In entirely unexpected twist at inaugural
Surf Park Awards, quaint Lemoore, California comes within striking
distance of besting Melbourne, Australia as “most appealing” place
to experience artificial waves!
Aftershocks are still reverberating through the
surf community after last night’s earthquake (feat. Chris Cote) at
the inaugural Surf Park Central Surf Park Awards. Recap here, but
for those short on time/attempting to preserve remaining brain
cells, the shocker occurred when Spain’s Wavegarden snatched “Most
Appealing Wave Technology” from the grasp of Kelly Slater’s Surf
Ranch.
Audible gasps and shocked sighs filled the lushly wood paneled
public library community room somewhere in San Diego.
Surf Lakes, Yeppoon clutching a bespoke monogrammed Occy clutch
to breast. Waco, Texas taking the stage unexpectedly, standing
there in front of Wavegarden saying, “Yo, Wavegarden. I’m really
happy for you, Ima let you finish, but Kelly Slater made one of the
best waves of all time. One of the best waves of all time.”
Wildness.
So much wildness that, as reported
earlier, URBNSurf, Australia there just off
Melbourne’s International Airport, almost didn’t hear its winning
of “Most Appealing Surf Park Destination.”
Melbourne, a world-class city, would have been completely
confident going against Yeppoon, Waco, Spain, Lemoore ahead of the
awards but, as a surf journalist, I would like to call for a
recount on the votes.
Berlin was on the list.
And so was Lemoore.
Surprising at it may seem, I have been to Melbourne’s Crowne
casino and I have been to Lemoore’s Tachi Palace.
Sorta potato, potato there.
Much closer than it would otherwise appear.
Melbourne has superior fussy cuisine, Lemoore a superior
Applebee’s Bar + Grill.
Potato, potato?
Where would you rather vacation?
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Waco (in black) defends Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch as
Wavegarden (in white) looks on befuddled.
Public shocked, flabbergasted as Kelly
Slater’s Surf Ranch wins “Most Popular Surf Park for
High-Performance Surfing” but loses “Most Appealing Wave
Technology” to Wavegarden at inaugural Surf Park Awards!
Audible gasps, shocked sighs, filled the lushly
wood paneled public library community room hosting the first-ever
Surf Park Central Surf Park Awards, last evening, when the
penultimate satin envelope, containing the winner of the coveted
“Most Appealing Wave Technology” award, was opened.
Up until that point, there had been few surprises as master of
ceremony Chris Cote, nattily dressed in a short-sleeved Hawaiian
print button-up buttoned all the way up, announced the results of a
global consumer opinion survey which had garnered over 2,000
votes.
Most popular surf park for beginners and intermediates:
URBNSurf, Australia.
Most appealing deep water standing wave technology: City Wave,
Germany.
Most appealing amenities: URBNSurf, Australia.
Most popular surf park for high-performance surfing: WSL Surf
Ranch, US.
Kelly Slater’s brainchild, crowning California’s industrial
farming Central Valley, has experienced somewhat of a renaissance
of late, what with erstwhile grouchy surf journalists being won
over by its charm, and Team Surf Ranch confidently, yet graciously,
accepted the honor only smirking ever so slightly toward Team Surf
Lakes Yeppoon.
Cote then began another patented charming spiel before segueing
into “…and the winner of the most appealing wave technology
is…”
Team Surf Ranch readied itself to stand and make its way up
front, gingerly fingering the acceptance speech it had written last
night.
“… Wavegarden, Spain.”
Audible gasps.
Shocked sighs.
Such commotion that URBNSurf, Australia also taking “Most
Appealing Surf Park Destination” went almost unheard, Melbourne
quietly happy not to have lost to Lemoore.
But Wavegarden taking out Surf Ranch for “most appealing wave
technology”… what do you think about that?
Which would you rather dance upon?
Watch the drama unfold here.
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John John Florence wakes up, talks WHOOP with middle
bro Nathan.
A plastic wrist-band convinced me to temper
combat sport training with surfing, respect sleep and achieve
sexual transcendence!
Two-time world champ Florence, who has been using WHOOP for three
years, is the last custodian of the old way: talk
softly, carry a big stick, surf with power and brilliance. A man
whose approach is effortless and fearless.
By using his WHOOP, Florence has
already determined the exact amount of days he must enter a
hyperbaric chamber before a surfing contest (“On the third day my
recovery would go down and then a day after it would shoot back up
really high… I made sure I didn’t use it a day before a heat”) and
says he talks to middle brother Nathan “all the time” about his
WHOOP metrics.
“Before that we never thought about heart rate or anything. Now
it’s all we can talk about after we’ve surfed for six hours,” says
Florence.
On the metric Recovery, he goes hard, multiple surfs when it’s
green, does light exercise mixed, called active recovery, a little
swimming etc, when it’s in the red.
I prefer to hammer hard day after day, not chasing the supreme
triumph of Florence, but the occasional top of the surf and jiujisu
charts. (You join online groups, compete against ‘em.)
You wake up a couple of wild days of swell, you’re suddenly in
the red. And you feel it.
Been lazing around, green.
Y’feel that, too.
A side bonus has been the incentive to punch up the numbers
during long afternoons awash in libidinal heat, imagining a sword
between the hips, undulating like an eel etc. Numbers track between
five and fifteen. I record it as High Intensity Training.
Next week: The pro surfer, not Florence, using a WHOOP
to monitor his ailing daddy!
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"It's morning in Orange County..."
Southern California’s surfers attempt to
secede from inland hordes as state re-draws district map: “There’s
this localist strain that if the beach is in my neighborhood then I
have rights to the wave that other people don’t have and that
localist strain tends to be a very White, privileged one!”
The Golden State of California is a magical
place where starlets sprout in Hollywood Hills, butterballs wash up
on Malibu beaches, Facebook founders and CEOs e-foil patriotic
lakes and the people live in wonderful harmony, all showering in
the warmest rain of Papa Gavin Newsom.
Except every ten years a Hunger Games-like phenomena occurs
wherein the public is carved into different voting districts and
then utter hell breaks loose.
This decade’s edition has seen surfers emerging as a powerful
bloc able to drag the entire fortunes of California with it.
California’s mapmakers will soon decide whether to keep the
district as a coastal enclave or to redraw the map so coastal towns
are joined with areas further inland. Surfers and other ocean
lovers have argued they need to remain in a single district so they
can speak with a unified voice in Washington. The seemingly
nonpartisan issue could help shape the political future of Orange
County, a traditional Republican stronghold where Democrats have
been making gains.
To combat gerrymandering, California and six other states
have taken the job of redrawing congressional boundaries out of the
hands of partisan legislators and given it to independent panels.
The state requires the panels to group together communities with
shared social and economic interests. But such “communities of
interest” are often proxies for partisanship, especially as the
U.S. becomes increasingly polarized along lines of income,
education, and race. And defining them can be subjective and
fraught with controversy.
In Orange County, which hugs the Pacific just south of Los
Angeles, some residents say that keeping coastal neighborhoods
together would help promote the vital tourism that surfing brings
and the lifestyle that goes with it.
And later…
Huntington Beach, with a population of 198,711, brands
itself as Surf City USA (the moniker prompted a trademark dispute
with Santa Cruz, six hours to the north; Huntington Beach prevailed
in 2006). It’s home to Boardriders Inc., which includes the
Quiksilver, Billabong, and Roxy brands of boards and apparel, and
the surf forecasting company Surfline\Wavetrak Inc., as well as
dozens of retail surf shops, the annual U.S. Open of Surfing, and
the Surf Walk of Fame.
Surfing historian Scott Laderman says that while issues like
coastal preservation and beach access can galvanize surfers,
there’s not much else that unites them politically. “Looking
historically at the surfing community, they tend to be an
apolitical bunch,” says Laderman, author of Empire in Waves: A
Political History of Surfing. “Most surfers will tell you that’s
what they like about it—it allows them to transcend the everyday
concerns that they might otherwise have to deal with and escape the
social, economic, political turmoil of the outside world.”
But there are commonalities that have little to do with
recreation, Laderman notes. “These tend to be overwhelmingly White,
upper-middle-class areas,” he says. “There’s this localist strain
that if this beach is in my neighborhood, then I have rights to the
wave that other people don’t have. And that localist strain tends
to be a very White, privileged one. It’s probably easier from a
redistricting point of view to identify that as a surfing community
of interest than a White, wealthy community of interest. That
probably wouldn’t fly very well.”
Before putting the whole business into greater context…
It’s not unheard of for districts to coalesce around local
industries. Coal mines in western Pennsylvania, oil refineries
along the Gulf of Mexico, and tourism in central Florida have all
been used to draw legislative maps. Still, Orange County’s surfers
will have to compete with other interests.
Before ending with a banger.
“This was the place where Ronald Reagan said good
Republicans came to die,” Smoller, the political scientist, says.
“Now I think Orange County doesn’t know what it is—it just knows it
doesn’t want to be Los Angeles. They want to retain their
separateness, but they’re holding on by their fingertips because,
like the rest of the country, it’s going to be majority
minority.”
California surfers: Good Republicans dead.
Very Halloween, no?
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Constructing a surfing persona for him, consciously or
not, would be child’s play. He gets it. | Photo: Cover shoot for GQ
by Ed Templeton
Why I Love “Ultimate Instant Surf Boi”
Jonah Hill!
You can’t help but admire the way Jonah Hill has dropped
in on surf culture with the insouciance of a grumpy old
local.
The peroxide hair. The tattoos. The ironic shirts. The 88 soft
tops. The GQ photoshoot.
Chuck him in a car park at Wategos, Waikiki or Malibu and nobody’s
gonna bat an eyelid. He’s the ultimate instant surfboi. The Sex Wax
simulacrum.
Add in his associated social media commentary and perceived woke
hypocrisy, and it’s safe to say the Oscar nominee’s got many
surfing purists in a twist.
Jonah Hill ruined surfing. Or so the sticker goes.
But I reckon there’s more to it. Jonah didn’t come down in the
last VAL shower like one of the core’s other recent arch villains,
Mr E.Lo.
We live in a post-factual world where everything is subjective.
Opinion and counter opinion rule. Objects are only made real by the
meaning you attach to them.
It’s the sort of environment where a cultural agitator like
Jonah can thrive. He’s a provocateur, operating in a hall of
mirrors.
Consider it.
This is a guy that’s been in the mainstream media spotlight
since his teens. Seen it from every angle. Experienced first hand
the vapid rapaciousness of tabloid media, and by extension social
media.
He knows how the game works. Probably has an axe to grind.
Something to say.
He’s a character actor, a damned good one, and his Oscar
nomination would agree.
To be that requires incredible self-awareness. Watch him play
himself, pun intended, in The End of The World. Happily
skewering his public persona, all with a knowing wink to the
audience.
He’s a master at taking the piss.
Every move Hill makes in the public eye would be calculated. He
knows what the reaction is going to be. The reaction to the
reaction. The opinion and the counter opinion.
Jonah knows how a subculture works.
He might be a kook, but he’s not some ignorant Inertia VAL fumbling
his way into a world he knows nothing about. Go and re-watch
mid90s. As a film it’s not perfect. But the way he
painstakingly, lovingly re-creates the minutiae of that deep sub
culture is top shelf. Skate memes, by the original definition of
the word, make the surf world look one dimensional.
Constructing a surfing persona for him, consciously or not,
would be child’s play. He gets it.
Which gets us to his act: Jonah becomes so surf it hurts.
Overtly embraces the culture, to the point of parody. Then Jonah
starts a commentary around body image. Writes some impassioned
messages to Chas. Says some stuff which on face value is all
entirely valid and agreeable.
But Jonah knows how the commentary will play out. The point and
counterpoint. The rabid and hypocritical response of the social
media world, whether it’s angry surfing purists or dog-whistling
wokes. The ultimate vacuousness of the entire exchange, where the
original intention is so far twisted that it no longer holds any
weight, pun not intended. Sharon Stone, etc
etc.
This is absurdist theatre. Think Joaquin Phoenix in I’m
Still Here. Jonah’s playing it like a cheap guitar. And we’re
getting to enjoy it first hand, for free.
You can’t help but smile.
It’s all driven by an original, organic truth. Jonah’s been
through some heavy body struggles. I certainly dunno the guy. But
by all reports his embrace of both the pursuit and the culture is
genuine. Jonah loves surfing. Jonah looks happy. John doesn’t like
being body shamed.
Fair cop. More power to him.
But whether it’s deliberate or not, I’d argue the public
character that he’s built over the last two decades can only lead
us to this conclusion. That this is all performance art.
By engaging in this play he’s holding a mirror back to cancel
culture. To surf culture. And having fun while he’s doing it.
So being outraged by Jonah is like being outraged by
BeachGrit. It means you’re missing the point.
If you judged each article on here by its individual merit
(other than mine) you’d be left curled up in the foetal position,
horrified at what surfing and society have become.
But lay it out more broadly. Consider the context. The collapse
of surf media. The invasion of the culture by dilettantes and
manipulators trying to turn it into something it’s not. And then
you realise this whole thing is an art project. Social commentary.
Meta comedy.
BeachGrit and Jonah Hill are one and the same. Shit
stirrers. Treating surfing with exactly the level of respect it
deserves. ‘Cause it’s equal parts the greatest and stupidest
thing you could ever try and do.
As Livia Soprano says, it’s all a big nothing.
So be like Jonah.
Enjoy your journey with surfing, and comedy, and live life
accordingly.
