Heroic pigeon who traveled across the Pacific from the United States to Australia set to be executed for ignoring country’s quarantine restrictions: “It poses a direct biosecurity risk to Australian bird life and our poultry industry!”

What then does this mean for our professional surfers?

Joe is a very talented racing pigeon from the United States who became confused during a race in Oregon, turned right and flew, or maybe hitched a ride on a cargo ship, for an extraordinary 8000 miles (13000 kilometers) to Melbourne, Australia.

Kevin Celli-Bird, a resident of the country’s cultural capital, found the exhausted bird in his backyard on Dec. 26th. “It rocked up at our place on Boxing Day. I’ve got a fountain in the backyard and it was having a drink and a wash. He was pretty emaciated so I crushed up a dry biscuit and left it out there for him,” he told the Associated Press.

“Next day, he rocked back up at our water feature, so I wandered out to have a look at him because he was fairly weak and he didn’t seem that afraid of me and I saw he had a blue band on his leg. Obviously he belongs to someone, so I managed to catch him.”

The Oklahoma-based American Racing Pigeon Union has confirmed that Joe was registered to an owner in Montgomery, Alabama.

Celli-Bird let the heroic bird go, infuriating the “the notoriously strict” Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service who are now seeking to re-capture and execute Joe for flaunting protocols.

The service released a statement reading, “The bird is not permitted to remain in Australia” because it “could compromise Australia’s food security and our wild bird populations. It poses a direct biosecurity risk to Australian bird life and our poultry industry.”

They are currently hunting the gallant creature.

All to say, our professional surfers are set to re-start the severely bungled 2020/21 World Surf League Championship Tour at Bells Beach, very near Melbourne, in three short months. Word coming out of Australia is that there will be no quarantine exceptions made for those coming into the country. They will each have to quarantine in hotel rooms for two weeks, without leaving, and after their two weeks will only be able to surf in their heats, not being allowed to play in the ocean otherwise.

Much time in hotel rooms.

Notoriously strict.

Do you think our professional surfers will be able to abide by the rules?

Do you think they will be executed if they do not?

How will World Surf League CEO Erik Logan screw it all up this time?

A racing pigeon was sold at auction for $1.9 million this past November, which means they are very much more valuable than our professional surfers.

Guillotine for the top 20?

CEO Erik Logan helping to hold them in place before the blade drops?

Blood gushing down Hosier Lane?

More as the story develops.


Watch: “Talented waterman and big mountain charger” Chuck Patterson ski the day-of-all-days at Mavericks!

Novel!

Where does novelty rank, for you, in surfing? Love every twist of our favorite, or second favorite, pastime? Hate the desecration? An earnest shrug? A less-than-earnest shrug?

Well, whatever your feelings, Chuck Patterson just skied the day-of-all-Mavericks-days. The same one that saw Peter Mel enter the quinquagenarian hall of fame.

Patterson, whose website describes him as, “Versatile. Adaptable. Accomplished. A few of the words that exemplify the spirit of the talented waterman and big mountain charger. A master of not just one or two disciplines, but seven,” has also skied Jaws.

What are the seven disciplines?

When Nike launched into action sports it had 6 as part of Nike 6.0. Has Patterson discovered a hidden one? The holy grail of extreme?

Let’s hope.


Shane Beschen part of group bringing world’s largest deep water standing wave to Oahu: “Similar to Oahu’s Waimea Bay river wave that flows periodically when the sand bar opens up after heavy rainfall periods – but on steroids!”

The future was yesterday.

Zig when others zag, I think, is how thousandaires become millionaires and millionaires become billionaires. Finding those beautiful gaps, exploiting either forgotten or ignored veins. And while the world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater, surfboard shaper Greg Webber, American Wave Machines, the inimitable Tom Lochtefeld fight over the global wave pool market, onetime Kelly Slater foe, and the least huggable pro of all time, Shane Beschen is quietly breaking ground on “the world’s largest deep water standing wave” on Oahu’s southside.

Standing waves, recall, were once the creme of artificial surfing. The best, and only, thing we had to replicate our favorite pastime save pretending we were doing cutbacks on our skateboards in drainage ditches.

They went out of vogue once they began appearing on cruise ships and almost disappeared entirely with the reveal of Kelly Slater’s surf ranch.

But zig, zag, millions possibly billions and let us turn to Surf Park Central for the very latest.

Wai Kai Commercial Development, LLC today announced that construction is underway of The LineUp, the anchor attraction to the Wai Kai waterfront recreation and entertainment destination at Hoakalei Resort in Ewa Beach in West Oahu. Wai Kai will feature the world’s largest deep-water standing surf wave, and access to an adjacent 52-acre recreational lagoon. Wai Kai is anticipated to open in 2022.

The LineUp at Wai Kai, a dynamic social and recreational hub of authentic waterman experiences, is headlined by the Wai Kai Wave, the world’s largest deep-water standing surf wave at 100-feet wide. Powered by Citywave®, the technology creates authentic surfing conditions with perfect endless and adjustable waves from 2-feet to head-high for all skill levels allowing the use of standard surfboards with fins for big carving turns and top-to-bottom surfing on its glassy wave face. The Wai Kai Wave was created in collaboration with Oahu’s-own Shane Beschen (a partner in The LineUp at Wai Kai’s operating company), an X Games Gold Medalist, former world #2 ranked surfer, and Red Bull’s high-performance surf coach, and his young gun surfing son Noah.

“The surfing will be similar to Oahu’s Waimea Bay river wave that flows periodically when the sand bar opens up after heavy rainfall periods – but on steroids,” said Shane. “Everything from high speed carving turns to sections for attacking the lip or doing airs are all possible here. It creates the perfect on-demand setup.”

Sound fun?

Would you rather surf a standing wave in Oahu or a moving wave in Lemoore?


Rarified Air: World’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater golfs with former President Barack H. Obama, shouts out other famous friends from the links!

"...got a friend here for you."

Yesterday found the world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater not battling shifting peaks at bigger Sunset, facing down a rightly aggrieved Adriano de Souza, Wade Carmichael and Yago Dora hovering on the wings in their overlapping heat, Joe Turpel in the booth explaining the concept of overlapping heats for the thirteenth time in fifteen minutes to the viewer at home, no.

It found him on a Hawaiian golf course playing a round with former United States President Barack H. Obama and shouting out his other famous friend Anderson.

“Hey Anderson, what’s up bud…” Kelly begins, holding his iPhone (presumably) in selfie mode. “…got a friend here for you…” before tilting the camera to a full-face reveal of Obama, who tells Anderson that his family are big fans.

The Anderson in question is Anderson Paak, a musical artist very worth of praise as evidenced by his phenomenal song Come Down.

Extremely impressive but, over to you, who is the most famous person you could call a “friend?”

For me it is probably Scott Caan (listen here) with a close second being Alyssa Milano whose car I parked, once, when valeting.

Not quite the one-time leader of the free world but still very cool.

Your turn.


The Instagram Murfers went to ground after the Vanity Fair hit piece. A Darwinian struggle for brands and influence could not be healed by #blessed, at least not privately. Reading between the lines, it's easy to see who threw who under the bus, who positioned for the inevitable backlash. Even being a Murfer, this Byron Bay lifestyle don't come for free.

Long read: Byron Bay “a monument to greed wearing a spiritual cloak. A glittering dream metastasized into a malignant nightmare. The spawn of unhinged neoliberalism and grinning hippy capitalists!”

Ayn Rand on a mid-length… 

If New York City is the spiritual and actual home of VAL-lit, inspired, perhaps by Bill Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, then Byron Bay is it’s Mt Everest, Valhalla and Nirvana.

The apex of the peak for the lifestyle obsessed VAL.

A voluptuous lava flow from an ancient volcano protrudes further east into the tepid sub-tropical Pacific than any point on the Australian Mainland. The Bay it circumscribes is lavishly decorated with sand-bottom peelers. No other place on earth is so falsifiably mytho-poetically rhapsodized over by post-modern knowledge workers.

The see and repackage and sell on what they have read in the brochures and guide-books; what has been packaged up and sold to them.

I see a different side of the Bay.

Four am and the pharaohs stir softly in their modern-day pyramids, Hollywood scripts flit between neurons in the alpha state.

Barefoot dude wanders, staggers over to my car.

“Got a ciggy? I need a ciggy.”

“Can’t help you bruz, don’t smoke”

He leans against the car. Dangerous? Not sure.

Byron has the highest rates of violent and sexual assault outside of inner Sydney. This ain’t a peaceful place when drunk and drugged fuckers are wandering around outside closeing time.

“Can you tell me how far to Newy?” he asks.

“Newy’s about eight-hundred k’s that way.”

I point south into the bush, “You’re in Byron Bay, go this way.”

I point in the other direction, down the main street, “You’ll find a bakery open, someone to give you a ciggy”.

“I need money, a coffee, give me some money.”

I got no cash.

He’s looming over me now.

I hand him a coffee thermos.

“Take this, go drink it and when the sun comes up, go to the bus station and go home. Don’t bash or rape anyone. Good luck”.

It’s a monument to greed wearing a spiritual cloak. A glittering dream metastasized into a malignant nightmare. The bastard spawn of unhinged neoliberalism and grinning hippy capitalists running riot in an orgy of aimless consumption in the spiritual supermarket. Ayn Rand on a mid-length.

He’s only an hour from the first rush hour: the pre-dawn dawnie at The Pass. The bank is hero. The peelers addictive.

In this negative Utopia, like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, slaves are drip-fed peelers at the Pass, instead of Soma.

Six am and the carparks are packed.

Range Rover, Audis, idle in the carparks, the scent of diesel fumes wafts over the line-up. The serfs have had their hit, time to man and woman the cafes. Byron is Abu Dhabi with cafes and warm-water peelers instead of air-conditioned malls. Euro-babes and Brazilian studs do the coolie labour instead of South Asians.

It’s a monument to greed wearing a spiritual cloak. A glittering dream metastasized into a malignant nightmare. The bastard spawn of unhinged neoliberalism and grinning hippy capitalists running riot in an orgy of aimless consumption in the spiritual supermarket. Ayn Rand on a mid-length.

The Instagram Murfers went to ground after the Vanity Fair hit piece. A Darwinian struggle for brands and influence could not be healed by #blessed, at least not privately. Reading between the lines, it’s easy to see who threw who under the bus, who positioned for the inevitable backlash. Even being a Murfer, this Byron Bay lifestyle don’t come for free.

It does for my Pal, “Why Kick a Maz Cow”. I don’t know he ended up rejoicing in this moniker. Alls I know is he walks and wanders the streets and since he found the Lord maybe five years ago has managed to find work cleaning cars and does a very fine line in man on man street preaching.

I’ll make a very fine king, he tells me, when my soul is saved. Ascending to heaven with the full complement of angels and trumpets, he mentions virgins, but he may be poaching from a rival faith. More attractive, at least to me, than a sponnoed post about a thirty dollar vegan smoothie.

Many folks live in the paperbark grove behind the library. Their despair and suffering is writ large, unlike the hordes of achingly cool babes on logs who soothe their angst with prescription meds. There are only so many gigs for micro-influencers.

Mental health is, of course, fucked in this town.

My old pal DC lives behind the church on Ruskin St. He rolls a sleeping bag out every night and then slinks around the old Aboriginal tracks that criss-cross Byron Bay. An invisible man. Ruskin st is named after a victorian poet, John Ruskin, who emphasised the connection between nature, art and society. One of the original mytho-poetical rhapsodisers.

I wonder what he would think of the human being seeking shelter on the street named after him.

“How you fixed D?”

He shrugs.

Like always he seems to melting. Something is dripping off him. Not tears, not sweat. He is literally melting away.

“Tramps like us,” he tells me, “we were born to die”.

Byron is changing very fast.

And like writer AA Gill discovered about the rapid changes wrought on Dubai: “The plan was money. The architect was money. The designer was money and the builder was money”. It’s a town more status obsessed and class conscious than Victorian England, more wealth inequality exists than at any time since the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers strode the boardwalks of Manhattan.

Surfing is just the latest accoutrement. A kind of necessary flag to wave that shows peers that you are doing life right.

At The Pass, peelers are glittering and winking into the sun as it draws down into the twin peaks of Mt Chincogan. Sexual selection is rife. There are many more gals than guys, the ratio is like communist China, but reversed. A competent hipster who can cross step and control a leashless log can run a harem of Euro babes with little effort.

What little effort there is consists of blocking for waves, a push, an encouraging word. Swiss, Austrians, Italians, Spanish,Germans (especially Germans), they all feel free of the constraints of the Old World, fully self-actualised in this banquet where all wines flow and all hearts open.

A biologist interested in human behaviours could write many theses studying these sexual selections. They would never exhaust the material.

Covid has accelerated and enhanced the desire for Byron Bay.

Each new VAL adds their own flourishes to the myth. The old whore, it seems, will never want of pimps ready to apply a fresh coat of lipstick and send her out for another go round.

The fully realized VAL in Byron Bay becomes God-like, a digital reality with a purchase that has currency around the Globe.

Don’t get me wrong.

I love beautiful people, diamond studded peelers, perfect pop-ups and peaches on the beaches as much as the next mark.

It’s just… it’s just if we have VAL-lit, then we need an anti-VAL lit, otherwise the universe topples over.