Listen: “I play hard local and send people in all the time. In Covid-19, even the most pussy surfer can do it, ‘Hey Bro, stay six feet away!’ I don’t know why people aren’t owning their local right now!”

Episode two of Dirty Water, a weekly conversation between Chas Smith and Derek Rielly…

Over the course of this forty-eight minute recording, enjoyed with a high-end organic sipping tequila called Solento that was designed to be savoured slowly, BeachGrit principals Chas Smith and Derek Rielly cover a raft of mostly pointless topics.

It is a conversation that, let’s be frank, shouldn’t be loosed on the various podcast platforms, although we all got time on our hands, at least theoretically, so here we are.

Today, we begin with “skinny, gross, easily poundable” Chas Smith describing his favoured method of sending people in, conceding the absurdity of it and that “even an overweight millennial once took me down with an open palm to the neck.”

The topic is open because of how localism is now available even to “sissy surfers” who can legally scream, “Hey bro,  you’re in my six feet” to anyone who encroaches on their real estate.

There is discussion about how easy it is to remove a set of FCS fins with a fist and the impossibility of doing so if your opponent’s surfboard has Futures boxes.

“I don’t know why people aren’t completely grabbing hold of and owning their local right now,” says Chas. “How many times in history has this happened? No time! Except in Hawaii during Bustin’ Down the Door when Rabbit got choked out for being within six feet of whoever.”

The mention of the great surfing documentary opens the table to discussion, again, about HBO’s 24/7 Kelly Slater and why BeachGrit’s Longtom adored it so much (read here).

“Hating on Kelly Slater is like shooting fish in a barrel; to love Kelly is the nuanced take.”

Chas talks about the “atomic bomb” he laid at the end of a film he made for Red Bull that made it impossible to release commercially and the footage he shot of a teenage Kolohe Andino, reimagined as a has-been living in his grandma’s garage after totalling his career with coke and hookers.

“It was a dirty shoot,” says Chas. “I can’t believe we even got the concept through. But the Andinos didn’t like it at the end.”

The recording finishes with a blunt, and predictable, hammer to the head of WSL CEO Erik Logan.

Game over for the WSL!” says Chas, “Erik Logan is the guy who turned the WSL from a tour to a content provider and now, when everyone is starving for content, all he’s delivered is a half-baked Chris Coté show, I love Chris Coté, but are you kidding me? The WSL’s a wrap!”