Don't know what to think? Ask your favourite surfer…

A gift, this afternoon, in the form of a seven-hundred essay on America’s civil unrest from the still-best surfer in the world, Ventura’s Danny Reynolds.

Reynolds, a former world number four (2011) famous for his “go for broke” style of surfing, squares up to the hydra-headed movements, Marxism, Anarchism, Racism and so forth, that have turned parts of the country that saved the world from European fascism seventy-five years ago, into lawless Mogadishus.

“I’ve decided to take this moment to open up a conversation,” writes Reynolds, a thirty-four-year-old millionaire and daddy of three, who goes on to say that social media has “gone mad” and that “misinformation is spreading like a disease.”

Then, a plaintive wail,

Can anyone tell me what the hell is actually going on out there?  Is it a coincidence that all this chaos is happening during an election year? I can’t help to think about how supposed Russian operatives used social media to create division and chaos in America during our last presidential election. 

It’s really not that hard, Anyone can invent a fictional story around an event or a person, connect a few dots, post on youtube or facebook or a meme on instagram or twitter and someone will believe it. Post something real enticing and it just might go viral.

Evidence?

Shit even the president doesn’t care to fact check before posting.

Social media is an open stage for spreading false narratives.

Are things more bizarre and unfathomably scripted than we can imagine? Are we pawns in a massive scheme? 

Or is it mostly straightforward… to use the current situation as a reference – an unfortunate set of events… coronavirus spread to a human in a wet market in China and is highly infectious so it spread like wildfire into a global pandemic and then two months later a fucking heartless person with a badge got recorded abusing his power and ultimately killing a black man over a misdemeanour which triggered global protests and a movement for equality and police reform which will ultimately be a positive change?

I know the reality lies somewhere in-between… I wish to believe that for the most part politicians are good people that look out for the greater good, and create policies that benefit everyone from the disenfranchised to the wealthy.

But that’s a fairy tale, 

It’s all a fucking mess man. 

I sympathize with the black community, who have been suffering from systemic racism since being stolen from their homes and shipped to America as slaves 100’s of years ago. Some basic reading if you need a reminder –

Slave patrols.

Jim Crow laws.

Slave patrols to traffic stops.

I sympathize with police. Policing is the last line of work I would want to do – confronting people every day who are breaking the law. Enforcing minor infractions would just be sad. Dealing with people committing real infractions would be sketchy, being a police officer dealing with sketchy situations day in and day out has to warp your perspective on how to treat people fairly.

There’s people everywhere with poor judgement and no moral compass, angry fearful self absorbed egotistical mean and judgmental people. How people with those traits can become our leaders and law enforcers I don’t know. 

I don’t have any answers, I try to think logically, rationally, critically, vote, support businesses that support causes I believe in, treat everyone with respect, teach my kids good values… but it doesn’t feel like enough…

Pandemic, protests, lies, rallies, conspiracies, corruption, environment, justice…

How is it going to end?

And can we discuss these issues without everyone shitting their pants in anger?

(Click here for a sizzling little sesh with Matt McCabe, “metabolism of a rat”, and Reynolds, “still fairly nimble for 200 pounds and never stretching.”)

 

"BeachGrit has an insane amount of page views, visitors, zero advertising constraints, they say what they like, and they're now in a position to make masses of money!"

One of the more enjoyable aspects of creating a website without any sorta ideology beyond having a little fun and being able to lay on our lazy asses all day, is hearing other people talk about it.

In this podcast, which was prepared by English snowboarder and late blooming surfer, Matt Burr, we are gifted an opening monologue that describes BeachGrit as the biggest thing in board sports even if everyone who reads it wears bikini swimsuits and covers their bedroom walls in magazine ads of buff boys in frilly dresses; men who with effortless fluid motions can wink an eye, throw a kiss and toss their hair at the same time.

Matt believes that the “vast majority of interviews you see, read or hear tend to be anodyne, reductive, dull and often ill-informed” and, therefore, if you close your eyes during this interview with Charlie Smith, you can feel the empathic warmth Burr envelopes Charlie in.

“I’ve always been intrigued by Chas,” writes Matt in the podcast notes. “Firstly because I met him last year and found him to be utterly charming. Secondly, because in its way this persona as as much of a cliche as the very surf conformity he has spent his career railing against, and I’ve long suspected that nobody is more aware of that than Charlie himself. All of which begged a fairly obvious question as I sat down to interview him for this episode of the podcast: where does ‘Chas Smith’ end and Charlie Smith begin?”

The homo stuff is in the beginning.