Watch: Huntington Beach cements reputation as Riot Capital, USA after 149 arrested during TikTok party gone berserk!

Surfers gonna surf.

Surf City, USA aka Huntington Beach, California, is a gift we red, white and blue surfers give to the world. Home to the U.S. Open of Surfing and U.S. Olympic Coach Brett Simpson, the town boasts long stretches of par to subpar waves, two extra large surf shops, one Sugar Shack and a reputation for “surfers gone wild” riots.

The 1986 Op Pro bacchanal legendary, the 2013 re-make not too shabby.

Over the weekend, folks got back down to business as a birthday party invite went viral over TikTok and drew a large crowd who proceeded to “act in the Huntington way.”

According to the ABC news report:

The initial crowd that gathered at the beach that evening exploded to more than 2,500 people who descended on the downtown area and threw “bottles, rocks, fireworks and other items at officers,” police said. Multiple businesses, numerous police vehicles and a lifeguard tower were also damaged from vandalism. However, no significant injuries were reported, according to police.

The Huntington Beach Police Department declared an unlawful assembly in the downtown area at 7:13 p.m. local time and called in assistance from outside agencies. Throughout the night, more than 150 officers from virtually all law enforcement agencies within Orange County were deployed to Huntington Beach. An emergency curfew was also put into effect to help authorities, clad in riot gear and armed with less-lethal weapons, disperse the crowds.

Police arrested and booked 121 adults and 28 juveniles for various charges, including vandalism, the firing of dangerous/illegal fireworks, failure to disperse and violating curfew.

Very cool.

Watch here.

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WSL staffer (in red) checks in on Liam O'Brien.
WSL staffer (in red) checks in on Liam O'Brien.

Breaking: World Surf League buffeted by troubling accusations that it is holding remaining surfers prisoner on extremely expensive Rottnest Island!

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.

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National Geographic magazine loses credibility entirely with make-believe feature on Hawaii: “For decades, scholars, writers and tourism boosters have portrayed the islands as a racial utopia!”

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.

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Today we have released 2 White sharks at Ballina - Lennox and 1 white shark at Evans Head after they caught 3 yesterday." | Photo: @nsw_ sharksmart

Question: How long after a fatal shark attack at your home beach would you get back in the water?

Is dying in the mouth of a Great White worth the kick of surfing? 

As existential questions go, it’s a doozy. How long after a fatal shark hit at your home beach would you get back in the water?

For the surfers of Tuncurry, a precious stretch of east-facing coastline a few hours north of Sydney and when y’combine its neighbour Forster maybe the best waves on the north coast, it is, literally, existential. 

Every surfer in Tuncurry has gotta ask him, herself: Is dying in the mouth of a Great White worth the kick of surfing? 

Five days ago, a visiting surfer from Newport in Sydney, fifty-nine-year-old Mark Sanguinetti, was hit fifty yards off Nine-Mile beach by a fifteen-foot Great White. 

A witness on the beach said, “The shark came out of the water, just smashed him, five seconds later he came round and hit him again… Just the whole bone exposed, no meat on him at all.”

A couple of days later, the joint was still crawling with ’em, a Channel 7 drone filmed a White cruising the shoreline, fifty feet from shore.

A little further out Whites were being caught, tagged and released. 

Now, think about it. 

You live in Tuncurry. 

You’ve surfed all your life. 

You’ve felt an increasing Great White vibe there, hard not to when a drone operator regularly releases footage of Whites swimming among surfers and swimmers and the Department of Primary Industries announces it has caught and released sixty-five Whites in a six-month period, but not enough to keep you out of the drink.

No near misses, not in Tuncurry at least, although everyone knows the story of  Colin Rowland being dragged underwater by a White at Bulls Paddock, twenty clicks away; not so many know the similar story of Chris Little getting the same treatment a few years later at nearby Boomerang Beach.

Still…

In May 2020, two Great Whites swam under three surfers at Tuncurry, the drone footage evidence it seemed at the time that the squad that patrols this stretch of beach found little of value in the bones of human beings.

“We could hear a drone going and I’m like ‘where is that coming from?’ And we turned around and there’s a dude running down the beach to come wave us out of the water yelling ‘there’s two Whites behind you!’” one of the surfers told Channel Nine’s The Today Show.

“I actually found it quite reassuring that they’re not interested in us, they were just swimming past and happened to run into us,” said another.

“I reckon it happens on a near daily basis here,” said the third.

Now? 

The Whites are still there. No one’s coming to take ‘em away. They’re protected so there’s gonna be more around every year. 

What do you do? 

I grew up in the eighties, West Oz, and the spectre of a shark attack was an abstract concept, to say the least. 

Not one surfer had been killed by a shark, in Western Australia history until 2004, long after I’d left, when Brad Smith was hit by two Great Whites at Lefthanders. 

(More fatal attacks on surfers would follow, 2005, 2010, 2o11, 12, 13, 16, 17, a couple in 2020 and a raft of non-deadly hits, along with fatal attacks on swimmers and divers)

I’d moved to Queensland where the last hit was at Moreton Island 1992; down the coast in Byron, there hadn’t been a hit on a surfer since Martin Ford at Tallows in 1982. 

All pretty safe, and easy to avoid. 

I kept an imaginary pencil in my head and would lick the nib and draw a line through joints that hosted a fatal attack. 

Until 2004, I only had to avoid Moreton Island, in Queensland, Tallows in Byron and anywhere around Cactus. 

In 2021, if you surf, and you live on Australia’s east coast, or in Western Australia, Great Whites patrol the waters in greater numbers, it is safe to presume, in living memory. 

Healthy, abundant stocks.

What do you do? 

When do you go back? 

At Snapper, Occ was back the next day. 

At J-Bay, after the non-fatal hit on Mick, Derek Hynd took an hour or two before he dived in. 

What about you? 

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Kelly, bottom left, locked n loaded.
Kelly, bottom left, locked n loaded.

Watch: Diamond handed Bitcoin investor, surfer, Kelly Slater supplants Ellen DeGeneres as cruelest celebrity of the year!

Roast time!

“As you probably know, Kelly, Adriano is in his last season on tour and he was a guy who would want to win at all costs, had to learn how to surf all the heavy water waves, became a Pipe Master and a World Champion and you guys had some entertaining heats throughout that entire career, what do you think, uh, Adriano will really be remembered for as a World Champion and also a leader of that Brazilian Storm?” Joe Turpel asks the 11x title and diamond handed Bitcoin holder Kelly Slater with thirteen plus minutes in Miguel Pupo and Liam O’Brien’s quarterfinal heat.

In his contest wrap, the great Longtom wrote, “Kelly on the tools is always gripping viewing for me. Now that the focus has shifted from the sleds to the phone-in I expected big things. Rabs and Turpel gave him plenty to work with but when Turpel pitched up the biggest softball of all time and asked Kelly to comment on what Adriano De Souza’s Legacy as world champ would be, I almost squealed in delight.”

I did squeal, no “almost” about it.

Slater can be seen grinning, picture in picture, and what would he say? Praise the work ethic? Commend the drive?

Of course not, we know our Kelly and we know him well, but what? What deviousness might he have up his sleeve?

“We had a heat in Puerto Rico, a three man heat, I won the tenth that year…”

The story spools out perfectly, beautifully, Adriano surfing too aggressively, Kelly running him over, Kelly’s mom yelling at Adriano on the beach, Kelly “feeling bad for the guy already,” Kelly putting on a Brazilian accent while imitating Jadson Andre, Kelly laughing that Adriano walked two hours home, carrying three boards because he was so hurt by the loss.

Words don’t do justice, can’t adequately describe Kelly Slater’s tone, his face, cadence. The clip is tee’d up here and I suggest you watch, take notes.

And how lucky that we get to have the greatest of all time? Oh, I’m not writing about surfing, hell no. I’m writing about the greatest roaster of all-time.

Rat Pack founding member Dean Martin made the format popular with his televised Celebrity Roasts, and Comedy Central has revived, but nothing but no one is as cutting, as quick, as absolutely devastating as one Kelly Slater.

Not Martin.

Not Ricky Gervais.

Not Carrot Top.

Adriano de Souza getting sent off on his farewell tour by Slater saying how he, himself, won his tenth World Title by shaming the Li’l Plumber?

Cruel, purely effortlessly cruel.

Ellen DeGeneres is blushing.

Bravo.

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