“I thought the whole point of the Surfing Reserve,” says George Greenough, “was to keep corporate contests away from there."
Thanks to BeachGrit breaking the story about the proposed Lennox CT, which smoked the Mayor and others out, we’re past the rumour stage and deep into another public relations catastrophe for the WSL.
No formal announcement from the WSL, just a total debacle as “community consultation” runs amok and demons buried from the last time a CT event was proposed for Lennox get loosed and spark a civil war.
The factions break down as follows.
Faction A is throw the hands up, it’s paradise lost, we’re all fucked now, might as well let it happen. Faction B is WSL yay! let’s go. Faction C is Fuck the WSL/over my dead body.
If someone put a gun to my head and told me to estimate the split in the community I’d say 20:20:60. Conservative.
Amongst grass roots who still surf the Point, 5:5:90.
Good people in all camps etc etc. Which makes me both mad and sad. To see my comrades split and warring is reason enough for me to say Fuck the WSL.
Which is no surprise.
I tied my colours to the mast in 2008 when Rip Curl proposed a Search Even at the Point. The way they went about it then: trying to go through the backdoor, hand pick off opposition, duchess selected groups, divide and conquer is the same way they are going about it now, except on steroids.
Weird times.
The story broke on BG, which means someone in the Faction B camp broke ranks and leaked the story. Otherwise it’d all be behind closed doors with an upcoming breathless WSL presser announcing the done deal. Instead the story broke, mainstream media is all over it and the surf media have completely gone missing. It’s a story that’s happened plenty of places where the pro tour has colonised yet despite constant rumblings in Hawaii, a story that has never been told. A strange taboo subject.
Just got off the phone from a screaming match with the Mayor, who at least had the balls to return my call, unlike Andrew Stark and Kieren Perrow. The poor old Mayor had been wheeled out to do the heavy lifting in the information vacuum left by the Woz, after local press pounced on the BG scoop.
No comp without proper community consultation, he intoned gravely.
The timeline for the “community consultation” is not a good look for the WSL. It’s one of those things that looks very squiffy from a distance and even stranger when you get up close. Thursday was the initial meeting with council.
Well, the Mayor, anyhow.
None of the other councillors knew jack shit. By Friday he’d received an email saying the consultation was done. Less than a day to get the job done. Except they didn’t. Lennox Surf Reserve Committee members Don Munro and Terry Chandler hadn’t heard a thing. An ex-Surf Reserve member was contacted and his non-committal Faction A response was taken as Surf Reserve blessing. It was nothing of the sort.
As for Starkey and Kieren fronting up to a meeting and putting the proposal down in front of people who live here. Too hard basket. Maybe they learnt the lesson from the way Rip Curl got their arses handed to them when they tried to run a Search Event here in 2008.
“Fuck the WSL.”
“Absolutely a place for the people not these freaks.”
“Sacred ground not for contests – will blow it out forever.”
“Hope it doesn’t get up, it’s literally the last things this area needs.”
“It’s got to have public approval and no one is keen on a pro comp.”
Actual messages from people. School teachers, chefs, surfboard shapers, tradies. No one wants to stick their heads up over the parapet. Who wants bad feelings amongst their own surfing brothers and sisters?
“I thought that was the whole point of the Surfing Reserve,” said George Greenough, “to keep corporate contests away from there”.
Monday morning and councillor Jeff Johnston knows nothing about the event. He calls me later today, Tuesday, to give me the skinny.
There will be no community consultation. Council has been backdoored as well.
Deputy Premier from NSW State Govt will be appearing Thursday to make an announcement that the comp has been approved. There will be no due diligence. Starkey has shown how he will play his hand. Behind closed doors, sidelining anything in his path. A Grade A headkicker who hasn’t got the balls to front the communities he claims to seek approval from.
I can’t wait to hear Joey Turpel soft shoe shuffling the issue of local consent. Of which there is nil.
There will be war.
Most likely the comp will go ahead and be forgotten quickly, the stench from the way they went about it will linger for a long, long time.
Of course, I will be there to cover it.
I’m not a fucken idiot who lets the WSL steal the food from my childrens’ mouths.
We’ll be chatting face to face Starkey.
#FucktheWSL
The WSL or their successor will be well advised to look to Digital VTCS for securing their future and the future of ‘pro surfing’. Now that’s a format with longevity.
yep
Not sure why this is a problem?? Lennox is already one of the best known and most crowded spots in the country. Like pretty much everywhere with a breaking wave in Australia.
So Greenough has hit his head on scooped out kneeboards too often it seems. I guess it is hard to get one’s head around the term “Surfing Reserve”. Seems like to me, without reading the fine print of the regulation is that it is “Reserved” for “Surfing”. Hate them all you want, but it is hard to argue that the WSL contest is “Surfing”, but what do I know… San Diego State grad and all. Go Aztecs. (Can’t cancel me for that.) There are no living Aztecs to complain and the Aztec school mascot went through the entire attempt of being cancelled years ago and survived.
EDITED TO ADD: According to this article from 2008 about the formation of the Lennox Reserve, and I quote ” National Surfing Reserves are symbolic in nature, and current laws and regulations regarding use of the area remain unchanged.”
http://www.ballina.info/blo…
Symbolic of what?
not getting arse raped by corporates?
“Today the descendants of the Aztecs are referred to as the Nahua. More than one-and-a-half million Nahua live in small communities dotted across large areas of rural Mexico, earning a living as farmers and sometimes selling craft work.”
you might be surprised where the opposition comes from Jimmy.
It ain’t boomers.
WSL has few friends in this town, including some who you might expect to be on side.
But we’ll see, I guess.
The problem that surfing has, is that is seriously misunderstands how small it is in the scheme of things. When you’ve guesstimated the “community” split, did you actually take in to account anyone outside the surfing community? You know Lennox has a whole community that has nothing to do with surfing, right? It’s the majority of the town these days. It’s all the houses that got renovated over the past 12 months. It’s the rich pricks who can afford to drop $2mill on a holiday house in the middle of a pandemic so they can work from a beachfront home office. It wellness and yoga preachers and monied-up retirees with spoilt teenage children.
Now, I’m not saying that the surfing part of the community should not have more weight when it comes to management of their (supposedly protected) surfing reserve, but you do need to be realistic about what kind of place Lennox Head is these days.
I know the odds are with me. But I reckon Carcass would be in faction C.
“that punter just bought a… (world surf league)”
You can’t script this
And in breaking news just to hand , Nick Carroll says nothing.
Fuck all of you, I’m moving to Darwin.
This stuff is NSW gov bread and butter, Destinations NSW is basically running the show. they will not budge an inch. The NIMBY opposition to the super cars in Newy – building a race course in a heavily populated, heritage listed area, boxing little old ladies into their home for four days at a time etc – was a borderline suburban insurgency with big financial backing and it all came to naught. Your only hope is the WSL rolling over and carking it before it reaches the finishing line but it sounds like they’ve made some powerful connections, especially if they’ve got Barrilaro coming to announce it. You almost have to tip your hat at the effort, from an objective POV
surely the locals could shut it down if they all go around coughing loudly a few days before it
Haha! Though in all seriousness that’s prob the only card for local opposition to play here – public health concerns. Large international contingent coming, look at how they bungled Hawaii etc. Ask questions about who is paying for quarantine.
Elo billeted to LT’s joint for quarantine. Easy.
He’s outside with the goats and pythons.
Not to mention one case that close to the border would cause QLD to slam the door again – which means plenty of locals out of work.
Another similarity between the cases.. a mayor who sees $$$’s
its kind of like a step up from a dribbler. a dribbler will engage in dribble about why the wsl is failing and how to fix it but couldn’t tell you who is running the show. a punter will do the same but knows who E-lo is. thanks to beach grit, I can now call myself a punter.
The WSL is failing because they hold it in the same shitty waves every year. They hold it in the same shitty waves every year because every time they try to go somewhere good, faction C gets in the way.
Not sure that’s the reason the woz are failing
Though they will walking like penguins when they do.
Ok
Stark’s message* to the locals of Lennox
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
*What?
That weasel prick Perrow deserves the same treatment.
lemme know if you want KP’s address for death threats…
tradition shows, anyone not pro or aspiring to be a pro, or employed by surfing backs these shindigs, and the core surfers hate them to death, saying that , for once last year we thought without our local WCT running we might be able to surf with a bit less stress, history shows however that covid provided us with the busiest september EVER, good luck Lennox’s , you will need it,
British for customers, often ill informed ones.
A far better idea would be for the World Schlepper of Locales to strand Tom Curren there with Dane and a couple backsiders, maybe Bobby and Italo or Gabs, cook up some global catastrophe so it’s just them and the locs having digs all to themselves for a whole season. Lengthy Thomas, you could provide the wrap-ups between go outs. I’ll sit on the rocks with Drunken Angel; we’ll serve as your Pottz and Turpz. and I’ll teach him the ethos of style, flow, power, and taste as we commentate.
but Dane is only allowed to ride a midlength
Knowing the WSL’s luck, the contest will be held in two foot onshore slop, and they will have done the nimbys a favor
got a feeling this one will go all the way, finishing with LT being arrested for pouring sugar into the generators and burning his bra and chaining himself to the contest bouy. best of luck Lenno. hope you can stop this before it gets too much momentum.