In apparent swipe at world’s fifth-richest man Mark Zuckerberg, Hawaiian surf legend and noted enforcer issues ominous warning to tourist foilboarders “exploiting Kauai and her beauty”; says Nā Pali Coast foil shots “drive up home prices here… it drives us out”!

"Exploiting Hawaii is really going to bite us in the ass."

The Hawaiian surf legend and noted enforcer Kamalei Alexander, born, raised Kauai, has taken to Instagram to issue an ominous warning to foilboarders using the wildly rugged Nā Pali coast as the backdrop to photos.

“Just want to get something of my chest,” says Alexander, younger brother of Kala, and a peer of Andy and Bruce Irons, shredder from two-to-twenty feet. “Yes, I’m totally guilty of exploiting Kauai. I’ve used her beauty and her majesty for my benefit many of years. 

“However, I feel that it was necessary for me to survive. Nowadays, people are coming, people from here, people from all over, they come here to exploit Kauai and her beauty and what really really sucks about it is, for example, guys going down the Nā Pali coast, foiling, to get that ultimate shot of them foiling down the coast. That drives up home prices here.

(Pause)

“You know what that does. 

“It drives us out…”

“So,

“Note to everyone, you might just get a local (post cuts out…)”

Mark Zuckerberg, who owns 1300 acres on the island, and guy-pal Kai Lenny have made the sixteen-mile stretch on Kauai’s north-west coast a regular setting for their foil outings.

Read, “World’s fifth-richest man Mark Zuckerberg caught enjoying e-foil life with mystery woman off his 1300 acre Kauai plot; accused of ‘colonising’ the island!” and “In extremely controversial move, Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg emerges from quarantine donning ‘white-face’ on an electric foil!” and “Watch: Facebook founder, CEO, fifth-richest person in the world Mark Zuckerberg posts humblebrag video e-foiling in Hawaii, shouts out bestie Kai Lenny!”

Meanwhile, over at John John Florence’s IG, a new short of the two-time world champ foiling circles along the Nā Pali coast, cut to the Pink Floyd song Breathe, from seminal 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon.

 


Heir to Miki Dora’s Malibu throne Jonah Hill pulls ultimate power move; woos and wins heart of surf instructor!

Hot for teacher.

Jonah Hill, Hollywood funnyman and heir to Miki Dora’s Malibu throne, has just pulled the ultimate power move wooing and winning the heart of his surf instructor.

The Wolf of Wall Street star went Instagram official, hours ago, with Sarah Brady sweetly captioning the post “Grateful for you.”

Brady, whose website declares that she is currently an undergraduate at UC San Diego studying the Anthropology of Climate Change, hails from a line of surfers three generations deep and learned, herself, to slide at three-years-old. She has a smooth longboardy style, as evidenced on her own Instagram, and if I was Commish of the Longboard World Tour, like Devon Howard, I would proffer her a slot post haste.

And, actually, I couldn’t find any reference to her being a “surf instructor.” Yahoo! reported that bit but let’s assume it is true and let us all doff our jaunty beanies Hill’s way because if Van Halen taught us anything at all, it is that wooing and winning teacher is boss.


World Surf League Final’s Day penciled in for Monday or Tuesday with large swell headed toward Lower Trestles; Brazilian surf fans threaten largest seaborne invasion in history: “The entire country is going to be down there on the beach!”

Order and progress.

But do you feel the tension? The fission? Strange days, yes, but also exciting ones to be alive and a fan of professional surfing. What is being described as a “substantial swell,” or in Surfline-speak “la bomba nuclear,” is currently making its way to Lower Trestles, home of Filipe Toledo’s “huge scuffle,” for the inaugural Final’s Day and wow just wow.

World Surf League CEO Erik Logan, Vans so clean he can see his own reflection in them, is certainly patting himself on the waxed back right now, congratulating himself for his foresight, his bold maneuvering, Gabriel Medina be damed.

And we will all be there, watching on computers and phones, cursing ourselves for loving it, cursing ourselves for wanting the aforementioned Gabriel Medina to both win and lose.

According to an overheard conversation between three Brazilian filmers on the path to Lower Trestles this very morning, however, the entire sovereign nation of Brazil is planning to be there, each man woman and child, on the beach.

“I got the best shots of Italo… It’s either Monday or Tuesday… The entire country is going to be down there.”

Wow.

Operation Neptune, which has come to be known as D Day, saw 24,000 Allied troops land on French beaches on June 6, 1944. Until now, it has been the largest seaborne invasion in history.

Brazil has a population of north of 213,000,000.

The Marines, at nearby Camp Pendleton, won’t stand a chance.

More as the story develops.


Yo Morgan, wake up, wake up baby Mmm, yo... Yo Morgs, wake yo' ass up c'mon I'm up! I'm up. I'm up , I'm up Morgs, wake up! I'm up Mick, what the fuck, man? What's up? C'mon now it's a quarter to six we got the 7:30 heat etc.

Route to victory: How underdog Australian Morgan Cibilic can “corner Gabriel Medina like a rat” in a “ridiculous, peculiar” Trestles Finals Day, “Perfect in the context of the WSL whoring its credibility out on the most sexless, boring reality show in human history!”

It's a dream outside lane run for Morgs at a dream location. The draw could not be more favourable for him.

Let me make two t’ings perfectly clear before laying out Morgs’ pathway to victory, why Nick Carroll is full of caca, and why Morgan Ciblic is the World Champ we need this year.

First, in the same vein that Kelly Slater is the smartest guy in any room he finds himself in, I am the biggest Medina fan in any given situation.

Second, I loathe the accidental champion.

I believe that is a Derek Rielly line and a lot of people don’t realise how Ol DR is the iron fist in a silk glove when it comes to management of his surf writing team*. A real Stalin. As I recall DR sent me a text maybe three or four am one night just to check I was on the tools and it contained that deathless line: I loathe the accidental champ.

Which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Worst days of my life watching Fred Morais beat JJF at J-Bay or Keanu Asing win the French Pro in the shorebreak.

I want the best being the best or GTFO.

That said: it’s a dream outside lane run for Morgs at a dream location. The draw could not be more favourable for him.

The first scoring ride of the day will be the most crucial of the day for him. If judges dictate that Aussie blue-collar progressive power** surfing is in the good to excellent range then the rest of the day essentially unfolds on terms he has already set.

If they low-ball three big turns and a close-out smash then he’s cooked from the beginning.

He gets past Connor Coffin.

Toledo panics. Tries to play Aussie surfing power games, falls on an air.

Sits and waits like an Easter Island statue. Gets beaten with two mid sevens.

Italo feels his manhood very much threatened by this insolence. Falls on three massive airs. Lands a sketchy one for a mid-six. Ciblic rides set of the day for an easy win.

Gabe is now what is known as cornered rat- rata accorolada in local parlance.

“I do not like this format, it is unfair,” starts to ring in his ears.

This is the most unfair manifestation of the format.

A guy who a year ago was on the beach with a t-shirt trying to get a signature off Medina now about to challenge him for a Title that according to 40 years of Pro Surfing dynamics should already be his.

This thing fucking with Gabe, pride.

Medina hustles, gets physical and earns an interference.

Heat One lost.

Heat Two, Gabe goes massive and falls, unstoppable Ciblic wins World Title.

Ridiculous. Peculiar. But perfect in the context of a Sporting Governing Body whoring its credibility out on the most sexless, boring reality show in human history.

There are many objections to this pathway to victory.

Nick Carroll, in a summation for Surfline, said many things including this: “I haven’t seen any indication this year that anyone in the field can take them down in a best-of-three match up, whether it be Lowers or anywhere else”.

To which I would reply, did he not watch the Olympics? Gabe choked two heats in a row.

Did he not see Surf Ranch where he folded in the Finals against Toledo.

Gabe is eminently beatable, especially at a wave where he has such a poor record.

Carroll then played the fatigue card as a major factor. To which I would respond: there is no location on the planet kinder for multiple heat surfing than Trestles.

No current, no big paddling, no crowd, long waits for sets.

The average ride at Trestles is between 13-20 seconds with most being between 15-17 seconds long. Morgan, like Jordy Smith and Mick Fanning, catches few waves in a heat (three or four on average).

When you do those sums, a minute of surfing in a 30 minute heat, he could get the job done with five actual minutes of exertion over the day, with tons of recovery between rides.

This is not Pipeline or Cloudbreak where a single wipe-out saps the tank.

Certainly not a combat sport, as Carroll clumsily compares it to.

If a surfer of Morgs calibre can’t surf five minutes in a single day then the whole concept of surfer as elite athlete is an absurdity.

It’s just a silly piece of nonsense, like The Ultimate Surfer.

Two set waves per heat, expertly ridden, will get the job done. No need to reinvent the wheel either, as Carroll insinuated.

If judges score eights for big turns in one heat then they’ll score them eights all day long.

Morgs can do it on the left as well, as we saw at Narrabeen.

One of the more absurd outcomes of this glorious path coming to fruition is a better future for Pro Surfing.Elo and the Woz are playing with fire double dealing the Australian taxpayer by going all in on the Ultimate Surfer, trashing the integrity of the QS system that has been funded by the Oz govt for years.

You don’t fuck around with the main squeeze, as Amy Winehouse counselled: you keep your dick wet with your same, safe old bet.

If the scorned Aussie taxpayer turns their back on the Woz it’s game over.

I don’t think Elo realises that.

A Morgan Ciblic victory ensures another decade of clean funding down the Pipeline.

It keeps pro surfing dreams alive on the Island Continent and enrages an entire nation, thus ensuring a better 2022 than could have possibly dreamed of in the Santa Monica high castle.

Please tear this logic to shreds, I would very much like to hear the counter-arguments.

My Final Call: Italo Ferreira for World Champ.

*Very much justified in this case.

** No oxymoron


Florida's fav ever surfer, CJ Hobgood! | Photo: Steve Sherman/@thserms

Will much-loved world champion surfer CJ Hobgood win BeachGrit’s inaugural Surfival League? “I only win things with an asterix next to them!” says champ.

Blood, sex and tears!

It’s been a wild inaugural Surfival League season, I think very safe to say.

If you’ll remember, the Surfival League was launched as an alternative to Fantasy Surfer. A place where you could win real prizes (see here, here), one where you only root for one surfer, one where you didn’t have to worry about tiers, points, or budgets. 

Simplified Fantasy.

Need a quick refresher?

Four rules.

1. Pick one surfer each event.

2. Surfer must advance past The Round of 32.

3. You can’t pick same surfer twice.

4. Winner takes $1,000 and a custom-shaped Panda Surfboard.

A little over three hundred BeachGrit commenters, WSL staff and fantasy dorks tried their hand predicting which surfer will have early round success.

We are now down to 11. That’s three percent of the Original League. 

There were massive cullings at Pipeline (Seth Moniz, Julian Wilson), Margaret River (Jack Robinson), Rottnest (Callinan, Toledo, Colapinto), and Barra (Toledo, Colapinto, Igarashi).

Out of the 11 Surfivors, one Hobgood remains, one event remains.

All that’s left is to choose one surfer to win at Lowers (and combined heat score of winning heat to settle ties).

I asked Clifton, would a Surfival win be better than a 2001 crown?

“I only win things with an asterix next to them so yes it would be right up there,” said the Champ, adding if he did win he’d be giving his prize to the runner-up. 

The finalists are, 

And, ‘cause everyone’s money is on Gabriel Medina or Italo Ferreira, what if Conner, Filipe or Morgan wins?

Tie-breaker rules below!