Kolohe Andino on a CI Happy. | Photo: @ciatreiser

Swinger’s Ball: Conner Coffin is officially out of Channel Islands’ hometown door but is San Clemente’s Kolohe Andino pouncing through crack like a sexy cat?

Championship time?

You…… you are a grown woman. You have fallen in love and fallen out of love and fallen back in love then rudely shifted your eyes around wondering if you should be back in love or maybe there is something better.

Conner Coffin, sweet Santa Barbara boy, is currently in the throes of a very public breakup with hometown surfboard maker Channel Islands.

We, of course, remember Channel Islands surfboards via Tom Curren and his Black Beauty, Kelly Slater and the only boards he ever won on (a huge shame that he left in retrospect), Dane Reynolds and… Conner Coffin, I suppose.

Conner was never a household name but did make it on to the Championship Tour with a beautiful turn and gorgeous personality.

Now he is gone, from Channel Islands, but will the only American with an actual shot at the title fill his slot?

Maybe.

Kolohe Andino is the greatest surfer dyed red, white and blue of the last decade. A proper star even today but with so much left in the tank.

And rumor has it that Kolohe wants to fill that tank with Channel Islands boards. An undeniable pedigree, impossible to beat pedigree, if we’re honest.

Also what meaningful has Matt Biolos won?

Think hard.

If Kolohe does indeed jump to CI then will a championship follow?

Much to ponder.

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Conner, always pretty on the eyes at at J-Bay. | Photo: @wsl

Conner Coffin quits Channel Islands for JS; world #20 to become the face of Australian company’s push into USA!

Thanks for the laughs!

Lovely Conner Coffin, whose over-easy haircut rivals Strider Wasilewski’s for lesbian chic, has quit his board sponsor of sixteen years for the greener pastures of Jason Stevenson’s eponymous brand JS. 

It ain’t a great surprise, despite Conner being pivotal in the design of two of CI’s most popular surfboard models, the Fred Rubble and the Fred Stubble. 

JS ran a contest a couple of weeks back offering a board if you could guess who his new team rider was going to be. The clue was a silhouette photograph and Conner’s blunt-cut waterfall was a dead give-away, at least to anyone who has ever walked out of a hairdresser’s salon in tears.

Ain’t no other CTer with that sorta blunt cut.

Our sources say Conner was searching for something a little different, a secret weapon to elevate him from the tour’s fringes and into the top ten. He shopped his schtick around and landed at JS.

In a statement to his fans Conner writes,

“I was fortunate to get my first CI around age 10 through @baresco and then worked my way up to a childhood dream of Al shaping my boards for around 2 years. His ability to transform feedback into board design to help me grow as a surfer was amazing. I clearly remember a few boards that took my surfing to new levels within a few sessions. Then I got to work with @mike_andrews3 who was all time and we gave birth to the Fred rubble and Fred stubble, A board that was borderline life changing for me. Then I had the privelage of working with a long time friend and brother in @mike_walter . As a relatively new shaper mike was fired up and had a nack for the “al rail” that I was looking for since he left. We had a blast working together which led to qualifying for the tour and a year at 7th on the CT.”

Conner will now become the face of JS’s push into the direct-to-consumer market in the US, his style which might be linked to the rippling of a kimono so sinuously as to suggest two women making love, a compelling sell to cutback aficionados all across that brave land.

Parker Coffin, Conner’s naughty little brother who shakes his hips and mimics a femmie boy on waves, meanwhile, will remain with CI, his star rising on the success of his Fishbeard model. 

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Kelly Slater (right) demonstrates erectile dysfunction to John John Florence.
Kelly Slater (right) demonstrates erectile dysfunction to John John Florence. | Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms

World’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater viciously trolls men with erectile dysfunction: “Girls should be tagging guys who couldn’t perform!”

"The comment, both exclusionary to homosexuals and the trans-community while pushing the hurtful narrative of cisgender normalcy, is also very mean."

You sure never do know where the 11 x World Champion and wave pool ownership enthusiast Kelly Slater will pop up. The beginning of the Coronavirus shutdown found him bouncing around New Zealand then Australia before somehow arriving in the United States, a healthy trail of environment sustaining CO2 lighting his path.

He is a mover and shaker though always on Instagram where he opines on various thises and thats.

As you know, Slater recently canceled BeachGrit, blocking and removing, possibly over being called the most environmentally damaging non-politician in history, though he has long taken offense with the surf tabloid’s “character revealing” tone of “funny and cheap.”

Well, it seems like the world’s greatest surfer also has a mean bone, going out of his way to finger men with erectile dysfunction.

Underneath a recent Instagram post featuring an effete younger man smashing himself in the head with a can of beer and knocking out with a caption “tag the softest person you know”, Kelly commented “Girls should be tagging guys who couldn’t perform.”

The comment, both exclusionary to homosexuals and the trans-community while pushing the hurtful narrative of cisgender normalcy, is also very mean.

Imagine having erectile dysfunction and getting tagged by a onetime lover. Imagine scrolling up and seeing she was egged on by Kelly Slater.

Imagine hot tears streaming down your cheeks, falling onto your knees and wondering, “Why Kelly Slater? Don’t you have enough? Beautiful ex-girlfriends, homes in Hawaii and Airstreams in Lemoore, a fridge full of Purps. Must you take my pride too?”

Will Kelly Slater apologize?

For you, I will try to find a way to reach around his embargo and ask.

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WSL anchors from right to left, Ron, Rosie, Pete, Martin and Joey, pensive at news of possible sale.

Longtom analyses rumoured $US150-million sale of WSL: “Will anyone pick up the corpse? Few buyers spring to mind.”

"The transformation of the WSL from sporting league to media content creation company is allegedly part of the deal behind the sale. It's hard to define that transition as a success."

There’s never been a historical riposte like the one uttered by the old San Clemente crook Richard Nixon at his 1962 presser* where he took aim at his pursuing press pack and claimed, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore”.

We raise that spectre because rumours persist that WSL is for sale which would mean the death of the organisation and pro surfing as we have known it for decades.

Which would obviously mean parasites like me would not have the undisputed pleasure of kicking the League and it’s risible management at every turn.

So, what now?

To borrow the title of Dane’s latest foray, how does it end?

The press moved on without Nixon, found new targets to kick after a turbulent time and the surf media has largely moved on alright without the WSL, which has presented a huge gulf between expectation and reality for the League and its CEO.

In short, without pro surfing we’ve all managed to float on OK.

We’ve found new things to kick. We’ll be fine.

It’s very unfair to compare a reactionary crook like Tricky Dick with the titular head of maybe the wokest and greenest organisation in world history (fair, yes?) but one thing they did share was welcoming the opportunity to “test wits with the press.”

Elo has fronted up a few times to get feather dusted by the surf media, and we credit him for that.

He’s more accessible than the previous 37 CEO’s of the WSL in the preceding half decade.

It’s doubtful history will record any such wonderful fightback from Elo, probably the closest thing we’ll get is snippets from Ziff’s wonderful masterpiece when he received the Waterman of the Year award.

He took aim at us, the surf fan, in an almost Nixonian way, albeit incomparably gentler.

Elo will be remembered far more as a charming flim-flam man, and a gold medallist in corpo-speak.

Ratcheting up of corpo-speak in the pro surfing universe almost always guarantees bad news behind the scenes. It has an inverse relationship to truth.

It’s incumbent on us, I think, to do some of the grunt work for future historians now and construct a simple timeline, upon which we could place upcoming events onto.

The Australian leg and the tour itself was cancelled by the WSL on Friday March 13. Slightly ahead of the cancellation curve, at least as far as Australian sport went.

A very long forty-six days later a clearly distressed Elo fronted a video presser announcing the Tour as we knew it was gone and a total restructured Tour was in the offing.

Details were to be announced June 1.

The distress and hyper corpo-speak conjured up Virginia Woolf’s dying moth. She found the extraordinary efforts of the tiny fluttering legs against an impending doom “superb”.

Her sympathies, like ours for Elo, were on the side of life; this struggle “to retain what no one else valued or desired”.

On June 3 the can was kicked down the road until early July.

OK.

Assuming the moth is close to kicking the bucket. Is there anyone who could pick up the corpse, asking price 150 million (US dollars presumably).

Few buyers spring to mind.

But, if we think of the largest stakeholders there could be some promising tyre-kickers. The Australian taxpayer has been one of the most loyal underwriters of the pro surfing dream.

And, if we can largely accept that pro surfing is an Australian project then nationalising the dream doesn’t sound so outlandish. Give it back to the people who have invested the most into it. With dollars and access to publicly owned land.

It’s always seemed perverse to have an American billionaire controlling coastal access via WSL comps.

Give the permits to the people.

Hawaii can take back their permits. Europe likewise**.

Obvs, much more to flesh out there.

The other obvious owners would be the pro surfers themselves. Take it back to being an Association of Surfing Professionals and let them have a go at running it. Expensive ask if owned by the Top 34, $4.4 million a person. If the top hundred pro surfers chipped for equity stakes then we’re looking at steep but not insurmountable 1.5 million each.

Or Kelly buys it.

At time of publishing Kelly did not respond to my enquiry about purchasing.

The transformation of the WSL from sporting league to media content creation company is allegedly part of the deal behind the sale. It’s hard to define that transition as a success. Elo has now had 104 days of non-sport in which to claim the room.

One hundred and four days of re-runs and a steady dribble of Inertia-lite content that has hooked nobody.

The ambit claims of the new ownership of the WSL, née ASP were extreme.

They claimed almost everything they could, and by and large they succeeded. By claiming to own the stories themselves they’ve committed massive over-reach.

That wasn’t theirs to take, let alone claim.

If this was to be the end, or the end until there is a new beginning under new ownership, then I think there could not have been a more fitting farewell to professional surfing than the last day of live broadcast surfing.

The finals day of the Pipe Masters, 2019.

A very, very fine high point to go out on.

Yes?

*Not the final post-Watergate presser but a showing at the Beverly Hilton Hotel 7 November after losing the California Gubernatorial race to Edmund “Pat” Brown.

**They already love socialism, like Australians.

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Act of Kindness: International Surfing Assoc. chief Fernando Aguerre reveals the sport was saved by cash infusion from International Olympic Committee!

"The support from the IOC came not a moment too soon."

Yesterday, or maybe today, was/is Olympic Day, that most wonderful time of year when we gather together with our loved ones and remember the anniversary of the formation of the International Olympic Committee in Paris, in 1894, by the great Pierre de Coubertin.

How do you usually celebrate?

By sitting around the hearth and eating a fresh baked cake in the shape of the Olympic rings (the blue one flavored blueberry, black dark chocolate, red red velvet, yellow lemon meringue, green yucky green apple)?

By dancing turn of the century Parisian dances included but not limited to the chassé?

Typically, I run up and down my street waving the Olympic flag and singing Les Champs-Elysees at the top of my lungs but this year, alas, the dastardly Coronavirus is raining on my parade as the mask I am forced to wear outdoors really hampers my tenor.

The Coronavirus is also raining on the International Surfing Association’s parade as revealed by its chief Fernando Aguerre. In a wide ranging interview with Inside The Games, he discusses how the ISA usually celebrates International Olympic Day with festive beach clean-ups but this year, due restrictions, the ISA is celebrating with Justine Dupont leading a home workout on Instagram Live.

Exciting.

Aguerre also revealed how his International Surfing Association was almost undone but saved from the gallows at the very last second.

“It became very clear when the pandemic came that the ISA was not going to survive without financial support,” he told Inside the Games. “The support from the IOC came not a moment too soon. It was needed and we made a very good presentation for it. We’re the first Federation to receive this financial compensation. It shows in the Olympic family, surfing and the ISA are seen as credible and bring enormous value to the Olympic Games.”

Wonderful but what do you suppose was in the very good presentation?

An at-home Justine Dupont workout?

More as the story develops.

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