Exclusive eyewitness reporting World Surf League number 3 Filipe Toledo involved in “huge scuffle” at Lower Trestles, ordered to the beach after young junior demands “Who do you think you are? The new local?”

Well do you, punk?

The World Surf League exciting but possibly also ill-considered final day at Lower Trestles is but a week away and can you feel the tension? The crackle? I can all the way from Nashville, Tennessee where I am preparing myself for a soccer game tonight followed, hopefully, by a hot chicken sandwich.

Filipe Toledo, world number 3 and set to face the winner of heat 2, can also feel it but much closer up for an eyewitness-adjacent is reporting, exclusively, to BeachGrit that the Brazilian aerial enthusiast was “ordered to the beach” yesterday and “complied” after angering a young hot sponsored junior who does not want to be named.

Allegedly…

Scuffle at lowers point yesterday… Philip Toledo “sent in” by San Clemente locals. Lots of witnesses! Toledo dropping in on everybody… Pissing off the locals…. Young junior surfer, sponsored, that would like to remain anonymous got the wave of the day out the back a big set wave. Drops in and Toledo suddenly appears, tries to skirt around him with a high line. Young surfer knows he’s going to do this because he grew up at Lowers so he takes a high line too. As Toledo tries to pass him, young surfer grabs and holds on to Filipe’s wetsuit… and holds on the entire ride. At the end, there was a huge scuffle. Mostly verbal. Young kid is a hothead, demands that Toledo paddle in after asking, “Who do you think you are? … the new local?” Tensions were so bad at the peak that Toledo did decided to paddle in and go home.

Will the incident fire Toledo right up or will it cause his nerves to twitch and for him to lightly fail?

Does it change the way you will bet?

Who is your money on, by the way?

Exciting but possibly also ill-considered.


Happy Australian Father’s Day weekend to BeachGrit dads from the greatest player on the greatest team of the greatest game in sporting history!

Nothing but the best, for you.

We here, we are surfers from countries strewn all across this marvelous globe. Scotland to South Africa, France to Free Taiwan, Norway to Guinea both New and Old. We are not all men, Jen See is here, and we are not all fathers, Jonah Hill is here too, but we are mostly men and mostly fathers and in two short days Australian men are celebrated for being such.

Now, since BeachGrit is based in Australia, and since we are here, it is our duty to be celebrated too. Thus, I went out and recruited the greatest sportsman from the greatest team from the greatest sport in history, currently alive and waltzing this marvelous globe, to share his heartfelt congratulations to us all, to BeachGrit readers.

Who?

Collingwood Football Club’s Dane Swan of course.

Nothing beats Australian Rules Football, not soccer, basketball, cricket or ruby. Certainly not surfing which is not even a sport at all. No, footy is inarguably the best with its bouncing and its tackling and its guernseys. Collingwood is its best with its magpies and its “aggressive, unruly, profane” reputation and its rat pack. And Dane Swan is its best with his trophies and his tattoos and his leading that rat pack to glorious victory.

Nothing but the best of the best of the best for BeachGrit father-readers.

And you are very welcome, but if you are not satisfied with Dane Swan, and my Father’s Day gift, you can sort one out on your own, ungrateful bastard, using the brand-new personalized video messaging application memmo.me.

Ross Clarke-Jones is available.


Heir to Miki Dora’s Malibu throne Jonah Hill reveals he nearly drowned while swimming “blackout drunk” with Channing Tatum at Bondi Beach in eerie echo of famous scene from pair’s comedy-sequel masterpiece 22 Jump Street!

"I start to swim as hard as I can and I'm not going anywhere and so I'm like, 'This is how I die...'"

The comedy superstar Jonah Hill, more famous, recently, for his ascension to the throne of King of Malibu, has revealed he nearly drowned at Bondi Beach while on a promo tour for 21 Jump Street in Australia. 

Hill, now thirty-seven, had to be rescued by the beach’s famous lifeguards after diving “blackout drunk” into one of the beach’s notorious rip-tides, the event captured in a series of dramatic photographs, which you can examine here. 

Speaking to late-night talkshow host Conan O’Brien, Hill said, 

“We got off the plane and immediately we’re like, ‘Let’s go swimming!’ and so we go to Bondi Beach… and there’s such a bad riptide there that dumb tourists get off the plane and go swimming and drown, and get rescued.

“We go in the ocean and I start swimming and then what feels like a second later I look back and Chan’s (Tatum) about a mile away from me … He’s, like, by the beach taking pictures with people and I’m literally, like, head bobbing out, like, ‘What’s going on? Where am I?’

“I start to swim as hard as I can and I’m not going anywhere and so I’m like, ‘This is how I die…’ I am a guy who died in the ocean in Australia … wasted.

“Finally a guy comes out on a jet-ski and he’s like, ‘Hey mate, we gotta pull you in; you can die out here!’ He kinda pulls me in and then I start swimming and what’s crazy is there was paparazzi on the beach. Rarely in life do you tell a story that sounds ridiculous and there’s a picture that’s even more ridiculous than the actual story.

“We’re there for a week doing press and I open the newspaper and on the front page was, ‘Jonah Hill, actor, almost drowns’ and that picture is on the cover for all of Australia to see. Every interview we did started off with, ‘Heard you went for a swim yesterday… Somebody needs to get some floaties’.”

Two years later, Tatum and Hill would reprise the near-fatal event in the sequel to 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, with Tatum pulling his co-star from the surf in Puerto Rico. 


Buy cheap furniture, save the earth, ocean.

WSL announces collection with low-cost, disposable furniture company IKEA to “raise awareness about the climate challenge and inspire action to reduce plastic pollution in the oceans!”

We had to kill the earth in order to save it.

Ahh, 2019. Can you still remember it?

International travel was unrestrained. Instagram surf personalities hadn’t assumed their new roles as medical practitioners. The left/right political dichotomy was not yet fully redundant. Tongue kissing strangers in the street was still ok.

Did it really even happen?

Wisps of memory of life pre-Covid persist, though they quickly recede in our mind like some fevered dream. So you’d easily be forgiven for not recalling the partnership between the WSL and Nordic furniture giant IKEA announced back in June of that year.

It was a weird match.

Like Red Cross teaming up with Jack Daniels.

Or Kanye West with Marilyn Manson.

But this was our world back then.

Unbridled positivity. Anything was possible, if two profit-driven corporate bodies could put their mind to it.

Here’s a refresher:

“With around 70% of its surface covered by oceans, Earth is rightly known as the blue planet. The ocean is a major producer in the oxygen we breathe, making it a crucial part of our everyday life regardless of where we live. IKEA is teaming up with WSL to better understand the everyday life of people that have a mobile and active way of living in close rhythm with the ocean. There are 370 million people across the world interested in surfing and more than 40 million active surfers. No sport relies on the ocean as much as surfing, which is why sustainability and protecting the ocean are naturally important to surfers.”

So went the breathless press release, still quoting WSL CEO Sophie Goldschmidt (“We’re looking forward to working with IKEA on a product collaboration around plastic using ocean-bound plastic”).

But since the announcement there had been very little mention of the exciting collaboration.

No updates from Erik. No TikToks.

Three hundred and seventy million surfing interested persons had, presumably, turned their interest to more pressing issues.

Partnership canned. Gone to dust like so many other pre-covid plans.

But we were wrong. Boy, were we wrong.

Like some flat-packed Lazarus, the collab nobody ever asked for has risen again, just in time for Trestles.

Landing in the inboxes of surf industry leeches this week was an invite for a sneak peek at the new WSL x IKEA range, to coincide with the Fina Series at Trestles.

“Join world champions Italo Ferriera and Carissa Moore for an exclusive look at this surf-centric collection.”

It’s obvious when you think about it.

A dedicated team spending more than two years in deep R&D. Secreted away from the societal collapse the rest of us have been subjected to. Studying the everyday life of people that have a mobile and active way of living in close rhythm with the ocean.

Keen little Swedish hands beavering away with a million allen keys to produce a range of indispensable surf-adjacent products, feat. ocean bound plastics where possible, for our eager consumption.

Exciting times.

The Earth weeps with joy. Oceans saved etc, and all thanks to disposable furniture made in China and low-labour cost eastern European countries, Romania etc.

But seriously, wtf kind of ‘surf-centric’ product is Ikea going to come up with?

Predictions?

Hoping my long-suggested shoe horn/toilet brush invention makes the cut.


ISA chief Fernando Aguerre declares no intent to run Olympic qualifying rebel tour: “We plan to continue and collaborate with the WSL as we did for Tokyo.”

Heartbreak hotel.

Earlier this morning, the most wonderful rumor floated across my horizon. Namely, that the World Surf League and International Surfing Association only had a one year deal in place for the WSL to be Olympic qualifier.

As you know, the ISA and its chief Fernando Aguerre, are surfing’s official governing body and, therefore, decide which surfers go to the Olympics and how they get there.

In the caffeinated buzz of a morning still fresh with possibility, I imagined our long awaited hopes and dreams of a rebel tour run by Aguerre himself which would culminate, every four years or thereabouts, with gold, silver, bronze medals being handed out.

The best surfers in the world shifting into the ISA camp.

Santa Monica’s high castle brought low.

Repechage to the moon.

But alas, hopes and dreams both punctured just moments ago with Aguerre himself reaching out and telling me, “The ISA doesn’t have any plans to start any world tour. This is nonsense! As we did for the Tokyo Games, we are already in collaboration mode with the WSL. Our role is not to run pro tours.”

The message came via text message, as I was on a plane to Nashville, Tennessee. A town that desperately needs an ocean.

We exchanged a few more pleasantries, had a few laughs, but, in truth, my eyes were welling with hot tears.

Noa Deane’s Olympic path no longer clear or viable.