Is there anything he can't do?

It hasn’t been the best few months on the biggest little surf website for 11x World Champion Robert Kelly Slater. Once only deified here, the relationship has taken a cantankerous turn in the past few months with charges of environmental duplicity (BeachGrit) leading to Instagram cancellation (Slater cancelling BeachGrit) leading to…

…well you know. You’ve been along for the ride but it is important for us not to forget that the greatest surfer of all-time is basically a saint.

Oh, not a saint of surf journalism, mind you, but one of a much higher varietal like Tom Hanks or Jane Fonda. A celebrity saint who exudes good deeds and as if to prove my point he recently used his celebrity saintly powers to free one of Joe Rogan’s very good friends, former special operative and current workout guru Pat McNamara, from Instagram purgatory.

Per Rogan: “Great news! Pat McNamara got his page back! The great and powerful @kellyslater sent me a message saying he knows someone at Instagram, and now it’s back!”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEC-a2YAdm8/

Wonder of all wonders but it does also make me wonder.

Who does Kelly Slater know at Instagram?

What had Pat McNamara done to lose his page?

Will “the great and powerful” Kelly Slater use those same vast powers of persuasion to free BeachGrit?

Unlikely on the third question but those first two I’m still very curious. Any saints of surf journalism care to take a crack?

Nick Carroll?

Sam George?

I’ll wait patiently.

I told you it was the Peruvians.

Fraught times. Angry times etc. but you already know that and I am looking forward to re-reading each of 2020’s BeachGrit posts, in ten years, to chuckle at the generally dim worldview encapsulated in the first lines because in ten years we will all be ruled by rogue AI and pandemic/economic collapse/Rumble at the Ranch will seem paradisiacal in comparison.

Andy Irons.

What a bastard.

In any case, Surfer magazine i.e. The Bible of the Sport has recently awakened and is doing a fabulous series on the pre-white history of America’s most famous surf spots. The latest highlights The Pump House Gang’s La Jolla (brought to you by Tom Wolfe). Shall we read its opening together?

In surfing, we obsess over people’s history and connection to our favorite surf spots. We even go so far as to build hierarchies in the lineup based on who’s been there longest. First time paddling out somewhere? Cool, no set waves for you. Moved into the area for college a few years back and been surfing it on the regular ever since? OK, go help yourself to some scraps on the inside. Are you a third-generation local surfer who knows every cobblestone like a family member? You probably more or less run the place.

The funny thing is, while surfers place immense importance on our history and connection to a given surf break, outside of Hawaii, most surfers don’t actually have that much history at any particular spot. Not in the grand scheme of things, at least.

On the US mainland, few families can claim more than three generations of surfers. And, sure, some surfers have family history along their local coastline going further back through things like fishing, but none of that compares to the history of those who have the deepest roots along the coast—the original locals indigenous to the region.

In the case of San Diego, the original locals belong to the Kumeyaay Nation, a Native American tribe whose ancestral land spans from North County down to Northern Baja, from Swami’s to Sunset Cliffs and beyond.

You can, plus should, read the rest here and learn something but also Peruvians and their Thor Heyerdahl, cocaine and inventing our Pastime of Kings. You can, though probably shouldn’t, read the rest here.

Rogue AI is gonna be super lame, theoretically, but I have a solid belief that I can confound it with a barrage of me.

Have you ever listened to Dirty Water?

Told you.