Surf journalist Chas Smith (pictured) in warmer water.
Surf journalist Chas Smith (pictured) in warmer water.

Witness: California-based surf journalist currently in the midst of “historically unprecedented” ironman streak!

Move over Cal Ripken.

California-based surf journalist Chas Smith is currently in the midst of a historically unprecedented ironman streak having surfed for six consecutive days. The streak began, without fanfare, on Sunday, January 26th. Though his wife was out of town and he was single-parenting, his daughter’s best friend’s parents texted and offered to host a playdate.

He agreed at once and went for a surf. The next day, with his daughter in school, he surfed again and repeated it all the way until Saturday, February 1st even though his wife is out of town again but the same friend’s parents’ once more agreed to host a playdate.

“I don’t know…” he responded when reached for comment, post-surf “…I guess I’m just really in the zone. The water is a little chillier than I’d like it and one day I looked outside and saw what seemed to be onshore wind but I went out anyway.”

During the streak he has performed a handful of very slow wrapping turns and one little smash off the top that he imagined looked very cool from the beach.

Nobody on the beach told him it looked cool.

Smith has been surfing a 5’10 Album Plasmic twin fin in matte grey and alternating between a 3/2 Billabong customized Furnace Revolution and 4/3 NEED Essentials and one bootie on his front foot because he recently suffered a broken toe.

“That water…” he said “…I wish it was just a little bit warmer.

Will he be able to continue on to day seven?

Stay tuned.

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Super Bowl: Ex-football star Rob Gronkowski throwing “culturally appropriated Hawaiian themed” beach party in Miami with tickets going for $1 million!

Tiki bars, Hawaiian bbq, hula dancers.

Unless you are the sort of person that harbors ancient grudges against “jocks” for their meanness in high school and/or you are Australian then you will very likely be watching tomorrow’s Super Bowl. The game, pitting San Francisco and their surfing running back against the Kansas City Chiefs will be played in Miami and broadcast at 3:30 pm pacific standard time.

Just down the beach from the stadium, one-time New England Patriot star Rob Gronkowski will be throwing a Super Bowl beach party named “Gronk Beach.” The upstate New York native claims that he “never really partied on the beach before” but is selling tickets ranging in price from $800 on the lowest end to $1 million at the top.

Since we surfers party often on the beach and for free let us learn about “Gronk Beach” and its pricing model so we can better monetize what we do most.

Former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski is throwing it down the way Gronk knows best, in the city that brings the heat.

Gronkowski is hosting a larger-than-life, pre-Super Bowl “Gronk Beach” party on Saturday in Miami Beach complete with open tiki bars, Hawaiian barbecue and hula dancers.

But it’s no surprise that ticket prices match the party vibes. A general admission ticket costs around $800 and a VIP table is $2,000. The “Big Game Royalty Experience” package includes a private jet for 10 people, a ride on NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal’s shoulders and a private Miami mansion for the weekend — all of which will cost $1 million.

A ride on NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal’s shoulders?

Why didn’t we think of this?

Also, the party mines Hawaii’s proud culture very much.

Do you think Gronk should pay reparations?

But back to the Shaquille O’Neal shoulder ride… how much would you pay for that feature alone?

Cultural appropriation.

But how could we bring more value to the time we spend on the beach? More money in our pockets?

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"YOU'RE WRONG!"
"YOU'RE WRONG!"

Opinion-ish: “After fifty-odd podcasts I’d guarantee a better performance in a professional surfing booth than all save Dead, Kaipo, Wassel. Cotę, etc.!”

Let's stop being polite and start getting real...

Red Bull’s teasing of our World Surf League is a gloriously un-mined narrative in this surfing life. Un-mined by Stab and Ashton Goggans because… well… to full-sized to fit down the shaft? Un-minded by The Inertia because does it even still surf? Un-mined by Surfline, Surfer, Su… whatever because basically out of business but un-minded by BeachGrit?

Your BeachGrit?

For shame.

For Red Bull has teased our World Surf League into absolute stasis. Into a stupor born of heavy, heavy mockery.

To wit, there was once a day and once and age where professional surfing owned professional surfing and the Red Bull Austrians were as awkward as they were weird. Arrogant as they were Austrian.

They were not allowed to play.

And so away they cowered, back to the Wolfenstein, to lick wounds and regroup.

Regroup they did and over the past few years Red Bull surf productions including, but not limited to, Cape Fear and the Volcom Pro Pipe make an absolute mockery of professional surfing’s vision of professional surfing.

OMG.

In any case, watching how much better the Red Bull booth is featuring the other Blakey, who replaced his last name with “Dead” to Chris Cotē, an everyman hero, to Dave Wassel to…. whoever is there except Sal “The Hurricane” Masekela throws the World Surf League’s booth team into harsh relief.

Oh, I’ve been told, many, many, many times that it’s harder than it looks etc. But I’ve actually done it before (a women’s one star QS) and loved and performed admirably. Since then I’ve recorded fifty-odd podcasts and would crush, absolutely crush anything the WSL/Red Bull is putting forward save Vaughn Dead, Kaipo G, Dave Wassel, Chris Cotë and maybe one or two other forgottens.

Why doesn’t the World Surf League hire me to be music to your ears?

We will someday ask the brand new CEO Erik Logan who snatched power in a bloodless coup.

Until then… who would you like to hear in the booth?

Give me dream team.

(Chas Smith and Nick Carroll)

Also, really who?

(C.S. N.C.)

But honestly…

(Smith x Carroll)

One normal human height, the other hobbit.

Dream team.

No?

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Angelika does a little modelling, too. This, from Ok magazine, Russia. | Photo: @evgeniymim/@okmagazine_ru

Gold Medal-winning Russian Olympian switches from synchro swimming to surfing; gets coached by deaf former pro; shreds after 18 months!

Can a VAL learn to shred in under two years? Maybe yes!

The name Angelika Timanina ain’t gonna ring any bells, not unless the pretty ladies of synchronised swimming stole your eye during the 2012 London games.

Angelika won a gold medal in London, and over the course of her career has won the World Championships eight times.

A titan in synchronised swimming.

Now, Angelika, who is thirty and lives in Moscow, has turned to surfing and is backed by an unknown benefactor paying Australian former pro surfer and coach, Andy King, to whip her into something for the Russian Olympic surf team.

Andy King?

Yeah, the Australian WQS pro from Cronulla who lost his hearing after a street fight in 2004, a hard-charging goofy footer who grew up with an alcoholic pops (Andy kept a knife under his pillow for protection) and who shifted to surf coaching after his tour comeback was stymied by his deafness.

I heard about Angelika from the big-waver Mark Mathews who told me it was one of the most remarkable switcharoos he’d ever seen. Eighteen months on a board and sorta shredding.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6NMV4IprCU/

When I called Andy, now forty-three, to talk about his charge, the pair were at Tallows in Byron Bay, part of their hundred days a year of personal coaching that has seen ‘em travel to Indo, to the Maldives, Australia, Portugal.

It’d been maybe three or four years since I’d spoken to Andy and his voice was sharp, clear, different to the low monotone of a man whose speech has been muddied by his cochlear implants.

Turns out he has a bluetooth connection straight from his phone and into his head.

Andy King, iPhone compatible.

“There’s no external sound. Technology is fucking incredible,” he laughs.

“Coaching is a bit of a fucking magician show,” says Andy. “I wanted to see if there’s any value in coaching, that it had any grounds, that it wasn’t a farce. Angelika is a complete, clean canvas. She’d only surfed a very short amount of time and was from such a random environment. It was a rare opportunity.”

He says he got the gig with Angelika via the Portuguese pro Tiago Pires who’d been approached to coach but told ‘em they needed someone special, someone like Andy.

And Andy, who had the feeling that coaching high-level pro’s was all smoke and mirrors (“Was I just security to make their life easier? I didn’t know,” he says), was thrilled by the chance to test his coaching theories.

“Coaching is a bit of a fucking magician show,” he says. “I wanted to see if there’s any value in coaching, that it had any grounds, that it wasn’t a farce. Angelika is a complete, clean canvas. She’d only surfed a very short amount of time and was from such a random environment. It was a rare opportunity.”

The Russian came into surf with at least one crossover ability: she can hold her breath for four minutes.

“We surfed some pretty big waves in the Maldives and when she gets into trouble she sits on the bottom and waits the set out. Fuck, it’s amazing.”

Over the course of their eighteen months working together, Angelika has gone from VAL riding the whitewater on a softie to surfing in the pocket, riding six-foot waves, finding tubes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1YJSKngpDx/

Andy says her body awareness is like nothing he’s ever seen.

“She explained to me that she spent fifteen years of her life in a pool, training sixteen hours a day. Said she’s like a cosmonaut, suspended in water for so much of her life. She’s so aware of her body that she’s already above-average level, doing reos and snaps.”

One downside of all that pool time.

“She’s so used to being suspended that it’s hard for her to feel pressure on a surfboard, to be able to engage and push a rail and feel the flex patterns on a board.”

It’s here that Andy comes into his own as a coach.

His big theory is trying to get his charges to “respect the shape”, to get their stance in the exact spot on the surfboard where the shaper has designed it to displace water.

“Breaking it down to respecting the shape of the board and the concave and having a neutral stance,” he says.

Andy says the Russian loves surfing so much it lifts his own spirit.

“She’s obsessed with it, like when we were groms.”

There’s a howevs.

Unless the Russians mount a successful court challenge, there’ll be no Russian team in Tokyo after the country was banned for four years for doping.

Still, Angelika and Andy are pushing hard.

“My goal is to get her into a huge one out at Cloudbreak, a nice south swell. I want to get her to a skill level to ride a ten-to-twelve-footer, a proper Cloudbreak one. She’s got the physical ability to do it and she can make a statement if she gets big Cloudbreak. It’d be an Everest for her.”

Oh, and, like many things from the former Soviet state, there’s a wonderful mystery to who’s funding Andy’s salary.

“I don’t know who pays me and I’m not allowed to ask where the money comes from,” he says. “They transfer what I ask for, deliver what I ask for and told me not to ask who’s sending it. I honestly can’t tell if it’s from a sponsor or the government.”

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Memory Lane: “Voice of Pipeline” Sal Masekela was once too afraid to drive in the rain but when he finally mustered the courage said, “I lend credibility to extreme surfing!”

Plus a warning to Mandy Moore.

Sal Masakela, fallen from the heights of E! Entertainment Television fame to Red Bull’s third or fourth extreme sport option is in the booth, right now, calling gorgeously pumping Volcom Pro Pipe Pipeline. John John is allegedly out. Others are too but it is gorgeously pumping and Chris Cote is shining, Vaughn Dead neé Blakey is outshining his brother, Dave Wassel is making it clear that the ’89 World Champ is, in fact, mummified and has been for years.

And damned Sal Masekela. Damned hackneyed bro brah bro brah bro brah Sal Masekela.

But can I tell you a quick story, one that I swore I told you before but couldn’t find even after googling “BeachGrit Sal Masekela New York” and “BeachGrit Sal Masekela Hurricane?” One that popped right into my brain once I heard his “Bro brah big Pipe I surf Cloudbreak brah bro.” Is that ok?

Yeah?

Ok!

The year was 2011 or some such and Quiksilver had secured the rights to a New York-based Association of Surfing Professionals World Championship Tour event so sensational, so bombastic, that few imagined it could be pulled off. It would be, weeks later, in some of the best surf New York had ever seen but our story begins, weeks earlier, in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District’s Standard Hotel.

It was the “event hotel” and the keycards had already been embossed with “Quiksilver Pro New York” imagery. Very chic but I was there not for future surf but because the professional skateboarding tour Street League was being held across the Hudson in Newark, New Jersey. My gorgeous wife represented famous skateboards and I was merely along for the ride.

In any case, some hurricane was threatening to hit the region but the Street League organizers decided they would have enough time to run the event no problem. My wife and I drove through the Holland Tunnel or Lincoln Tunnel or whichever Tunnel, watched, then drove back to the Standard.

Rain was already lashing the windows when we arrived to our home-away-from-home.

Strong-ish wind.

We went downstairs to eat dinner and happened upon Sal’s then girlfriend who we invited to join as she was solo.

“Where’s Sal?” My wife asked.

“He is staying in New Jersey because he is too afraid of the potential hurricane…” she responded.

“Oh bullshit.” My wife, notoriously opinionated, fired back. “I’ll hire you a car. You go get him.”

Sal’s girlfriend, inspired, agreed and left as soon as dinner ended.

I didn’t think much of it until, a few hours later, she invited us back downstairs to join her and Sal for a drink. I had already fallen asleep like a fat li’l Arab and was confused, off-kilter, but perpetually agreeable.

My wife and I went downstairs and there sat Sal and his then-girlfriend. He seemed upset and announced that he was frustrated that his then-girlfriend had put them both in danger by driving through steady rain and almost steady wind to get him.

An apparent “hurricane.”

I thought, “Oh.”

Then he proceeded to tell me that Nike, teasing Nike 6.0 representing the “six stars of extreme sports” and Hurley, had “credibility” in the “surfing and extreme sports” space thanks to him. That without Sal Masakela they would be seen as frauds and interlopers but because of him were accepted as “core participants.”

I thought, “I must still be sleeping…” while looking outside at the rain and possible wind.

Many months later he advised one-time pop celebrity Mandy Moore against climbing Mt. Everest due danger etc.

It currently has 1900 views.

Pipeline.

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