Tourism board shenanigans.

Troubling allegations, just levied, are swirling around the Rip Curl Rottnest Search presented by Corona as it enters the last of its contest window days. Reports that the World Surf League may well be keeping the eight remaining surfers prisoner against their wills.

Forcing Sally Fitzgibbons, Tyler Wright, Carissa Moore, Johanne Defay, Liam O’Brien, Morgan Cibilic, Italo Ferriera and Gabriel Medina to shelter in place, drinking twenty dollar beers, thirty dollar açaí bowls, forty dollar electric bike trips to Stricko Bay (one way).

For word, yesterday, out of Perth suggests the conditions were absolutely perfect and let us read directly from the source, who shall remain unnamed for his/her/its own protection.

Woke early Sunday to discover, contrary to the forecast…barely a breath of wind and offshore! Went surfing with the lad. Was one of the unusually better days for Perth, and not too crowded since everyone was expecting onshore.

Including the WSL it seems.

Winds remained perfect until midday and in fact by 9am was NE (perfect offshore for Strickos) and heaps enough swell. They could have easliy finished the contest.

It seems when they wrapped up on Sat, then and there they scheduled the “Next Call” to Tues 25th.

Odd.

We all know better than to completely rely on a forecast…and are they too lazy to check every day? Did they double down and bury their heads in the sand and not wanna go back on their next call, call?

Is this the curse of the “next call”…the island laughing at them?

The island’s fifty dollar flat whites are certainly laughing.

Worryingly, though, I think the League accidentally showed its hand. Now that it is, ostensibly, acting as an agency in the tourist board game, filling the entire waiting period must be agreed upon before the events even start, no?

A set amount of airtime etc.

Static “stay tuned” screens broadcasting who knows what straight into addled brains across the globe.

You certainly remember the controversy around backmasking in the 1970s and 1980s. Satanic or troubling messages put into songs and heard when played in reverse.

A positively terrifying prospect in the hands of World Surf League CEO Erik “ELo” Logan.

But, real quick, how totally bummed are Sally Fitzgibbons, Tyler Wright, Carissa Moore, Johanne Defay, Liam O’Brien, Morgan Cibilic, Italo Ferriera and Gabriel Medina right now?

Binge watching old episodes of Lost over sixty dollar a day internet.

Welcome to Post-Racial Paradise, Now Go to Hell.

I have, my whole life, loved National Geographic. The magazine held my rural Oregonian imagination in the grip of its iconic yellow with features on exotic countries, fascinating people, brave explorers adventuring to the ends of the earth.

I dreamed of being part of the National Geographic Society when I grew up, dressed in a natty blazer, smoking a pipe, regaling a smoke filled room of my colleagues with stories of fabulous discovery, uncovered truths of professional surfing on Oahu’s North Shore maybe, but that dream got shattered, this week, as the Hawaii beat just got stolen.

Shall we read together?

To outsiders, Hawai‘i might seem like the epitome of a post-racial society. For decades, scholars, writers, and tourism boosters have portrayed the islands that way—as a “racial utopia” where Native Hawaiians and Asians live harmoniously alongside white people, with the largely non-white population serving as the antidote to racism.

After all, no racial group holds a majority on the islands, and nearly a quarter of the population reports having a multiracial background. Compare that to the United States as a whole, where only 3 percent of the population is multiracial and three-quarters is white.

But Hawai‘i’s racial make-up does not stem from a desire to unify races. Instead, it comes from concerted Western efforts to eradicate Native Hawaiian culture and create division among sugar plantation workers. The reverberations are still felt among residents today, including by the people featured in these portraits. Photographed in spaces linked to discrimination against their respective cultures and in places where they find healing from those traumas, they are part of our ongoing project focused on dismantling the myth of Hawai‘i as a post-racial paradise.

Etc.

The piece goes on and on into the histories but, can I ask, who on God’s green earth ever considered Hawai’i a “post-racial paradise?”

Like, seriously.

Have none of my erstwhile dream colleagues read the PEN-nominated best-seller, and important anthropological work, Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell (buy here)?

That gives me good mind to go shopping for the finest Irish Donegal tweed jacket (leather elbow patches, of course), a pound of Cavendish tobacco, hop a flight to Washington D.C. and treat that smoke filled Society room to a stern but informative reading…

….or wait.

Opportunity?

Time ripe for Welcome to Post-Racial Paradise, Now Go to Hell?

Intriguing.

Very intriguing.

More as the story develops.