Listen: Longtom and Chas Smith talk Rumble at the Ranch “Two seconds of Joe Turpel and I felt such disgust” and Pat Curren: “The only shame in this story is I didn’t know he was living so close to me. I should be down there pouring out a bottle of vodka with old Pat right now!”

Dirty, dirty water.

Today’s episode of Dirty Water, number twenty-four, is a virtual roundtable with flap jaws Charlie Smith and Steve “Longtom” Shearer, one a ravishing blond, the other with narrow maroon eyes.

Steve has been hailed for his artistic independence and the honesty of his portrayal of professional surfing. Unlike every other surf writer, he subordinates himself to the story, explaining that “any story I reveal myself completely in will be a bad story.”

Topics discussed: The Rumble at the Ranch, the first WSL event of note in eight months.

“I’m terrified that people still think that contests in tubs are the future,” says Longtom.

“I wanted pro surfing. I wanted something. But Turpel’s nonsense, I thought, this is a proper Dante’s inferno here. I don’t know what level it is, but it’s hell,” says Charlie.

We move to Pat Curren, the eighty-eight-year-old big-wave surfboard designer who was revealed, yesterday, to be living in a van near the beach with his wife and special needs daughter. 

“Imagine how much vodka he could buy,” notes Charlie, referring to the GoFundMe account setup by a New York shaper to help the old guy out. 

There’s a detour into mid-lengths, BeachGrit’s pivot to politics, Belarus and the revolution there, and the episode wraps with Steve reading a chapter of Moby Dick dedicated to Pat Curren.

“Pat’s not just an icon,” says Steve. “he’s symbol of that surfing life where you just let go all the attachments to society and the normal considerations of life