Twenty-two apartments overlooking Superbank, from $1.1 million for a two-bedder to six-and-a-half mill for one of the sub-penthouses…

Last summer, the six apartment owners at 1 Petrie Street, Coolangatta, whose modest seventies-era building overlooked the Superbank, sold the whole joint for twelve million dollars to a developer planning a “landmark building.”

The developer is a self-confessed VAL from Brisbane, Paul Gedoun, who“discovered” surfing five years ago at Snapper and who figured, oowee, maybe I’ll just buy the joint.

“I love everything about it and can’t believe I’ve been lucky enough to buy it,” he said.

It ain’t such a bad idea; I would if I could etc.

And the new building, called Flow, a seventy-mill build, will feature a penthouse which Gedoun will keep, and direct access to a footpath that leads to the the Snapper Rocks jump off.

It’s got all the usual markers of wealth, heated pool, daybeds, steam room, gymnasium, personal surfboard locker rooms, fire pit, even a “surfboard preparation room” where, perhaps, locals might be employed to fix their masters’ two-thousand dollar longboards and where lucky children with whisky breath will be free to roam and little dogs sourced from Mexico will be trained to walk on their hind legs. 

Here’s the price range.

2 bedroom 100sq.m – 113sq.m from $1,175,000
3 bedroom 160sq.m – 200sq.m from $2,300,000
Oceanic Residences 241sq.m – 289sq.m from $3,150,000
Sub- penthouses 524sq.m from $6,450,000

The sorts of places that send a message to the world that says, and I’m quoting Hannah Mary Rothschild here, “I have time to subcontract all the menial, dull chores out to others… I am time-rich. I can mooch about in a sea of pickled sharks.”

Terror turns to joy etc…

Here’s the wildest bit of vision you’re probs gonna see today – a twelve-foot White swimming through a group of surfers during a clear-water middle of the day sesh fifty feet or so from the beach at Plettenberg Bay in Western Province, South Africa.

The joint, say local authorities, is crawling with Great Whites because of seals and fish coming close to shore but adds it’s a “normal aggregation” this time of year.

I’m still chasing the fourteen-year-old kid who snatched this drone footage to fill in the blanks, why he didn’t swoop down and maybe let his brothers know there was an animal famous for mangling human limbs examining their offerings a little too closely, so we must draw, for the moment, from our own observations.

One, ain’t it crazy how long it takes the group to see the White?

Two, its languid swim through a potential food source and, three, the VAL swinging his arms over like a pendulum who can’t catch a wave to escape.

According to Plettenberg Bay man Michael Herbst, ‘These guys said they had no idea the Great White was there until one of them yelled ‘shark’. They said they came out the water so fast and the beach was cleared by the lifeguards. For these surfers, it was their lucky day and they will never forget what happened out there as it is on film”.

Over the past ten years, twelve people have been killed by sharks in South Africa, five by Whites.

More to come if the kid checks his messages.

(In the meantime, maybe get one of these tourniquets if you’re kicking around White neighbourhoods. And I don’t mean Beverly Hills etc.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CByT2_sn1MK/

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.”)