In love, in Waikiki.
In love, in Waikiki.

Modern Waikiki is an earthly paradise of surf, sun, high-end shopping and must be protected from unimaginative bores who would dare tarnish its glorious name!

David Lee Scales has it coming.

Ooooooooooh I don’t get hopping mad much, red in the face, curses bubbling up from deep inside before expectorating out* but on Thursday just past I almost leapt my second coffee table and almost danced with David Lee Scales.

It all happened so quickly.

There we, per the usual, at the finest surf shop San Clemente has to offer, chatting about my pivot from hardened cynic to a bubbling fount of anti-depressive joy (buy here), Jonah Hill being a total pussy, Dave Chappelle delivering a masterpiece etc. when Scales brought up the recent, tragic, surfboard rack fire there in Waikiki and began spouting off on what an abomination Oahu’s crown jewel is.

“I was scared to walk out of my Airbnb because prostitutes were coming up and down the stairs, homeless drug addicts everywhere, big gaudy Chanel stores, blah blah blah it was horrible.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Waikiki has, truly, been on of my very favorite places on earth for decades now. I love everything about it from its history to its architecture to its high-end shopping to its hotels, tourists, Hawaiiana, Roy Yamaguchi’s Hawaiian fusion fare.

Everything.

I could spend the rest of my days waltzing up and down Kalakaua Avenue, never wanting for nothing, and to hear David Lee besmirch it so set my heart pounding, blood boiling.

(WHOOP numbers forthcoming.)

I dished out a stream of truths, allowing him to escape physical violence as he is just about to have a baby any day now, but, later, wondered what you think about Waikiki.

Abomination or gem?

Be careful how you respond.

Listen here for more on Jonah Hill being a complete pussy.

Also, Punch-Drunk Love is one of the greatest movies ever made.

No?

Continue being careful.

*Upon further reflection, I get hopping mad, red in the face, expectorating etc. often.


Paddle power.
Paddle power.

Surf Journalist finds Holy Grail of physical fitness in federal prison system, readies self for profound performance enhancement!

Get WHOOPed.

I am back from that beautiful gem in California’s much-maligned Central Valley with a new hunger for our sport of kings. A reinvigorated passion to learn, improve, to be the best surfer in the water not by having the most fun, no never, but, rather, by surfing the best. Opening shoulders during turns, bending at the knees not the waist, etc.

It was at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch that I learned, for the first time, that fitness actually enhances surfing. Thigh muscles necessary, a torso that can twist, but how to build the platform and build quick all while measuring progress with WHOOP, the very latest in fitness tracking excellence?

Prison.

If Hollywood has taught me anything, it is that Robert De Niro looked peak best in Cape Fear, Steve McQueen in Papillon, Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke all lean and well-muscled. They looked like they would have each a fine wrapping cutback and I should attempt to become prison fit like them but how?

Ahhhh, Cousin Danny.

My own flesh and blood is currently serving yet another stint inside after going on yet another bank robbery spree after getting out of prison for going on a bank robbery spree and nearing legendary status.

A stone’s throw from being the most prolific bank robber in United States history.

The book, featuring Cousin Danny’s run, releases this Spring (Blessed are the Bank Robbers: The True Adventures of an Evangelical Outlaw, pre-order here etc.) and you can learn much about how to rob banks for yourself but we had never discussed fitness and so I asked him forthwith.

“How can I get prison fit?”

He responded mercifully quickly.

“10x pushups, 10x squats, ten times. 9x pushups, 9x squats, nine times. 8x pushups, 8x squats, eight times all the way down to one and then back up to ten.”

Visions of pig dogged tube rides danced in my head as marched out to the backyard cedar paneled yoga room, the closest approximation to cement box I currently have, and began.

I finished after 160 pushups, 160 squats, not even 3/10 of the way through the program. Shoulders on fire, especially reconstructed one. Thighs unable to take anymore. Sweating more profusely than after running three miles, than surfing Surf Ranch for an hour plus twenty minutes.

WHOOP strap, never not affixed, registered the strain as a 12.9.

A fine number, more than running three miles, and I felt well on my way to a powerful down carve so went surfing immediately.

I was too tired to do much, barely able to pop to feet, but did do one turn in my short 45 min session that felt powerful-adjacent and I knew I was on the right path.

Hardening up.

The surfing, itself, still did not register as an “activity.”


Kelly Slater slammed by Australian Press after launching multiple fronts in online vaccine war; says friends have “literally” been killed by vaccines and claims “I know more about being healthy than 99% of doctors!”

“I had another of many friends have a horrible reaction to the vaccine just today. She thought she was dying and fears her quality of life has changed in the past few days for good."

The world’s greatest surfer, athlete, Kelly Slater, has enlivened an otherwise dreary news day by teeing off on COVID vaccines on a relatively obscure Instagram account. 

The almost fifty-year-old Slater lit up after the account @summer_ofsurf posted a message thanking ocean racing competitors for getting vaccinated against COVID-19, prompting ironman Matt Poole to write. 

“The next time I head down to surfers I’m going to jump in the rip because “freedom of choice”,” Poole wrote. “It’s no issue for me, but as soon as I start telling others there is no danger in the rip, they’ll jump in too, and tell their mates and before you know it, there is a 100 of us in there… Now some of the 100 get in trouble, and lifesavers come to save them… putting those lifesavers in danger as well. Now 50 are drowning and the lifesavers are overrun, and can’t save them all or themselves…. But that was our choice. It’s not freedom of choice if it impacts others — it’s about helping others.”

Here, Slater jumped in. 

“@matt_poole1 let me explain why your analogy makes no sense. If I know the risks (informed consent) and I judge the choice to be one that benefits/hurts me based on stats and info and my own ability (health), I can choose accordingly.

“If something happens to me it’s on me, not someone else. Your argument is a false equivalence. Apples and oranges. If 99.7% of all people would be fine with no lifeguard while in that rip and they’re given all the possibilities, most could swim the most dangerous part of that beach without risking drowning.

“And plenty of people drive without seatbelts. We can agree that’s statistically not a great thing at speed but it’s still your choice, not mine. And my seatbelt (like the gene therapy) doesn’t save you so that’s another fallacy. Now regarding covid…21 total deaths in OZ under the age of 30 and 6 below 20. This is clearly a disease of obese, unhealthy, and elderly if you study the official statistics.

“And for people saying listen to the doctors, I’m positive I know more about being healthy than 99% of doctors, but I wouldn’t trust me. But most of my covid info comes directly from doctor friends, many of them in disagreement with the official ‘science’.

“I had another of many friends have horrible reaction to the vaccine just today. She thought she was dying and fears her quality of life has changed in the past few days for good. My mom also is part of those underreported stats. Other friends have literally died from it. So anyone here shaming people who are affected or concerned does nothing but feed the ego.

“When you study and talk to health professionals that deal with actual health and find out about the immune system suppression from the vaccines one day, you’ll open your mind to it.

“Don’t worry, plenty of doctors also talk about this but your algorithm isn’t feeding it to you. It’s wild that people don’t believe we are born with the ability of our bodies to adjust and prepare for different health issues. Covid exposes the unhealthy underlying patterns and issues in people.”

Back in August, Slater leveraged his formidable social media platforms to create what he had hoped would be a non-politicised debate around the use of vaccines to fight COVID-19 and its sequels.

Slater posted an excerpt from an article by Michael Yeadon, a former VP of Pfizer who has become the poster-boy of anti-vaxxers for his belief that there’s gonna be a few side effects we don’t know about yet.

“There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic,” wrote Yeadon. “I’ve never heard such nonsense talked about vaccines. You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planing to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.” 

Adding an addendum Slater wrote,

“Something to ponder. But I’m no epidemiologist.” 

In a story from March, news agency Reuters tore hell out of Yeadon and his claims etc.

Read that here. 


Cape Cod swimmers and surfers under siege from Great White sharks reports New York Times, “We have to rethink how we enter the water as we have an apex predator that has returned.”

“Fear on Cape Cod as sharks hunt again!”

Here’s a story eerily familiar to surfers and anyone who goes into the water beyond their shins in Australia. 

No Whites around, virtually no attacks in the past one hundred years… suddenly… boom…boom…boom… hits, fatals, surfers bleeding out on the sand.

Gorgeous Cape Cod, that geographical cape that swings its J-curved arm from the south-east corner of mainland Massachusetts, think rich cunts festooned in striped tees riding in yachts etc, has suddenly become “host to one of the densest seasonal concentrations of adult white sharks in the world.” 

The NYT magazine reports Great Whites are now aggregating around Cape Cod in numbers never before seen in living memory. 

“The animals trickle into the region during lengthening days in May, increase in abundance throughout summer, peak in October and mostly depart by the dimming light and plunging temperatures of Thanksgiving.” 

Here’s the numbers: during the entire twentieth century there were three shark attacks, one fatal, in 1936. 

Since 2012, there have been five hits by Great Whites.

Last year, a Great White killed a swimmer at Casco Bay, Maine, a couple of hundred miles south. 

“In Maine, we never knew we had Great White sharks,” the swimmer’s husband said. 

The story is a horror show of first-person accounts. 

Here, lifeguard Nina Lanctot arrives to find boogieboarder Arthur Medici, hit by a White, dragged out of the water onto the sand by his pal Issac Rocha. 

Medici was motionless and without expression. His pupils were fixed and blank. He was not breathing. She checked his pulse. There was none. Scanning, taking in information quickly, she examined his wounds. A chunk of flesh of one leg was missing, and the other leg was mangled. Worse, the wounds were not bleeding or noticeably seeping. Lanctot’s eyes followed drag marks leading from the water to Medici’s silent frame. There was not a drop of blood. His femoral or popliteal arteries had been severed, she figured, and his blood drained away. Without hemostatic clamps and immediate transfusions, he was past saving. The nearest hospital was more than 30 miles away. Lanctot knew this math. It was bad.

She heard a man in the crowd. “You’ve got to do something,” he said

Rocha had tied a boogie-board leash around one of Medici’s legs. Lanctot slipped the tourniquet around the other, just under his groin, and twisted it tight, clamping quadriceps and hamstring hard to bone. The lifeguards and doctors worked frantically, pumping Medici’s chest with the flat of their hands while one gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Lanctot felt pangs of empathy. Medici’s skin was turning ashen. Rocha was inconsolable. She wished his mother were there to comfort him. She held Medici’s hand, hoping he would feel companionship, knowing he could not acknowledge it.

Surfers are referenced later in the piece, which you can read in its entirety here. 

After Medici’s death, some surfers switched to stand-up paddle boards, which largely keep limbs out of the water and offer greater visibility. Others, like Lanctot, quit surfing on the Outer Cape. Some kept surfing, but with whistles, so if a shark appeared they could clear people fast.

Whistles!

Scientists have applauded the arrival of the Great White packs, 

“The annual returns are a success story, a welcome sign of ecosystem recovery at a time when many wildlife species are depleted.”

So there’s that, I suppose. 

 


Dang rich homeowners.
Dang rich homeowners.

Hawaii government vows to act against surf great Kelly Slater, other oceanfront homeowners, after public outcry against illegal burritos: “It looks like a trash heap, not something you would assume to find on Sunset Beach, which is the premier surf spot!”

But silver lining?

Two weeks ago, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser published a damning report fingering surf great Kelly Slater along with other oceanfront homeowners there on Oahu’s North Shore who have installed illegal devices on the sand in order to protect their investments from an increasingly violent sea.

The makeshift seawalls and sand bag thingers, called burritos, were temporarily allowed for some homeowners in 2018 with the promise that they would be removed. Robust beach erosion followed, as “hardening” the shoreline causes beaches to disappear, sand getting sucked away etc.

Oahu, per the report, has already lost 25% of its beaches and scientists declare that number is on its way to 40% with the hardening but the Hawaiian government has remained quiet… until now.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources, reacting to frustration from the island’s non-rich residents, has admitted that the structures have “led to obvious degradation of the public beach resource” and shall henceforth send letters to the homeowners detailing their “alleged noncompliance.”

Zing.

According to ProPublica:

Under state law, officials can fine property owners $15,000 a day for unauthorized structures that remain on the beach, though they have yet to take that step against homeowners with expired permits. Nevertheless, the uptick in oversight represents a stark shift in approach for Hawaii’s coastal officials.

As the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica reported last year, temporary sandbags and burrito systems are rarely removed from public beaches when their permissions are set to expire, in large part because state officials have repeatedly granted homeowners extensions or don’t enforce their own deadlines. In addition, the state has often granted after-the-fact approval for structures that were built illegally.

In at least one case where coastal officials rejected an illegal barrier, they did not force its removal. In 2018, Kelly Slater, an 11-time world surfing champion who lives on Ehukai Beach by the world-famous Banzai Pipeline surf break, illegally installed a barrier made out of thick fabric. He was fined just $2,000. DLNR told the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica this month that “unauthorized land uses continue to exist” in front of Slater’s property and the department is “attempting to get the landowner to comply.” Slater, who did not respond to a request for comment, previously told the news organizations that without the sandbags people “would have lost properties outright.”

Asked why authorities hadn’t yet forced North Shore homeowners to remove the burritos with expired permits, OCCL said that many of the homes remain imminently threatened and that property owners have a right to due process. Officials have also said that they’re concerned about potential public safety hazards created by homes that could fall into the ocean.

Wait.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Slater’s collapsed, ocean-drowned home becoming a new reef that rivals the Banzai Pipeline?

That’s so Kelly!

Inventor of professional surfing Randy Rarick is also interviewed in the report and tells homeowners to kick rocks.