Florida surfer-parents get lambasted for smoking “joints as big as cigars” while children learn from home: “You can’t do that!”

Florida teachers not happy.

It is difficult enough to be a surfer-parent, balancing the needs of young children with favorable swell reports, planned boat trips to the Ments with “da crew” etc. and now, with Covid keeping those young children learning at home, sucking up precious bandwidth typically dedicated to gazing at sunbathers on the beach etc. it is downright impossible.

Well, Floridian surfer-parents have discovered a solution.

Smoking “joints as big as cigars” while their young children finish online math tutorials and also drinking heavily.

Floridian teachers, obvious downers, are not happy.

Edith Pride, who teaches at Boca Raton Elementary School told Fox News:

“We need to make sure parents don’t get on the computer to help their children with joints in their hand and cigarettes in their mouth. Sometimes the joints are as big as cigars. You can’t do that! We’ve seen the parents in towels, we’ve seen them in underclothes, we’ve seen them in bras. It’s just inappropriate. The children can see it in the squares.”

Pride brought up her concerns at the school board meeting and other teachers chimed in with stories of 11 am beer drinking, partying and whatnot.

Surfer-parents have never been known for decorum but what are they to do? What solutions can there be?

Elysa Grossman, a Johns Hopkins University professor, and Susan Sonnenschein, at University Maryland Baltimore Campus, conducted a poll earlier this year and discovered that stressed parents are drinking more during the coronavirus pandemic, to say nothing of stressed surfer-parents.

“We found that parents who are stressed by having to help their children with distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic drink seven more drinks per month than parents who do not report feeling stressed by distance learning. These stressed parents are also twice as likely to report binge drinking at least once over the prior month than parents who are not stressed, according to our results.”

Again, obvious but what’s the fix?

Where’s the solve?

Should local surfer-parents get together and form a collective where the children learn in one room while adults smoke, drink, wander nude etc. in an adjacent room with no connecting door?

What would The Dude do?

Much to ponder.


It shouldn't matter, but Jack Murphy also looks like Montgomery Burns' favorite son. | Photo: EOS

Warshaw on death of Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy: “He was a stone-cold killer who took a pair of female crime accomplices out for a boat ride, beat them to death, knifed opened their torsos, tied them to concrete blocks, and threw them overboard.”

Murphy, it turns out, was very much not the debonair gentleman thief as played by Don Stoud in Live a Little, Steal a Lot.

Jack Murphy, the handsome surfer-playboy jewel thief — that’s what Nora Ephron would have you think, anyway — died last week at age 83, from heart failure.

Murphy was born in LA but belongs to Florida. That’s where he made his mark as a surfer, winning the ’62 Daytona Championships and briefly running Murf’s Surf Shop in Indialantic.

And that’s where he began thieving professionally, as a B&E creeper in Miami Beach, stealing high-end art from rich people’s beach homes and selling the pieces back to their insurance companies.

In 1964, Murphy and two accomplices broke into the American Museum of Natural History in New York and stole the Star of India sapphire, plus a big handful of other precious gems, and “Jewel Heist of the Century” stories ran coast to coast.

Three days later they were caught, and Murphy served 21 months in Rikers.

My resentment against Jack Murphy began with the fact that his perfect “Murf the Surf” nickname sounded too much like “Murphy,” and I don’t want anybody or anything stepping that close to Rick Griffin’s sweet-faced cartoon grom, who represents all of our surfing innocence.

(In 2013 I described Murphy as the Hello Kitty of surf culture, meaning he was sweet, popular and beloved, and I stand by that call.)

What really put me off Jack Murphy, though, was looking deeper into his criminal history while writing Encyclopedia of Surfing in 2000. Murphy, it turns out, was very much not the debonair gentleman thief as played by Don Stoud in Live a Little, Steal a Lot.

He was a stone-cold killer who in 1967 took a pair of female crime accomplices out for a boat ride, beat them to death, knifed opened their torsos, tied them to concrete blocks, and threw them overboard.

The East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame elected Murphy on their first ballot, in 1996, noting his competition wins and his surf shop.

The open-and-shut double-murder conviction somehow went unmentioned.

It shouldn’t matter, but Jack Murphy also looks like Montgomery Burns’ favorite son.

(Like Matt Warshaw’s flavour? This obit comes from his weekly mail-out, sent to all good surfers who cut three bucks a month to subscribe to his bottomless archive of surf history. Join here. And if you want a little more, listen to Matt, along with Tyler and Jamie Breuer on their Sunday Joint podcast here. Fascinating.)


Listen: Longtom and Chas Smith on stalkers, empty political gestures and the conjoining of the Great White shark to modern culture wars: “The Great white shark as an avenging spirit for deeply misanthropic thinking that regards humans as a cancer on the planet.”

And, what if you hate Bad Grandpa Biden but love Kammy Haz? Where does that leave a man?

On a sleepy morning recently, one man in Lennox Head, another in Cabo San Lucas and the other in Sydney, the important matters of critical race theory, the proliferation of stalkers of surf stars on the Gold Coast, the beatification of the Great White and more were discussed in a roundtable of sorts.

Questions:

Was Tyler Wright’s BLM protest a wonderful thing or was it an empty gesture, a confected outrage?

EJ Coffey and sis have monetised their asses for men that like to jerk their hips. Good or no?

The reason black kids don’t surf in Australia is because of the high cost of coastal real estate. Fact or fiction?

Patagonia says “Vote the assholes out.”

What if you hate Bad Grandpa Biden but love Kammy Haz? Where does that leave a man?

Some very poor audio, as usual.


Peeping Tom: Once-bucolic Encinitas grants Surfline permission to add more cameras at Moonlight and Swami’s; Surfline, in turn, insures they “can’t be redirected to stare at sunbathers on the beach!”

Extremely troubling.

As much hullaballoos and ruckuses as major media cause, it’s still the small town, local newspaper where true information resides. Honest facts presented honestly, not fired in the kiln of “left” or “right.” Not glazed with a lead-free layer of bias.

And it was this morning that I read in the Encinitas Advocate that Surfline, a company that invites you to “know before you go,” had been granted unanimous approval by the Encinitas City Council to add four more cameras on public structures.

The deal, which will last three years, allows for three cameras to be affixed to the Marine Safety Center at the very popular with inland residents Moonlight Beach and one on the lifeguard station at iconic Swami’s.

The city will receive $645 a month total, which seems like a sweetheart deal. Like, not at all the going market rate. Like, worthy of investigation.

The City Council, heading off potential criticism, insured their public that “…the camera systems are controlled by the Surfline company, not the subscribers, so viewers can’t redirect them to stare at sunbathers on the beach.”

And this raises very much concern. I am assuming the Encinitas City Council has never met anyone who worked for Surfline. Never gazed into those beady eyes, heard the darkness seeping unfiltered from those mouths. Never felt the cold, clammy handshake or been touched, inappropriately, slightly below the waistline.

Surfline men, including Surfline Man, are never to be trusted. Not trusted to deliver accurate surf forecasts nor trusted to hold to even the lowest standard of decorum.

From this point hence, we must assume that Huntington Beach’s Surfline office is wallpapered with images of Moonlight and Swami’s sunbathers.

Extremely troubling.


Noted Cabarita surfer Christian Bungate and sons. | Photo: Christian Bungate/Facebook

Australian foilboarder breaks silence on Cabarita Beach Great White attack: “I left my board and I crawled up the beach and I lay on my stomach bawling my eyes out.”

"I was off my board and on top of the bloody thing. It was like I was submerged on a rock, it was so hard and rough."

Three days ago, foilboarder and noted local surfer Christian Bungate was hit by a Great White at the site of last weekend’s Tweed Heads Pro, the animal, which was described as a “tank”, leaving behind a tooth in the foil’s carbon fibres. 

Bungate, was, initially at least, loathe to talk to the press, preferring, according to friends, a few days to process the event.

The hit came two weeks after Nick Slater was killed by a Great White at the Superbank, forty-five minutes drive north, four months after Rob Pedretti was killed by a  Great White at Kingscliff, ten minutes drive north, one month after longboarder Chantelle Doyle was pulled out of a Great White’s mouth by her husband at Port Macquarie, a few hours south, and two months after teenager Mani Hart-Deville was killed by a Great White at Wooli, a couple of hours south. 

So, yeah, Bungate knew it was a close call. 

Speaking yesterday to the ABC’s Gold Coast bureau, Bungate said he was fifty yards off Cabarita Beach on his foil when he saw a shadow alongside him. 

Harrowing?

Yeah.

“It was like there was an oil slick next to me, it was so big. It came up so slowly, and I literally shit myself and kicked it as hard as I could with my right leg.”

The White hit his board and knocked him into the water.

“I was off my board and on top of the bloody thing. It was like I was submerged on a rock, it was so hard and rough.”

Then,

As he managed to scramble off, the predator came at him with jaws gaping, but bit the board instead. Mr Bungate was convinced if he had been on a standard surfboard rather than a foil board, which has a 70cm keel and wings instead of a fin, he would be dead.

“I’m 100 per cent sure if I was on a normal surfboard it would’ve given the shark clear access to get straight back at me and it probably would’ve taken out my stomach,” he said. “Instead it caught the wing of my foil board, hence why there’s a bloody tooth in it. I left my board and I crawled up the beach and I lay on my stomach bawling my eyes out.”