Insider website BeachGrit makes it into pages of New York Times bestseller’s latest work: “(a place where) vulnerable adult learners, particularly those mythopoetically rhapsodizing about the life-changing joy of waves they first rode the week before, are mercilessly mocked!”

Mythopoetically rhapsodization!

We met author Tom Vanderbilt exactly one week ago, or close to it anyhow, when I stumbled across his new book titled, “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning.” A VAL manifesto if there ever was one. Vanderbilt purposed to pursue a year of learning purely for the sake of learning, “tackling five main skills (and picks up a few more along the way), choosing them for their difficulty to master and their distinct lack of career marketability–chess, singing, surfing, drawing, and juggling.”

I couldn’t find much about the surfing but became very frustrated that he considered it to have “a distinct lack of career marketability.”

So frustrated that I felt it served him right if he had been stung by a scorpion on his Costa Rican surf holiday.

Now I feel bad.

An excerpt from the surfing chapter of Vanderbilt’s book appeared in Outside magazine, yesterday, and let’s read together.

I don’t think I saw a surfer in person until I was in my late twenties, on a magazine assignment in Orange County, California, to interview the noted surfer and shaper Donald Takayama—a task that was definitely over my head. After spending the morning with him in his shaping bay, I watched a crowd of kids on shortboards buzzing like agitated water striders around the encrusted pilings of the pier at Huntington Beach.

Over the next few decades, I maintained a kind of low-grade secret crush on surfing, the sort I once had on an older woman who worked at a hip coffee shop in my college town. Like her, surfing seemed wrapped in mystique, perhaps slightly dangerous, and ultimately unattainable.

The pursuit doesn’t exactly hang out a big “Beginners Welcome” sign. At insider websites like Beach Grit, vulnerable adult learners, particularly those mythopoetically rhapsodizing about the life-changing joy of waves they first rode the week before, are mercilessly mocked. Surfers, the Australian pro Barton Lynch once observed, are “more cocky and judgmental than any group of people in the world.” Even if you barely paid attention to surfing, you’d no doubt heard about angry locals, always men, threatening kooks at coveted breaks. The bar to entry, on various levels, seemed high.

Insider websites like li’l old us mercilessly mocking those mythopoetically rhapsodizing about the life-changing joys of waves they rode the week before?

He gets us. He really gets us.

Swing into the comments, Tom, and have some fun!


O at Cloudbreak. Who wouldn't pay to view? | Photo: WSL

It is time for World Surf League CEO Erik Logan to boldly take his place in history; either step down or convince co-Waterperson of the Year and billionaire Dirk Ziff to rent Tavarua and put on a show!

Logan, the tennis ball is in your court.

Let’s be frank. The reason Sunset and Santa Cruz are canceled, the Pipe Pro and Backdoor Shootout too, is on World Surf League CEO Erik Logan. It was he who contracted the dreaded Covid-19.

He who told his followers not to worry, he was only lightly symptomed.

He who made a mockery of Hawaii’s health protocols.

Certainly the buck was passed to Yago Dora but Yago Dora is just a sweet boy with a dime and a dream. Erik Logan is the adult in the room. The Chief Executive and, in the vein of President Truman, the buck stops there.

As I see it he has too options: apologize for his blunder and step down or dispense with the corpo-speak, convince co-Waterperson of the Year and professional surfing’s benefactor Dirk Ziff to rent the island paradise of Tavarua for a month, bring the men’s draw and the women’s draw and bang out two quick contests.

Restaurants and Cloudbreak.

In between, shoot a bunch of content of professional surfers stopping being polite and starting being real. Force strange bedfellow situations etc. Kelly Slater bunking with Yago Dora. Pip Toledo with Kekoa Bacalso.

Much drama at the buffet.

Throw it all behind a paywall. I’d subscribe and so would you.

Bold leadership. A strong move. What we need to cheer us up.

Logan, the Tavarua tennis ball is in your court. The same tennis ball batted back and forth on the same court that Bobby Martinez and Todd Kline enjoyed.

Do the right thing.


What is beautiful about the desert day one are the same things you find ugly day three.

Palm Springs Wedding Planner Reveals Tragic Flaw in Kelly Slater’s $250 million La Quinta real estate and wavepool gamble!

"Kelly’s pool better be underground or covered. Not to mention, a filter system will be required to keep the water liquid or else he’ll be mixing cement."

Thoughts about the new Slater pool in La Quinta. 

I’ve designed three weddings on the golf course and incurred the same challenge each day, wind.

Horrific wind hugging the curvature of the mountains and funneling through a green belt that manages a very occasional rain storm.

End result is dust for miles, sand storms.

I built a ceremony arch for one gig and purposely installed it behind the reception tent. Two thoughts, some wind protection and to give the poor photog some back light.

We had to borrow stakes from the lighting company. I sent a kid to Home Depot for some high tensil strength cord. We tied the arch off at 4 stations and I disappeared behind the hotel to cut Trumpet vine to run along the cord.

Next trip, we rented a huge gazebo.

Thought fuck this, something so heavy nothing could blow it down. Concentrated decor on the aisle and base legs of the monster. Was hanging the chandelier in the middle when a gust hit, my twelve-foot ladder fell under me and I clung to the chandelier mechanics while my boys sorted the ladder.

Following trip, I sold NO CEREMONY DECOR. We scheduled the chairs into theatre in the round and called it a day. As fate allows, no wind that particular day so we made a circle of rose petals for the actual ceremony space. Yeah, they curdled in the sun, but the Hippy knows a trick or two about a half and half mix of silk petals.

Point being, Kelly’s pool better be underground or covered. Not to mention, a filter system will be required to keep the water liquid or else he’ll be mixing cement.

I’m not sure why all pools are not in a warehouse or underground. Manage nature as best as you are faking it.

If I’m paying for Kelly’s ranch it better be fucking glassy. As glassy as that same money will buy me a two-week charter in the Ments.

I really think the only way to keep evaporation at a minimum and run without wind issues is by covering the pool. Especially Palm Springs because for five months it’s too hot to be outside anyway.

I could make oodles of money out there, restaurants are sublime, but fuck, it’s like Las Vegas, three days is plenty.

What is beautiful about the desert day one are the same things you find ugly day three.

I just need three dinner reservations and a fat paycheck to make me happy driving back to the beach.

(Editor’s note: The author is actually an event designer not a wedding planner. Fitted the headline better. “It’s a huge distinction of competence from the wedding planners I loathe,” he says.  Second, Hippy’s from Santa Babs. Again, makes for a better headline, Palm Springs Wedding Planner etc.)


WSL CEO Erik Logan.

World Surf League cancels events two and three on 2021 tour, Sunset Beach, Steamer Lane; Rip Curl Pro at Bells possible year opener!

COVID-19 continues to beat hell out of world surf tours.

Sunset was always going to be dead in the water after the COVID follies, which included the WSL’s CEO Erik Logan and four other WSL staffers being infected, at the Pipeline Masters. 

And, earlier today, after Hawaii’s department of business, economic development and tourism announced it was suspending surf competitions, effective immediately, the WSL cancelled not just Sunset and the Big Wave Jaws Championship Pe’ahi  but the Santa Cruz Pro at Steamer Lane, too. 

Per the presser,

“The decision to postpone the Santa Cruz Pro, the last planned event of the US leg of the Championship Tour, is based primarily on the surge of COVID-19 cases in California. The postponement is also heavily influenced by the length of time our athletes have been away from home, and by the complexities of global travel during this pandemic, which would have caused significant logistical challenges for athletes and staff to travel home and return to California for the event.

“We look forward to safely continuing the 2021 CT season with the Australia leg starting at the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach in April.”

No Sunset, no Steamer Lane, possibly, still, no Bells.

A gift from heaven, no?


Like all socialist experiments, heavy with good intention but operating at odds with basic human nature, the chat room has since descended into brutal internecine fighting. 

Angry Ellie-Jean Coffey fans turn on each other after socialist experiment to crowdfund explicit videos goes bad, “The three of us who buy the videos can’t keep forking out hundreds and hundreds of dollars while all of you sit there and enjoy the benefits!”

"How sad is your life that you think someone is lying about having content just because you’re too much of a cheap ass to buy it yourself."

One month ago, it was reported that Redditors had created an encrypted chat room to share explicit content bought from world #25 rated surfer-turned-porn-star Ellie-Jean Coffey. 

A socialist experiment where capital is pooled and the harvest shared.

BeachGrit was invited, for free, to the chat room and therefore the material we might examine would also be free. 

At the time, the group’s latest crowd fund was to buy a $120 video that promised, “PUSSY FUCKED. My bare pussy getting penetrated by DICK for my birthday. UNCENSORED and NSFW XXX action for over 5 mins.”

Harvest days for men with snouts wetted and ready to savage imaginary vulvas and ani. 

Like all socialist experiments, heavy with good intention but operating at odds with basic human nature, the chat room has since descended into brutal internecine fighting. 

One man wants to sell views of a video bought for $149 at ten dollars a hit. 

Recent posts: 

“If you wanna see the good content you gotta pay for it. The three of us who actually buy the videos can’t just keep forking out hundreds and hundreds of dollars and all of you just sit here and enjoy the benefits.”

“LOL. How fucking sad is your life that you think someone is lying about having content just because you’re too much of a cheap ass to buy it yourself. This is exactly why I took my offer to share it back.”

“Anyway, it’s interesting to see everyone who not so long ago was waiting and asking to have free videos and photos come here and spit in everyone’s face and now that they have something they keep it to themselves.”

“Can you guys actually confirm what you see and if it’s fully tits and pussy or is it still edited out or covered.”

Busy days for busy men.