Japanese Olympic fans in happier days.

Surfing’s Olympic Dream shatters as Japanese government “privately concludes” Tokyo Olympics will be cancelled; looks to secure 2032 Games!

"Too difficult… I don't think it's going to happen."

Revealed today news that the Japanese government is looking for a “face-saving” way of announcing the 2021 Games, already postponed for one year, will have to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As reported by The Times,

According to a senior member of the ruling coalition, there is agreement that the Games, already postponed a year, are doomed. The aim now is to find a face-saving way of announcing the cancellation that leaves open the possibility of Tokyo playing host at a later date. “No one wants to be the first to say so but the consensus is that it’s too difficult,” the source said. “Personally, I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Publicly, Japan’s prime minister remains bullish and says holding the Games will be “proof of human victory against the coronavirus.”

Were you excited by surfing appearing at an Olympic Games?

Last January, our tour correspondent, Steve “Longtom” Shearer described his feelings,

Tell me, how pumped are you on surfings Olympic debut, on a scale of one to ten where one is you’d rather shoot heroin in the eyeball than watch and ten is cashing in your kids education fund to be there in person?

I’m hovering between a four and a six. Maybe a high seven if Italo surfs it in cut-offs during a typhoon swell.

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VAL and WSL CEO Erik "Elo" Logan, at right, during happier days as junior frogman in traditional front-zip wetsuit. | Photo: @eriklogan

Scandal rocks World Surf League as chief executive admits to wearing wetsuit backwards on health and wellness podcast: “Put it on backwards, like most people do, zipper in the front…”

"Hey, you should go be with all the cool guys..."

Our World Surf League leadership has done an absolutely incredible job mocking the pastime it seeks to promote.

Who could forget the money, and co-Waterperson of the Year Dirk Ziff coined the phrase “grumpy locals,” his co-Waterperson of the Year, and wife, Natasha, calling the same group “grumpy traditionalists.”

Then there was the legendary Beth Greve, the League’s Chief Commercial Officer, who made herself a household name by innovating by somehow inserting her surfboard fins backwards.

Backward Fin Beth, lauded by dairy ranch hands and Pulitzer Prize winners alike.

Now, of course, we have Chief Executive Officer Erik “ELo” Logan who rides a standup paddle board, singlehandedly destroyed the just-re-launched 2020/21 Championship Tour by contracting Covid-19 in Hawaii but also used to put his wetsuit on backwards too.

He was recently a guest on the Health Gig podcast where he said, “Moved to Manhattan Beach (California) and bought a house five blocks away from the beach. Now, go back in time, Chuck the Duck, landlocked kid from Oklahoma who wouldn’t even go into a lake if I couldn’t see my feet. It’s like, ‘If I can’t see the bottom, I’m not going in.’ And so, my wife at the time bought me a wetsuit when I was 41, for my 41st birthday as kind of a joke. It was sort of like, ‘Hey, you should go be with all the cool guys…’ so I put the wetsuit on, put it on backwards of course like most people do, zipper goes in the back, not in the front, it’s a great picture. So I put the wetsuit on and walked into the ocean…”

Fabulous but is it really true that most people put on wetsuits backwards for the first time?

Is this a truism of our little world?

I saw a frustrated younger 20ish boy sitting on the beach, two years ago, with his wetsuit on backwards but this is the only example in-the-wild I can recall.

Are there more at your local?

Most at Manhattan Beach?

Much to ponder.

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Virginia lawmakers consider banning wake surfing as lakeside homeowners grow furious over child abuse: “The waves take our grandkids and slam them into the dock!”

We got trouble...

And the golden age of surfing is officially over. History will record 2015-2021 as a jubilee wherein the Pastime of Kings grew legs and wandered inland, making new homes in cow towns, protected wetlands and deserts as wave making technologies exploded in viability. Also lakes where new boats, fitted with impressive cavities, could lower themselves into the water and create large breakers for which wake surfers can ride without rope or care.

Very cool.

Except, as stated, over.

Lakefront homeowners in Virginia have realized that surfing is a wayward lifestyle that leads to many societal problems including, but not limited to, child abuse.

Rhonnie Smith, a grandfather who was recently profiled in the Roanoke Times, is one such lakefront homeowner. His grandchildren used to love to play in the water just outside his house at Smith Mountain Lake until those dreaded wake surfers came to town. Now, when they pass, “large waves” slam into the shoreline and the dock. Once during this past summer, Smith said, his grandchildren were playing down in the water by the dock, and the waves threw the children into the dock.

“We pull the children out of the water any time a wakesurfing boat goes by and won’t let them back in until the boats have left the area.”

Other homeowners are equally furious and have lobbied the Virginia General Assembly to pass a law that will keep the bastards far away. Or at least 200 feet from the shoreline.

Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford, who represents lake residents, told the Assembly the legislation “Will keep people involved in water sports at Smith Mountain Lake and those who enjoy the lake at their docks safe, it will reduce the erosion of property and mitigate the destruction of property.”

Many chimed in with horror stories of damage done to homes and families. Thousands upon thousands of dollars spent. Children sent to the hospital and rehab.

No one testified to the committee in opposition to the bill.

Very smart for we, here, know that once surfing takes root it is nearly impossible to root out and will very soon rot the soul.

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Ain't she a peach. Probs gonna be knocked down, however.

Iconic surf shack bought for $48,000 during first-ever man-on-man surfing contest sells for $7 million!

Slice of history to be bulldozed to make way for "standout family home."

In 1920, a modest wooden house was built at number 10 Goodwin Terrace, Burleigh Heads, a joint typical of the period, elevated to snatch northerly breezes, a covered wrap-around balcony to shelter from the pretty damn relentless Gold Coast sun.

Six decades later, as man-on-man surfing was being debuted at the Stubbies Pro by Peter Drouyn, the house was sold for $48,936 and occupied thereafter, and for many years, by the winner of the 1980 Stubbies, Burleigh Heads local and the town’s postman, Peter Harris.

(Correction: An overnight email from John Lambert, the great-grandson of the man who built the house, reveals Stubbies winner Harris actually lived in the joint next door and that the house wasn’t sold in 1977, despite records suggesting otherwise, but was bequeathed to his dad from his great aunt that year. Lambert writes, “Because of our ongoing Burleigh connections & friends, this article hits all my family’s social media and its pretty insulting to read something so woefully researched and ludicrous in its sloppy facts. We have to deal with the fact its being knocked down and then also deal with your fiction! C’est la vie!”)

With sizzling views of point carpark and waves just beyond.

Now, a little after the hundredth anniversary of the house’s build, the iconic surf shack has traded for seven-million dollars, almost two-and-a-half mill more than it sold for in 2016.

The couple who bought the joint had been trying to buy it for the past three years. After the last refusal by the owner to sell, the pair bought a six-mill penthouse a little further down the street.

The agent that sold ‘em the penthouse then  convinced the owner of 10 Goodwin to sell ‘em the house, too, for seven mill.

A nice little pair of boltholes, although the historic house is gonna be bulldozed to make way for a “standout family home.”

Burleigh Heads in 1920.

Once one of the grittier parts of the Gold Coast, third in shittiness behind Coolangatta and perennial winner Palm Beach, has been transformed into a paradise for investors, including the Chinese man who bought the Old Burleigh Theatre Arcade, the former home of Surfing Life magazine, for eighteen-mill.

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TMZ first major media outlet to declare Makua Rothman’s weekend Jaws wave to be over 100-feet: “Rothman beat out the other surfers to catch a Holy Grail type of ocean ride!”

Finally!

I’ll be honest with you here, I forgot that a 100-foot wave was the “Holy Grail” type of ocean ride but I forget more and more these days. I do recall a day where the mystical 100-feet seemed both atmospherically impossible and physically impossible. No way could a wave ever get that big. No way could a human ever ride.

Then, climate change, then very progressive tow-surfing et voila.

The “100-foot wave” moniker has now been hung on a few different ocean rides, notably Tom Butler, Garrett McNamara and Sebastien Steutner’s Nazare beasts but much debate as to where the trough, or lowest point, of those Portuguese Mamas actually is.

Eddie’s son Makua Rothman, anyhow, was out at Jaws over the weekend, feasting on that ridiculous run of swell and TMZ is now the first major media outlet to declare his wave to be 100-feet or over.

Is Jaws easier to measure than Nazare?

Is this a 100-foot wave?

This is BeachGrit where you are judge and jury.

How do you rule?

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