Pop sensation Shakira takes evasive action to ensure children won’t grow up as VALs: “Don’t wait up to surf at 40 when you can start at 6!”

Chas Smith

By

Priorities.

Popular music superstar, 12-time Latin Grammy winner, Shakira made an important parenting move, over the weekend, attempting to save her young children from difficult lives as vulnerable adult learners. Radar Online is reporting that the Colombian must stand trial for tax evasion, and may face jail time, but priorities are priorities and, so, off she whisked her young boys to Wavegarden where she boldly declared, “Don’t ‘Wait Up’ to surf at 40 when you can start at 6.”

“Don’t Wait Up” just so happens to be the name of her latest single.

The chanteuse also partook herself gamely penning, “Back at Wavegarden trying to improve my skills in this cruel sport.”

True understanding.

While you’re here, I went to Colombia once, to the city of Cali gorgeously set amongst Andean folds. My trip was, ostensibly, about the cocaine trade and so I wandered the neighborhoods that the Orejuela brothers did and their families still do, drinking in their bars, watching salsa and merengue, hips not lying, trying to feel the heat.

I chatted up those who had stories of heady days when the city ruled the world, some estimated $7b a year pouring in. What impressed me, most, was how tastefully the cartel had spent its money. Open modernist design a la Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater was preferred to anything gaudy or gauche.

Surprising.

Bird in the sky, man in the water hurting. @roygruenpeter

Surfer snaps leg at Sydney’s Bronte beach in horror wipeout; bone penetrates wetsuit; wild drone footage of rescue!

Derek Rielly

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A little light Sunday action… 

On a real pretty Sunday morn, three-to-five-feet of south-east swell, combed into a dazzling pompadour by the baby breath of a three-knot offshore, a surfer has been karate chopped by the lip, leg snapped.

Our boy with the bird in the sky at Bronte beach there in Sydney’s east, Roy Gruenpeter, says the shredder was hunting a barrel, got a little out of position and was subsequently creased.

Another witness says the man’s busted femur penetrated the rubber of his wetsuit.

A wild bank at the north end of the beach was doin’ a slab impersonation, something pretty rare round these parts.

Because the city is shuttered, max lockdown here in Sydney, the beach was as busy as a summer’s morn, citizens enjoying the last vestiges of what might loosely be called freedom, every one clawing at their hour of allotted exercise per day.

And, so, bird in the sky, lifeguards, plenty of people in the water to help and so on.

In social media first, World Surf League post advertising next episode of “The Ultimate Surfer” reaches heretofore-deemed-impossible universal negativity: “This makes me uncomfortable.”

Chas Smith

By

Iconoclastic.

Since the invention of social media, almost 25 years ago, positive affirmation has been key. Be they likes, followers, friends or flowery supportive comments, acceptance matters and has mattered, supremely. Heart eye emoji. Even the crustiest accounts featuring fumbles and foibles receive thumbs up emojis.

Universal negativity but an urban myth.

Your BeachGrit came close, days ago, when posting a video of a mule or donkey tumbling down a hill.

Closer still by dancing with actor famous for not playing sexy beefcakes Jonah Hill.

Still, a 3% support rate hovered, not including ex-surf personality-cum-troublesome gentrificationist Heath “Nutty” Walker who begs to the point of gagging to one day surf with Hill.

Leave it to the iconoclastic World Surf League to break through.

In a recent Instagram offering advertising The Ultimate Surfer post-show podcast featuring fame-bound Joe Turpel and Bachelor-winning Cassie Randolph, universal negativity was achieved.

Not one happy message.

Only vomit emojis.

Unkind words.

But what is thought in Santa Monica’s High Castle?

“Haterz gonna hate?”

“Let’s go ahead and hide this from co-Waterperson of the Year Mr. Ziff?”

Cancellation possibly imminent.

“Get back on the ski and reset.”

?

Sorry.

More as the story develops.

Listen: Mid-length madness reaches fever pitch as Pyzel, Hayden, Firewire and more launch models of world’s hottest surfboard!

Chas Smith

By

Strange days indeed.

Strange days we are living in what with surf groupies worshiping at the beautiful, I’m near certain, feet of Jonah Hill. Wildfire chewing through the land. Everyone, and I mean everyone, clamoring over mid-length surf craft. Looking for funboard in all the traditionally high-performance shortboard places.

Jon Pyzel, creator of the Ghost and Phantom now also has a Midlength Crisis.

Hayden, who brought us the Hypto Krypto, a Mid Length Glider.

JS does the Big Barron, Stretch the Jon Wayne Freeman, Firewire the Sunday, Chili the Midstrength and on and on and on it goes.

Oh, there are no rocks sailing from my glass house. I was introduced to the lifestyle just over a year ago by the very man responsible for the craze. One Devon Howard. The handsome 47-year-old put me on a 6’10 CI Mid and I enjoy much, though must say, I only ride when head high and only occasionally.

Horses for courses.

But what do you think? Are you swayed by the masses or hunkered down, shaving volume, adding fins?

Howard, in any case, joined David Lee Scales and I just days ago to discuss midlengthing, fatherhood, Joel Tudor and the resurgent longboard world tour.

A fine program, all things considered.

Listen here.

Or watch.

Peter Maguire, main photo. strong as bear, clever as fox etc.

Dirty Water returns with surfer-turned-war crimes investigator and marital arts expert Peter Maguire; talks “overwhelmed, reactive, defensive” Joe Biden and how he “stretched out” a “competitive and aggressive” Kelly Slater!

Derek Rielly

By

Death, drugs, surf and training MMA fighters.

Today’s guest, Mr Peter Maguire, is a surfer, war crimes investigator and author of Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade, Law and War – a book about the Nuremberg Trials, Facing Death in Cambodia, and Breathe, the new bio on jiujitsu icon Rickson Gracie.

Ain’t much he can’t do.

Petey made a fine cameo on BeachGrit one week ago with a piece on the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He describes Washington DC as a “shitshow”, snoozy Joe Biden as “overwhelmed, reactive, defensive”, his own books as “extremely depressing”, developed a military rescue boat along with George Greenough, has multiple black belts in the martial arts and gave a “competitive and aggressive” Kelly Slater his first-ever lesson in jiu-jitsu and is currently in the process of selling a screenplay on the discovery of G-Land.

(Jump on his Substack Sour Milk, here.)

Photo: Jack English
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