Not a real good sight when you're on a little
plastic boat. 9News
Teenager films twelve-foot Great White
stalking his kayak near popular Australian surf spot; pal watches
helplessly via drone from above: “(The shark) was looking straight
at me!”
By Derek Rielly
Kid on plastic boat sees life flash before him
etc.
It’s the year of the Great White in Australia,
to put it mildly.
Therefore, it doesn’t come as a tremendous surprise that a kid
in his kayak was able to film himself being stalked by a
twelve-foot Great White while fishing for snapper a mile off Black
Head Beach, just north of Forster in NSW.
Matthew Smith was on his little kayak, couple of fishing rods
out, when he was visited by the White.
“I just looked next to me and the shark was just gliding past,
looking straight at me,” the kid told 9News.
Meanwhile, Matt’s pal, Nick O’Brien, watched it all via his
drone.
A demonstration of human vulnerability and a what-if scenario
that will find its way, I think, into the kid’s night thoughts.
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Climate change, bad luck, held responsible
for Australia’s shark attack fatality crisis: “One centimeter to
the left, if you get bitten on the leg, and you can die in seconds
or minutes at least.”
By Chas Smith
Welcome to the rest of your life.
Australia has had seven fatal shark attacks this
year, the most since 1934, spreading an eerie chill across
the proud and once-happy land. There were zero fatalities last year
and only one or two annually for a long, long stretch before
that.
In a recent interview with
CNN, Culum Brown, a professor at Macquarie
University’s Department of Biological Sciences in Sydney, said, “In
Australia, (this year is) a bit of a blip. And in fact the
long-term average is one — one fatality per year. So seven is a
long way above that, there’s no doubt.”
But what is causing such a statistical anomaly?
According to The Most Trusted Name in News™, climate change and
bad luck should, likely, be held responsible.
Drastic changes in water temperature have altered typical fish
migration patterns which, have in turn, altered where the Tigers,
Bulls and Great Whites, the three species responsible for most
deaths, do their feeding and general malingering.
Bull sharks enjoy warm water and are spending more time in the
south. Great Whites prefer cooler water and are pulled closer to
shore where pockets of chill can be found. Tigers used to enjoy the
wild north but have developed a taste for city livin’ and are now
common around Sydney.
Robert Harcourt, a researcher of shark ecology and director of
Macquarie’s marine predator research group, said, “I would foresee
that there’s going to be greater movement, an increase in
geographic range, in a lot of these species. That’s because the
dynamics of climate change mean their suitable habitat in terms of
water temperature and prey distribution is changing as well. And
these animals are large, far-ranging apex predators. They will
potentially come more in contact with people, and at the same time,
human use of the ocean is increasing all the time.”
Dang VALs.
Climate change is certainly tough enough but coupled with bad
luck? Well, a nasty combination that is basically impossible to
shirk.
“We managed to save several people over the last couple of
years, just by the fortune of having somebody qualified on site to
deal with the trauma immediately, and that makes a massive
difference. It also depends where the victim is bitten.” Brown
said.
“One centimeter to the left, if you get bitten on the leg, and
you can die in seconds or minutes at least,” Harcourt interjected.
“You know, one centimeter to the right, you get a terrible scar and
a lot of pain but if you don’t go into shock you’ve got a good
chance of survival.”
Climate change and bad luck.
Welcome to the rest of your life.
But this is BeachGrit where lemons are turned into
lemonade, daily, so… welcome to the rest of your life!
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Acetone, vol 2.
Start the presses: iconic surf filmmaker
launches newspaper-style surf mag as bulwark against the great
WSL/VAL cultural replacement: “The surf industry is in an
embarrassing state; it’s the fatal structure of capitalism!”
By Derek Rielly
A magazine called Acetone "dedicated to keeping
alive alternatives to the internet and computers."
Did you weep when Surfer magazine shuttered
after sixty years?
Yeah, me neither, for it was a grape long withered on the vine,
a repository for drink cooler and cruiser skateboard advertisements
and “brave” outrage suited to teenage girls on TikTok.
But print mags disappearing, one by one, well, that might break
your heart a little if you grew up on ’em.
Now, Andrew Kidman, creator of game-changing surf film
Litmus in 1996, its 2019 sequel Beyond Litmus
and the surfboard design documentary On the Edge of a
Dream where an impossible to ride board is filmed ruining the
live of myriad surfers, has made a newspaper magazine that will
act, I believe, as a cultural bulwark to the great WSL/VAL
replacement.
He works from the angle that he has to produce work that offsets
the WSL’s “utter bastardisation” of his beloved sport.
Kidman, along with surfer Sam Rhodes, who is a student of
writing at Southern Cross University in Lismore, launched
Acetone six or so months ago, with issue two landing over
the past two weeks.
The pair edit, write, design the whole thing, with
San Francisco artist Barry
McGee providing pockets of illustrations throughout
the compendium of sprawling interviews, photos and drawings.
Issue two features a cover photo of Tom Curren in white face, a
rare piece of writing by Dave Parmenter, Wade Goodall on
cartooning, George Greenough and the most detailed account you’ll
ever read of two waves ridden fifty years ago, drawings by Kidman,
all sorts of wild gear that appeals to a niche within a niche.
Sam Rhodes, who is twenty-nine, stopped by Bondi three days ago
to deliver a copy of issue two, and which BeachGrit has a
quarter-page ad contained within.
He’s a juvenescent part-blond who cut himself loose from
following pro surfing when Andy Irons died in 2010, although he has
started following WSL CEO Erik Logan on Instagram, for laughs.
“The other day he put a story up during that crap contest on the
Goldie or Cabba, wherever, and he had three screens open at once.
On one screen was the basketball, another one the NFL or some other
American sport and on the other was surfing.
And he wrote, ‘Such an exciting day to be a sports fan.’”
It makes Sam want to regurgitate his barbecue chicken.
“It implies that surfing is just another thing,” says Sam, “and
I don’t want to get too earnest, surfing is this supernatural
thing elevated above all else, but it…isn’t… in the same
realm as those sports. It goes back to that old cliché when Nat
Young said, “When they asked us what is surfing, I wish I said that
it’s a spiritual activity, and not just a sport, cause that’s what
put us on the wrong track”. Again, I don’t want to subscribe
to the melodramatic spiritual stuff but surfing does feel a more
sacred than football or basketball.”
I ask Sam about the magazine being a tiny niche within a niche,
but, conversely, an important bulwark against intruding kook
culture.
“Well, the surf industry is in a pretty embarrassing state,” he
says. “It’s a classic example of the fatal flaw of capitalism,
something becomes of interest, people jump on it, don’t really know
anything about it, and the reason why it’s interesting, a small,
unique culture full of freaks, becomes this big monetised thing,
and then it no longer exists.”
Sam and Kidman ain’t gonna make any money off of this
venture.
There’s 104 pages of editorial, including the cover, and eight
pages of ads.
Every cent that comes in from online sales, twelve bucks plus
shipping, goes into a bank account to pay for the printing of issue
three. If you don’t wanna pay, go into a surf shop that has ‘em and
if you’re quick, ‘cause they only print two thousand worldwide,
you’ll get a copy for free.
The next issue, which’ll be out in six months, maybe, Sam has to
wrap up his writing degree, will be built around a story Kidman
describes as “crazy” although he won’t tell anyone what it is until
the magazine gets a little closer.
“Ank (Kidman) is heavily committed, and so am I, to keeping
alive alternatives to the internet and computers. His feeling was
that the surf mags still surviving had disintegrated from their
heydays and he’s committed to not doing advertorial-style articles
and having total control on what we think is interesting and
important.”
Does he imagine great riches from Acetone?
“I hope there’s enough support to keep it open,” he says.
TMZ officially declares: “Surfing exploding
during pandemic SHOPS CAN’T KEEP BOARDS IN STOCK!!!”
By Chas Smith
We need The Club.
And the center has not held. Remember, six
months ago, there were VALs and there was us and the twain only met
at World Surf League events when Chief-Executive-Officer Erik Logan
said various things?
JS Industries — “More beginners entered the
market than almost ever before due to surfing being one of the few
activities deemed safe and accessible during COVID.”
Channel Island Surfboards in CA — “Surfing
has doubled this year because it’s a social distancing activity and
it’s free.”
Surf Station in FL — “There has been a
definite increase. I can’t even put a timeframe for board
requests.”
And I must preface by saying that I hope Peter Schroff, Matt
Parker, Dane Hantz and every other wonderful shaper I know are each
buying mansions in the hills next to Matt Biolos’s and/or San
Pedro.
Then I will say, “Shit.”
The core is peanut-sized, the Wavestorm horde is already massive
and now we can add VALs on JSs bogging turns and being lame in the
impact zone.
Can we form up our own Da Hui but have it be international and
also not culturally appropriated and, I guess, socially
distanced?
What can we name it and what sort of thing can we do besides
punching teeth out of heads?
Help!
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New exhaustive study reveals surfing does
not help parents in “any way, shape or form” when it comes to
placing children in Ivy League schools!
By Chas Smith
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?
