Listen: Australian yeoman Adrian “Ace” Buchan shocks Julian Wilson, Jeremy Flores, the world, by announcing his lack of retirement!

Kelly Slater quietly furious.

The old dog can still learn new tricks, as they say, and Australian yeoman Adrian “Ace” Buchan just mastered a doozy, shocking Julian Wilson, Jeremy Flores, The Li’L Plumber and the rest of 2021’s quitting class by taking to instagram and announcing his impeding lack of retirement.

In a lengthy post to Instagram, the 57-year tour vet wrote:

The end of the most challenging competitive year of my career. Processing so many different emotions at the moment as I reflect on the last few months. Time away from my wife and kids, injuries, missed events but also memories of having the chance to do what I love in the middle of an incredibly challenging time.

For that I’m so thankful.

As an Australian with a young family, leaving the relative safety of home I definitely felt some culture shock these last months dealing with the reality of travel and Covid. If I’m honest for the first time in my life it made it really hard to leave home and be wholeheartedly committed to surfing.

But I definitely felt a camaraderie like never before between the surfers on tour as everyone rallied around to support each other in the absence of our regular teams.

I want to say a massive congrats to @adrianodesouza @floresjeremy and @julian_wilson on your inspirational careers. I feel so lucky to have shared friendship, finals, many, many battles and even heated moments with you guys! You’ve all been a huge motivation to me and have inspired so many with your competitive fire and love for the sport.

Personally I’m taking some time to think about what’s best for me and my family. Ultimately I’d love to finish out my career in front of my kids and show them that with dreams and belief you can achieve anything.

The hammer at the end.

Personally taking some time but ultimately would love to finish out career in front of kids exemplifying their dreams etc?

Brilliant.

Buchan has often been called “the smartest man on tour” but this zig, where so many others are zagging, proves it so. There he will go, surfing G-Land, Teahupo’o. Pipeline with only one, maybe three, other men out. There he will get effortlessly barreled, mega-watt smile filling caverns. There he will enjoy the comforts of hotel beds and hotel foods while billing back to the World Surf League for his services as liaison.

Showing his kids, and ours too, that the best surfer in the water is the one billing back.

David Lee Scales and I discussed Ace’s intelligence today and also how Scales plans to teach his almost-here son Mandarin.

I was very much opposed.

Listen here.

Load Comments

World’s best-ever bodysurfer and swinging retiree Mark Cunningham described as “cum-artist” in revealing new profile, “If Charles Darwin were alive today, Mark would’ve blown his mind and sent him back to the drawing board!”

Still beautiful, even at the rim of seventy!

Mark Cunningham, you know. Described by Warshaw as being “amphibious” and “unchallenged as the world’s best bodysurfer from the mid-1970s to the early ’90”, winner of the first two Pipeline bodysurfing contests etc. 

Pipeline Master Rory Russell said, “If Charles Darwin were alive today, Mark would’ve blown his mind and sent him back to the drawing board!” 

Now, in an interviewee with Outrigger magazine, a promotional arm of the famous hotel chain, the former North Shore lifeguard, a well preserved man at the rim of seventy and mentor to John John Florence, has been described as a “surfing-legend-cum-artist.” 

See, when he retired from lifeguarding after thirty years in the game in 2005, Cunningham switched gears to art.

Cunningham’s more recent adventures-at-sea illustrate this deep-rooted passion — literally. He now hunts for what lies beneath the waves, searching the surf for lost treasures like board fins, sunglasses, and even designer watches. Cunningham stores this menagerie of long-forgotten items at his garage-turned-art studio in Kāhala, where he assembles them into three-dimensional sculptures. Through his art, he seeks out each object’s hidden story and honors how they’ve been shaped by the passage of time.
But just like his surfing glory, Cunningham is reluctant to claim a title as an artist. “Mother Nature is the real artist,” he tells Flux Hawaii Magazine. “I’m just putting it all together for everyone to see.

Gallery owners, critics, and art lovers seem to disagree. Cunningham’s sculptures have been on display in galleries from New York to San Francisco and even featured on the TV series Hawaii Five-O.
Getting Stoked in Waikiki

What’s up next for Mark Cunningham? We’re beyond proud to invite this local surfing legend-cum-artist to join our Surfers in Residence program. As the birthplace of modern surfing, there’s no better spot for Cunningham to share his deep love for the sea with wave-chasing travelers from around the world than Waikiki Beach.

A man impossible not to love.

Load Comments

In move likely to shift balance of surfing power, San Clemente considering adding lights to pier for night surfing: “The idea aligns with the town wanting to be known as home of USA Surfing!”

Brazil may fall.

The Orange County Register is reporting that San Clemente is seriously considering adding lights to its pier in order to facilitate night surfing. According to Councilman Chris, “The idea aligns with the town wanting to be widely known for being the home of USA Surfing and it sounds like a ‘really cool’ idea.

Having access to night surfing would likely kick San Clemente’s current crop of talented locals, including Kolohe Andino and Griffin Colapinto, to the next level giving them a further 12 hours to train.

Could mighty Brazil fall?

Strike rate on air reverses through the roof?

added spins?

Possibly, though the plan is not without its detractors.

The city commissioned a report which, in part, read:

“Marine life is typically attracted to light at the water’s surface. Recent research has demonstrated that light from coastal cities has affected habitats on the seafloor by disrupting the natural biological cycles of marine life, effectively reducing the regulatory cycles that trigger sleep, food, and protection from predators. Large marine predators, like sharks, tend to hunt at night.”

Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at Long Beach State added, “I’m sure it will attract a lot of bait, which then may in turn attract sharks. Light pollution is already a problem for some marine life. I would imagine that really bright lights to support night surfing will disturb a number of marine species that are sensitive to light particularly at night.”

Shark disturbances, attacks, a small price to pay for added spins.

For the fall of Brazil.

No?

Load Comments

US surf star and inventor of the ‘alley-oop’ compares Australia’s COVID-response to Hitler’s incineration of six million Jews,“I pray for FREEDOM from tyranny for my fellow Australians & New Zealanders. Many of us are WIDE AWAKE”

"I can no longer be silent"

Former world number six and inventor of the alley-oop Ventura’s Tim Curran, has taken to social media to attack Australia’s COVID response likening the lockdowns, vaccination requirements etc as the sorta thing the bad old National Socialists woulda done. 

Curran, who just turned forty-four and whose arrival was announced to the surfing world in 1995 by Taylor Steele in the opening gambit of his game-changing film Focus, writes, 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSu9-A3JzzP/

I pray for FREEDOM from tyranny for my fellow Australians & New Zealanders. Many of us are WIDE AWAKE. Our hopes, dreams, and everything we have is worth nothing without our God given Freedom. We are dealing with it here in the US as well in some states. There are major human rights violations going on all over the world. We must call them out.

The atrocities of the Nazis are unfathomable, and we must never forgot that history can repeat itself. Never let anything close to that happen again to any race color gender or religious group. 

Covid Camps, and kids being forced to get the vaccine without their parents sounds alarming to me. People loosing their life savings, businesses, homes due to lockdowns is even more very alarming.

Please research the great reset and the world economic forum and see what their agenda is… also in the US do some research on VAERS which reports vaccine deaths and adverse reactions. It is all public knowledge and may even be under reported.

SHOT OR NO SHOT it’s your choice not the gov, not big tech, not corps or the celebs. If any of these require you to take the vax you should be able sue any of the above if you have any adverse reaction or death from it.

I can no longer be silent.

New Zealand funnyman Luke Cederman responded,

It’s appalling here in New Zealand at the moment, our Netflix catalogue is limited to Australasia, so we can’t get access to every show unless you have a vpn, so staying at home for a week while being paid has become a real challenge, the oppression is real. This is the first I’ve heard about ‘COVID camps’ or mandatory vaccinations, but if it’s on the internet it must be true, thanks for the heads up.

Gritty! 

Load Comments

As Hawaii buckles under tourism surge, woke locals attempt to shame visitors into staying home: “You are contributing to cultural genocide through colonized narratives redefining aloha, hula and cultural mores!”

Woke-alism.

The Hawaiian islands are receiving a pre/post pandemic surge in tourism that is creating many problems. As fully vaccinated visitors were encouraged to skip quarantine, restaurants are reporting 90 minute wait times for tables, drivers telling of rental car-choked streets, hospitality workers of an inability to keep up.

Mayor Mike Victorino, from Maui, is begging airlines to cut back on flights to allow for some recovery.

“We’re asking for just a pause, if you want to use that term,” he told EuroNews, “We don’t have the authority to say ‘stop,’ but we’re asking the powers that be to help us in this sense. For more than a year, COVID-19 stopped everybody from going almost everywhere. And so now Maui has become – and the state of Hawai’i – a focus point for that pent-up demand. We’d like to welcome them, but we also realise that we only have so many beaches.”

Other woke locals, or “woke-als,” have gone further, turning to Instagram and posting shame-inducing messages.

@end_hate_in_hawaii, for example, has posted its 95 theses to the digital wall, declaring “Your Hawaiian Vacation Contributes To:

-The displacement of Hawaiians for tourism development.

-Gentrification etc.

-Cultural genocide through colonized narratives redefining aloha, language at large, hula, and cultural mores and practices.

-Perpetuation of a “terminal narrative,” erasing the ongoing struggles by Hawaiians against colonialism and imposed capitalism.

-The perpetuation of harmful tropes like hyper-sexualized hula girls or doormat natives.

Etc.

Sign petition to stop tourism here.

Load Comments