Slater at 48: “Kelly, before I share my favourite story about you, could you please make sure your significant other or mother, or mother-in-law, is not reading over your shoulder?”

"Like a liquid fever dream. She's in denim cut-offs, of course. The left leg comes out first, emerges like a butterfly wing from a chrysalis. Then the left boob emerges, barely contained by a flimsy crop top."

Happy Birthday Kelly Slater.

Here he is, about to line up again for another go round, our GOAT, the GOAT of GOATS. Forty eight years old, Happy Birthday Robert Kelly Slater.

We know you are a bit tender around the tummy when it comes to criticism, and we know you’re reading so let me take the opportunity to speak on behalf of the room and say from the bottom of our dark hearts: don’t go.

Please don’t go.

A glance around the sporting firmament at ageing athletes gives grounds for cautious optimism.

Forty-eight-year-old Julius Boros won a PGA Championship in 1968. Seventy-three-year-old Israeli goalkeeper Isaak Hayik is still playing full games with Ironi Or Yehuda.

Hershel McGriff competed in the K and N West race at Tucson speedway in 2018 at the age of ninety. Ida Keeling completed the one-hundred-metre race at the age of one hundred in 2016.

Based on these facts, the best case scenario is Kelly Slater isn’t even halfway through his career.

In May last year at an open Q and A session during a showing of the Momentum Generation Kelly said, “Part of the challenge of getting better as you get older is believing your best days, including physically, are still ahead of you.”

Get Cloudbreak back on the schedule, and Trestles and solidify an Indo leg and a sixty-year-old Slater is still not a back marker in the thirty-four

There’s still unknowns unknowns for us to ponder.

Kelly’s next appearance is pegged for the first event of the QS Challenger series at Piha in March. How Kelly fares at a rambunctious black sand beachbreak in New Zealand is a total mystery bag.

The only certainty is I’ll be watching, and so will you.

It’s customary when pals gather around to celebrate a loved ones birthday to share stories about the birthday boy.

Kelly, before I share my favourite story about you, could you please make sure your significant other or mother, or mother-in-law is not reading over your shoulder.

Cheers.

It concerns one of your famous girlfriends.

Early nineties in the Pipe carpark opposite Sunset Elementary school. A rusted out two-door Honda Civic pulls in. Out pops a very follicularly fulsome Kelly.

In the front seat, a skinny, rockered Merrick, I think with the stork sharpied out on the bottom.

You know the one?

Kelly leans into the back seat and pulls forwards the drivers seat. Slowly and somehow communicating a very clear sense of disgruntlement Pam Anderson emerges from the back seat.

Kelly Slater has stuffed the most famous babe of the nineties into the backseat of a rusted-out Japanese shitbox.

Is Kalani out of the room?

Good.

How does Pam Anderson get out of the backseat of a Honda Civic?

Like a liquid fever dream. She’s in denim cut-offs, of course. The left leg comes out first, emerges like a butterfly wing from a chrysalis. Then the left boob emerges, barely contained by a flimsy crop top.

I recall an audible intake of air, I think my ears popped from the sudden pressure drop, but that could be imagination playing tricks on memory. Then the right leg, the right boob and she was clear of the rust bucket.

A little shake and shimmy and there she was.

What did Kelly do?

Took the Merrick out and surfed Pipe.

Was Pam impressed? Apparently not.

Within weeks she was back with Tommy.

How amazing that when we consider the life and times of RK Slater-Pam Anderson is a B-character.

Equally amazing to me is that with a once-in-a-lifetime superstar like Slater at their disposal pro surfing still couldn’t crack the market as a mainstream sport.

I think an appropriate remedy would be for Kelly Slater’s Birthday henceforwards to become an international public Holiday.

A day that could truly unite all of humanity would be an appropriate gesture of thanks to Kelly Slater for all he has given us, and continues to give us.

Happy Birthday Kelly.

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