Watch: Hero with no apparent care for life
or limb dramatically frees baby Great White Shark caught on fishing
line in North County, San Diego!
By Chas Smith
Notes for the apocalypse.
I wander through this life quietly making mental
notes about who I want to be around during the apocalypse.
Who cuts and runs versus who stands and faces situations dire and
scary. It’s often surprising, you know. Men standing tall and proud
will abandon a scene at a sniff that it might go sideways. Women
seemingly meek and mild will roar like lionesses and fear no
action.
That’s why mental notes and I would very much like to have the
hero who, days, ago freed a baby great white shark caught in a
fishing line on Carlsbad’s Tamarack.
The scene was captured by a beachgoer named Kelly Bailey who
told Fox 5 News, “I was walking over towards the Jetty where my son
and his cousins were exploring and I noticed a fishing line pulling
from far out in the water. I then saw a man reeling in a large
marine reel and another man running towards the water with a spear.
After the man was fighting to reel in what we all thought was a
sport fish, was told by the other man holding the spear that it was
in fact a shark.”
Yes, a baby great white shark teeth gleaming in the June gloom,
head whipping to and fro trying to find a snack.
The hero, though, is completely unperturbed and deftly goes to
work freeing the beast then dragging out to sea.
Very cool under pressure.
And while I surf the general region, and imagine this li’l
man-eater is swimming around with much rage, the hero’s poise and
desire to throw himself in harm’s way to help a creature makes me
proud.
His family and friends lucky come apocalypse time.
A surf brand inspired by WSL's Future Surf
Classic.
If you knew Joey Frizzelle like I know Joey
Frizzelle, why, you’d love him to pieces, too.
Joe was at Volcom for fourteen years, all through the good ones,
through the great float, and before getting the joint got bought
out by the French luxe group Kering, owners of Gucci, Saint Laurent
and Bottega Veneta and finally, Authentic Group, makers of Juicy
Couture’s outstanding velvet tracksuits (a personal fav.)
“It changed a lot for over that time,” says Joe, who was
Volcom’s surf trunk designer of note.
His little light bulb moment for a brand centred around pools
came when he was watching the Future Classic at Surf Ranch in 2017,
the world’s second-ever major wave pool event, a contest where
spectators were excluded.
“No one could see what was going on, it was so exclusive, so
elitist and all of a sudden everyone had a comment about it, the
death of surfing and so on. Everyone had an opinion on
it.”
Joe went out and got the Instagram handle, bought the domain, he
yelled from his Volcom cubicle, “Can somebody make a
logo?”
By the time the afternoon had spilled into evening, he had a
logo, a website, had posted photos on Instagram and had mocked up a
full range of hats and tees.
He had to keep it under wraps, howevs, at least the part where
he was in low-level cahoots with BeachGrit.
“The management were not too keen on BeachGrit and here
I am sending stuff to Chas.”
The brand started as parody but Joe is anything but anti-tub. He
hits the Waco pool when he can and even blew his money on the old
Austin tank before it got bought out by KSWaveCo, demolished, and
abandoned.
“The Austin pool was tough, that was horrible. It was like bad
San Onofre,” says Joe.
Still, even at Austin “we had a really fun day. Wavepools are so
dope, they’re sick, that’s what we dreamed about when we were kids.
You have Travis Ferré saying they’re the
worst thing ever, never do it, everyone splitting has on it,
flip-flopping back and forth. But when you go,
everyone’s rotating, no one’s hassling, everyone’s stoked. It’s
better than sitting at 56th Street and battling all the groms all
day for shitty waves. At BSR, it’s a pretty good three-footer.
You’re with your friends hooting and hollering and you’re not out
there thinking, aw, the wind just came up, the tide’s not
right.”
“Everyone is on the Bro Team,” he says. “If you want to apply go
for it. When you show up at a pool rocking a Country Club shirt, you’re in the know,
part of the club.”
Country Club Surf Club ain’t even close to
being self-sustaining, Joe’s got himself another gig
to pay the bills, but the dream is to get enough of a buzz around
it, to build relationships with the guys at the pools and get a
discount on sessions so he can take his twin five-year-old
shredders on his choline adventures without melting his card.
In the meantime, “It’s a fun spin on what’s happening in core
surf,” says Joe. “It keeps me self-entertained.”
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Dariel, not a man to reflect on life's what-ifs… |
Photo: @dariel_melendezd/@quekasurfer_ma
Surfers raise $26,000 to buy freakishly
talented Caribbean amputee a custom titanium prosthetic leg!
By Derek Rielly
"Team work truly is the dream work!"
Ten years ago, eleven-year-old Costa Rican Dariel
Meléndez Davila was hit by a train while trying to escape a thief,
his leg so mangled it had to be amputated in hospital, the
kid conscious the whole time.
The train shortly after running over
Dariel.
Seven years later, Dariel got hit by a different train, this
time the desire to surf.
He’d seen all the surfers around his home town of Puerto Viejo,
but it wasn’t until he spoke to a pal who’d been to an Adaptive
Surfing Camp that he realised there was a network out there of
surfers dealing with disabilities and who could help him get into
the game.
Now, thanks to the intervention of noted filmmaker Logan Dulien
(Snapt series) who created a gofundme to raise cash for a
prosthetic limb and travel to the US to get the appendage fitted,
Dariel is gonna get a custom titanium prothesis from Russ Molina,
owner of Advanced Kinematics and one of the best in the
biz.
“He will come out start of September compete in the adaptive
surf competition in Oceanside first week of September then after
the comp he will spend 10 days in Palm Springs with Russel Molina
getting a custom mold fit for the titanium leg,” Dulien told
BeachGrit. “Then after that attend the Snapt4 world premiere in HB September 25th
and then fly back to Costa Rica a few days later.”
It ain’t gonna all be plain sailing, howevs. Dariel has never
used a prosthesis.
“He will first have to learn to walk and eventually surf. Will
be work in progress,” says Dulien.
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World peace through surfing!
Many-time World Champion Kelly Slater
floats hosting surfing in 2028 Los Angeles Olympics at his Lemoore
Surf Ranch: “It’s something that could be done. You’ve got my brain
thinking over it!”
By Chas Smith
Explosive!
In an explosive new development, many-time
World Champion and artificial wave technology pioneer Kelly Slater
has floated hosting surfing in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics at his
Central Valley Surf Ranch.
The question was floated to him during the junior national
championships at Lowers earlier in the week by a Los Angeles
Times’ reporter. His response, “Hmm. I didn’t
think about that,” led to an introspective spitball about what
might work best.
“I think by then we’ll have other designs. Maybe something a
little shorter, maybe a 20-second ride would be optimum because you
could push as hard as you want and have enough variety in the
maneuvers,” before ending with “It’s something that could be done.
You’ve got my brain thinking it over.”
But can you imagine surfers from around the world coming to Los
Angeles in seven short years, driving up to the Tachi Palace,
taking a few practice runs each, maybe, then going for gold?
The world’s best surf journalist
recently opened up about his feelings on Kelly
Slater’s eponymous wave technology, writing, “The only thing I felt
like killing after (watching) Surf Ranch was myself. It made me
realise though, that I really and truly wanted no part of Kelly’s
power-hungry, water-wasting machine wave. In fact, you’d have to
pay me to go there and surf it.”
What would an Olympics at the tub do to surfing?
What would it do to Longtom?
More as the story develops.
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Founder of Queer Surf Club discusses
pretending to be straight while learning to surf: “I was worrying
about whether I was cheering camply or coming across as effeminate
when I was falling off the board.”
By Chas Smith
A serious discussion.
Can I be truly open and honest with you? I am a
sarcastic, snarky man, there I said it. I am sarcastic and snarky
and think I’m funny and think being too serious is such a bore.
“Huh?” I thought, probably sarcastically and snarky. “Pretended
to be straight to learn to surf?”
I immediately clicked and read the story of British man, and
founder of the Queer Surf Club,
Frazer Riely learning to surf in Morocco where not surfing, but
state laws, prohibited homosexuality.
Continuing, I learned how the experience was not enjoyable how
he “was worrying about whether I was cheering camply or coming
across as effeminate when I was falling off the board. My
experience of learning to surf was of hiding my true identity, and
I never wanted another queer person to feel like that.”
“Huh,” I thought, toned down and introspective, then reached his
impression of the broader surf community.
“There are incredible individuals out there who are welcoming
and inclusive. But the issue with surf culture is that there’s a
very singular, homogenous story on what it is to be a surfer, from
how you surf to riding shortboards to what you wear. That image is
generally cis-gendered, straight white men who are athletic and
able-bodied – and that narrative has perpetuated surf culture since
conception, almost. Now, I truly believe we’re on the cusp of
changing. Surfers are waking up and looking around them and seeing
who is present and who isn’t.”
I’ll continue to be truly and openly honest. I was moved.
A question for you, now.
Is surfing, or the public perception of surfing, an outdated
cultural relic that should be dashed on the same rocks that brought
low “whites-only” country clubs or is identity, as primary
lens with which to view everything, not always the most useful?
Here’s one more.
What if we, altogether, learned how to stop worrying and love
the bomb?
