Not recommended for use in the ocean etc.

A little shy of one year ago, Nike sold Hurley to “brand management company” Bluestar Alliance.

The sale followed Volcom’s to the Authentic Brands Group, makers of iconic velour tracksuits, in April and Rip Curl to camping equipment retailer Kathmandu.

(Bob Hurley, of course, had sold his eponymous brand to Nike for a hundred and twenty mill in 2002, three years after Hurley International was launched.)

As previously reported, the way Bluestar works is it identifies brands it wants to buy and once they get the keys, “our team of experts embark on a complete and thorough understanding of the brand’s potential channels of distribution and price point strategies. We create tools such as brand development profiles, trend guides, style guides and marketing strategies. These marketing materials portray graphic illustrations and a strategic marketing road map to enhance consumer brand recognition.”

The focus at Hurley shifted from R and D, maintaining a dazzling surf team, high-end accounts and so on to a model focussed on the bottom line.

Which means that anything that can fit a H on its tube, shoe, can or box will be licensed.

As leaked concept drawings show, new Hurley products include inflatable pool tools, a Wave Runner, a Wave Barrel and a Lounger and “performance” bodyboards.

No prices available, yet.

Bob, meanwhile, has partnered with former Hurley rider John John Florence with their Florence Marine X brand.

“I am excited to announce Florence Marine X, an apparel brand I am proud to launch alongside Bob Hurley, who has been an inspiration to me over the years, along with longtime friends and industry leaders. We are excited to explore what’s possible and build products that celebrate the ocean, sustainability, exploration and overall just doing the right thing. I’m looking forward to the road ahead and invite you to follow along in this new adventure,” says John.

“We are incredibly energized to embark on this journey with John, his curiosity, vision, and obsession for exploration are unsurpassed. We’ve been on the same team before and we really had a whole lotta fun,” says Bob.

"Gonzo meets Hezbollah in this unlikely—and delightful—work of journalism."

Today, August 11th, is the official release date of Reports from Hell by mid-length aficionado Charlie Smith, whom some of you already know.

You have read excerpts here and here and may be tired of Charlie shamelessly promoting the work but shameless promotion is part of the job, as they say.

“Books are wild things. Beautiful things. Maybe antiquated but never for me. I love Camus, love Waugh, love Murakami, Knausgaard, Wolfe, Thompson, Mailer, Didion… but I am no literary titan. I am but a surf journalist,” says Charlie. “Still, I can’t stop writing. Flipping the computer’s lid open, dropping headphones over my ears, dancing with words. I’m generally a little blue when the final draft comes back from the editor because then the journey is over.”

This review, which you can read below, comes from Kirkus, an American book review magazine founded in 1933, which isn’t always kind.

Gonzo meets Hezbollah in this unlikely—and delightful—work of journalism.

What to do when al-Qaida strikes and the twin towers fall? Grab a surfboard and make for the Middle East, of course, the strategy followed by Smith and companions Nate, “who happens to look exactly like Steve McQueen playing Frank Bullitt if Frank Bullitt wore a bleached fauxhawk,” and Josh, given to sage analyses of current events: “This is the way history works, bro. Convulsions and spasms. To imagine any different, to imagine that we are somehow removed from the long bend, is ludicrous.”

Smith opens with a howlingly funny interview he conducted with David Petraeus, who delivered “easily digestible, easy-to-understand drips of Middle Eastern insight that I imagine rack-rate conference-goers crave.”

During that encounter, Smith had been prattling on about a car that is as central a piece of equipment in this narrative as the suitcase full of pharmaceuticals in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, very much a kindred book.

So is just the right T-shirt, the right board, and the right amount of sangfroid when, in Lebanon, the loopy journalists were kidnapped by actual terrorists, just as they’d feared, occasioning another Jeff Spicoli–ish remark from Josh: “These Hezbollah bros are something we know. We can figure this out.” Underneath all the goofiness is utterly serious intent: In addition to seeking to better understand the radicals’ point of view, the author is committed to providing plenty of shades of gray in a world that “had never been more black and white or more polarized.”

(Readers will hope he covers the U.S. in the same spirit.)

Funny and sharp, Smith is also a master of the tossed-off phrase that is just right for the job: “Early-2000 Dubai felt like Blade Runner might if written and directed by trust-funded Saudi Arabian boys who loved robot porn.”
A lively and entertaining—and illuminating—journey into dangerous territory.

Buy here or, if y’round tomoz, jump on a virtual meet-and-greet with Charlie, twenty-seven bucks, book included.

"Wonderful example to promote," says world champ in latest instalment of multi-year blood feud.

Only four weeks ago, the eleven-time world champion surfer Kelly Slater proved, again, that the pen is mightier than the sword when he slayed an historically inaccurate Instagram troll who had accused him of racism after a post on Chinese fishing in the Galapagos Islands.

“Writing me out of the blue talking shit is such a crock of shit. Accusing me of being a racist? My girlfriend is Chinese. You’re on glue. You’re a miserable coward. And now you’re blocked.”

“Hahahaha,” wrote the kid.

Relive that hootenanny here.

Earlier today, a new front was revealed with Kelly’s riposte to Peter Schroff, the noted LA-based shaper and artist who has made turned his hate for Asian-made surfboards into performance art.

In 2019, the San Diego-by-way-of-the-Philippines-and-New-York shaper Mark Polintan had given his Happy Battles shop to a Schroff show where a Slater Designs board was cut in half by Schroff using a chainsaw.

A handprinted t-shirt was made for the occasion and sold for fifty dollars.

(For a quick education into Schroff’s previous attacks on Slater Designs, Firewire and so on, click Blood Feud: Schroff v Hayden Cox, Relentless: Schroff’s War on Mark Price, Peter Schroff Does Yellow Face, Modern: Peter Schroff Doubles Down and Three-Way: Dorian v Tudor v Schroff.)

When Polintan reposted a photo of the tee on his Instagram account @happy.battle, Kelly sent a pointed direct message.

“Hahaha. Must be great to be in your mid-late 60’s, on drugs, sexually confused and dying for any kind of attention. Wonderful example to promote.”

Polintan replied, “The shaper you’re referring to who happened to be gay is not sexually confused. How (is) being gay sexually confused again? Get your head out of your ass.”

Two years ago, I interviewed Schroff, then sixty-three, where he said he was “a stick of dynamite…The methods that we’re using is to ridicule Kelly and Mark Price and to have local people be too embarrassed to buy the boards. That’s the strategy.”

Paradoxically, in an interview in Surfer magazine in 2019, Schroff revealed himself as a Slater fan.

“Kelly Slater has never stopped surfing and that’s why he is still the best surfer alive,” said Schroff. “Even at 47 years old. Sure, maybe not as much in contests anymore, but his surfing is so stylish, it has so much character and, shit, he’s so driven. Nobody else has ever come close to that drive. That’s part of his style. He’s like Marlon Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now.”

Good times etc.