Effort. Reward. Vindication. | Photo: @parkerndavis

Astonishing: Thirty-second surfing clip reveals “everything of the nature of man and fate!”

"That is life, that is man."

Did you know there are 2024 lines of dialogue in Hamlet? 

But, would Shakespeare have felt inclined to spill so much ink and time if he’d ever had the privilege of witnessing the sport of kings?

Specifically this clip in particular?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKo6sZSHfl2/

 

I doubt it.

He would have lain down his quill with the words,“See that there? That is life, that is man.”

What is exhibited in this one thirty-second clip is nothing less than the full spectrum of humanity itself.

What’s encapsulated in this narrative is, in a word, literally, Everything.

Needless to say then it warrants a closer look.

The work opens with a familiar scene (Act one scene one: establish normality), a crowded line-up. The supporting cast. A wave approaches. Several figures scratch for the drop. Four make it.

Thus we have our leading men, our major characters. Three surfers and a bodyboarder. Questions of priority we will leave for ensuing generations of critics and scholars to mull over. For now we’ll concern ourselves principally with plot. The surfer furthest on the inside is lost early, call it timing, positioning, bad faith snaking – we can’t know. Save it for the prequel.

Regardless, his story is lost. Hopelessness.

That leaves three.

One, all in white, struggles in the foam, not gone, but lost. His cause looks futile.

This? Life.

The bodyboarder looks to have it. He pops to a drop-knee position. Does he know of the surfer on his inside, further towards the pocket and to whom many an observer might say the wave belongs? He seems oblivious, concerned only with his own ensuing gratification: Solipsism. Egocentricity.

The inside surfer looks back seemingly concerned with the fate of The Lost One: Compassion. Empathy. Curiosity.

Regardless of motive Inside Surfer’s focus on “the other” will prove fatal.

The Bodyboarder, either through hubris, a desire to get back further towards the pocket or out of territorial malevolence, cuts back into the path of Inside Surfer. Villainy.

The audience holds its breath.

Inside Surfer ploughs into Bodyboarder and stacks it over the lip. Out of shot. Out of existence. “Nice guys finish last,” the universe seems to tell us. Bodyboarder must surely have it now.

But wait.

Inside Surfer’s board pounces like a conscious animal still loyal to its fallen master and tonks Bodyboarder on the head. He could take the hit, hold his line, ride on. Instead he puts up his hands to guard himself against the blow and in doing so loses said line and swerves off up and over the lip! Vanity. Cowardice. Lulz. Justice.

And thus ends the tragedy?

Sweep to stage right to reveal: The Lost One, our angel all in white, once assumed to have gone the way of Hopelessness is resurrected, muscling through the foam, thanklessly and inexplicably chasing the lost cause. A picture of patience. Lazarus and Sisyphus combined. Tenacity.

But there’s still work to be done. No Bodyboard hubris here. He waits. After all, what’s another half-second compared to the previous twenty?

The wave jacks slightly.

He carves out of the foam and at last he’s on the wave!

And then suddenly the universe obliges further. From nowhere a barrel, and he’s in it, bent at the waist, slightly ungainly, a touch of poo-stance, but hey, who’s judging?

He emerges. Only a scoundrel would resent the claim: arms aloft in victory, in gratitude.

Effort. Reward. Vindication.

Curtain.

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Lennox Head, a wildlife playground. | Photo: Photo: @9newsGoldCoast

Rumour: National Surfing Reserve Lennox Head to be site of fourth WCT event on Australian leg of 2021 WSL tour!

Local surfers refuse to rule out "weaponised ass-play"… 

As reported earlier today, the three-event Australian leg of the World Championship Tour will, likely, be extended to include a fourth contest.

Surfline suggested a double-header in Sydney but our sources have revealed the contest will actually take place at Lennox Head, eight hundred kilometres north, and home to BeachGrit’s Steve “Longtom” Shearer as well as shaper Dan Thomson and his father, the builder of “the world’s most advanced surf mat” Mark Thomson. 

You’ll also recall Lennox as being the home of “weaponised ass-play”.

Lennox is also popular with Great White sharks.

Read, BeachGrit writer eyeballed by White at Lennox: “I can feel the pressure wave on my legs; the big pectoral fins look like a plane!”and Healthy: 333 Great Whites caught on ten-mile stretch between Ballina, Lennox and Evans Head!” 

Whales, too, enjoy the area’s warm green water. 

And Sharpes Beach made headlines last October when the one-time world title contender Matt Wilkinson was stalked by an eight-foot bull shark while having a solo sesh.

“I got to feel that weird, heart-sinking but lucky feeling when I saw that footage,” Wilko said.

https://twitter.com/slsnsw/status/1313742332269715456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1313742332269715456%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbeachgrit.com%2F2020%2F10%2Fincredible-drone-footage-all-beaches-around-ballina-closed-after-former-world-1-matt-wilkinson-bumped-by-large-bull-shark-or-white-if-it-got-any-closer-it-wouldve-been-sucking-my-toes%2F

We’re told that the WSL’s “Competition Director at selected events”, Kieren Perrow, and Andrew Stark, the WSL’s general manager, have met with the local board riders club, Le-Ba (Lennox-Ballina), as well as stakeholders who hold the keys to unlocking a national surfing reserve to a corporate surfing event. 

The back-up site will be Sharpes Beach, a pretty average sorta wave just south of Lennox, but suddenly popular due to a surge in housing developments, including the master-planned “neighbourhood” Aureus. 

Aurea at the WSL’s back-up site, Sharpes Beach.

More as it comes. 

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Surfer (pictured) being taken to beach for heat.
Surfer (pictured) being taken to beach for heat.

Reported: World Surf League considering adding fourth Championship Tour stop in Australia, creating a “competitive bubble” seven months too late!

The Thrilla in Vanilla.

There is progressive and then there is our World Surf League. Wave forecasting website Surfline has reported, in the early hours of the morning, that Santa Monica is considering sandwiching a fourth Championship Tour event in the upcoming Australian leg of an already-truncated 2020/21 season.

Australian quarantine laws are extremely strict, for those entering the country from abroad, and not bent even for tennis stars who were forced to stay in hotel rooms for a full two weeks ahead of being able to ply their craft.

Polite, mild-mannered, well-behaved, wealthy tennis stars.

Professional surfers are set to get back in the water April 1st, or thereabouts, for the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach followed by Margaret River (April 16 – 26) and Snapper (May 3 – 13).

Surfline is suggesting the fourth event will likely be in Sydney and a “double-header.”

The idea of a “bubble” is not new as it relates to the current pandemic.

The NBA restarted its season in an Orlando bubble in July and successfully crowned a champion in October.

The NBA plays its game indoors where men breathe in each other’s faces whilst sweating profusely.

The World Surf League plays its outdoors in the ocean where two women, or men, sit very far apart from each other unless one of them is named Gabriel Medina.

The rumored Sydney event will likely favor Pip Toledo.

Exciting days ahead.

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Loophole of the century: South African surfers circumvent beach ban by vaulting shark nets, “Today we made a public stand against the silly law making it illegal to walk across the sand to practice our sport!”

Surfers stomp a righteous flamenco on South Africa's level 3 lockdown laws… 

Ain’t no secret that it’s wild times for South African surfers who want to ride or even examine waves. 

One month ago at Jeffreys Bay, a man was arrested under South Africa’s level 3 lockdown laws for checking the surf with his fourteen-year-old son and, on the beach, two surfers were busted, had their boards confiscated and were threatened with jail time. 

Cop tries to stop man’s son from filming dad’s arrest at Jeffreys Bay.

Six month ago, beachgoers were forced to flee a Durban beach when cops arrived en masse.

Now, wave-starved surfers in Durban have joined together to circumvent the ban by paddling into the lineup after being deposited beyond the shark nets by boat.

From The Surf HQ, “Today we made a public stand against the silly law allowing surfing as a sport , but making it illegal to walk across the sand to practice our sport. so this is a huge shout out to the 7 brothers who took the BIG risk of coming along for the ride with me knowing full well tonights bed could have been in a jail cell, for chartering a Boat and being dropped out deep sea beyond the shark nets to paddle over them to surf “without touching the sand” for an hour and a half,
paddling all the way back over the nets to get back onto the boat then be Police escorted to Dock to face the Law enforcement officers.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKmEkprnzF_/?igshid=o8jb8oj7ohtb&fbclid=IwAR2PfVoAmAtstfutTGNfoBhLUpe10sh5S4cbyKPcrmy_tUscQFeiDWMCbyU

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKjlHzoHUZ5/?igshid=3bktsccqxnm7&fbclid=IwAR33eDh9JtNDIeDNeukcHNQwvMHaWctAO84J-DFtqCYC4HqscBxo3jAI7UA

Oddly electric, yes?

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Breaking: World Surf League strips iconic Tom Curren of one of his three titles following explosive popularity of new film “Free Scrubber!”

More questions than answers.

Tom Curren re-introduced himself to a surf-entertainment starved world, days ago, in the form of a fifteen-minute work of art from the minds of Vaughn Blakey and Nick Pollet.

Free Scrubber may well be the finest surf film of the decade and if you have not yet watched you must pause, right now, and so do.

Marvelous and impossible not to love…
…for everyone outside the World Surf League’s Santa Monica headquarters.

Inside the virtually empty offices hurt and rage, vengeful thoughts and angry anger, must be percolating for the WSL posted the film, like all other surf media, but also stripped Curren of a title.

“Enjoy a little of that old Tom Curren magic in Rip Curl’s new film “free scrubber” the headline reads, followed by, “From twin-fins to skimboards, the two-time World Champ’s quest to find the perfect…”

Everyone, legitimately seriously everyone, knows that Tom Curren won three titles (1985, 1986, 1990) and free scrubbing one of them was clearly done purposefully but why?

Because World Surf League announcing is gently mocked in the film?

Because Tom Curren is not wearing a competition singlet?

Because the work is vastly superior to Unboxing with Koa Smith?

Currently, more questions than answers and also unclear which of the three titles was disappeared but, as always, more as the story develops.

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