Cowboy surfers (pictured).
Cowboy surfers (pictured).

Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch sets off explosion of cowboy-beach themed restaurants and bars: “The world’s greatest surfer is, without a doubt, a design visionary far, far ahead of his time!”

Chas Smith

By

World's collide.

But is there anything the world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater cannot do? Anything at all (besides tip 20% at restaurants or bars)? Let’s count a few of his accomplishments.

He has won 11 world professional surfing titles.

He has set off an explosion of cowboy-beach themed restaurants and bars all thanks to his design influence behind Lemoore, California’s Surf Ranch.

But let’s go to Houston, Texas where the latest has opened.

Cowboy Surfer is a new casual bar with comfort fare and live music and officially opens Tuesday at 827 Frostwood Drive in Memorial.

According to the Houston Chronicle, “The 1,850 square-foot space features colors of bright blue and yellow and cowboy and surfer-themed artwork including memorabilia, posters, prints, photography, vinyl records and personal items from photographers such as Kenny Braun, Geoff Winningham and Mark Seliger.”

Bar co-owner Jack Massing said, “Visitors to the bar will enjoy the wide range of quality art and memorabilia that visually tie together the worlds of hard work and freedom while listening to the music that captures the spirit of Texas and the West.”

Very cool.

The menu will feature surfer-cowboy favorites chili and cheeseburgers and the bar will serve a drink familiar to all surfers, the Baja Beach Beer, which I don’t have to remind you, is made with vodka, orange juice, lime juice, jalapeno and ginger beer.

Muy delicious.

Kelly Slater was not available for comment.

Just in: Give the gift of modern radical Islamic terrorism to friends and family this holiday season!

Chas Smith

By

Nothing says "I love you" like jihad.

And here you are, today, if you are an American celebrating Black Friday. Either shuffling down the overstuffed aisles of Target, jostling other masked warriors for the last Nintendo Switch, trying to remember if it is toxically demeaning or alt-empowering to buy the wife a Dyson vacuum cleaner, wondering if the mother-in-law would like a Home Depot gift card.

Hot. Uncomfortable. Nerves on edge.

Or maybe you are at home, refreshing the browser to try and get the best possible deal on Facebook’s new TV thing from Amazon and getting your identity “borrowed” and re-marketed directly back to you in seventeen different ways before you’ve even clicked on to the next gift idea.

The death of western enlightenment.

So why not just give the gift of modern radical Islamic terrorism to all friends and family?

Modern radical Islamic terrorism comes in a few different flavors but the best is Yemeni via Deoband, India and will solve all your moral and physical dilemmas and it is cheap. You can buy here too without a line.

Need more?

Here is one free chapter (feat. Sam George) from the velvety pipes of author Chas Smith.

Enjoy.

Bareback Irish Swimmers employ surfer-style intimidation in brutal clash with “Dry Robe” wearing VALS!

John Miskelly

By

The Vulnerable Adult Learner Swimmer!

Hardened Dublin Bay sea-swimmers are taking a leaf out of the surfers’ book of beefs with as they attack the bona fides of swimmers using Dry Robes.

Dry Robe is brand name of “the world’s most versatile change robe” and costs 150 Euro or 180 American dollars.

The veteran Dublin swimmers’ issue is that the Dry Robe prevents the wearer from experiencing the invigorating post-swim, life-affirming “scrotum tightening” chill of the Irish sea.

“Year-round sea swimming used to be the preserve of a few people, known as “hardies”, deemed brave or mad. That changed several years ago when sea swimming became trendy,” reports The Guardian. “Some hardies associate the robes with arrivistes who snaffle parking spaces, hog benches with their fancy fleeces, call sea swimming ‘wild swimming’ and try to undo the Irish Sea’s effects on the human body.”

Arrivistes? Snaffling parking spaces?

So far, so familiar. Clueless weekender newbies coming into a “our” sacred space and clogging up the line-up – sorry, benches. Those Hardies sure are mysterious; immune to the frigid chill of the Irish sea but very much attached to public seating facilities.

And, they’ve got even more in common with us surf types, complaining about the “Dry Robe Wankers” penchant towards “using GoPros, selfie sticks and other devices to document fleeting swims.”

A nation on the brink.

Anti-Dry Robe posters have already appeared, surely we’re only a couple of hogged-benches away from a slashed tire or two.

Naturally, BeachGrit will follow the story as it progresses.

Four pretty towers for Greenmount hill.

Gimme: Developer to sell massive parcel of land with mothballed resort overlooking iconic surf break Snapper Rocks!

Derek Rielly

By

Thirty-five mill plus if you got the cheese… 

Last year, it was revealed, here, that a passionate newcomer to surfing had bought the hottest piece of real estate in surfing and was gonna fill it with a landmark twelve-storey tower catering to the fabulously wealthy.

“I love everything about it and can’t believe I’ve been lucky enough to buy it,” said Brisbane-based VAL Paul Gedoun.

Now, and just a few hundred metres north, the old 151-room Greenmount Beach Resort, a faded jewel that was as glamorous as it gets when it was built in 1980, is gonna be offloaded and replaced, likely, with four or five twelve-storey towers.

Ain’t such a bad looker considering age etc.

Queensland developer Sunland Group bought the old site in 2016 for twenty-eight mill.

The following year they lodged plans for a $370 million build featuring two curvilinear towers filled with 247 apartments. It didn’t happen and in a recent review of undeveloped assets the company figured better to sell than linger.

The Greenmount Beach Resort holds many pleasant memories for your old pal DR including, although not limited to, being attacked with a glass bottle by a noted surfboard shaper enraged by my involvement in a bodyboarding magazine; meeting a pretty brunette with smoky eyes who would later become my wife; and presenting Kelly Slater with a twin-fin surfboard made by Mark Richards and painted in candy stripes and which would feature in a number of surf movies – a surfboard I’m pretty sure, helped convince MR to put the old board back into production, and to great commercial success.

Photo courtesy Sea Otter Savvy.
Photo courtesy Sea Otter Savvy.

Cute n cuddly sea otter caught trying to eat face off shark: “It was as if hell had opened up and spat forth a creature even more wicked than anything Tolkien could imagine!”

Chas Smith

By

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to my American brothers, sister Jen See, and I hope everyone is looking forward to a fine meal of turkey, stuffing, sweet taters, mashed taters, candied taters, ambrosia salad, string beans con bacon bits, rolls and pun’kin pie with loved ones you are not supposed to be seeing.

Very fun, though, let’s be honest. Thanksgiving food is terrible. Every bit of it. And we must blame the British because I don’t think our Native Americans would have been so cruel as to come up with ambrosia salad.

Thinking about the British, here, where do you put J.R.R. Tolkien on the list of great British authors?

Near the top?

Above or below Evelyn Waugh?

I used to not care for Tolkien but he has grown on me over the years, especially his depictions of evil (Orcs etc.) in the Lord the Rings trilogy.

Even Tolkien, though, could not have come up with a more horrific tableau than was witnessed in Morro Bay, California last week where a typically cute n cuddly sea otter attempted to eat the face off a shark.

Michael Harris, of the California department of fish and wildlife, told the website Win for Outdoors, “To my knowledge … this is the first documented horn shark capture by a sea otter. There are reports of sea otters capturing skates and rays, but this is the first report of a shark. Sea otters will feed on fish, but it’s a very rare observation in California.”

The not-for-profit Sea Otter Savvy added, “Not surprisingly, while some nibbling may have occurred, the prey was not consumed.”

I don’t why “not surprisingly” and I don’t know what’s worse for the shark. Having half its face eaten or all of it eaten.

At the end, would you rather have shark face for Thanksgiving or turkey?

I’m on the fence.

Photo: Jack English
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