"Hawaii residents and tourists should not have to miss their flights or stand for 3-4 hours in line at the airport security check while the super rich that own airplanes don’t have to deal with this mess and these things."

The king of the octagon, the UFC hall-of-famer, survivor of worst wavepool accident in surfing history and now candidate for governor of Hawaii, has promised to disband the Transportation Security Administration if elected in November. 

“The Afghanistan war is over,” writes BJ. “There is no need for TSA IN Hawaii anymore. As Governor I will eliminate TSA and I will find jobs for the current TSA workers. TSA was introduced to us in Hawaii in 2002 at the start of the Afghanistan war. Walking in the airport should be the same security as walking into a court house. In the ALOHA STATE Hawaii residents and tourists should not have to miss their flights or stand for 3-4 hours in line at the airport security check while the super rich that own airplanes don’t have to deal with this mess and these things. No second Identification check, a walk through metal detector, no taking off all of our shoes and jackets and throwing away all of our liquids for no reason. These things do not help our economy. These are things that police states implement. It’s time to get our way of life back… cut the red tape!!!” 

The TSA was birthed in response to the September 11 attacks on New York and DC as the USA souped up its security to Israeli sorta levels, using full-body scanners, device restrictions, air marshalls on board random flights, real clever machines that can detect a whiff of explosive in luggage etc, you know the drill, Islamic terrorism’s lasting gift to the world. 

Not all of BJ’s 330,000 fans were thrilled by the notion howevs,

With all due respect, TSA keeps bombs off airplanes I’d love to hear the alternative plan for that. Local authority?” writes @trainangry.mma

“I was rooting for you but after this post idk anymore lo,” writes @soganator.

“Cuz been knocked in the head one too many times. That CTE catching up to you,” writes @macaysa

@lomohunger, “TSA is what you’re worried about??? 😂 Not the ice problem?? I guess standing in line for a while is more important than all the drug addicted people in Hawaii.”

One notable supporter of the plan is the baseball-bat swinging, send-the-king-of-the-Hui to jail hell-raiser Ian “Kanga” Cairns, whom we last saw enjoying a DM battle with the surf feminist Lucy Small.

It’s been five days since the Hawaiian Penn, who is forty-two and of Irish-American and Korean-Hawaiian descent, posted a clip from the movie Sparta with the following call to arms, 

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but I would never run from a fight or sell out my people. As soon as I step into Hawaii’s Governor office I will remove All new federal and state mandates that have been hurting our economy, residents, and ‘ohana. We will get the best doctors, medicines, therapies, and health care the world has to offer to fight this pandemic and always keep Hawaii among the safest and healthiest states in the union. We will get rid of all vaccine passports. Hawaii will be a vaccinated with Aloha and Unvaccinated with Aloha policy for everyone. Same with the masks 😷. We will follow the constitution to the tee 👌. I am not here to fit in with the other politicians, I am here to get our freedoms back!

The election takes place on November 8, 2022, with the incumbent, democrat David Ige, ineligible to run due to govs being allowed only two terms. 

Half of the apartments sold in the first weekend, a wild seventy-one mill in sales.

The three-time world surfing champion Mick Fanning and Rip Curl founder Doug Warbrick have pooled their considerable fortunes to bankroll along with a few others, a wild looking tower with yoga and steam rooms, gymnasiums, a rooftop slide and hanging gardens in Rainbow Bay, where you’ll find Snapper, Greenmount etc. 

Mick and Doug, who both own hunks of dirt in Rainbow, although not on the beachfront side, combined their landholdings into one monster block. 

Doug, y’might recall, came into his cash after selling his slice of Rip Curl to Kathmandu after fifty years of continuous ownership in a total sale worth $350 mill; Mick, who won world titles in 2007, 2009 and 2013 before retiring in 2018 after seventeen years on tour, has long been into real estate as well as various business plays, including Balter Beer which sold one year ago for a rumoured two-hundred mill.

The approval for the tower, which is called Esprit, wasn’t a fait accompli despite Fanning’s god-like status around Coolangatta, with the Gold Coast Council stinging ‘em for a $2.084 million infrastructure charge. 

Council also wanted to green up the joint, getting the “celebrity moguls” to increase the size of planter boxes on the apartments. 

Whatever you think of towers, of development, of the rich getting richer and so on, y’gotta admit, oowee, ain’t she a peach.

Lap pool, ice bath, yoga and steam rooms, infrared sauna, rooftop slide, outdoor cinema and so on. 

Popular? Yeah, you could say that. 

Half of the 93-apartments were bought in the first weekend, a wild seventy-one mill in sales.

A little under two-mill gets a three-bedder, around a mill, and all Australian shekels, gets two beds.

The developer of Esprit is Paul Gedoun who is building the exclusive Flow residences overlooking the Supa Bank at Rainbow Bay.

As I wrote at the time, “Flow’s got all the usual markers of wealth, heated pool, daybeds, steam room, gymnasium, personal surfboard locker rooms, fire pit, even a ‘surfboard preparation room’ where, perhaps, locals might be employed to fix their masters’ surfboards and where lucky children with whisky breath will be free to roam and little dogs sourced from Mexico will be trained to walk on their hind legs.”

V exciting.

Buy Esprit here.