Complete with "private atrium" and circular driveway. A mid-century summer night's dream!

Anastasia Ashley is a thirty-something bikini gal and pro surfer from San Clemente, CA.

She has one million followers on IG and has appeared in Sport’s Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue alongside Kate Upton and the models Nina Agdal, Lily Aldridge and Chrissy Teigen, and has featured in New York’s Esquire magazine.

Some years ago, Ms Ashley twerked before her Supergirl Pro heat in Oceanside, ran it on youtube, and stole many millions of views. 

A terrific success.

Recently, Ms Ashley sold her redundant three-bedroom Miami beach bungalow, a bolt-hole used while walking catwalks during fashion week and so on. Bought three years ago for $720,000, the 2200 square foot  three-bedder on 6000 square feet of lovingly maintained grass at 18 W 30th St, Miami Beach, the house features, among other things, a”private, screen-enclosed atrium” and a circular driveway.

Very mid-century mod etc.

Half-a-mile from the beach, too, although waves very poor quality except in Huzza season.

She was chasing a clean mill for the joint, but took the eight-seventy.

Get a whiff of the place here.

Longtime readers of BeachGrit will remember Ms Ashley socking us with recordings of her reading important poetry.

Song for a Lady, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anne Sexton in 1969 was my favourite. The recording took place in AA’s bedroom (for acoustic purposes) at her Mexican-style apartment in Orange County.

Read along!

Song for a Lady by Anne Sexton (1969)

On the day of breasts and small hips
the window pocked with bad rain,
rain coming on like a minister,
we coupled, so sane and insane.
We lay like spoons while the sinister
rain dropped like flies on our lips
and our glad eyes and our small hips.

“The room is so cold with rain,” you said
and you, feminine you, with your flower
said novenas to my ankles and elbows.
You are a national product and power.
Oh my swan, my drudge, my dear wooly rose,
even a notary would notarize our bed
as you knead me and I rise like bread.

Watch genius at work!

It opens with Rob standing in his doorway nonchalantly strumming some serene chords on an acoustic guitar.

He looks up, spots you, smiles his “need some more advice on trimming your bonsai, neighbour?” smile.

Before you know it he’s invited you round the back for, you know, just some hang time.

Distracted as you are by the luxurious flow of his gold and sliver curls – almost dreaded and yet not, as if even the hair on his head is too aggro-adverse to trouble itself with knotting itself into locks – you barely notice the talk has turned to surf.

“The last month has just been insane,” says Rob.

Insane.

The bombast of the word loses all bluster as it passes across the Machado vocal chords, that NPR late-night vocal fry as comforting and homely as a well-brewed coffee supped on a patio-deck drenched in a Southern Californian sunset, in a modest yet charming suburban backyard.

A backyard just like this one in fact; for Rob’s backyard is that backyard.

It is humble, unassuming. Modest but assured of itself. Ramshackle yet rustic. It’s a misshapen pomegranate nestled in a hand-woven basket of a backyard.

He mentions something about Covid projects. Covid? Oh right, yeah. You’d forgotten about that. You’d forgotten about the WSL, Trump, the pain in your lower-back…

Now he’s giving you the tour.

“It’s like a little zen zone,” he says. “My tangerine tree is flourishing.”

Flo-rish-ing. You sigh the sigh of an Andalusian field-worker’s first sip of la primera cerveza de la noche.

“I got my avocado tree.”

Such a good avocado tree.

“And my Paulownia tree.”

Your what tree? Doesn’t matter. Whatever it is: You believe. You’re in.

Now he’s telling an anecdote, nay – a parable – about this one tree and how he coaxed it out of its seedling solely with the power of his voice, until it burst forth from its plastic pot and grew so high it tickled the moon.
“It seemed kind of stressful…“

Wait, stressful? The word jars against the serenity of the scene.

“…from a gardening perspective,” he clarifies.

Ah. Gardening. Gardening’s not stressful. Gardening’s wholesome, healthy. Chill.

Rob Machado ASMR gardening anecdotes. Sign me up.

Then he’s on about surfing again. Destination days. Strikes to Mex.

Oh, and did he mention? The rails on his custom board lying right there? Paulownia wood.

Gasp! Just like the tree from the story!

The world feels complete.

“It feels good to be surfed out.”

It feels good to hear Rob Machado say it feels good to be surfed out.

You gaze up at the hypnotic tips of the Paulownia’s swaying limbs. You close your eyes, feel the So-Cal sun on your face. Rob’s playing guitar again.

You awaken.

Home.

Back at your own dingy flat.

Everything is beige, anaemic.

You curse your asinine life.

There’s no tangerine tree in your garden, flourishing or otherwise.

There’s just next door’s dog shit and an up-turned garbage can.

The shrill squawk of your phone. The bank. Three thousand bucks worth of Rob Machado signature surf kit.

How the fuck?

"The WSL made it clear holding the event at Snapper Rocks this year was conditional on the Queensland Government picking up the quarantine tab for the WSL’s international competitors.”

Money talks, as they say in the classics.

With one event confirmed for the supposed four-contest Australian leg of the CT tour, Merewether at Easter, either NSW or Western Australia will now claim Snapper Rocks’ slot after the Queensland state government refused to cover the cost of quarantining surfers and the WSL’s entourage.

The Gold Coast Bulletin is reporting that NSW and Western Australia have created “war chests” of up to five million dollars to snatch the event away from Queensland, which offered half-a-mill toward the running of the event, believed to cost around four mill.

From the GCB,

State Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe confirmed the event’s departure, saying he was deeply disappointed.

“I am less disappointed with the NSW Government than I am with the World Surf League’s decision to chase short-term dollars at the expense of surfing tradition,” he said. “The breaks at Snapper Rocks are highly regarded worldwide, as are those at Bells Beach in Victoria. The WSL made it clear holding the event at Snapper Rocks this year was conditional on the Queensland Government picking up the quarantine tab for the WSL’s international competitors.”

Mr Hinchliffe also hit back at the NSW Government.

“Quarantine expenses for sporting events have always been the responsibility of the organising body,” he said.“If that’s what NSW has agreed to pay to lure the WSL, then NSW taxpayers who have paid for hotel quarantine out of their own pocket should ask for a refund.”

“We didn’t expect to be engaged in a bidding war with NSW and Western Australia who put together a war chest of taxpayer funds as a lure,” an industry source told the Bulletin. “Essentially the Government were hamstrung because Queensland, like Victoria, stood firm on forking out taxpayer funds to put up athletes. So now rather than keeping it where it should be, WSL are now trying to give the classic to the highest bidder rather than keep it on the Gold Coast which is the home of surfing.”

The teats of state governments in Australia have long been a source of nourishing funds for pro surfing, although as Longtom pointed out after the Lennox Head fiasco, “It looks like cheap rent-seeking for a product that few want in their backyards and a story that has never really made sense except for a few rare birds who live at an altitude the rest of us will never attain.”

And, “Without a functioning business model to wean itself off State Tourism bodies the WSL is locked in a prison of its own making.” ­

More tomoz after the WSL’s announcement.