Bro against bro.
A strange wind has been buffeting southern California lately, maybe accounting for weird vibrations, maybe responsible for such odd behaviors and especially coming out of southern California’s Santa Monica.
To wit, it was revealed late last evening that our World Surf League had turned the screws on shaper to the stars Matt Biolos for daring post celebratory WSL Instagram content of his team rider Carissa Moore to his personal account.
Swift removal of offending material and a cease + desist letter from the WSL’s legal department.
When the longest employed man in professional surfing, Dave Prodan, got wind of the kerfuffle, he reached out to Biolos to help sort but was also violently bashed down by his own organization.
What sort of business sense does that make?
A strange wind, I already told you.
But speaking of the World Surf League, David Lee Scales and I discussed on today’s podcast as it relates to Surfline.
Scales had just conversed with the forecasting giant’s newly appointed CEO and made some sort of case for Surfline taking over all content, sending the best surfers out at the best waves during the best swells and filming away.
This, to me, felt like a direct challenge to the WSL’s core business and I wondered, if the two declared a massive, all-consuming surf civil war on each other for which side would David Lee take up arms, bleed, maybe die?
Without a second thought, he said, “Surfline” then tried to explain his poor choice.
I would definitely battle for the World Surf League.
Surfline is an insidious enemy intent on pushing thousands upon thousands of new south swell-infected VALs into each and every lineup. Imagine the potential surge if Huntington Beach is also allowed to own every facet of our beloved pastime. Marketing wave events, marketing surf events, marketing, marketing, marketing.
Yikes.
The World Surf League, what with Ultimate Surfers and hammering Biolos for sharing heart-warming moments, seems to be on a successful participation eradication program. Something I can certainly get behind.
Not the rebel tour we want but the rebel tour we deserve.
We also talked to the great surfing historian Matt Warshaw about the historically unique and equally revolutionary Project Ibelli, Melinda Gates and Jeffrey Epstein.
Something for everyone.
Don’t miss here.
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Trailer parks going to low,…if they’d let you in…depend on how drunk the guard was…(cash was King)
True ! There is only one winner in an Arms Race ….. the supplier .
Chas, re your question about whether surfers have crowdfunded on tour – Ricardo Christie crowdfunded his way onto tour in 2015.
Brilliant! How much he raise?
https://sportfunder.com/
He raised 22k to fund his QS campaign which got him on tour. It also says that Paige Hareb raised 17k to pay for travel when she was on tour. Must be a kiwi thing…
Think Luke Cederman even had a crack before finding his calling
https://sportfunder.com/
22k to get through the QS onto the tour. Paige Hareb is also on there – $17k to pay for travel when she was on tour.
I think Luke Cederman also had a crack so it must be a kiwi thing
If the WSL collapsed in a screaming heap tomorrow it won’t be Surfline that starts a new tour. They don’t have the know-how nor the infrastructure to turn into a pro surfing organisation.
If anything it will be the ISF and they will run comps (or possibly a one-off world championship event) with minimal prizemoney.
The other possibility is another soft takeover where Dirk exits ‘gracefully’ into the sunset ala Bodhi and it gets bought for chump change by someone else. Of course it’s a loss-making venture in its current state so the only people I could see somehow buying it are the surf brands that are still afloat.
No mention of Ashton’s lack of employment?
Surprised it wasn’t mentioned on the pod or anywhere here yet. Figured they’d be dancing on his grave.
Pray tell!
I shall pack many powerful weapons and stand on the sidelines to snipe at both sides, with any luck they’ll both suffer equal losses, and a new dawn shall rise without either of them bathing in its glory…
The World Surf Line?
Aren’t we just one big tribe?
Hmmm
Nice thought
About time I get into the arms trading business…
It seems to be quite lucrative. A product that always sells.
If Malia Ward is going to be a DJ, should she do a remix of ‘Slap My Bitch Up’?
Comment of the day !
…for Daddy.
WsL doesnt give me alerts when salsipuedes is firing.
Damian Hobgood at Salsi – holy fcuk!
Why not ask Elon to buy it out from Ziff?
Chas? What have you got to lose?
Hey Chas, that 3 poddys or so you’ve had a round florescent light reflecting off your sunglass. Makes you look like a Dalek. Creepy.
Thanks for sending me down Dalek rabbit hole!
The way Surfline blows things up, imagine how many times world champ Slatz would become under their bloated regime? 12-23 times?
*edit 12-23 times @ 19 secs
Orange for days…
“the wildly successful project Ibelli”
Never expected Chas to birth a wall of positive noise.
You really missed a trick by not photoshopping yours and DLS’s stupid looking faces onto those Yankees. Are they Yankees? What are Yankees? Your country is garbage.
The Huntington Beach line you literally don’t complete and just jump to the next paragraph…was that when you got vodka and forgot to reread and edit? A quickie with the wife while the kids were outside? Both?
Oh man…… nothing even fun! Scrambling to store to get salmon for dinner but then saw a fabulous sun-drenched seat at fav restaurant so grabbed table and had wife and child join but promise to finish thought when I return to computer.
I saw that and thought it was some deliberate Chas punk rock deconstructionism.
I shoulda played it that way.
Hope the Salmon was wild caught. Next time in Half Moon Bay, stop by my boat for some seasonal seafood. Proabably either King Salmon or Crab, I know you like both.
That alone sounds worth a run up!
Would that be about as punk rock as Joey Turdpile ?
Joe does come across as being more Sid Ambitious than Sid Vicious ?
Is your life just one big crusade of social gatherings and eating out amidst half-started things?
When I see it put so bluntly it makes me sad. But yes.
I think I love and loathe that in equal measure.
Did your Wide-brim hat compliment that sun-drenched seat?
How awesome is that thing in Glasgow where all the neighbors stopped the dawn-raid on those immigrants?
Didn’t see it, mate. I try not to pay attention to the news or what’s going on in the world.
Haha!
Dinner with wife and kid is top 3 of fun. You won.
I cant speak for the west coast offices but I know the east coast team fairly well. They are pretty damn solid people. Id fight along side em. Funny note Chas, they are only 2 streets over from your old pal and my current editor Matt Walker.
Im team surfline all day.
Also after combining with CoastalWatch in AUS The Lola Model became the LOTUS model. It is extremely accurate(as much as a forecast can be)
But the app has settings to report in Face Height or Swell Height. It defaults to face height im sure very few people grasp the difference in socal.
Clearly you have never been the victim of seeing Surfline’s”current” 4-6ft while staring in real time at tiny little ripples. It’s like they don’t even check their own cameras while publishing this sh*t
Not once in 10 years. Because that usually happens when theres a 4-6′ swell coming in on the bouys but the angle is wrong for the spot.
Ive been in some epic places scoring epic waves thanks to surfline.
Like next week, where I’ll be on a beach in central america.
I happened to be surfline-curious last night, and perused the reviews in the Appstore.
Sounds like most Australian users are rather unhappy about the quality of the reports, forecasts and camera restrictions.
All I can surmise is that they must have dismissed all the local reporters and are doing algorithm-based reports/ forecasts from some California basement shit-dungeon,based on rather crude chunks of data broad-brushed onto large swathes of the coast.
Magicseaweed has changed it’s reporting methods and now gives “actual waves heights” which I am doubtful of. I’not sure when they changed, but that would account for my recent confusion upon actual viewing of said conditions and seeing “4 -6 foot ” sets dribble in at about 2 feet Hawaiian.
Will listen to this later. As per PartyPete’s gospel.
Coastal watch fired local Newy reporter along with swathes of others years ago. They’re now ‘regional reports’ – Swellnet on the other hand has dedicated 2-3 reports a day from Pa on the beach at Merewether/Newy.
Of course! Swellnet. I knew I was forgetting another source. Thanks.
Long live Swellnet.
noooo.. long live nothing.. . It seems like yesterday I phoned my bro when I had the glory of head high peeling aframe sets rolling in glass, mid afternoon in the light snow. He said “bullshit”.. I said get to my house now. We were out there for a long while and then two other folk showed up. They were from another state… I asked them how they knew.. one said, “we were watching the buoys.” That was the beginning of the end (the internet) I miss those days like no other in my life. My buddy used to have a radio that only played the NOAA forecast in that electronic voice. So funny. (sorry I am a bit of grumpy fuck)
Yeah. I’m feeling you.
Buoys don’t lie.
Is that a song from the Cure ?
Yeah buoy!!
The Sunny Buoys …. The Buoy with a thorn in his side …. Small town Buoy , Beastie Buoy
The possibilities are endless Stick man
But you may decide like the WSL that the Buoy is mine and not share the joy buoys around ?
ohh buoy!
They do not – that is truth. But they can only tell you what is happening now or maybe the next day. They cannot tell you what is going to happen 2-3 days and beyond.
I feel your pain …… Though have experienced the joy , when the almighty algorithm gets it all wrong …… the first time in the late 90s in France , a mate was over from Wamberal ( home of the Wamby Whopper ) and we had a real nice summer morning surfing long running 2ft point break like beachbreak waves by ourselves …. on our walk back home along the beach we came across a French mate from town 11 km away ….. who studied the surf reports religiously and had a watch even then which gave a reading on water temperatures to one decimal point etc …. Any way this day , he read the report , believing it to be dead flat , did not bring his board and then …..unbelievably , when he saw us , and the waves breaking , asked us , honestly , while we were still dripping wet , how we managed to surf when it was dead flat .
ha!!!
Rang Mike Perry once ,when surf reporting just kicked off,on his dial up report,and headed down to Broken Head from Tweed.Saw my mate talking to an old bloke,and went over and saw it was George Greenough.
Having a pleasant yarn with both,until I mentioned how I had come to be there on a nice little swell.
George looked disdainfully at me,and sat quietly.
He saw the writing on the wall.I stuck to newspaper weather maps again after that.
My mate said George wasn’t a big fan of surf reports.
Took me a few years to appreciate his reaction.
that is awesome.
They have some very funny stuff from the team known as Ding Alley ….reminiscent of Roy and HG from this Sporting Life and highly recommended .
Yeah. I can count my subscriptions on one hand. SwellNet. Spotify. XHamster. Highly recommend all 3. I actually cancelled my private health insurance rather than drop one of them.
I can’t actually believe you subscribe to Swellnet haha, and you truly believe that it’s worth it?!?! Also can’t believe you just aren’t rifling through scratched 28 Days cd’s in your floor well either really.
Ha 28 Days’s !! havent heard that name dropped for awhile. My ex did their promo for the Record Company they were signed to I went to afew free drinks/concerts when they were peaking..
Was shit then, hate to hear it now.
Haha, utterly rubbish aye, hope the drinks were worth it.
The old dial up Trigger Bros reports used to be the go back in the day. So shit though. They would say Western Port is pumping. Western Port has actually never pumped. It’s been OK at best. Cat Bay is another story. I’m talking about Peninsula side. SurfLine and Magic Seaweed I can only assume don’t work in Australia. You’re honestly better off watching Channel 9 news the night before than relying on those two pieces of shit. CoastalWatch is also forecasting from another planet. Just stick to SwellNet. Except keep in mind to always add 2ft to the Peninsila report cos the cunt who writes the report is a hero and thinks it’s always 1ft.
It’s possible the Good Old Boys had itchy Trigger fingers and shot their Western Port is Pumping Load to early ….. or were trying to throw the punters off the scent of where the real action was ?
All you need is @noliesreport basically surfline without the lies…
https://www.instagram.com/n…
Thanks. I’m not on Instagram, but I appreciate the info.
Mate it’s a really good team down here. Shearer, Ben Macartney, Braithwaite, Spinksy, Kate Jackson, me, plus the old CW backbone team and some new recruits coming on pretty soon. There’s some hiccups with the changeover but there’s also heaps of people enjoying the site. We are eager to hear intelligent feedback so hit me up on [email protected] so I can hear what is and isn’t working and help get it fixed.
Thanks Nick, I hope lots of the disgruntled SL app users who reviewed it poorly on the Apps Store see your comment.
I haven’t actually downloaded it yet so I’ve yet to make my own mind up. Reading the reviews was a en eye-opener though and I thought it a timely subject to come up to mention.
lol pretty sure we’ve read and replied to every one of ’em
I would like to trust you Nick , but I believe you once did a surf report , decades ago , claiming that every beach from Manly to Palm Beach was Pumping , but strangely enough , the swell was missing Newport Peak and there were absolutely no waves at Newport Peak that day ….. true or myth ?
I must have been on Drugs at the time. In fact the boys were attacking me just yesterday for Surfline’s spot description of the Peak as a “fun, friendly spot”
Possibly the Drug was truth serum …. The Surf Reporters Conundrum …. I need this cash to go surfing , but is it worth it if I end up surfing with half of Sydney ? I had one surf at the Peak and was actually alone until the Young Doctor paddled out snarling at the “ fun friendly spot “ ….. any way cheering on my club from 23,000 km away , at Newcastle Beach , light offshore 2 to 3ft on the sets ….
I checked the report for a spot in Denmark the other day and they said the wave height was head high to double overhead …… then checked the cam for 2 hours and no one caught a wave over 1 ft ….. twas way more shin to knee high .