Watch: One-time surf brand Hurley releases
must-see-to-believe video debuting full line of men’s skincare
product!
By Chas Smith
Performance art.
Some time in those free-wheeling 2019s,
pre-Covid, the brand Hurley was sold by Nike to Bluestar Alliance
for an undisclosed sum. With a team consisting of John John
Florence, Kolohe Andino, Julian Wilson etc., innovative design year
over year and a corest of the core executive team, Hurley
represented the very best of what the surf industry was, of what it
could be.
The axe fell quick, executive team jettisoned, designers too,
team cut and then relative quiet… until a line of men’s skincare
product was teased four-months ago.
It almost seemed like a joke, like a very canny bit of
performance art.
Today, the video selling that line of men’s skincare product has
been released and it is more than I could ever hope for. Words
cannot describe.
The mystery and stupidity of NFTs, the
world’s hottest new art market where otherwise worthless digital
files are traded for millions of dollars!
By Derek Rielly
"Why would you want ownership of this art? Why is
it crypto?"
One week ago, in a sprawling thought piece, the best
surfer in the world years 2007 until 2016,Dane
Reynolds, wrote about being accosted in the
water by a man pushing NFT’s.
A long haired fellow on a soft top asks if he can have
thirty seconds of my time for a business pitch. You can’t really
say no so he proceeds to inform me that NFT’s are all the rage and
they could be right up my alley.
What are NFT’s? Well shit, I still don’t quite understand
but someone is creating something called crypto punks which are 8
bit digital art files that are being traded for millions of
dollars. Fuckin crazy. My brain does not compute. Fascinating and
foreign. Why would you want ownership of this art? Why is it
crypto? What the fuck?
The man on the softie was John Caldwell, the
thirty-seven-year logistics and marketing guy for Martin Daly’s
Indies Trader and his surf heaven resort on Beran Island in the
Marshalls.
Anyway, he saw Dane in the water, had an inkling Dane’s label
Former had the sorta low-fi cred that is big in the virtual world
and figured, what the hell, I’ll see if I can sell him on
NFTs.
Dane asked if NFTs were going to be the next beanie
babies.
John said, I ain’t got a clue, but crypto is the
future.
What’s an NFT?
Oh it’s wild. And it’s nothing, at least nothing physical.
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token.
Fungible means exchangeable. You bought a watch. You can give to
to someone else. A plane ticket? Not without a ton of hassle, if at
all. Non-fungible.
NFTs, if we’re to be kind, are unique, collectable tokens. They
can be permanently affixed to art, music, whatever.
Like baseball cards and other pointless collectables, they run
on FOMO and limited supply.
Last year, there were two-hundred fifty mill, US, in NFT
transactions, up from under a hundred mill the year
before.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen, what’s going to fucking
take off,” says John.
He tells me the story of one of these NFTs called MoonCat
Rescue. Twenty-five thousand virtual space cats that needed
rescuing from a long defunct website. Real cute. You wanted one?
Totally free apart from the fifty-dollar transaction cost. Somebody
tweeted about it and they were all gone in a few hours. Want one
now? Four grand.
FOMO, of course, is an old art trick.
As Tommy Wolfe wrote in The Painted Word,
his book from 1975 that jams a skewer right into the high-falutin
art biz’ guts.
“First you do everything possible to make sure your world is
antibourgeois, that it defies bourgeois tastes, that it mystifies
the mob, the public, that it outdistances the insensible
middle-class multitudes by light-years of subtlety and
intellect…”
You buy one of these things and you get a sorta certificate of
authenticity.
You can’t put it on your wall, unless you live in some virtual
meta-verse and you want to decorate your beachfront
casino.
Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk and his
one-time best man’s wife make New York Times as action sport
pandemic icons: “During a time when many families have struggled
with the chaos of working and taking classes under the same roof,
Mr. Hawk and Mrs. Goodman have found grace in their 5,080 sq ft
oasis!”
By Chas Smith
"Luckily the size of their house allowed everyone
else in the family to spread out and avoid getting sick."
There are times when I think surf journalism
doesn’t matter. There are other times when I’ve realized
we’ve reached the absolute peak of privilege, no higher rung
to grasp, no higher stone to hold.
And the world’s most married skateboarder Tony Hawk was just
profiled in that august New York Times with his now wife, who was
once married to the best man for an estimated three of his four
weddings.
Legendary.
Let’s sample?
With the increased time spent at home, Mr. Hawk and Ms.
Goodman have witnessed an improvement in their relationships with
their children and also gained a lucid understanding of their
interests and needs.
A Stronger Sibling Bond
Being home together has also made the couple more pleasantly
aware of the strength in their children’s relationships with each
other. Ms. Goodman, who has two children from a previous marriage,
and Mr. Hawk, who has four children from previous relationships,
value the compatibility of their mixed family, especially during
such restricted times.
“It’s been refreshing to really realize how well all of our
kids get along and how great they are together. Not all siblings
have these dynamic bonds — especially stepsiblings — so we’re
thankful for that,” Ms. Goodman said.
Grateful for Space
During a time when many families have struggled with the
chaos of working and taking classes under the same roof, Mr. Hawk
and Ms. Goodman have found grace in their 5,080-square-foot oasis.
At different points, three of their children contracted Covid-19.
Luckily, the size of their house allowed everyone else in the
family to spread out and avoid getting sick.
The family was able to have Christmas dinner together on
their large outdoor patio and still remain socially distant while
two of their children were both tested positive for Covid-19.
“Christmas was especially challenging, making sure that nobody felt
left out even if we couldn’t be near each other physically. Cathy
and I were a good team as co-parents, dividing responsibilities and
making time for each other amid the chaos,” said Mr. Hawk.
And…
“Caring for my sons while they were in isolation in my home
had its own strange issues. Not being able to be close with them
and being in a constant state of emotional check-ins, food
delivery, and contamination management was a new and unexpected
role as a mom,” said Ms. Goodman. “I am just endlessly grateful
that they were fine. Mostly the experience made me very aware of
how hard this must be in homes where families have to share small
spaces, plus the countless inequities that this virus
highlights.”
There is much more in the article, worth reading as performance
art, as a tableau playing out on a glorious stage.
Much related to Ms. Goodman, self-proclaimed playwright sans
play who took on unexpected role of new mom in spite of birthing
Tony Hawk’s two-time best man’s children decades earlier.
But also to an extreme lack of awareness.
Epic.
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Simms, pictured, surfing. Photo: Jason
Childs.
Man pictured in first leash advert on
crusade to get helmets on surfer heads: “I’ve got the solution, I
just need to get it out there!”
By Chas Smith
The future?
“You know, I saw him that morning. That
surfer who died
out at Rincon. He drove past me and I swear it was
him,” Terry Simms, surfing jack of all
trades, tells me on unseasonably cold Southern
California afternoon. “It just breaks my heart because I’ve got
something that can help, I just need to get it out there…”
One-time Coastie-turned-professional longboarder, coach, surf
tour guide and the man who appeared in the very first advertisement
for the revolutionary leash has crafted Simba, the world’s first
surf-specific helmet, and every time he reads or hears of head
injuries out in the lineup it boils his blood.
“Look, I know that surfers aren’t going to wear helmets every
time they paddle out but it should at least be a consideration
sometimes. Like, if you’re surfing over shallow reef, out in a
crazy crowd… all kids should be wearing them.”
“What makes your helmet different?” I ask.
Simms lights up.
“Well, it’s based on a Roman gladiator design and it has no
straight edges, nothing for the water to grab so when you break the
surface of the water your head doesn’t get ripped around. The water
just channels through and runs out the back. Again, I really just
want for people to know this is here because with the crowds the
way they are, people bailing their boards, running into each other…
it’s just becoming more necessary.”
A year ago, I would have thought Simms was wonderfully eccentric
but mad in his assessment. Now, with the wild influx, the VAL
utopia, I think he may be right. I recall when I first started
snowboarding, two and a half decades ago, zero people wore
helmets.
Now, only kooks don’t.
Will the same happen in surfing?
Will the helmet become like the leash before it?
Loading comments...
Load Comments
0
Girl's Can't Surf
Right-wing Australian press slams beloved
and empowering Girls Can’t Surf as “a shallow documentary” that
“dodges” issues “as fast as it can”!
By Derek Rielly
"Blanket sentiments that some men said and did some
unpleasant things, that some of the women were likely wronged by
their female contemporaries without the specifics of who, doesn’t
serve these women, or the audience."
A week or so ago, much noise was made, correctly, about
the 1993 world champion Pauline Menczer who was “the victim of
maybe world sports’ most brutal and blatant sexism. A
world champ who could not raise a dime in sponsorship, who received
a trophy that would not make the grade for the second-hand shop at
the dump. Lesbian, when that was taboo, lacking the physical
accouterments that were classically assumed to stimulate the desire
of a presumed male audience and thus moreorless discarded by the
companies that largely funded the sport. Bad old days.”
The film Girls Can’t Surf, which has just hit cinemas
Australia-wide, “follows the journey of a band of renegade surfers
who took on the male-dominated professional surfing world to
achieve equality and change the sport forever.”
Pauline, obvs, an important element of film.
Reviews, universally, excellent.
“Astounding.”
“A story as shocking as it is awe-inspiring.”
“The force of their impact maintains a thrilling interest that
persists through its subjects’ hardest moments dealing with
homophobia, anorexia, and domestic violence. It’s in passages
devoted to these elements that the film reaches its emotional
peak.”
One reviewer has taken the film to task, however, describing it
as “ultimately shallow”.
Girls Can’t Surf frequently hit on issues and events that
made a pro surfing career near impossible but then dodges it as
fast it can.
Jodie Cooper’s revelation that she was outed as gay against
her choice by the women on tour with her and the homophobia that
followed was ultimately glossed over, without any reckoning for the
individuals responsible. Ditto Pam Burridge’s recounting of her
battles with anorexia.
When the documentary touches on the successful attempt to
have the female representation on the governing body reduced from
two seats to one, there’s no accounting for who on that board voted
in favour of the resolution.
It’s also hinted that many of the women didn’t like or
support each other at the time and maybe wouldn’t even take a call
from them now, but that’s all between the lines.
Maybe there were legal entanglements that prevented director
Christopher Nelius from naming names, or maybe the filmmakers were
trying to play nice and keep everyone in the surfing community on
side.
But blanket sentiments that some men said and did some
unpleasant things, that some of the women were likely wronged by
their female contemporaries without the specifics of who, doesn’t
serve these women, or the audience.
Girls Can’t Surf wants to be celebratory and empowering, and
that is fine, but it’s also what makes it ultimately a shallow
documentary that feels like the introductory summary of a book with
many chapters to follow.
If only it was as fearless as the women riding those monster
waves.
