World surfing champion turned property tycoon Mick Fanning set to reap multi-million dollar profit after listing one of his three apartment blocks on Coolangatta’s “golden mile”!

Be real quick! Will be sold etc.

The Irish soccer legend George Best put it best, I think, when he said, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds, and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

Mick Fanning, who won world titles in 2007, 2009 and 2013 before retiring in 2018 after seventeen years on tour, has pissed away his millions on real estate and various business plays, including Balter Beer which sold one year ago for a rumoured two-hundred mill.

Now, Mick, who turns forty in June, is selling one of the three apartment blocks he owns on Boundary Street, Coolangatta, the strip that divides Coolangatta, in Queensland, and Tweed Heads, in NSW, and footsteps from Snapper Rocks’ Supabank.

Mick bought the joint at 213 Boundary Street, Coolangatta, for $3.1 million in 2007 and turned the old red-brick fifties build into something a little easier on potential buyers’ eyes with soothing vanilla interiors, black faucets, wooden flooring and with breeze-block walls enclosing patios.

Square black taps, a lesson in edgy chic.

The agent calls it a “luxurious homestead.”

There are two three-bedroom apartments, each with its own studio or granny flat, two garages, and the building squats on five-thousand square feet. 

The selling agent says y’can rent the big apartments out for eight hundred dollars a week and you’ll get five hundred for the tiny joints underneath ‘em. 

Inspection dates, times, here. 

Be quick.

There’s a fever for real estate on the Gold Coast at the moment, a frenzy bigger than bitcoin or Tesla, with even shitty old houses on streets famous for their cavalcades of human detritus selling for millions. Gonna be sold real quick.

Mick also owns the building next door, which he bought for 2005 for $1.39 million and another two doors down, bought for $1.2 million in 2006. 

Load Comments

Breaking: HBO inks deal for six-part Garrett McNamara documentary as he searches for “Surfing’s Everest!”

Anderson sad.

And it seems like just days ago that we were all reminded of surfing’s “Holy Grail,” its “Mt. Everest,” is the mythical 100-foot wave because it was. On January, 21st TMZ declared Oahu’s Makua Rothman bagged one and ooooee the 100-foot wave back in the spotlight.

Where it belongs.

HBO, always finger on pulse, just announced a six-part documentary following Garrett McNamara on his quest for his own.

Per Deadline:

Directed and executive produced by Chris Smith and executive produced by Emmy winner Joe Lewis, the six-part HBO Sports Documentary series 100 Foot Wave plumbs the depths of those questions through the quest of one man. The series intimately follows the decade-long odyssey of big-wave pioneer Garrett McNamara who, after visiting a small fishing village in Portugal, helped push the sport beyond the realm of imagination.

Do you think Anderson Cooper will feature?

Here’s to hoping but also Cooper appeared on HBO’s number one competitor Showtime.

Fingers crossed, in any case.

Load Comments

Scene from a Newcastle negotiation room.

WSL claims “massive audiences” of “10 million live” for events as Newcastle mayor calculates “conservative” $15-million boost for Merewether; state’s deputy premier slams Lennox Head residents as NIMBYS!

"Everybody wants all the investment by government, but as long as it's not in their backyard. It's a real problem…”

The fall-out from Lennox Head’s overwhelming rejection of the WSL can be likened, I think, to a successful small business refusing the buy-out of a corporate monster, an Amazon, an Apple. 

An offer too good to refuse etc.

For some, and particularly on the right side of politics, the belief that there can be something more appealing and important than money, a town wanting to retain a village feel for example, beggars belief. 

When the Ballina Council voted, eight-to-two, against a WSL event at Lennox Head-Sharpes, the state’s deputy mayor, Giovanni “John” Barilaro, said the decision was a classic case of Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome. 

Local graffiti.

“I think this area is a NIMBY area, sorry to say it,” Mr Barilaro told the ABC. “Everybody wants all the investment by government, but as long as it’s not in their backyard. It’s a real problem…”

Merewether, a lovely and on-the-up beachside suburb of Newcastle where two million Australian dollars barely gets you near the beach, meanwhile, is shouting to the heavens at the joy, and money, the event will bring the joint. 

Newcastle’s Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes told the ABC the contest is going to inject, “conservatively” at least fifteen-mill into the city, almost double the eight-mill or so that flows into Torquay each easter. 

The WSL’s Andrew Stark says the Merewether CT will “get a massive audience… We’re seeing audiences of like 10 million live across our linear and digital broadcasts and along with all the post production.”

Not real sure how those figures are arrived at, although the WSL’s Instagram and TikTok numbers are pretty robust. 

Load Comments

Dana McGregor (left) with Pismo.
Dana McGregor (left) with Pismo.

In whimsical new craze, goats are taken surfing to mend broken nation: “We are just trying to bring hope and healing to people’s hearts through surfing!”

Beautiful.

Our very own Steve “Longtom” Shearer is a goat rancher of some note but has likely never considered the cathartic power of the creatures he maintains as fully as Dan McGregor, who lives on California’s central coast.

There, McGregor has his goat ranch but, unlike Longtom, he teaches his to surf and uses that power to mend an extremely broken nation.

Recently, McGregor and friends took a tour from their hometown of Pismo Beach all the way down to San Clemente with one of their surfing goats named Pismo. Having arrived, a group of at least five grown men paddled Pismo out on a SUPsquatch, spun and paddled the Capra into knee high closeouts.

The event was covered by much media.

“We are just trying to bring hope and healing to people’s hearts through surfing,” McGregor told The Los Angeles Times.

Those who voted for Donald J. Trump and those who voted for Joseph R. Biden could be seen on the beach, watching, feeling a profound sense of closeness.

Back to Longtom, though, I think his goats may be used to heal the now-gaping rift between Lennox Head and the World Surf League. I think WSL CEO Erik “ELo” Logan would enjoy participating and could show off his SUP skills while bringing hope and healing.

Very cool.

Load Comments

American tourist captured in The Beatles seminal Abbey Road cover unleashes surfing’s greatest invective against legendary band: “Hey, it’s those four kooks!”

Harsh.

Surfing has one great swear word and it is “kook.” Etymologists are generally agreed that the one syllable invective is derived from the Hawaiian word kūkae, meaning “feces” and used, in those early years as today, to refer to surfers with poor ability.

Extremely rude and the very worst thing one surfer can call another. An utterance in the lineup must be met with extreme force, indignation or flipped script.

“No, YOU’RE a kook.”

Very harsh but equally harsh when uttered on land and let us learn the story of American surfer and tourist Paul Cole who used it to deeply shame The Beatles.

One of the greatest photobombs ever was the the man standing on the pavement to the right of the picture of the Abbey Road album cover by The Beatles. He was an American tourist named Paul Cole. Cole was accidentally included in the album cover as he watched the four one by one cross the street while on vacation in London and thought they were just four “kooks.”

Almost a year later, he saw the album by chance when his wife, a church organist, was given the record to play at a wedding. “I saw it resting against her keyboard,” Cole remembered, “and I said, Hey! It’s those four kooks! That’s me in there!”

Despite his realization, the retired salesman has never enjoyed the Beatles. “I’ve never heard Abbey Road,” Cole said. “I’ve seen the Beatles on television and have heard a few of their songs. It’s not my kind of thing. I prefer classical music.”

“Hey, it’s those four kooks.”

Ouch and it is now incumbent on Paul McCartney and/or Ringo Starr, the two remaining Beatles, to find either Cole or one of Cole’s surfing sons and demand retraction.

It will be a hard day’s night until then.

Load Comments