1 + 1 = Tube
I woke up early this morning, prepared my daughter’s school lunch, French pressed a cup of coffee and then got down to the business of surf journalism. Initially, it seemed like nothing newsworthy had happened while I slept other than the bubbling story of 11 x World Champion Kelly Slater unfollowing his beautiful Chinese girlfriend on Instagram (more soon) but right when I was about to give up, I stumbled on something that shocked me profoundly.
It was in a University of Southern California newsletter, not a normal stop for me and I don’t know what made me click the link reading…
This professor keeps his students on their toes, especially when they’re learning at home.
…though click I did and and glanced over the first paragraph.
John Walsh describes himself as a “nutcase” who likes to surf giant waves.
“I’m a diehard surfer,” said Walsh, associate professor of gerontology and assistant dean of education at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. “I’ve traveled the world surfing, and I’m actually really good at it. To keep it going, though, I have to stay limber.”
My mind instantly reeled but I didn’t quite know why so went back up and read slowly.
And then it hit me like a brick. Have you ever, in all your surfing life, heard someone say they surf “giant waves” and also that they are “really good at it?”
I have not and the norm shattering pronouncement made me intensely uneasy. Does he really surf giant waves? Is he good at it? What is “giant” for him? Overhead? Waimea? And who is he comparing himself to in terms of “really good?” Mark Richards? Anastasia Ashley?
Do we trust the statement a priori?
Should we all start saying we surf giant waves and surf them well?
Is this what they mean by “manifestation?”
Reeling.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
When you go to STAB does it take forever to load?
Yes.
He’s dead?
Asked my wife Moka or me? She said she needed some time to consider.
Chas, how long are you going to 鸡 (cock) tease us on this Kelly Slate IG story?
I’ look a lot like Bowie.
Ashton will write about what a generous guy he is by giving a beer to someone who hasn’t paddled out at pipe and been ignored by Bruce irons
They’re only good for 2 things
Was it just my world…or did every school have a teacher that tried just a little too hard to be liked by the cool kids?
Was this your teacher? https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Hahahaha…how did you know?
Dominican nuns, cool non, fearsome oui!
Stab does indeed suck… But chazs content is embarrassing. Makes Jake Embry look college educated
“I can’t be racist, my girlfriend is Chinese!”
shit.
Seen that school chalkboard photo a bunch over the years…. anyone know the origin or what the story is?
A vote for the Bialetti.
An average amount of the time, yes
In Australia, anyone who says they are really good at something will be heavily frowned upon, rejected and possibly assaulted.
Ha, not in Lakemba
Lebos build people up cuz..fuck I love Lakemba. Food, people etc, awesome.
That’s what I said
Haaa you get out to Lakemba Bex? My lefty journalist mate took me out there years ago. Loved it. Went back a few times mainly for food and experience – feels like being overseas. Seems a lot of Sydney siders won’t venture there. Weird.
I wanted a wide tail but hated twins. I went back to single fins for a while. Thrusters were my savior.
Yea whole different world here now
I saw him in Sydney in the early 90s at the Big Day Out and was one of the best live gigs I have ever seen along with David Byrne’s , of Talking Heads , one man show at the State Theatre around the same time .
All the good surfers and sponsored surfers in my area are humble guys, mostly, and talk about surfing as if they just go to the beach like anyone despite their skill and rare above intermediate status. I’ve found it’s usually the guys who don’t surf very often and can’t do much in the water or who take a giant floaty midlength who talk about how good they are.
In other news, I mentioned this already to David Lee on Instagram, but did anyone catch that Stab posted a clip of Pat Gudauskas and captioned it as being Tanner and tagged Tanner, and as the comments started to bring the comical mistake to light Stab quickly changed the caption and responded to comments saying they had fired the person who made the caption? I honestly don’t follow Stab but I like the G brothers so I clicked to see the post, but it struck me as odd that they would make that error but then try to cover their tracks and come down so hard by firing the guy. I’ve listened to The Grit and comments about Stab and Inertia and surf content often being disconnected from everyday surfers, and this felt like it reinforced that even more, or am I reading into it too much?
I saw that, I don’t think they really fired the intern. Their attempts at irony always sort of fall flat though, don’t they?
Yeah, I suspected that as a possibility too. Felt like they lacked the ability to laugh at themselves though.
Well they shared an apartment just down the Road ( ok 300km away ) in Schöneberg Berlin in 77 so they obviously bounced ideas off each other and god knows what else ….
I surf the best waves, all the best waves. The most bigly waves. And. And I surf these waves. These waves, and you know they are waves, tremendously. It’s tremendous the way I surf, surf these bigly waves. Oh they’re big, they’re very big, bigly. Oh and they tell me, sir, they say mr pp, they say sir, you surf these bigly waves so well, so very well, how do you do it sir? And I say, you know, just watch me I say, it’s experience, I say, it’s tremendous.