Listen: “The World Surf League can only earn legitimacy when CEO Erik Logan gets arrested for illegally surfing under quarantine!”

#waiting

As you have certainly heard, by now, Kelly Slater has blocked BeachGrit on Instagram and Facebook. He has also blocked me, personally, and I love him no less. Greatest surfer in the world, handsome, one-time boyfriend of Cam Diaz, Pam Anderson, Gissy Bündchen, unafraid to think broadly, etc. but alas I can no longer gaze upon his stray thoughts.

His visage looking more and more like Joe Rogan every day.

Oops.

I wasn’t supposed to see that.

In any case, and thankfully, World Surf League CEO Erik Logan hasn’t blocked me yet.

Three days ago, he posted a picture of him sitting in a sunset dappled Manhattan Beach lineup with the caption “Soon #waiting.”

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

I assume he meant waiting to surf again which brings us around to a profound statement made by David Lee Scales today as we sat in Album Surfboard’s upper room and chatted.

“Waiting? Why doesn’t he just go surf? How boss would it be if he got arrested for surfing, his personal photographer hiding in the bushes capturing every moment then selling it to TMZ and using Oprah connections to push the story wide? World Surf League CEO Erik Logan arrested for surfing. Now that’s a story that would draw eyeballs.”

I completely agree and, again, the World Surf League continues to blow it worse than any other organization, save Souplantation, in the Covid Era.

With the absolute dearth of sporting news, it would headline ESPN’s Sportscenter and be New York Times front page.

The Modern Surfer may even skim the story.

You’d think a one-time President of Content and Media would be more on top of it, no?

We also discuss the joys of protesting nude, getting paid to finance a new car and teaching parrots to curse police horses.

Fine enough for your commute not to work?

I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Listen here!

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Revealed: Sensible surf website Stab magazine’s readership an extremely angry, racially and sexually diverse mob!

Woke.

Last night, after a full day of homeschooling, light yard work and a slimy red tide surf, I rolled into bed and began scrolling Instagram. A vague sadness permeated, as it was my first night blocked by Kelly Slater, but the ionized glow from a salt lamp soothed my nerves.

Instagram held no surprises, posts of “wacky animals in quarantine” and “ain’t my hair funny in quarantine” followed one after the other until I stumbled upon a particularly odd offering from Stab magazine.

I thought the post had been deleted, per Stab tradition, but just found it. The content praises the World Surf League’s bold recent moves while mocking the Stab commenter as an extremely angry, racially and sexually diverse mob.

The caption read:

“Those who said the @wsl is foolish for proposing a World Title surf-off: do you feel differently after learning that a majority of recent World Champs love the idea?”

But back to the mob.

Have you ever seen one that looks like this?

Is this the group that forced mayors and governors to criminalize surfing around the world?

The group that calls the police when they see a neighbor BBQing with non-relatives?

How many people have they blocked, collectively, on social media?

Is there a manager on stand-by to harangue?

Does Stab make more sense knowing this is the readership?

Many questions.

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Bullish: Surf Lakes’ dystopian plunger being tooled to produce “hundreds of millions of waves every year for decades!”

Many, many waves.

This Coronavirus Apocalypse will end soon, I feel, or at least when those cowering indoors, reading scientific journals etc. find their passports and remember they aren’t 80-years-old. A misplaced passport is certainly a troubling thing. Haunting even if no imminent trip is planned.

It will end soon and the under-80s will get back to livin’. Back to dreamin’. Back to surfin’.

Of course, it may be difficult to travel for surf in the near future. Airline bankruptcies, social distancing rules, worldwide economic collapse will likely put a damper on the whole shootin’ match but thankfully the world’s greatest surfer, Kelly Slater, has gifted humanity artificial wave technology and we will all soon be surf tripping to near-ish by industrial parks to play the Pastime of Kings.

Kelly’s team is busy now in Australia, bulldozing koalas in the most environmentally friendly way, but what about Surf Lakes there in Yeppoon. Do you recall?

It was my favorite of all the Surf Ranches due its dystopian design and how much better will that rusty plunger look now that our world actually is a dystopia?

Phenomenal.

It is still my favorite because, as revealed today, the Mad Max-esque machine is being tooled to “hundreds of millions of waves a year for decades.”

Shall we read?

Development of the system was commissioned by Surf Lakes, an Australian company that now has a full-scale functioning prototype operating in the town of Yeppoon, Queensland. A number of groups are reportedly interested in licensing the technology, which should happen once its creators have ensured that it’s ready for commercialization.

“We need to ensure the wave machine can deliver hundreds of millions of waves every year for decades for people to enjoy, and for surf park owners to confidently build businesses and developments around,” says Dr. Chris Hawley, managing director of Engenuity Solutions. “The data from the prototype testing is also being used to optimize the performance of the machine further, ensure ease of construction, improve power efficiencies and bring the highest standard of safety in design to every element.”

Amazing.

But how many waves a day?

I have been helping my young daughter with her first grade math in quarantine so let me run the numbers.

Let’s go on the low side of “hundreds of millions” and say 300,000,000.

That would be:

25,000,000 waves a month.

833,333 waves a day.

34,7222 waves an hour.

578 waves a minute.

9 waves a second.

I don’t even know if a jackhammer can run that hot.

Brilliant.

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"One time I wrestled a VAL to the ground with my bare hands." | Photo: @stepbrothers

Millennial responds to recent evisceration of the modern surfer as fat, COVID-fearing craft beer drinker: “Modern Surfer is only one side of the canvas. We must also inspect the other. Surf Don!’

"The Surf Don reckons wave riding was perfected by Taylor Knox at Trestles in ‘98. Anything that came after that is just gristle on the bone."

Yesterday, Charlie Smith sketched for us his outline of the Modern Surfer.

He is, wrote Smith, repressed, flaccid.

Youthful, yes. But domiciled by the invisible shackles of an information-saturated world.

Content to never break free.

It was a beautiful picture.

And one that, maybe, cut this writer deep.

But, that’s beside the point.

Because Modern Surfer is only one side of the canvas. We must also inspect the other.

The Yin to the Modern Surfer’s Yang.

The Surf Don.

Named after the classic literary figure Don Quixote. The Surf Don is an idealistic crusader always looking for a fight, and an opportunity to prove just how right he is.

The Surf Don has risen through life, absorbed everything thrown at him, and came out tops.

No handouts. No favours.

The world is his, and there ain’t any tilted beanie or windmill that’s gonna tell him otherwise.

Want to know more?

The Surf Don works a trade, and has been doing so for the last thirty years. His appointments are timed around surfing, he only ever responds to phone calls (generally 3-5 business days later) and he charges like he’s suing for reparations.

The Surf Don looks at any feeble bodied, feminine cocksucker that doesn’t earn a living with his hands lower than he would Ando, or AOC.

The Surf Don is divorced, and if he’s not he should be.

The Surf Don has a long relationship with a local shaper and can’t believe what cocksuckers will pay for those goddamned Oriental pop-outs.

The Surf Don has been recycling through the same three board quiver for the last decade. Every few years he gives a silent, knowing nod to his shaper and an extra 1/4 inch is added to the thickness and width on his next order. But this is never openly discussed.

The Surf Don reckons wave riding was perfected by Taylor Knox at Trestles in ‘98. Anything that came after that is just gristle on the bone.

The Surf Don says his stiff style is all about economy of movement, but you probably wouldn’t understand. Cocksucker.

Anyway, you’ll never see the Surf Don in the water as he only frequents solitary banks and ledges. He don’t move with no crowds.

The Surf Don still dismisses thirty-four year olds as ‘groms.’

The Surf Don doesn’t say you should have been here yesterday. The Surf Don says you shouldn’t be here at all.

The Surf Don hates the WSL and everything it stands for, and wishes those lousy cocksuckers would fuck off and let somebody smart run the show. Like the Surf Don.

The Surf Don spends any spare time not surfing or working doing blokey things, like building retaining walls for friends and unknowingly reading alt-right media.

The Surf Don enjoys parking in liberal elitist cocksucker’s 2007 Prius hatchbacks with his late model F250 truck.

The Surf Don would live off grid if he could, and compensates for the fact by buying portioned cadavers direct from a butcher to store in his three commercial freezers ( eg “One deer leg thanks, Buck”).

The Surf Don is financially conservative, a self-labelled libertarian that would discover he’s an anarcho-capitalist if he ever looked it up.

The Surf Don buys an upgraded version of the same flannelette hoodie every two or three years.

The Surf Don reckons music peaked with the Foo Fighters’ 1999 album There is Nothing Left to Lose.

The Surf Don only drinks domestic and/or Mexican beers, which he enjoys with the odd hot one down by the beach with a few of his Don buddies.

Or, alternatively, he’s been off the booze ever since (insert drunken event that probably would have involved the cops if he didn’t have some “good people around him” here).

The Surf Don actively decries social media and all those who use it, yet spends most waking hours rotating between his Disqus and LinkedIn profiles.

(He had to get rid of Facebook after the ex caught him sexting a Russian bot)

What did I miss?

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See this ten-foot White? Caught on a drumline at Ballina, "Shark Number 28" has been tracked swimming from Queensland to WA and back. Forty thousand clicks since it was tagged in 2016. | Photo: @nsw_sharksmart Message

Healthy: 333 Great Whites caught on ten-mile stretch between Ballina, Lennox and Evans Head!

"The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks. We eyeball each other."

Don’t let it be said that there ain’t a flourishing White population in Australian waters, the result of a decision by the conservative government in 1999 to erect a legal forcefield around ‘em.

Whatever you think of Great Whites, majestic, horrifying, divine or the embodiment of evil, they sure do like it in the warm, clean waters between Lennox Head and Ballina.

Over the past four years, the NSW government has employed contractors to tag and release sharks caught on drumlines between Lennox Head and Ballina and around Evans Head.

The drumlines are of the “smart” sort, which means whenever a shark, or whatever, bites, the contractors are hit with an email, text or call telling ‘em to come and free the fish.

And the head-count?

Three hundred and thirty-three Whites have been caught, tagged released, sixty-seven Tigers and only seven Bulls, once the staple bities around these part.

Three hundred plus, oowee, that’s a lot of Great Whites swimming around.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_5henYj_RV/

It doesn’t necessarily mean terror, however.

(A couple of exceptions, here, here and here.)

Last year, BeachGrit’s Longtom wrote of a divine encounter with a juvie White at his beloved Point,

Flick. Some little imperceptible rapid movement in my peripheral vision sparks an unconscious reaction. I turn quickly to the movement. It takes a micro-second to see clearly what it is. A White shark. Coming in very hot straight at me. I don’t feel a thing even remotely allied with fear. It’s a “whoa!” I face it.

It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop. I can feel the pressure wave on my legs. White shark does a slow circle around me. I can see it the whole time in the crystal clear water. Comes in nice and slow right underneath me and rolls over. The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks. We eyeball each other.

There is no fear, no frozen feelings, no panic. Just a profound moment of inter-species communication across the gulf of millions of years of evolution.

Are you, like me, thrilled by the rude good health of Australia’s great white stocks?

Are you, like me, not planning on surfing the Ballina to Byron stretch anytime soon?

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