Cops patrolling the streets, the beaches, the parks; the World
Health Organisation in the pockets of the architects of a virus
that’s doin’ what no war or fascist dictator ever could, bringing
the capitalistic west to its knees.
Food lines, empty shelves, an unemployment tsunami coming that’s
worse than the Great Depression at its peak.
You’ll have lots of fun scaring your friends and loved ones when
you pop this in your tub and the water runs a bloody red.
Results may differ from photo.
The size of an oddly shaped baseball, roughly two-and-a-half
inches high, and, inexplicably, painted green and without eyeballs,
the BeachGrit Great White Shark
Bath Bomb is handmade in Atlanta, Georgia,
and numbers are strictly limited.
Cuter, even, than formal wear for chubby children.
The sun is out in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, again,
apparently unaware there is a novel Coronavirus terrorizing the
entire globe. Striking much fear into hearts and minds from Hot
Water Beach, New Zealand to Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz, USA.
Terrorizing and striking much fear but thankfully we have bold
global leaders who have plotted humanity on a course where few
people have caught the un-common cold, fewer people have jobs and
no people have even make-believe freedoms.
Pretend rights.
After puttering around the house for a moment, make-believe
teaching my young daughter homeschool math and happening to catch
part of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press conference, I
decided to go for yet another bike ride even though the last one
ended disastrously and/or historically.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press conference was playing
at very low volume as he and I have
beef but I saw his lips moving and saw words like “we
won” and “curve flattened” and “restrictions eased.”
I didn’t know where I was going, as there is officially nowhere
to go, but outside is better than inside and with restrictions
eased felt I might stumble into a block party.
Maybe a street magician performing entertaining sleight of
hand.
My first stop was a point overlooking my local break. I knew it
wasn’t firing as the wind whipped hard and onshore first thing this
morning but old habits die hard.
There were whitecaps as far as the eye could see and a 300 yard
ribbon of chocolate brown from the latest rain squalls.
Cashew nut pork brown.
Suddenly I became very hungry, fitness being a foreign concept
more or less, and needed sustenance.
Birdseye Kitchen in
Leucadia has the best cashew nut pork anywhere outside Laos and so
I called in a quick order with a side of white rice. Spice medium.
5 on a scale of 1 – 10 which is always a sneaky treat. Sometimes it
is more mild than I prefer but usually singes perfectly.
It took me fifteen minutes to pick it up and while I was riding
back to eat it in my yard became very scared that it would be too
cold.
Panicked, I saw a little patch of grass with no one around.
Should I dare?
Could I dare?
Nobody was around and Gavin Newsom bullish and….
…cold cashew pork with medium spice is a crime in itself so I
parked my bike, sat on a towel that my bike carries, unsheathed my
chopsticks and partook.
Delicious.
After a few minutes a very elderly man shuffled to a bench, well
over 25 yards away, and unfurled a newspaper. After a few more
minutes a mom with her toddler posted up on a picnic table an equal
25 yards away and unfurled a lunch.
Sun out.
Birds singing.
Then, without warning, all hell broke loose. Three sheriff SUVs
came sliding to a stop patch of grass adjacent. Recalling my
previous brush with the Coronavirus Gestapo, I wanted nothing to do
with any of it and got up to vacate but too late.
Bull rushed by a masked Gestapo, one hand on gun, the other on
ticket book. I told him I was moving along, heading back to
quarantine jail, but no matter.
“These are our Governor’s demands.”
There was no use arguing and I hoped to draw ire away from very
elderly man and mom with toddler but no such luck.
The Gestapo had them too.
I told my officer to stop talking to me and just write the
damned ticket, which he did, then made my way over to the mom and
toddler and told all three on her case that they should all be
ashamed of themselves, breathily whispering “Shame on you…” into
one of their masked ears for emphasis.
“Governor Newsom…” one of them uttered again.
Governor Newsom and I have now have fresh beef.
Ticket two.
First for Thai-esque salad.
Second for cashew pork featuring medium spice.
Both within view of the ocean.
Heroes have risen.
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Watch: Surf cinematographer nearly captures
friend getting legs torn off, marrow sucked from hips, by “savagely
territorial” Great White shark!
“I really don’t want to film this because I might
film my mate getting eaten…”
And they build them different on that western
half of Australia, don’t they just though? Women who laugh in the
face of robust, muscular kangaroos. Men who surf on top of rocks
with man-eating Great White sharks circling, just waiting to feast.
Waiting to tear legs right off surfers, bodyboarders, water
cameramen too and suck the marrow from those hips.
Famous surf cinematographer Brendan Foster was out recently and
almost caught his fine friend and water cameraman Anj Semark plus
two bodyboarders become Jarret de Veau.
Scary?
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-9Ll0VpP81/
Terrifying?
Apparently not to the brave Western Australians involved.
Foster went on the fine podcast Grin Reapers and told the story,
which goes a little something like this…
It was just the other day, I just went down to film some
empties by myself. I was there for two hours and there was no one
there and I just packed up to leave when I looked at my phone and
saw I had a missed call from Anj Semak. He was up top checking and
while I was one the phone to him he was like, “Oh shit, did you see
that?”
I was like, “No, what?” And he said, “I thought I saw
something launch out of the water…” but you know what Anj is like
and about two seconds later he said, “I’m gonna go out and
shoot.”
Well, I had two batteries left so I told him I’d shoot him
shooting the water and also just to keep an eye out.
So he was getting set up and two bodyboarders paddled out. I
didn’t have the drone up in the air yet but I saw directly in front
of me a shark launch out of the water only five meters from the
shore. I saw fully all the way down its throat, teeth and whatnot,
and thought, “That’s not a dolphin.” And the bodyboarders had just
gotten out and the shark was… I don’t know, 80 meters away so I
just decided to play it cool… thinking, “Ahhh it wasn’t that big.
His teeth weren’t that sharp.”
I was gonna fly the drone up and just drop it on them so
they knew and I waved at Anj “shark!” but he just waved back. And I
thought, “Ohhhh this is not working.” So I scaled down the cliff
back to the beach and saw the shark moving toward one of the
bodyboarders and had a bit of an “Oh shit” moment just sprinting up
the beach. One of the bodyboarders sorta came in so I told him and
we were talking about it but they were like, “But it wasn’t that
big right?” And I said, “Well, sort of but it did jump out of the
water so…”
But they all stayed out so I just flew the drone again to
keep a lookout. Fifteen minutes, didn’t see anything and then all
of a sudden I saw a shark pop up on my screen, max 1.5 meters from
Anj and it was heading directly towards him.
At that moment I yelled so, so loud and I can’t believe Anj
heard me. It was kind of like when Simba tried to learn how to roar
in the Lion King. I felt like I had found a new sound, like I had
just become a man, and he heard it and as soon as that happened the
shark looped back around and I had a thought that I don’t want to
admit but… I thought, “I really don’t want to film this because I
might film my mate getting eaten…” but then my brain went… “Yeah
but if he doesn’t get eaten Anj will definitely want to screen grab
this.”
So I hit record.
In the footage it wasn’t nearly as close to him as the first
time it popped up on the screen. You know, it was mellow because
nothing happened but when I thought back on it thought, “That was a
little close for comfort.” I told them how close it was, I left and
they all went back out. I know it’s like cool to be, “It’s not a
big deal…” but… I did it twice, I warned em twice and they went
back out so I left.
Different, I tell you, and if the whole world was populated with
Western Australians this silly Coronavirus would be so scared it
would likely just find another bat and go hide in cave forever and
ever and never even think about frequenting wet markets again.
Listen to the whole Grin Reapers podcast here featuring special
guest Jack Robinson!
The criminalisation of surfing on gorgeous French
tropical island continues…
Surfers attempting to surf St Leu a day or so ago, in
what looks like absolutely firing waves at St Leu, were
buzzed by a helicopter.
The three surfers scramble in and gather themselves before
disappearing into the trees that line the beach at St Leu, and
alongside the old campsite that used to front the break.
The chopper lands and an authoritative figure jumps out and
proceeds to give chase, ducking through the tree line in a bid to
capture the crims, for that’s what surfers are nowadays if they go
surfing – criminals.
Now, surfing ain’t a crime in most countries, but it is on
Reunion.
Some background.
On 12 April 2015, a 13-year-old surfer, Elio Canestri, was
killed surfing in Reunion by an eight-foot bull shark. He was one
of the best up-and-coming surfers in Reunion, a place that has been
torn apart, literally, by shark attacks, while the authorities
dither and refuse to make changes to the fishing reserve on the
west coast as well as shark-hunting policies.
The authorities have made it illegal to surf mot spots in
Reunion, putting the pressure on the surfers, as opposed to
cleaning up the mess they have made with the ocean. No one it seems
is prepared to make any bold moves to fix a problem that is wildly
out of control.
In the last eight years, there have been twenty-four attacks,
and eleven of those have proved to be fatal.
So, as a surfer, you have hordes of dumb bull sharks tearing
around the line-ups, wanting to eat anything in front of them, be
it birds, fish, car tires or surfers.
If you go for a surf, you are running the gauntlet every time,
and any session you brave might be your last might be the last time
you see your family.
It’s a helluva thing.
If you do survive a surf, there is always the risk of the
Gendarmerie waiting for you on the beach, to slap you with a EU37
fine, with those fines escalating each time you get caught, until
one day you’re in a cell and wondering what happened to your
life.
So going surfing is hard, in a place that used to be the jewel
of the Indian ocean surfing scene.
Surf schools used to flourish, surf backpackers, surf shops,
shapers, there was a full-on industry.
All gone now.
Back in the day, La Reunion was South African surfer’s secret
surf destination.
Warm and perfect, coral reefs, mechanical waves like St Leu,
barrels in St Pierre, big waves at Le Port and sometimes Etang
Sale, grinding reef-pass barrels at L’Hermitage and nudity at Trois
Bassons.
It had everything.
Now with this bug flying around, shit just got infinitely worse
on the island for anyone brave enough to surf among the sharks, or
foolish enough to take a chance with COVID-19.
Reunion currently has 389 cases.
The surfers all escaped the chopper, using back alleys and
secret routes, and they all got home.
Who knows, maybe they even picked up a couple of delicious
Bourbon Beers – the tasty local brew – to have a quick celebration
over beating all the odds, because they sure were stacked against
’em.
Local surfers on the whole, however, continue to remain indoors
and don’t want people to take these chances.
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"We're best friends and nobody else!"
Just in: New Zealand Coronavirus Gestapo
collaborator “disappointed” in abuse received from surfers!
When the whole entire world is put under lock
and key, it is extremely difficult to police properly. There are
simply not enough jackbooted law enforcement officers, state park
rangers, lifeguards to make certain that seven billion people are
shuddering inside their homes, hiding from the Coronavirus with
curtains drawn etc. Not going outside, to the park or, even worse,
the beach.
Thankfully, and if we have learned anything from Hitler’s
Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, it is that many
people are more than happy to papier-mâché little swastika badges
at home and play collaborator.
But shall we hurry to New Zealand’s Hot
Water Beach where one lone volunteer sturmabteilung is
being abused by surfers for his brave work on behalf of the
state?
A Hot Water Beach resident abused whilst trying to stop
lockdown flouting surfers says he won’t give-up on his mission to
keep the waters clear.
The man, who wanted to remain anonymous so he could remain
unrecognisable to the law breaking surfers, says despite his best
efforts, the Coromandel surf beach remained a popular
spot.
On Saturday, April 4, police released updated guidelines
around Alert Level 4 rules and provided clarity around what was
acceptable bubble behaviour – that included a ban on swimming or
water-based activities such as surfing or boating.
But just days later, the Hot Water Beach local counted
around 20 surfers in the ocean. As Easter weekend rolled in, there
continued to be a steady stream.
When he confronted them, he was abused.
“Since lockdown started I’ve been trying to educate the
people of Hot Water Beach, but I’m not getting very far,” he
says.
“They’re very defiant and have been very smart and abusive
and they’re making a lot of noise to be noticed.”
He says he’s well-aware that being a “squeaky wheel”
wouldn’t do him any favours with the surfing community, but his
priority was keeping the community safe.
Should “Defiant, Smart, Abusive” be BeachGrit’s new tagline?
Also, could it be possible that this anonymous man is, in fact,
Ken “Skindog”
Collins?
More as the story develops.
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
