Breaking: Hawaiian surf icon and former world #4 fighting for his life in ICU after being attacked at Ala Moana Beach Park! “Hawaii has changed dramatically. Drugs and crime are now everywhere. It’s getting worse… sad!”

One of the very best in the game.

The North Shore legend, former world tour shredder and influential surfboard shaper, Reno Abellira, is reportedly fighting for his life after being attacked at the Ala Moana Beach Park.

From Instagram,

Reno Abellira was Attack While Sleeping at Ala Moana Beach Park and He as kind of been homeless lately. They are Saying That He’s In A Coma? Please send some prayers to him and if anybody know anything new you can update or leave a comment.

Okay the latest update he is in Queens Hospital In ICU he’s in serious condition but stable but not conscious.
As of Sunday 9:15 PM

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Willie Grace (@waikikibeachboys)

Abellira, who is seventy-one, has had what you might call a wild, wild life.

His daddy was a middleweight boxer who was shot dead in a Chinatown pool hall where he worked as a “strong arm”; he beat Jeff Hakman at thirty-foot Waimea Bay to win the 1974 Smirnoff (he’d win it again three years later) and his twin-fin design convinced Mark Richards to make a version of it and subsequently dominate the world tour for half a decade.

In a 1979 profile by Phil Jarratt he is described as “oh, five-feet-seven, muscle-toned and slim of hip. He dresses elegantly and carries himself with what his friends call confidence and his enemies call arrogance. On a recent trip to the mainland he had his thick black hair permed and it now falls in ringlets around his face and sets off his well-trimmed mustache. He’s a bit of a dandy and he could teach most surfers a thing or two about color coordination. He speaks softly, and when he’s not smiling, he appears to be frowning. There is no middle ground. You hear Reno described as arrogant, aloof and intense. He’s all of that, but he’s also a warm and genuine human being with a positively wicked sense of humor and a streak of dementia deep within. He is sometimes misunderstood. There are surfers who have associated with him for years but confess they don’t really know or understand him. By his own admission he is “a complex person.”

In 1992, he was indicted, according to a letter to BeachGrit from Reno “for three counts for the Federal crimes of racketeering (the RICO Act) specifically Possession with Intent to distribute of four kilos of Cocaine and over 27 pounds of marijuana that had been control delivered by the U.S Postal Service and D.E.A agents to an address in suburban Honolulu.”

Recently, he went after Matt Warshaw and your ol pal DR in a couple of blood feuds.

More as it comes.


Small (center) in the belly of the NSSA.
Small (center) in the belly of the NSSA.

National Scholastic Surfing Assoc. advertises upcoming airshow with women getting half as much prize money as men, boys; surf feminist hero Lucy Small swings into action: “You love progression, what about progression on gender equality!”

Cha-ching.

The National Scholastic Surfing Association, or NSSA, stepped right in it yesterday by advertising an upcoming “airshow” for men, women, children in Huntington Beach, California to take place today. The post, on Instagram, was captioned “we love progression! Let’s go kids!”

All not great though the real kicker was the boldly announced prize purse. The winner of the men’s division set to receive $1000. Winner to the “juniors” or boys division also $1000. Winner of the women’s $500, exactly half as much, enough to cover dinner for 10 at the local Olive Garden.

“Cha-ching” was written above and adorned with rocket ship emojis and flying stacks of cash.

One might imagine how this bald-faced show of inequality might be ill-advised in this day and age. One might also imagine how this sort of business easily slides under the radar.

Thankfully, we have surf feminist hero Lucy Small.

You will certainly recall how she bravely called contest organizers out from the stage after winning half as much as the men in an Australian longboarding competition. You should also remember how she bathed Dirty Water with her charm and wit.

And into the NSSA comments she swung, declaring, “Equal pay for equal play is written into California State law! You love progression, what about progress on gender equality?”

The NSSA, of course, quickly deleted the post leading Small to wonder if it was disappeared because the situation is going to be rectified or simply because the association did not want the scrutiny.

Very fine point and I believe the scrutiny is well-deserved.

NSSA?

Equal pay or will the 1950s continue to guide decision making?

More as the story develops.


Look! Friendly ocean creature!

Surfing’s pre-eminent journalist slams Sixty Minutes’ child-like take on Australia’s Great White crisis! “What would you do if you swam into … Jaws?”

“We’re to blame for the surprising boom in shark bites…”

The world’s pre-eminent surf journalist Sean Doherty, a man who will crumble bones and drink blood in the pursuit of a story, has come out swinging at tabloid current affairs show 60 Minutes for its child-like take on Australia’s Great White Crisis. 

In episode 39, Close Encounters, which comes two weeks after a Perth man swimming fifty feet from shore was disappeared by a Great White, we get the usual tabloid arc on shark attacks, a little shock and horror (“What would you do if you swam into Jaws,”) followed by resolution and reassurance – technology will save us along with what might loosely be called an expert on the matter saying, well, more people in the water ergo more attacks. 

Nothing to see here, move on etc. 

Doherty, who is the author of the definitive MP: the Life of Michael Peterson, My Brother’s Keeper: the official Bra Boy’s story, once voted the World’s Best Surf Reporter, who owns print magazine Surfing World and who helped steer public opinion against new oil drilling in Australian waters, was savage in his attack.

When 60 Minutes tweeted, “Dr Nathan Hart, a world-leading animal neurologist, puts the increase in shark encounters down to one simple fact: humans are sharks are mixing more than ever before,

Doherty responded,

“One simple fact? More people? All recent fatalities have been victims of White shark attack. White sharks have been protected in Australian waters for 20 years. Breeding cycle 12-15. Your reporter just nodded his way blithely through this claim.” 

Doherty knows.

He grew up surfing the NSW mid-north Coast and has seen that dreamy lil stretch of surf heaven turn into a superhighway for Great Whites. 

In May, he wrote about life in Tuncurry after a surfer was killed by a fifteen-foot Great White at one of the area’s best waves. 

Growing up in Forster and surfing during the ‘80s and ‘90s, I never really encountered sharks, not whites anyway. We’d catch whalers outside while fishing, but you never saw sharks while surfing. This was the heyday of the Tuncurry Bar, half a mile out to sea off Tuncurry Beach at the mouth of Wallis Lake, one of the best right-handers on the east coast. When the Bar broke, nobody ever thought twice about sharks. They were never front of mind.

But that’s changed in recent years. With the white shark protected since 1999, and the primary east coast breeding ground just down the coast, they’re regular visitors. When the NSW Department of Primary Industries began their trial of Smart drum-lines in the area back in 2017, they immediately confirmed what many local surfers already knew. The DPI picked up 65 white sharks in six months between the town beaches of Tuncurry and Burgess, most of them juveniles between two and  three metres. 

Obvious questions.

Will the conversation, as it’s called, turn specifically to Great Whites or stick to “sharks” thus muddying the debate with platitudes like more sharks are killed by humans than vice-versa, cue photos of sharks being finned, and when will any of the supposed experts, none of whom appear to surf, arrive at a number for the current population of Great Whites?

And, to the point of more people surfing ergo more attacks, I’d suggest the numbers of swimmers off Perth has dwindled to almost zero, most of ’em swimming so close to shore they almost hit the sand with their arm strokes, and at known Great White haunts surfer numbers are down dramatically.

Or I’m wrong.

Tell me.


Later, VAL.
Later, VAL.

Tybee Island, Georgia’s most popular surf spot, experiencing horrific surge of headless roosters, cups of blood being left on beach as experts wonder if voodoo is being practiced to cull herd of VALs!

The answer?

The VAL-pocalypse is truly upon us, each and every one, but how many brand new adult learners do you see around your local lineups each day? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Seventy wouldn’t be out of the question and we surfers, we proud few who first paddled out before the age of twelve, are left with a real quandary.

What then shall we do?

Well, a brave soul in Georgia may have stumbled upon the answer.

Voodoo.

Georgia, directly above Florida and much like it except with a good college team, is not known for its surf but certainly has some and mostly on Tybee Island. Many surf schools there. Much soft top though also headless birds left on the beach and cups of blood.

Per a report from Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News:

Someone is leaving what appears to be animal sacrifices on the beach at Tybee Island. Channel 2 Action News has learned that police have found headless birds on the beach five times in 2021.

“I touched one, but it sure looks like blood to me,” said a witness on police body camera video. “Yeah, those would be roosters,” replied the officer.

Police said two headless roosters and six red plastic cups with dried blood were found on the beach in late September.

“Oh, cups of blood! No, I don’t know if they were performing some type of ritual or what, but I don’t like it,” said Stephanie Keeler of O’Fallon, Illinois, who was visiting Tybee Island’s beach.

Channel 2 Action News filed an open records request with the City of Tybee Island and learned that headless birds were found on the beach five times in 2021.

“We don’t know exactly why it keeps happening. The way appears to be ritualistic, but we don’t know whether it’s part of organized religion or what the intent might be,” said Lt. Emory Randolph with the Tybee Island Police Department.

I think brilliant.

I think if we, each and every one, purposed to leave headless birds and cups of blood on our favorite VAL infested spots we’d soon clean it all up.

No?

A better idea?

Well, spill those beans.


The bad old days.
The bad old days.

Reaching peak abundance of caution, New Zealand lifeguards ordered to wear masks when plucking drowning swimmers, surfers from Davy Jones’ Locker!

So long, CPR.

It is summertime in beautiful New Zealand, or almost summertime, and the beaches are filled with happy locals who have spent much of the last year-plus locked indoors. They are out now, and free, but maybe too free flocking to beaches and forgetting how to swim, surf.

There were two mass rescues, yesterday. One in Raglan after hundreds of people got sucked out to sea in a giant rip tide. Fourteen souls were saved and none lost. Another in Auckland where thirteen souls were snatched from Davy Jones’ Locker and none lost.

Lifeguards, brave and bold, hoisting dripping wet, gasping men and women into boats, helping them to shore.

Lifeguards, courageous and resolute, pumping chests and not performing CPR with their mouths because their mouths and noses are covered with abundant caution.

Yes, New Zealand became the first country to require its lifeguards to wear masks whilst on duty. Raglan’s patrol captain Molly Abrams told Radio New Zealand that all lifeguards had been given cotton masks to wear “when practicable” but that “saving lives was still a priority.”

CPR seems outdated, anyhow, so all good.