Our beacon of literary chops in a roiling, putrid
sea of shark stories. Our unanimous sage. Our lynchpin. Gone.
It is with deep sadness, friends, that I must report our
friend, Longtom (née Steven Shearer) has left the
building.
Our clear-eyed purveyor of pro surfing, who watched so we didn’t
have to.
Our beacon of literary chops in a roiling, putrid sea of shark
stories.
Our unanimous sage.
Our lynchpin.
Gone.
Some may wonder what took him so long. Some may wonder what
pleasure he derived from watching Ian Gouveia long into the wee
small hours, just to sling a few pearls before swine.
But, as Chekhov teaches us through the lunatic hallucinations of
Andrei Korvin, it is indeed a fine and dainty dance between madness
and genius.
Before the birth of BeachGrit and his renaissance period, Steve
Shearer spent an undetermined number of years traipsing the outer
reaches of surf media like Denzel Washington’s Eli, clutching old
surf mags and spit-flecked fury ignited by Nick Carroll and Sean
Doherty articles.
His BG arrival was announced with “5 RULES FOR THE GOLDEN AGE OF SURF
WRITING!” which decried traditional surf media and
hoisted the likes of Rory Parker and Chas Smith onto a pedestal. In
hindsight, perhaps a claim that has aged less well than his rules
for surf writing, including numbers three on his list: “Don’t be a
comment coward”.
Is there anything lamer than someone who can punch in the
co-ordinates but can’t deliver the ordnance in the comments
section?
Answer: Nein, non, nyet.
Surf writer, you ain’t Moses strolling down from Mount Sinai
delivering the Ten Commandments on stone tablets. So wipe that smug
grin off your face. Everything you say is contestable and maybe
completely wrong. The article is just the entrée, foreplay and
nothing else.
Like Orwell’s stubborn refusal to prolong his life and put down
the pen under doctor’s orders and in the death throes of
tuberculosis, ol’ Longtom’s commitment never waned. He has always
walked his talk and weighed in below the line.
It’s still worth reading.
It finished with a somewhat controversial list of the 10
greatest surf writers of all time. Upon publication of the seminal
piece, surf history gatekeeper Matt Warshaw was aroused to Tweet:
“I don’t know who Longtom is, but I think he’s just made his own
list.”
And with that, the floodgates opened.
Steve “Longtom” Shearer found his groove in contest reporting. A
grim, thankless task from which he somehow elicited high art.
Like an inky Spartan he relentlessly deconstructed the WSL with
a two-pronged Grecian attack. With one hand, a pathos that would
make Emily Dickinson weep; and with the other a bathetic rendering
that left us unsure whether to laugh cry or cry wank.
Whilst not ashamed to scythe through the performance of the
athletes with plain, beautifully brutal truths in the tradition of
Derek Hynd or Lewis Samuels before him, Longtom saved his most
choice lures and lethal barbs for the power brokers of professional
surfing. Notably, those who came from the outside with designs and
delusions of transforming the game he loved so deeply.
Sophie Goldschmidt fell. Backwards Fin Beth fell. Elo remains
free falling.
All not so much gaslit by Longtom as flung on a roaring pyre as
we danced around and squealed with glee.
Kept in check and on time by DR’s silken-gloved fisting, it’s
fair to say he over-achieved and undersold at BeachGrit.
Imagine him now, if you will, cash-strapped and cold-shouldered
by Charon, doomed to wander the shores, muttering something about
the Oi Rio Pro and Nick Carroll.
Flirtations with serious journalism never quite sang with the
same sweet symphonies of Lennox lore, big fish tales or his unique
brand of pro surf prose, but far be it from this necrologist to
judge.
One suspects that his afterlife might not be quite as much fun
as here.
The adulation will be the same, I’m sure.
The money unquestionably better.
But it will be constricted. The liberty to coil up those words
and sling the noose will not be the same.
He’ll be here, I’m sure. Hopefully not just lurking like the
many ghosts of surf industry past, but opaque and present.
I would have liked to revisit some of my favourite Longtom work,
to roll in it like a happy dog in autumn leaves, but I’m not
scrolling through a few thousand Chas Smith articles to find
it.
Can we have a searchable Longtom archive by way of memorial? A
shrine, if you will.
We can only hope that manuscripts for the promised but
unfinished memoir Big Tits, Blue Water are coherent and
forthcoming from his estate.
Longtom leaves us having published zero books to Chas Smith’s
three, and with a legacy of surf contest reporting that will never
be surpassed let alone attempted at that hourly rate.
If we’re honest with ourselves we knew it was only a matter of
time.
To paraphrase Ellis Boyd Redding, some birds aren’t meant to be
caged. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and
wild. So you let them go. And the part of you that knows it was
wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the
place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their
departure.
Favourite memories, donations, thoughts and prayers below.
