"You go out on a boat, shallow reef …”
The rise of the VAL, or vulnerable adult learner, will be one of the great marking features of 2015-2025 when historians look back and lionize this age. Grown men and women deciding to pursue surfing, whole-heartedly, splashing out into the great unknown, chins out and brave but also older.
Oh and we know the wonderful story of Jonah Hill, Patron Saint of VALs, and World Surf League CEO Erik Logan, Oklahoman who discovered power inside a wetsuit, but now let us learn about San Francisco’s lightly controversial district attorney Chesa Boudin who lives in Ocean Beach and, according to a new profile in New York Magazine, “surfs many days a week before dawn” at the “famously difficult break where winter waves can exceed 15 feet” though this has not always been the case as Boudin picked up our surfing after graduating from Yale Law school at the ripe VAL age of 31.
The magazine was profiling Boudin due the light controversy surrounding his tenure as San Francisco’s DA. Videos of mass burglary and theft have circulated online, images of very full tent cities crowding sidewalks, leading many to believe that his progressive attitude toward crime has made San Francisco a lawless pit.
The writer, famous Daniel Duane, meets Boudin in his office and describes thusly:
Boudin has thin brown hair and a scraggly beard that barely camouflages a gigantic jaw. The first time we met, at his office in Potrero Hill, a light-industrial neighborhood popular with start-ups, he wore a fashionable gray-blue suit; he was bound for a political event later in the afternoon. On a wall opposite his desk hung framed photographs of Boudin surfing substantial waves. He pointed to one and said, with the vowels of a Midwesterner and the rapid-fire cadence of a trial lawyer, “That’s me right there in El Salvador. And that’s Samoa — the first wave I got barreled in. I was on this backpacking trip, and I found this resort. You go out on a boat, shallow reef …”
A VAL trifecta, El Salvador, Samoa, backpacking discoveries. Boudin then swings to his childhood, fascinatingly the son of two Weather Underground radicals, his rise into law and politics and the troubles he is facing in San Francisco today. Well worth a read but, for our purposes, Boudin’s position, his stature and his open love of surfing is what will most interest historians.
Does the VAL now own surfing entirely?
Are we mere purposeless danglers?
Like appendixes?
Much to ponder.
Is this the prop up the hipster DA diversion piece? please only take note of Chesa’s successful VAL ultra progressive style and not his radical criminal justice policies destroying a once great city.
Haha fuck me ive seen the footage of you at surf ranch chas you epitomise everything that is vulnerable adult learner
Biggest Kook out there, and not much of a DA
either…won’t prosecute anybody😆
no 8 ball?
I went to Samoa, i had a backpack, I didn’t see any VALs. in fact, I only saw a handfull of other surfers. it was good.
Woah… this article is getting you to focus on one thing. And thats that Boudin is “Lightly Controversial”. Well if he was “lightly” controversial, then all of victims of the crime caused with ZERO justice or prosection are looking to recall him over lightly controversial stuff. I mean rape murder and assault victims… thats all light stuff amirite airheads?
He’ll have plenty of time to surf after he’s removed from office. All the Soros money in the world won’t save him.
Aah the joy of self gratification! Sitting in that office surrounded by photos of yourself….that’s me me me…oh and that’s me too…pretty cool huh?…
Lightly controversial??? He hasn’t prosecuted one drug dealer. He dismisses armed suspects in robbery and murder cases. His failures have directly lead to the deaths of several people in his 18 months in office.
Daniel Duane himself is a Val, he started surfing late in life in his twenties.
He had to binge read surf books to find out about surfing, because he didn’t grow up with it.
He had some type of complex because he didn’t have blonde hair and a tan, like he thought all surfers had.
Got freaked when he saw “Kooks go Home” written on the steps to the beach, on one of his first surfs.
These Vals, late learners, (Duane), they miss that important gremmie, grommet stage, that ‘toughens’ you ‘up’, that’s one reason they’re so freaking vulnerable.
(And have to hide inside of their Sprinters).
“Lightly controversial?”
That is HILARIOUS.
He’s only a little bit of an anarchist.
Half the site’s a good Aussie cunt and the other half is a debonair Yankee dandy. Chas probs likes that description but I’d rather be called a good cunt.
The appendix reintroduces bacteria into the bowel if it has been expunged too much as needs the culture to start doing it’s thing again. So yeah that’s exactly us.
The problem I had with Otto is he would post links to articles to back up what he was saying and they would be from Newsmaxx or whatever.
Nothing wrong with having conservative values, but his sources of info were my issue. I’m not even that liberal I just hated trump. I thought he was bad for the country.
I’m sure he’ll run again in three and a half years.
I wouldn’t come to SF as a tourist. They get mugged and robbed all the time in broad daylight. I live over in fantasy land on the other side of the bridge and rarely go to Downton SF anymore. There are still nice places like Napa, Sonoma and Marin etc.
Outer sunset is starting to get yuppified, with nice places to eat now, haha. Getting expensive also.
Edit: Not implying you were a tourist. Sorry if it came out that way.
All the tourists think you go to Chinatown for good Chinese food. All the residents know you go out to the avenues. I remember the first time I ventured into one of the restaurants on Clemente or California and was brought a menu only in Chinese. I looked around and pointed to what someone else had ordered that looked good.
There are some really good dim sum restaurants on Geary. Good Russian Delicatessen’s too. My best friend lives on Balboa so we eat lunch around there all the time.
Good for in between surf lunches and affordable.
Those incredible offshore days in October where the city is eighty degrees and the waves are perfect. That’s all still there.
It’s really getting bad in SF. Homeless people everywhere, needles and human waste. I avoid the downtown area altogether. What they do is they know that if they commit any crime that’s under a thousand dollars it’s a misdemeanor. Also all hard drugs are misdemeanors now too. I think that’s what’s causing all the problems.
What heroin addict is going to live in the midwest and get a felony for possession when they can come here and have no consequences.
OB is terrible for car break in’s now. Cars get stolen all the time, all to fuel drug habits.
It’s really sad to see how it’s changed here. Used to be such a nice place.
I haven’t had any contact with either of them.
I got out, best decision I ever made and yes, it is possible to make less money in border states and actually improve your quality of life. It turns out, that SF and CA is not the be all and end all of happiness in America. Happily liberated from the weight of that CA life…
Hard for me because I was born and raised in Marin but I used to go to Northern Minnessota every summer growing up and loved all the fishing and boating, just never been there in the winter, haha. I need to travel more around the country soon.
Can’t wait to read his article, “How to Lawyer, and Shred!” on the Inertia.
Chas, how many times do we have to request that you proof read your articles before the morning vodka? “And and”, “due the light controversy”. Starting to enjoy finding these little Easter eggs.
If it was a photo “of” Otto there would be a Glock in the photo.
So he was backpacking in his 30s after graduating from Yale? Was he schlepping a surfboard around with him in the Pacific islands? Then he just stumbles across a surf resort? No booking I presume. Then just hops in the resort’s boat – with his backpacking board or a resort rental? Then gets barrelled on a shallow reef, after taking up surfing in his 30s?
Get me a lawyer, I have me some doubts!