Or wait...
Last night I climbed into bed after a long day of surf journalism and began browsing the news. Stories about Covid-19 spikes, economists warning of imminent market collapse and then a headline from The Atlantic that read, “The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League-Obsessed Parents.”
“Time for more surf journalism,” I thought to myself, somewhat exhausted but, as a true professional, got down to reading.
The piece begins with a profile of Sloane, a “buoyant, chatty, stay-at-home mom from Fairfield County, Connecticut” who is shepherding her three daughters through school with dreams, like all stay-at-home mom’s named Sloane, of having them placed in Ivy League colleges/universities.
Harvard, Yale, etc.
Fairfield County is called the “Gold Coast” as it sends more children to the Ivy League than any other place.
The daughters need grades, advanced placement classes, social service activities and, of course as the title suggests, niche sports.
I wondered which east coast surf club the girls belonged to as I skimmed slightly ahead. Wondered if they were hitting one-star QSes or focusing solely on the pro junior events.
Then I was stopped dead in my tracks. One daughter fenced. The other played squash. I read again. Fencing and squash then raced ahead realizing the whole piece was about fencing, squash, lacrosse, rowing, water polo etc. with surfing nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be even sniffed.
I continued reading, anyhow, and realized that too many rich parents put too many kids with too many coaches etc. into these niche sports and now it’s all a big disaster.
Per The Atlantic:
The stampede of the affluent into grim-faced, highly competitive sports has been a tragicomedy of perverse incentives and social evolution in unequal times: a Darwinian parable of the mayhem that can ensue following the discovery of even a minor advantage. Like a peacock rendered nearly flightless by gaudy tail feathers, the overserved athlete is the product of a process that has become maladaptive, and is now harming the very blue-chip demographic it was supposed to help.
But wait.
Is there an opportunity to bilk rich parents with dreams of Ivy League placement due the entirely recherché activity called surfing?
An ancient Peruvian pastime with roots stretching to Polynesia?
Turning Connecticut’s Gold Coast into Queensland’s and getting wealthy in the process?
Much to ponder.
I have old joes on my list at 6.
3rd point lefts were destroyed with kiddie bowl in ’83.
Backside Rincon is very over rated.
and Tim, Magu is not a point and the sand is currently fucked up, but it would rank in the top 10 of any breaks in Cali through the 90’s.
Bingo.
Belushi’s film, 1941 filmed the plane crash at zero’s and the state used the money to develop the park. The Peacocks were the pets of the next door man on the dirt track leading down to the point and would visit our camp at nights…. meaning they stole food and had no fear of us. 1983 El Nino destroyed the point, small as it was and it is very busy now, but a shadow of itself.
PV holds the top 2 left points and another in the top 5, but you all won’t be welcomed so no point in rubbing that in….
Interesting that Chas mentions Porto…. of course he doesn’t realize that it’s a beach break of mediocrity (similar to north county SD), but it was home to the best left in LA county until the shit pipe was demolished. Thank you Chevron motherfuckers for that. Today, the tiny, short Hammerland Jetty is an insult to the shit pipe pier.
It really depends what your personal tastes are, as peacock/hen can be used in any recipe you want using a multitude of techniques just as you’d include any other delicious juicy meats…
The place I lived at was a full on professional recording studio, pretty loud place to live, haha. Lots of clubs in the city back then.
Used to live at the church studios in Fairfax that Marty ballin’s dad owned. Cheap rent $175 a month. Grace Slick used to play there all the time. David Crosby would hang out there doing freebase in our living room to hide it from his family. He was driving back home when he got pulled over with a gun and arrested.
Thats pretty clever how you took a story that had nothing to do with surfing…wrote an article confirming it had nothing to do with surfing…as a way of connecting it to surfing
Some days I really question whether my profile name is appropriate
Hell of a surf journalist
Reports from hell?
You see what he did there…bastard is playing us
Every post and comment on this website is a report from hell
I was born and raised on that gold coast. Darien…and look where it got me. BG nihilistic oldster!!
We tried to surf, Long Island sound, boat wakes…ugg. Good mud flats for skim boards tho.
Snowboarding custom snurfers was the substitute for waves.
A good book to read is “A Distant Mirror” by Barabra Tuckman”
Yeah, good for perspective, thats for sure.
I recall that for good times, when there wasnt any other mayhem to do…. local lads would get a good buzz on, nail a cat to a pole by its tail, tie their hands behind their back, and try to kill it by swinging their heads at it. Or so she says.
I guess some times and eras were rougher than others?
Realized how lucky we are today, to even live past 20 yrs old.
Incredible the daily existence that people used to lead. My college history teacher recommended it and it stuck with me to this day.
yeah, you can see what stuck in my head. But seriously, just having dentists and decent surgeons around makes all the “chaos” of modern times worth it.
Fuck… I wish
Just let those parents know the connection of Cocaine + Surfing and it’s a done deal..
CLICK HERE TO BUY
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B…
Links broken so I’ve DM’d you
Because I know how hard you work at Surf Journalism Chas, I offer this simple test question to your fine readers who may never answer correctly and be damned to public education….
Name the 5th Best Left Point break in Los Angeles County that was littered with peacocks and was destroyed by John Belushi just months before ’83 El Nino wiped the iconic left from the California coast?
During higher education testing, one is often asked to triangulate clues and connect the dots and I think these 3 clues are very obvious.
El Porto.
well…PV somewhere…but whats the Belushi connect?
Far too early in the morning to have to look at Dane Guadauskas beaver hole.
College is now an official waste of money. A mountain of debt (for most) and no jobs? What a great deal!
It’s like saying everyone who’s gone to a surf school should be on the world tour
I’d upvote three times if I could!
“Rich” daycare sold to the “poor” unwitting, mostly. Best part is the people supposed to be there, get paid to.
That paragraph quoted from The Atlantic is truly pish.
Peacocks are good at soaring though.
We’ve got a bunch of wild ones that hang around our farm and are an impressive sight when they soar from the hill to the bottom of the valley.
Bloody tasty too, like the biggest juiciest chicken ever…
And loud. But that’s why you cook them in the first place.
Stayed at a joint near Yamba once that had a bunch (?) of peacock chicks (?) next door. Every night it sounded like a room full of babies being strangled.
I’m intrigued about eating one now.
The plumper plainer looking hens are the best for eating, as a lot of the cocks energy goes into growing their tail feathers which moult and re-grow every year
It’s a horrible sound. There was a camping ground somewhere that had the bastards wandering around looking pretty throughout the day. Not so much appreciated when they kicked off at dawn and sunset.
Yeah they can sure make a racket, and run like the clappers when trying to take off if cows are chasing them.
Bloody hilarious really
Good watchbirds though. Scream bloody murder if someone went by them at 3am We had about 7 and a few batches of chicks. Neighbors started complaining though, so I “donated” them to the local zoo. Over the fence they went!!
Did England take them from you or the opposite? Every castle in England had peacocks.
Originally they came from India and got taken around the world by the English etc way back when everyone was on their colonising trip…
Chas you’re gonna have to refi your house to buy a lacrosse helmet, a horse riding helmet, a snowboarding helmet, and a skateboarding helmet just to get your daughter into a private high school.
After reading (will listen today) about yesterday’s BraBoy, who I’d never heard of, I googled him and read a few old news articles.
Apparently one of his goals was to send his kids to private schools too…
P.S.
Have now listened to it, and found him to be surprisingly charming, interesting and quite normal compared with some people in that trade.
Fucked up societal situation, especially over here. Undocumented workers with their kids going to public schools. Rich people want cheap maids, gardeners etc but don’t want their kids having to share the same classrooms.
Irony is, wealth requires cheap immigrant labor while it demonizes “illegal aliens”.
Not much real wealth out there. High credit limit don’t count.
My clients are of a particular socioeconomic group and I will tell you this, it is lucky I speak spanish.
Many “illegal aliens” send their money back to their homeland and build home and business to go back to. Good system they got going, working better than college…
I’m all for capitalism but when you see people getting groceries in their three million dollar Bugatti’s it make you wonder if something is not quite right.
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
The eighties Bay Area when punk was real
https://youtu.be/zB5JOWv8xI4
I don’t know what the article is saying, but I am a true disciple of BG so yes… I agree, I hate rich people and their white sports, and Matt Biolos. but what I hate more is myself because I love surfing but its a Polynesian sport that white people discovered so its not white enough.
Rhonda Harper is already en route!