A cop threatens to taser you while your two kids cling to your back and you stand in knee-deep water. What do you do?

Overzealous policing was always going to be an unwelcome side-effect of various government orders to eliminate human activity from beaches etc.

For who polices the police?

Florida’s Shea Lopez, who held a spot in the top sixteen for six consecutive seasons and who only exited the tour in 2003 after a catastrophic knee injury during the Pipe Masters, says he was threatened with being tasered, in front of his kids, while collecting sea shells.

On Facebook, and a few posts before a quote from Adolf Hitler describing, in his kinky way, how easy it is to control a population by taking a little of their freedoms one at a time, Shea writes:

The scene. My kids on the left. Saw some sand fleas running back to their surfboards. They love sand fleas. The guy fishing on the right was fake fishing. The officer’s big red truck is approaching from the south. He’s going. 20+mph. He drove that speed thought the water and tide pools until he came to a screeching halt right behind my girls. They all jumped. He yelled to them. I walked up from the north. Tried to let him know we were just surfing. They had wetsuits and boards. It was allowed. Everything went south after I asked his name. My girls crying from the scare he gave them. He could’ve killed us all.

“My question? If you were threatened to be tasered in front of your kids while your kids held tight to your back crying after getting yelled at by this masked and agitated officer in a big red truck. We were at the waters edge. Dead low tide. Two tide pools between us and the normal high tide beach. We were all wet. We would have all died.” SHEA LOPEZ

I have ptsd. It’s not new. Heck. We all experience elevated levels and times of stress that stay with us. To different levels. I’m at odds with what to do now to help me recover from an April attack that left me having recurring nightmares and flashbacks. All very real to me. It was real. The eve of Easter Sunday during quarantine and an emergency order. My question? If you were threatened to be tasered in front of your kids while your kids held tight to your back crying after getting yelled at by this masked and agitated officer in a big red truck.

We were at the waters edge. Dead low tide. Two tide pools between us and the normal high tide beach. We were all wet. We would have all died.

What do I do???

To prevent this from happening ever. In any situation for any reason. A taser. Wet kids. Because we were playing in the surf. Surfing. Dancing. Running. Collecting sea shells as we moved along the beach with our boards.

Why do beach patrol officers have big trucks. Big guns. Tasers. I almost died. My kids would have died. The way our beaches are protected and served. Could use a closer look. I’m scared. My kids were scared. Change is great. Let’s make a change. I don’t want to have nightmares anymore. Until I act on this event. I will keep having nightmares.

More, as, if, the story develops. ie if Shea picks up the telephone etc.

As for spectators at the early events, "you had the guys hanging off in the bushes, smoking dope and calling bullshit on the whole thing."

Every Sunday afternoon, east of the international date line that is, Seattle-based former surfer Matt Warshaw emails subscribers to his online encyclopedia a thoughtful summation of a certain event or epoch in surfing.

Today is Pipeline Masters themed, and the email links at the end to an interview Warshaw made with the father of the Pipe Masters, and pro surfing, the former Republican senator, Fred Hemmings.

Oh, reader, it’s thunderbolt after thunderbolt.

“I wanted to develop a format that would look good on television so I could market surfing to a larger audience—to the average schmuck watching TV in Middle America,” says Fred.

“I didn’t kiss the surfing establishment’s ass. I was an outspoken critic of drugs, back when that wasn’t cool. ‘Do your own thing, man’ —all that stuff. Well, a lot of my friends died as a result of doing their own thing.” FRED HEMMINGS

On why he chose Pipe over Sunset or Makaha.

“I went back and talked to people in New York, TV people, business people, and surfing was a really hazy thing to them. I’m sure they wouldn’t have really understood what was going on with a guy riding a 10′ wave at Sunset or Makaha. Seen one wave, seen ’em all; this guy looks just like that guy. That kind of thing. So I wanted to sell them on something a little more challenging—and dangerous, to be frank. The Pipeline is so different from other spots. And back then, as a contest site, it was virgin ground. The reason I just had six guys in the first contest was because I didn’t want to create a situation where someone was going to get in over their head.

Why the surf media ignored his event, at least initially.

“I didn’t kiss the surfing establishment’s ass. l didn’t play ball with Drew Kampion and the rest of them. I was an outspoken critic of drugs, back when that wasn’t cool. ‘Do your own thing, man’ —all that stuff. Well, a lot of my friends died as a result of doing their own thing. Anyway, I didn’t see things the way the magazine folks saw ’em, and my contest was a victim of that.”

And the spectators?

“I did the best I could to hype the thing, but I doubt if there were any more than a hundred people on the beach—probably not even that. And then you had the guys hanging off in the bushes, smoking dope and calling bullshit on the whole thing. But we just went ahead and ran it, and all in all, I think it was pretty exciting.”

(Subscribe to the Encyclopedia of Surfing, here. It’s a few bucks a month and will give the interested surfer rabbit hole after rabbit hole to fall down.)

Given the paucity of high-level surfing in front of us, will you be thrilled to watch Filipe, Brother, Griff and co oxidise Lemoore's water spouts?

Any port in a storm or so the rationale goes at three am in an emptying bar or, in our case, a year with no surfing contests. 

So it was with much excitement that we fielded a rumour, straight from WSL HQ where twenty-five percent of its staff have been “furloughed”, that America-based WCT surfers were being mobilised for a Lemoore contest “within a month.” 

The field will include Filipe Toledo, Kolohe Andino, Conner Coffin, John John Florence, Seth Moniz, Griffin Colapinto and the tank’s creator Kelly Slater; Carissa, if she decides to end quasi-retirement, Caz Marks, Lakey Peterson, maybe Stephanie Gilmore (Malibu crib), Courtney Conlogue, Sage Erickson, Malia Manuel and Brisa Hennessy if she can sneak in under the tortilla curtain. 

The Freshwater Pro, of course, has never been a favourite of surfers or fans. 

As Longtom opined last year, it was “damned with faint praise by Kolohe Andino, openly mocked by Jeremy Flores, universally panned as a doomed experiment by surf fans the Tub should have retreated back to its by now natural niche: as a novelty venue for things like Founders Cup and a high-priced corpo retreat. It ain’t a championship Tour stop. Especially one now stretched out over six days. That’s cruel and unusual punishment and I refuse to cover it.”

But, now?

Given the paucity of high-level surfing in front of us, Pentacoastal and Reynolds and Mini Blanchard’s new blog aside, I’ll be thrilled to turn on the WSL channel and watch Filipe, Brother, Griff and so on oxidise Lemoore’s water spouts.

Are you of similar mind?

Gone for two years.

If you were curious why Tyler Wright disappeared from the tour for two years, and were disappointed by the WSL’s belated and half-assed explanation, this television feature might fill in a few gaps.

While it ain’t the tell-all you mighta wanted, for mystery still surrounds the Wright family, you’ll get partly inside the head of a preternatural talent who won her first big event at fourteen and two consecutive world titles at twenty-two and twenty-three.

Meet the pop-star girlfriend “Alex the Astronaut” who nursed Tyler through her long illness, the physical therapist who asked, “How do we make her human again?” and how, at the depth of it all, and after being bedridden for months, the champ couldn’t stand up without feeling like her heart was going to explode.

A season in hell.