"Last time I was down there, there was a chap on his balcony with guns to two people's heads screaming and yelling."
Four-and-a-half years ago, the world champion surfer Kelly Slater spent $2.1 million Australian dollars on a beachfront apartment in the Queensland suburb of Palm Beach.
A ten-minute drive from Snapper; a Florida vibe.
If you’ve ever lived on the Gold Coast, you’ll know Palmy.
Its distinctive rows of run-down houses made in the nineteen-fifties from weatherboard cladding, curtains drawn even in the middle of a bright winter day, fronts for the hydroponic and meth units deftly hidden inside.
On a recent forum where readers were invited to detail what suburbs to avoid on the Gold Coast, Palm Beach was regularly noted.
If you dont wanna get stabbed or robbed stay away from as above nerang and palm beach, i live in robina thats pretty nice plus the stadium is getting built atm
Full of deadbeat bogans people who dont work and live on the dole and think its cool. Not all of them of course but alot of people around those areas are
Palmy, druggies.
All I can say is avoid Palm Beach. Full of druggies and bogans and has a very high crime rate. Last time I was down there, there was a chap on his balcony with guns to two people’s heads screaming and yelling. The SERT team came out and ushered us all into random people’s garages and stormed the unit complex. From what I heard afterwards the ended up shooting the dude from the road. It was like something off TV! Time before that the local video shop was broken into. It’s getting worse.
Really beautiful beach though 🙂
In November 2015, Kelly Slater bought a whole-floor apartment in the Joy on Jefferson build, a gorgeous seven-apartment tower on the little service road that runs between the Gold Coast Highway and the beach.
It’s here that Kelly has been helping his fans keep their chins above water by broadcasting rhythm guitar tracks for aspiring guitar heroes to lead over; never-before-heard songs like “Trouble” and offering the chance to decide whether or not they like his quarantine beard.
In between his important social media duties, Kelly has been raising hell on the local beachies, an underrated series of wedges broken up by various rock groynes and identified by whatever numbered avenue you came down to get there.
Like, you surf twelfth ave, nineteenth ave, twenty-fifth and so on.
The reader who sent this clip says his building stares straight into Kelly’s apartment and offered hair-raising stories that even your old pal DR was reticent to publish online.
Still, from what we see here, is Kelly, in insane form, painting his surrealist lines into verses that might very well be described as poetry.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-liTFTDLNN/
Below, the JOJ tower.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
It’s sad to say but I don’t remember the specifics. It was during BG’s nascent days and my comment was pretty rude. I think it may have had something to do with his Summer Teeth endeavor? Anyway…another one of the trusty commentators pointed out his response and then he deleted it shortly after but that didn’t stop me from apologizing profusely. I needed the good karma.
also your mate is full of shit. which windows does he look into? the ones that face out to sea? the non-existent side windows? or the shaded single back window?
kelly is the biggest cunt. how much energy does it take to make one wave at his shitty pool? no one knows and no one asks….
i lived in palmy for a year. never saw any dodgy shit or hard locals. byron is way dodgier.
Dinner table conversations, to the delight of all.
Coke makes the dreariest subjects interesting
Spill the beans buddy! Think of all those clicks that these sordid tales would generate for the website. You could retire and afford move in next door to Kelly!
what a pussy…
Sauvage
You holding? Asking for a friend…
The place has gone downhill. I learnt to surf between 11th Ave groyne (Note: Derek!) and Currumbin, which were in walking distance of my Grandma/pas house. Even back then it was a bit sketchy. Still, to a young grommet being able to cruise up to Geoff Darby’s shop, (a fibro shack on the highway), is indelibly imprinted. The smells of resin wafting through from the room out the back that serves as the glassing room, while I agonised over the critical choice between Strawberry or Honey Bee wax, was heaven.
Still some of the funnest little wedges I’ve surfed on the GC.
Was fun this morning – but pretty busy. Might be our last surf for a while Apparently State and GCCC meeting as we speak about closing the beaches down.
Oh yeah. When the groynes were first put in there was no sand at all for most of that stretch. As the sand filled in there were the best lefts of them for a year or two and then rights later on before it all settled into long straight banks for another year or two. Went from nothing to good and then back to nothing before settling into the current peaky goodness again. The really big surf improver was the Currumbin Alley groyne that connected the island to the beach. And then the training wall for the creek also helped. And you get to say groynes a lot.
oi, cunt. which window did your lying cunt of a mate look through?
Had a nice Darby once
He does a bit of backyard shaping for mates now I think. Still has a supply of the old/new decals which make for a interesting flashback. Speaking of which. That board I was riding in the recent Bingin photo was a Darren Handley shaped Hot Stuff. I was a test pilot for greatness it turns out.
Hawaii is still letting us surf. Just got to walk across the closed beach parks & paddle directly out. The North Shore, places like Chun’s Reef, are packed but the Life Guards remind folks to practice ‘Social Distancing’, good luck. The cyclist in spandex are also nose to ‘okole’ just like the down under. Surfline Cam to check out the Waikiki Crowds is ‘Kapiolani Park’. You can see ‘Public’s’ all the way East to ‘Rice Bowls’. No one on the beach but everyone surfing on what ever floats. Aloha Kanaka Maoli..
Can I pay him to do that to my wife?
Bogans and druggies…..Yawn. A lot of neighborhoods in Florida make Palm Beach Australia look like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
Was that footage shot on a Motorola Razor, Gen I?
2.1 million Aussie dollars.
What’s that American?
A night out and tipping big
Not for much longer Pal.
tipping? what’s that? keeping people above the poverty line cos you ordered a beer?
Hackworth’s property was known as the Duck farm. I went there in that late 70’s…his nephew was growing the cyrp. When the cold war threat dissipated the cunt became a restauranteur and a real estate agent. Go Robbie!
Saw him speak back in the day at a few of the anti-nuke protests. He’s a mensch.
Its interesting that Robert has chosen the GC to ride out CV-19 because it parallells with the story of US Army Colonel David Hackworth who elected to ride out a possible nuclear war by computing that the safest place…on the planet…was in the shadow of Mt Warning in the centre of the Tweed Valley. Google him….this bloke was a true survivor.
Someone was saying a while back that he looks on here to see what we’re saying about him.
I poo-pooed the idea though, cos surely he’d at least make an anonymous name and comment on himself…
Dane Reynolds did and maybe still does. Apparently I offended him at some point which is ironic considering I’m a huge fan and I’ve lightly stalked him in Hawaii and Brooklyn.
I wonder what his anonymous name was/is ?
Negs or Wigs might remember. In fact…one of them might remember the whole story because, unfortunately, I don’t. A sad combination of age and jetlag.
This is more like it NZ:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nat…
https://resources.stuff.co….
Fucken pathetic, ay !
The fun police in full swing – ok then – get the fucken cyclists off the roads.
Fucken nazis – that whole greenwankery lobby.
Yeah it’s only the cyclists falling off and hurting themselves anyway…
Yeah and their noses are literally inches from each other’s ass when they ride in packs. Fuckers blow snot rockets the whole time and heavy sweat on the downstream bunch.
Drove the coast yesterday after getting groceries from the harbor to Del Mar. Saw about 100 cops, rangers, and border patrol “guarding” beach access. Also noticed about 10,000 bikers in their cool spandex outfits riding in the Peleton about 1/2″ away from each other all sweaty and panting. The stupidity of all of this made me question out leadership deeply.
Yeah, wtf!? The cherry picking of who gets to work or play and who doesn’t is odd. Local news showed big construction sites where everyone is working. I see solo riders on the roads out here but not the pelotoners that typically plague the place. Olympic training center isnt far so they ride in teams with matching spandex into the foothills, pissing the fuck out of every person driving. Occasionally you’ll see a hot chick but most of the time they’ll all just look like skeletor
they are ridiculous here and I dont get it. logos all over the spandex, while my area is flatter than a pancake. great place to train mostly think its docs and lawyers that can afford to look like asses while they “train”
It really is out of control. Most have a fuck you attitude towards people in cars who are just trying to get to work or whatever. They need to make em get a license, pay registration, etc
and when one of them falls and gets hurt, they will come to one of the least safe places to be, which is the emergency department which may well be full of both identified and unidentified infectious patients. they get infected at the Ed and bring home and spread to others. bye bye grandma.
Bloody ridiculous, it’s the faggy cyclists they should be stopping…
Don’t forget people are walking and running too!
Most of them don’t fall over and need ambulances in the same participation/injury ratio
Nice try throwing a baited hook out there, Dozza.
But, fuck Kelly right now.
He’s zactly like the female morning host here posting pics of herself in her grad ball gown from 20 years ago.
Fucken pathetic piece of shit and who gives a fuck in the overall scheme of things.
Edit: let me help you, Dez.
#hillarybarry#patheticpieceofshit#mediawhore#loveastro
Just looks like some guy surfing some small dumpy beach break. you know who actually makes small dumpy beachbreak look good– is that dude– what’s his name–inner light or something, oh yeah, Sterling……. looks like he has fun too……..
It’ll be good if he grows a big full length big bushy beard but shaves his moustache, similar to Abraham Lincoln…
the terrorist beard look
Fuck Dez you can’t tease us with peering into Kelly’s bedroom then recanting it!!!! Maybe a guessing game at least no??
I’ll go first – he has bought all the women’s clothing from local op shops and is going to serenade us on that guitar dressed as and singing as beyonce, madge, dua lipa, Mariah, lady gaga etc