"And please, for everyone’s sake, leave your silly surf clichés at the door. It’s not the 7-mile Miracle, it’s the 11-kilometer slap capital."

Stab magazine, once headquartered in Bondi, Australia before moving its center of operations very near Venice Beach, California, has pivoted hard back to its Australian roots and is begging forgiveness for its “too American” tone.

In a job posting that brought many tears to elderly Australian eyes, the surf website robustly apologized for past missteps…

An American team led by Ashton Goggans, Michael Ciaramella, and (recent full-time addition) Brendan Buckley came into the picture around the same time that our established Australian voices (Jed Smith and Elliot Struck) moved on from Stab to pursue personal projects. This had the unintended effect of flipping our editorial cadence from Australian to American overnight—an obvious over-correction, and one that we’re actively looking to rectify.

…before announcing its mea culpa.

With that, we’d like to announce that we’re officially on the search for the next great Australian surf writer to come work with us in our Byron office.

What will it take to help right Stab’s flagging ship?

– Immense surf knowledge: Specializing in a single area is fine, but you must have sufficient knowledge of modern surf history, culture, and competition. To test your expertise, we’ll ask you to take this quiz and include a screenshot of your results with your email submission (and don’t try to cheat by taking the test twice, we’ll know).

– Clever, efficient, and upbeat writing: We don’t care if you’ve been published before or if you went to journalism school. We just want someone who’s young, witty, and a voracious learner. And please, for everyone’s sake, leave your silly surf clichés at the door. It’s not the 7-mile Miracle, it’s the 11-kilometer slap capital.

– An unequivocally Australian voice: By globalizing our brand (and workforce), we’ve successfully grown Stab to what it is today. But through that process, we’ve inadvertently lost our Australian tone. We need someone who can speak the native tongue and reinstate Stab’s hemispheric balance.

Young, witty, and a voracious learner (improper comma usage Stab’s)?

Young?

The great Steve “Longtom” Shearer, unfortunately, need not apply.

The same doubly true for Nick Carroll.

How many other aged Australian surf writers does this sort of business discriminate against? I can think of six or seven, off the top of my head, not even counting Tim Baker.

The move to near Venice Beach to Byron, multiple years after each reached critical mass, in any case, seems very cool.

11-kilometer slap capital.

What would your play be?

Cocaine washing up on Florida beaches is nothing new. The Sunshine State is on the White Trail as traffickers move their precious product from Caribbean production hubs to the world’s greatest marketplace. Sometimes, though, the fuzz gets wind and product is dumped off fast boats or planes crash and product is dumped and there it washes up on Florida beaches.

Most recently, a beachgoer found 65 lbs of cocaine and directly turned it over to border patrol who forced it to pose for a snapshot (above) then… who knows.

The beachgoer certainly not a surfer for we know the bond between surfers and cocaine is a special one (buy here).

But what would you do, in all seriousness, if you stumbled upon 65 lbs of cocaine whilst not exercising in the ocean?

Keep it and ponder your options?

Come on to BeachGrit and ask your wise friends?

Call 911?

Throw a party?

Many options.

"Be responsible and go home."

Humans, while often low, snide and selfish, can sometimes rise to the greatest heights of honor, dignity, selflessness. History has shown us we are at our best with backs to the wall, fighting impossible odds in some inspired last stand.

There are many famous in history, from the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC to the Siege of Mecca in 692 but my favorite is 1915’s Attack of the Dead Men.

In short, the Germans, whilst fighting The Great War, were seeking to overtake Osowiec Fortress, in northeast Poland, held by a few battalions of Russians. They waited until 4 a.m. on that early morning of August 6th, for favorable wind conditions, then bombarded the fortress with a mixture of chlorine and bromine gasses. Following the poisoning and waste-laying, over 7000 German troops advanced, expecting little resistance.

The Russians did not have gas masks and were greatly destroyed but one bold sub-lieutenant, Vladimir Kotlinsky, the highest ranking survivor, railed the remaining few, who wrapped urine-soaked rags around their faces, and charged the enemy.

The Germans, it is said, became panicked by the appearance of the Russians, who had turned black and yellow from the gas and were coughing up bits of their own lungs as the hydrochloric acid began disolving their flesh, and retreated so fast that they became entangled in their own concertina wire.

The five remaining Russian guns finished the Germans off.

Kotlinsky died that evening and the Germans took the fort two-weeks later but for one glorious moment, the ragtag were royalty.

Very similar, I believe, to the the plucky but under-gunned grumpy local viciously attacked on all sides by energized VALs who have picked up surfing during quarantine because it is “a great way to remain socially distanced, outdoors, while exercising.”

This categorization of “surfing” as “exercise” the root of many evils for we know that, while sometimes the arms can become a little sore, surfing is NOT exercise but rather a grand waste of time.

Well, the brave Western Australia city Perth appears to be making a last stand. The region is under another Covid lockdown though residents are allowed outdoors for one hour of exercise a day.

Except local Tania Edwards was out walking but became confused after seeing police tell surfers the sport is not classified as exercise.

She shared a video of the encounter to social media which shows police telling beachgoers “surfing is not deemed exercise, be responsible and go home.”

“We saw this police boat coming along shouting with his bull horn,” she told 6PR’s Liam Bartlett.

“I think the government is doing a great job, but I just thought that was a bit strange.”

Not strange.

Brave like the Russians.

Surfing is NOT exercise but rather a fantastic way to sit and stew.

We are all Perth.

Attack!

First Great Whites, now this.

Surfers have long been the focus of many, many terrifying natural phenomena from man-eating sharks to scary riptides to reef bashes, drownings, angry seals, clueless VALs, the World Surf League CEO Erik “ELo” Logan.

Yikes.

Lyme-carrying ticks, though, provided no worry.

Those nasty critters were for our woodland hiking friends to deal with and nasty is an understatement.

Lyme disease is one of the very worst plagues, very difficult to diagnose and causing fevers, rashes, aching joints, sleeplessness, semi-lucid hell.

Well, according to a new scientific study just released, there are just as many lyme-carrying ticks around Northern California beaches as there are in its woods.

Lead author Daniel Salkeld, a research scientist at Colorado State University, told NBC News, “We went into new habitats and found them in numbers we didn’t expect. A few years ago I would have said the ticks there wouldn’t have been infected because there aren’t any grey squirrels, which are the source for Lyme in California. I think they’ve been under our noses all along. We just haven’t thought to look very closely.”

Grey squirrels are, of course, thought to carry the ticks but a working theory suggests that northern California’s rabbits are transporting the li’l bastards around.

“This is a great study,” said Laura Goodman, an assistant research professor at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. “There is a bias in this country where people think they are only at risk when they go into the woods. But really, prevention and vigilance should be practiced everywhere outdoors, and we should be vigilant year-round.”

Great study my ass.

Lyme disease.

Ugh.